Deadly Powers (Tapped In Book 2) (31 page)

He huffed and shook his head. With a sardonic smile he peered down at Pippa’s still form. He tilted his head, suddenly becoming alarmed.

Pippa was already moving—the M16 coming up in both hands.

Tat Tat Tat.

Somewhere along the way, in the span of two, maybe three, seconds, Pippa managed to snatch up the weapon, switch it to full-auto mode, rise up and pull the trigger. Three taps went into Palmolive’s torso. She then rolled to her right and shot the other two men before they could react.

Carver and I stood mesmerized as Pippa got to her feet. She took three steps toward me and delivered a perfect roundhouse punch to my jaw.

I staggered backwards.

“I thought I was dead! I felt the burn of the round. You’re an ass hole … by the way … you know that?” She glared at me.

I nodded. “Sorry.”

Carver was still standing in the same spot. “How … I don’t understand?”

Before I could reply, two Sikorsky helicopters suddenly descended downward from the skies above. Apparently, the racket I’d created, from blowing up the barn, and the subsequent gunfire, affected my hearing.

Although unmarked, I recognized the old SIFTR aircraft. It no sooner touched down than the rear door slid open and an assault team hurried out. The team fanned out all around us. I wasn’t surprised to see Calloway, dressed in a smart, navy pinstriped suit—not a gray hair out of place—following close behind.

The second helicopter, a bigger and later model, landed moments later. Here, too, another armed team deployed with well-practiced efficiency. Then a middle-aged woman, dressed in a gray business suit, jumped down from the craft and made her way toward us.

She met Calloway and they shook hands. Together, they both hurried toward us. The woman signaled two of her own men to attend to Palmolive. Surprising to me, he was still alive. Pippa had fired a round into his left shoulder, his right thigh, and clipped his right ear, which was no longer there. Unfortunately, he’d live. Lifted up by his arms, he was half carried, half dragged, away. He and I made eye contact. I smiled and flipped him the bird.

“Who are you?” I asked the woman in the gray suit, now standing before me.

Calloway said, “This is Ms.—”

She scolded Calloway with a stern glare and said, “My name is Mrs. Gulliver, Mr. Chandler. This is quite a mess you’ve made here.” She looked over to the barn, now fully engulfed in flames, stoked by not one, but two, still-spinning rotor blades. Her eyes roved-over to Palmolive’s two dead men, eventually coming to rest on fallen henchman Jude—emptily staring into the sky above.

“Perhaps it’s time you came to work for me.”

I looked over to Calloway, who shot back, “That’s not going to happen. Remember our agreement, Anne?”

Pippa unslung the satchel from one shoulder and handed it to Calloway. She said, “Palmolive was coordinating the attack from a tablet in here. It’s passcode—”

Interrupting, Mrs. Gulliver said, “I’ll take that,” as she grabbed it away out of Pippa’s hands before Calloway could reach for it. “Rest assured, my people are already closing down the operation.”

Calloway, about to protest, was interrupted by me teetering. He reached an arm out to steady me.

Pippa moved in close to help keep me upright. “He was shot by Jude … already lost a lot of blood.” She looked over to Calloway, who signaled to two of his men, who rushed in to assist me. Then I remembered something and held up a palm … “We need to get out of here.”

“Why?” Ms. Gulliver asked, obviously not accustomed to taking orders.

“Palmolive … rigged everything to blow. The whole damn town.”

* * *

When I awoke next I was on a stretcher and we were lifting off. Ol’ Yeller, whom I’d completely forgotten about, was on my stomach and licking my face. I pushed him off and saw Pippa smiling down at me. She had a bandage on her scalp and seemed to have forgiven me.

Suddenly, everyone looked out the window. With some effort, I pulled myself up to see out, too. The first explosion started at the far end of Main Street, where I’d first ridden into town with Palmolive and Butch Cassidy. The next explosions below us were coming rapidly now, one right after another. I watched as the saloon exploded in a fireball—I lay back, feeling dizzy, and said, “Good riddance.”

I’ve been stuck in some dingy hospital room, in the hee-haw town of Canon City, for the past two days. The shoulder wound bullet had driven through and through—not bad enough to warrant surgery—but with so much blood loss, the doctors decided to keep me under observation, just the same.

Apparently, my shirt unsnapping-signaling thing did work and had called in the cavalry. I definitely needed to thank Bridgett Bigalow the next time I saw her.

Carmen, who’d waited back at the lodge, felt she was going berserk after not hearing from me for several days. Since phone service was not available at the lodge, she eventually headed out to get help from the local Guffy authorities.

Around that same time, a woman, wearing a soiled and torn saloon dress, and nearly frozen to death, staggered into town. Sheriff Corki wasn’t inclined to buy her bizarre, crazy, accounting of events happening in a Western town called Tombstone, of men running around shooting each other. A town he was not completely convinced even existed. Only when Carmen arrived was he set straight. He finally agreed to contact the Canon City PD, but warned they were four hours away and typically didn’t respond all that quickly. Corki did allow Carmen to use his telephone, and she contacted SIFTR, who’d already dispatched a helicopter to the ranch site.

From my hospital bed, I heard voices in the corridor and a moment later Pippa, followed by Calloway, entered my room. She still looked like Heidi Goertz and like she’d gone five rounds with Evander Holyfield. She moved to the right side of my bed, nearest to the window overlooking Pikes Peak in the distance, was about to take my hand, but seemed to change her mind. Calloway, looking dapper in a pristine navy blue suit and pewter-colored necktie, moved to the other side.

