The Moses Riddle (Thomas McAllister 'Treasure Hunter' Adventure Book 1) (20 page)

His eyes fluttered open, and the first thing he saw was a yellow pencil stuck in a ceiling tile. It looked like it was a mile away. The pink eraser swam in and out of his vision. What the hell happened? Should he move? Pretend he was dead
? Think, Thomas
! What about Ann? What was she doing?
He was staring at the ceiling in shock. Not real medical shock. Rather, self-induced downtime, until his brain could figure out what to do. No precedent.
There was ringing in his ears and he saw movement on the other side of the room. He raised his head and saw Ann lowering her gun, staring at him with the blank, detached gaze of a hardened killer.
The look on her face took him back to a childhood field trip to a dairy farm. He’d never forgotten the detached way the farmer had looked at his dairy cows while explaining his business to the class. The cows that Thomas had formerly considered members of Old Macdonald’s Farm had become machines that needed to produce X number of gallons per day, or they got eliminated, and replaced by better machines. He’d seen, and understood with great clarity, that the farmer had a job to do and that he’d separated his emotions from the job, so that there was no link. Ann had the same look in her eyes now. The way the dairy farmer had looked at the cows. Detachment. He never would have guessed she was capable of that expression.
And then suddenly something flickered behind her eyes and she turned and went out the door. He looked back at the ceiling. How long had the pencil been there? Who had thrown it? When would gravity cause it to drop? What in the hell had just happened? Thomas prided himself on his preparation, but in the million iterations on this exact exchange that he’d done, he’d never, ever planned on this outcome.
He lowered his chin to his chest and saw blood. He still couldn’t feel the wound. It was like an extremely powerful person had come up behind him, put a hand on his left shoulder, and yanked him back as hard as they could. His breath became short and then he felt adrenaline surging through his body.
He remembered when President Reagan had been shot. Reagan hadn’t known he’d taken a bullet until ten minutes afterwards. He had said he felt cold and clammy.
That’s how I feel
. Reagan had almost died on the table during surgery. He’d lost a lot of blood.
Why isn’t someone from the club coming to help me? If I stay here, surely I’ll go into shock!
And that’s what would’ve happened had he continued to lie there, if he hadn’t heard Ann’s voice coming from outside the room.
Focus, Thomas. What was she saying
?
Faintly, through the door, he heard, “It’s done. He’s dead. Bring in the cleaning crew.” Authoritative and convincing.
But it was clear she was trying too hard
. I don’t believe her and neither will Peobles. He’ll come back and, like the good agent that he is, put a bullet between my eyes. Then it will be done. Then he’ll call the cleaning crew.
But there was something rising deep within Thomas. From depths which he’d rarely, if ever, felt an emotion before. A dormant, animalistic section rarely used, seldom needed. A place that, after a few more generations, a few more mutations, would probably cease to exist.
His breathing increased and his chest swelled. His adrenal gland fully dilated. All pain and fear was gone. Suddenly he was filled with a flash of white hot anger — no, fury.
Without even thinking he sat upright. He was tempted to walk right out into the hallway, reach into Ann’s blue blazer, pull out her pistol, and shoot both her and Peobles. How dare a couple of squabbling, amateurish government agents try to kill him. Shit, he was probably the first person she’d ever shot. So much for fair play. So much for love, and the future. He’d get even. He’d show every stinking one of these bastards who they were messing with.
Adrenaline, driven by black hate, coursed through his veins. Every nerve tingled. He looked at his wound. She had missed his heart and hit his left shoulder. It felt heavy, but he still had limited use of his arm. He rolled over and pushed up with his right arm. There was a small pool of blood on the floor. He felt dizzy, but the adrenaline brought clarity back. Two plus two still equaled four.
His head swung to the door. He could hear Peobles say, “Fine. I’ll confirm, then we leave!”
Ann had lost the argument. Thomas went into survival mode. The thought of picking up a chair and slamming it into Peobles, as he walked through the door, crossed his mind, but he was in no shape to fight. He couldn’t be sure that he could knock Peobles out on the first try. Plus, there would still be Ann to deal with. The new robotic Ann. The Ann with no feeling. No emotion. Detached Ann, capable of nightmarish acts. She’d shot him once. She’d do it again.
He moved as quickly as he could to the door on the other side of the room. The one to the service hallway. He turned the brass handle and was out and moving toward the stairway he had seen earlier. Then he stopped. It was a primary corridor and was probably being watched.
Thomas was about to go back the other way, but before he turned, he scanned the end of the hall and there, in center of the wall, was a large gray panel. He shuffled over to it, occasionally leaning on the wall to keep his balance. He yanked the knob and the panel rolled upward like a garage door, revealing a large, ancient dumbwaiter. He heard a door opening behind him and without a second thought, he dove into the dumbwaiter, falling heavily against the far wall. Lightening bolts of pain shot through him, and on the horizon, over the lip of the shaft he saw Peobles, with what looked like a .44 Magnum, aimed right at him.

