The fury left her as she turned, looking for more opponents.
There were none. Only Alex standing over the downed shot gunner
staring at her in amazement.
Sirens approached, growing louder, and neither of them could find
words. Finally as the flashing lights of the first police car strobed
them, Alex said, 'What the hell are you doing here?'
'Nobody moves!' a cop nervously clutching his pistol yelled.
No problem. Alex and Toni stood very still--and nobody else there
could have moved anyway.
Wednesday, June 15th Port Townsend, Washington
The sleepy little scenic tourist town was certainly wide awake up on
the hillside now: City police, firemen, deputies, and most of the
neighbors all stood in the glow of headlights and emergency flashers,
trying to figure out what was going on. It was noisy, bright, and
hectic.
It didn't take all that long to get it sorted out. Michaels explained
who he and Toni were, and when their Net Force/ FBI identification
checked out valid, that made things a lot less tense.
There were two dead men in Morrison's backyard, and their IDs indicated
that they were members of some paramilitary group based in Idaho.
The shot gunner was alive, with a fractured skull, and it seemed he was
the leader of that same group, a general.
He had been hit twice by bullets from Ventura's pistol,
both of which had been stopped by his body armor.
Bubba the bodybuilder had a broken neck.
And Ventura? He had taken two blasts from the general's shotgun, and
unfortunately for him, he hadn't been wearing body armor. The first
shot apparently hit him in the chest, the second in the face. Either
would have killed him, the fireman-paramedic said, the head shot faster
than the one in the pump.
Michaels and Toni went through Ventura's personal property. He had the
gun, extra ammunition, flashlight, lock picks, car keys, and, inside
what was left of his windbreaker pocket, a DVD disk inside a plastic
case. Both had been shattered into tiny bits by the shotgun blast,
some slivers of which had been driven into the dead man's heart by the
impact.
'Want to bet that disk is what he stopped by Morrison's to find?' Toni
said.
'No bet,' Michaels said.
'You think the FBI lab could put this thing back together?' Some of
the bloody pieces were the size of needles.
She shook her head.
'Enough to retrieve whatever was on it? I doubt it. If the secret to
the crazy ray was on that disk, it's gone.'
Michaels nodded.
'Probably just as well. I'm not sure I'd want our government getting
its hands on it any more than anybody else.' He looked at her.
'You're the one who got the good car from the rental place, aren't
you?
