Cutler froze. Wingate turned his head toward the door. His mouth opened, but he stifled whatever he had intended to say.
“Put it down, now,” Carl commanded. Cutler laid the needle on the end table next to the bed.
“Get away from her and stand against the wall. Quick!”
Both men obeyed.
“I knew you’d come,” Vanessa said.
Carl moved to the side of the bed. For a brief second, his eyes left Wingate and Cutler and moved over Vanessa. In that instant, Sam Cutler slipped a Shirken out of his sleeve. The Japanese throwing star had six knife- sharp points. Cutler hurled it across the bed like a discus into Carl’s right shoulder. The shoulder went numb and he dropped the Glock. Cutler leaped across the bed. Vanessa raised her leg, catching Cutler across the knees. As he stumbled over her, Vanessa grabbed the hypodermic and rammed the needle into Cutler’s thigh.
“You bitch!” he screamed. Then his eyes started to loose focus. Vanessa knew exactly what was happening to Cutler’s body. It had been happening to hers with regularity ever since Cutler had injected her in the woods.
Wingate took a step toward Rice, then changed direction and charged out of the room when Carl grabbed the Glock with his left hand and start to aim. The shot went through the open door and into the wall, sending plaster chips spraying across the hallway. The General was shouting at the top of his lungs. Rice peered into the hall. It was empty but it wouldn’t stay that way long.
“Get up, Vanessa.”
Vanessa struggled to her feet. She wanted to move faster but her legs felt like noodles. Carl helped her stand. He knew it was going to be impossible to fight his way out of the house and escape down the cliff with Vanessa in this condition, but he didn’t dwell on the future. He would complete his mission one step at a time and whatever happened, happened. And the first step was getting out of the room.
Carl held the Glock in his left hand and gripped Vanessa’s elbow with his right.
“Concentrate, Van. We have to get out of here fast.”
“Okay,” she answered in a sleepy voice.
Carl took a step into the corridor, and a bullet almost took his head off. He ducked back inside the maid’s room as wood splinters from the door frame flew through the air. Carl slammed the door shut and jammed the chair under the knob. Then he dumped Sam Cutler on the floor and pushed the bed onto its side.
“Get behind the bed and hug the floor. There are going to be a lot of bullets coming through the door and walls.”
Carl joined Vanessa behind the bed and set out all his weapons and ammunition on the floor beside him. He had enough firepower to hold out for a while, but then what?
“What’s going to happen?” Vanessa asked. She still sounded a little spacey.
“I don’t know. We’re trapped in here. There’s only one way out-the door-and your father has that covered. Even if we got out the door, we’d have to fight our way down the corridor to get to the stairs. Then we’d have to fight our way down the stairs and through the house.”
Carl shrugged. Vanessa forced herself to focus. She was getting sharper every second and during one of those seconds she’d had a glimmer of an idea, but she’d been too groggy to hold on to it. She had figured out one thing, though. She had wondered why, if her father loved her enough to save her old pajamas, he had put her in a deserted wing of the mansion in the maid’s room instead of her old room. Now she knew the answer to her question. The General had expected Carl to come for her. All she’d been to him was bait, and this room had always been a trap.
“Carl, be reasonable,” the General called out. “There’s no way out of there. Throw out your weapons. That way, Vanessa won’t get hurt and neither will you.”
“That does sound reasonable, Morris,” Carl answered sarcastically. “I’m sure we can trust you. Maybe we can grab a bite to eat and reminisce about old times, too, like the mission to rescue the MIAs that your flunky led. You sure looked out for me and the rest of your boys then.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Carl. The only time Sam led a mission with you as a member of the team was your first mission, and you cracked up after it. You’re a sick man, Carl. I’ll tell that to the authorities. Maybe we can have you hospitalized instead of sent to prison.”
“That’s it,” Vanessa said, as she suddenly remembered her idea.
“What?” Carl asked her, but Vanessa didn’t answer. Instead, she started searching Sam Cutler. Just before they’d taken off from the airport in the Computex helicopter, Cutler had made a call on a cell phone, which he’d put in his pocket.
“Yes!” she said when she found it.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Victor Hobson had crawled under the covers of his hotel bed a little after midnight at the end of a fruitless day spent shuttling between the Portland police bureau and the FBI office. Then he had tossed and turned all night. At five in the morning, he dragged himself out of bed feeling more exhausted than he’d been when he went to sleep. On the east coast it was eight o’clock. If he were home, he would be at least an hour behind his usual schedule.
Hobson went into the bathroom. The mirror in his hotel room was not kind to him. Shaving, brushing his teeth, and taking a cold shower raised his spirits a little, but his failure to make any progress in the manhunt was still depressing.
Carl Rice had been as insubstantial as a ghost for the past twenty years, and there were times when Hobson had wondered if Carl was just a figment of his imagination. Now, just when it appeared that Rice was in his grasp, he had disappeared again. Victor could not understand how a man could vanish so completely.
It had been too late on the east coast to call Emily before he went to bed, so Hobson decided to call her now, knowing that she’d be up with the kids. He was reaching for the hotel phone when his cell phone rang. Hobson tried to remember where he’d put it and finally found it on the desk after several unnerving rings that sounded to his tired brain like metal dishes clattering on a tile floor.
“Hobson,” he barked as he turned on the desk light.
“Victor, this is Vanessa Kohler.”
Vanessa’s voice acted on Hobson like a strong cup of coffee.
“Where are you?” he asked, trying to hide his excitement.
“I’m with Carl Rice in my father’s mansion. You know where that is, right?”
“Yes.”
“My father’s men kidnapped me and he’s been using drugs to keep me a prisoner. Carl broke into the mansion to rescue me but we’re trapped. We’ve barricaded ourselves in a maid’s room on the second floor. My father’s men are trying to kill us. We’re armed, and we’ll fight if we have to, but we’d rather turn ourselves in.”
“I can arrange that.”
“Then you’d better move fast. I don’t know how long my father will wait before he tells his men to storm the room. Now, here’s what I want you to do. First, you have to tell the local police where we are and that we want to surrender to them. They’ll have to come to the room. We’re afraid to step into the hall if we’re not protected. My father’s men have already fired several shots at us.”
“I’ll call the police immediately,” Hobson assured her.
“As soon as the police are on the way I want you to call my father. I’ll stay on the line so you can hear him if he tries to break into the room. Tell him that you’re talking to me and that the police are coming. Tell him to stop shooting. He’ll kill us if the police aren’t here soon.”
“Give me the number of the estate.”
As soon as Vanessa rattled off the phone number, Hobson dialed Detective Walsh on the hotel phone. Walsh answered almost immediately. He sounded half-asleep.
“Howard, this is Victor Hobson. I’ve got Vanessa Wingate on my cell phone. She’s barricaded in a second- floor room in General Wingate’s mansion in California. Carl Rice is with her and they’re armed, but she assures me that they’ll surrender to the police if the police go to the room and escort them out. Call the police in San Diego and