He was falling fast now and the light entering the shaft was getting farther and farther away. On his back, looking up, he saw the silhouette of someone looking down at him from where he’d entered the shaft. It was Peobles. Suddenly, flames spat from the barrel of Peobles’ gun. Thomas’s eardrums almost exploded, as the sound of the .44 Magnum reverberated in the shaft. Another shot, and Thomas felt a tug on the tray he was lying on. He looked down and saw a hole the size of a quarter. His own blood, which had been pooling in the tray, began running smoothly through the hole. Peobles meant business. He clearly had orders to kill.

Figuring he had to be near the bottom of the tunnel, Thomas let go of the chain. A second later, the tray slammed into the bottom floor. Before Peobles could fire again Thomas rolled out onto a terra cotta floor. He could hear the sounds of a commercial kitchen, before he saw the faces of the startled workers. The clanking of pans ceased and all motion stopped as they watched him roll out and stand up, blood dripping from his fingertips. He had to keeping moving.

One of the men, the dishwasher, pointed to his right to a greasy door that looked like it might lead out to the alley. Thomas took three steps, opened the door, and was greeted by a sliver of sunlight in a typically narrow Manhattan alley. It was the one behind the Harvard Club that he had photographed yesterday. Behind him, he heard the kitchen resume its normal din before the door slapped shut.

Thomas figured that Peobles, or whoever was running this operation, would handle his escape in typical government fashion. The same way they handle Presidential security. Starting with the Harvard Club, they would set up a series of circles, each wider and less secure than the one before it. They would search these and contain each circle, slowly squeezing in, slowly isolating him.

In this situation, where they probably didn’t plan on his escape, they probably hadn’t set up the surveillance circles. But they had agents in the area, and they would set them up quickly. The circles would be relatively tight, because he was wounded and they knew he couldn’t travel fast on foot. And, since it involved DJ, they would be relentless. He had to get as far from the Club as possible as quickly as he could.

He stood in the center of the alley and surveyed his situation. From the Polaroids he knew the layout of each of the surrounding streets. He had to think fast. Any minute, Peobles would be in the kitchen, and someone would point to the door he had just come through.

The entire alley was lined with back doors to restaurants and retail businesses. Trash was piled high. There were many hiding places. Thomas walked over to the door directly across from the kitchen. It opened easily and led to the receiving area of some kind of paper and office supply store. Thomas took one quick look over his shoulder, to check for a trail of blood, and then went inside.

He moved quickly toward the front of the store, hoping it would place him on the street one block away from the Harvard Club. He passed a bathroom, reached in, took a handful of paper towels and continued on, stuffing them under his shirt where the bullet had entered. He went right out past the desk, where employees were helping customers with copy and printing requests, through a small retail area, and out onto the street.

He needed to get to his hotel. His car was only two blocks away, but driving in Manhattan would be like going to his own funeral. By the time he got to his car and entered traffic, he’d be within the FBI’s net. No car. He stood in front of the copy store cycling through options. This was the key decision. It might mean staying alive or not.

The lunch rush was long over and three yellow cabs came into sight, with their lights out. He hailed one. “Start the clock, but don’t go anywhere yet.” He couldn’t go anywhere cloaked in blood. His blue blazer was soaked through, a sticky mess, and he needed medical attention. The hospitals would all be on alert. He had to buy something to wear over his bloody shirt, so that he could get into the Plaza, to make phone calls. The dizziness was worsening. He would’ve fainted from the blood loss already, if he weren’t so filled with anger.