I looked at him quizzically. “Well? Disaster averted?”

He and Pippa exchanged a quick look. Pippa said, “Yes and no.”

“Yes … the Order’s attempt to take control of key municipal water supplies has been thwarted. That feat alone made your mission a significant success,” Calloway said, giving my leg a couple of pats.

“And?” I probed.

“We now have significant intelligence about the inner workings of the Order. More than a few of the men we extricated from the silver mine are speaking freely about the organization. After nearly being buried alive, any loyalties they once held are no longer a factor. Other than that, not much else has changed.”

“What are you talking about? That’s certainly enough to bring down the Order. Plus, we have proof of their plans; hell, we have Heidi Goertz—”

Calloway didn’t respond back for several moments. “No … what we have is the WZZ and another foiled attempt at domestic terrorism. Everything’s blamed on the WZZ—all of it. There’s no official admittance that the entity called the Order ever existed. What little intel we’ve pieced together tells us the Order, that elusive organization, has retreated for the time being behind the scenes back under the leadership of Mrs. Gulliver—who was next in line to sit at the head of the table. She has distanced herself from anything to do with the Goertzes’ and Palmolive’s radical intentions to invade key U.S. municipalities.”

“What about the underground thoroughfares … the hydro-passages?”

Calloway shrugged. “I’m sure they are still there. Look, the influence of the Order into international mega-corporations, and virtually into every aspect of the U.S., and other world governmental agencies, is staggering. That’s not going to change as a result of what happened up in Guffy. That’s a fight for another day. With luck, we’ll get some help.”

“Is SIFTR still operational … away from the Order’s influence?” I asked.

“As long as I’m heading things up, the Order will stay out of our business. Time will tell how long that remains so.”

“What is it you said to Mrs. Gulliver … you have something on her, don’t you?”

“Never mind that,” he said, his expression relaying to me the subject was closed.

“And what about Rudy Palmolive?” I asked.

Again, a furtive glance was exchanged between Pippa and Calloway. This time she answered: “Palmolive, according to our sources, has been ousted from the Order. His prospects for survival are not good. Mrs. Gulliver has taken over his seat at the head of the table. Leave it to say, there is some major house-cleaning going on now within the Order. There’s one other thing …”

“What’s that?” I asked, without enthusiasm, feeling we’d taken two steps backward for only one step forward.

“Both Heidi Goertz and Taffy escaped from our safe house in upstate New York.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “I thought SIFTR was out of reach—”

“No … safe houses are shared government resources. It was actually an FBI breach. The Order had a mole in place and well before Palmolive was taken into custody, he had their escape plan in the works. But I should have known better. A mistake I won’t make again,” Calloway said, reprimanding himself.

“They won’t get far, not with the resources the Order has,” Calloway said. “I need to leave now. Curt Baltimore left behind a family and they’ve not been notified yet. I want to handle that task in person. He had an ex-wife and two teenage kids,” Calloway said.

He stood for a moment in the room’s silence, then said, “But first I need to know something. I’ve now heard the same story from multiple points of view—but not yours.” Calloway looked at Pippa, then back to me. “How’d you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Shoot her in the head … and not kill the poor woman in the process?”

“Oh … that,” I said, as if it were no big thing. “When I first arrived in Tombstone, I was encouraged to replace my blanks with live rounds. While standing in the Guns and Ammo Shop, and for no particular reason, I decided to hold on to the blanks. Shoved them into my pocket and forgot about them. That is, until Palmolive and his men had us dead to rights at the back of the barn. With a little sleight of hand, keeping a red-colored blank from view, I was able to reload and … with the necessary dramatics … shoot Pippa in the head.”

Pippa reached for the bandage on the side of her head and scowled down at me.

“Apparently, it convinced Palmolive, and everyone else, that I’d shot a real live round.”

Calloway shook his head and smiled. Saying his goodbyes again, and that he expected me back in service within two weeks, he left.

I looked up at Pippa. I wondered how she was dealing with the physiological aspects of her Heidi Goertz-like appearance. This had to be incredibly difficult for her. I had to force myself to stay out of her head. “You doing … okay?”

She looked down at me, the smile gone from her face. “What do you think?”

I shrugged, but before I could say anything, she continued:

“I know how you feel about Heidi. You hate her; detest her. Probably more than any other person alive.”

I nodded, not knowing what to add to that.

“You’re going to look at me … and hate me! At least until these fucking injections dissipate. I should just disappear for a while. We were already having problems, Rob … this just makes things impossible for us.” Pippa looked toward the door and pursed her swollen lips—I could tell she was thinking about leaving.

I shook my head. “Hey … don’t shut me out! I love you.” The words just came out … three words I’d never said to her before.

Then I noticed she was back to wearing her hair in her former style and right then I realized I was already looking past the Heidi Goertz physical alterations. Heidi exuded ego and nastiness, while Pippa was not only beautiful on the outside, but inside, too.

Before I could say anything, which I was certain would come across as condescending, she said, “Well, then I’ve decided to make the best of it.” She pointed to her own face and shrugged. “Maybe even have fun with it … I don’t know. Hell, I lived through this once before … right? I’ll survive this time too.” She touched my face with the back of her hand … “Calloway said we have two weeks off. How about taking us back to that mansion-in-the-rocks of yours and we—”

At the risk of pulling out my stitches, I pulled her into the bed with me. She laughingly screamed once, then kissed me.

The End.

Thank you for reading
Deadly Powers, Tapped In, Book 2!

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