He’d traded fair and square. True to his word. He gave them the most unique treasure in history, and they’d somehow gotten Ann to shoot him
. But how?
It didn’t matter now. He would get to a phone and seek revenge. The seeds of an idea were already beginning to appear.

Three doors from the copy store was a sporting goods store. “I’m going to run into that store and pick something up. Here’s a twenty. I’ll see you get plenty more if you wait.” He dashed out of the cab and into the store, quickly bought a Cincinnati Reds jacket, and wore it out of the store. If the people behind the counter had noticed he was bleeding they hadn’t shown it. As he dove in the waiting taxi he hoped they weren’t calling the police at that very moment to report a badly bleeding man.

“I
confirm
, Agent Warrant. This wood came from the real Ark!” Dr. Nelson said too loudly into DJ’s ear.
DJ smiled. He had it. Finally. He echoed the words to Peobles in New York. And now, all he had to do was wait. McAlister was simply too dangerous to leave alive. He had devised a scheme to have Thomas shot so that it would look like self-defense. One of the agents on site, Peobles, would make it look like a domestic dispute between Ann and Thomas, in which Thomas became enraged and dangerous. Peobles would testify that Thomas had tried to kill both him and Ann, in a jealous rage. They would plant a gun on McAlister.
DJ lowered the hatch, leaned against it, and lit a Marlboro. He was the winner. Too bad McAlister wouldn’t be around to see that he’d won. Best of all, he’d made Annie kill the bastard. What a shock it must’ve been, when his lover pointed the gun at him and fired. What a terrible last image.
DJ turned to peer through the back window at the Ark. They’d have it loaded on the C-120 in less than ten minutes. They had the full cooperation of the Mexican government. The report would be easy. Straightforward because this was the outcome the President had wanted, had authorized. He smiled. He hated lengthy paperwork.
His radio crackled and a the sound of fast breathing came through. Then,
“DJ, DJ, come in! DJ, come in
!” It was Peobles.
He swung into action. Ready for the worst. “DJ here.”
Peobles was running. “Subject has escaped! Repeat, subject
has escaped
! We’re in pursuit. We’ve formed a tight perimeter. Goddamn it, DJ,
he got away
!”
DJ stood up and roared, each word ascending by at least an octave, “Goddamn it! God-fucking-damn it, Peobles! What happened?”
DJ could hear Peobles yelling commands to other agents. “He’s shot once. Point-blank. Bleeding bad. I think I may have hit him again. Tighten it, tighten the circle. Everyone come in two blocks. Check everything, people.
Everything
. We’re in pursuit; I’ll update you when we have him.”
“You better get him, Peobles. You goddamn better get him, or it’s your ass!”
DJ hit the Aerostar, making a deep dent below the back window. His heart was pounding so hard he could barely breathe. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. Had he lost his touch? Was this guy superhuman? He switched frequency on his radio, and began barking orders to the team that was standing by on the airstrip. “Steve, come in, come in,
Steve
!”
“Steve here.”
“Steve, we’re on our way to the runway. I want your men on Full Alert!”
“Ten-four, sir. Full alert!”
“
Full
alert!. Guns drawn, safeties off. Got it? No fucking around. Don’t let anyone but me and the team near that plane. Especially no Mexican officials. McAlister may be up to something. They’ve had trouble executing the mission in New York. Hold tight, I’ll be there in two minutes.”
“Got it, sir. No one gets near us.”
“Ten-four. Out.”
This made four times the bastard had gotten away. DJ broke out into a cold sweat. Somehow he knew Peobles would not catch Thomas. Peobles would pull the team in too tight, and McAlister would break through. Hell, right now the son-of-a-bitch was probably riding a broomstick, on his way up to meet their C-120 head-on.
How could they have missed him at point-blank range? In such a confined area? Suddenly, the full implication struck him. He had committed conspiracy to murder and the only person who could testify against him was still walking around. He had to get McAlister at all costs!
He turned to Elmo, who had been watching and listening as the mission unfolded. “Get me a list of the names of every friend, family member, or acquaintance of Thomas McAlister, and their last known address and phone number. Sort them by proximity to Manhattan.”
Elmo turned his computer screen to face DJ. Anticipating DJ, he already had the list waiting.