Mad Powers (Tapped In) (31 page)

He let the gun fall to the floor. “Sie sollten sich selbst aufgeben. Jeder ist für Sie suchen.”

He told me to give myself up—everyone was looking for me.

Shakily, I brought the pistol up to his nose, “Das wird nicht passieren. Wo ist die Frau, die ich mit angekommen?”
That’s not going to happen. Where is the woman I arrived with?

He stared into the muzzle of Lance’s gun for several more seconds, then said, “Die Montagehalle.”
The assembly hall.

I told him to take a step backwards and turn around. I retrieved his AK47. “Gehen. Zeigen Sie mir.”
Walk. Show me.

We both hesitated when loud alarms blared from every direction. Then came the sound of multiple helicopters, hovering above the courtyard outside. It seemed the cavalry had arrived.

“Bleiben Sie in Bewegung!”
Keep moving,
I needed to get to Pippa—not stop for anyone, even the good guys.

It took every bit of my quickly fading energy to walk forward and continue holding up what had become an excruciatingly heavy weapon. It took five minutes to descend more stairs and reach the assembly hall. I was now dragging my left leg behind me in a pathetic attempt to keep moving.

Upon first look, with the exception of hundreds of chairs, the assembly hall appeared empty. Then I saw them, strapped to posts at the front of the room.

I screamed at the guard, “Bindet sie los!”
Untie them
!

As I came closer I saw Baltimore was alive, his eyes tracking me. In little more than a whisper, he asked, “Get the code? Destroy the server?”

“Yes.” But all my attention was on Pippa. Her skin was blue-gray and she wasn’t moving. The Neo-Nazi guard released her bindings and lowered her to the floor. I yelled at him to help Baltimore.

I saw a trickle of blood on her forearm and a now-disconnected IV needle, hanging loosely down to the floor. I sat close to her and placed her head gently on my lap. Her skin was cold and lifeless. Her chest was still and unmoving. She was dead.

My vision blurred as tears filled my eyes. I felt anger rising in me like a cyclone. None of this was worth her life. Nothing, ever, would be worth losing her.

“Six presses,” came a soft voice.

I turned to see Baltimore trying to make his way over to me. “Press one side of her ring six times. Quickly!”

I looked at him, uncomprehending. Baltimore crawled over to me and Pippa. He reached for her hand and found her ring. He pressed on one of its octagonal sides six times in rapid succession. There was a loud clap as a jolt of electricity coursed through Pippa’s body. She went rigid, then gasped for air. Her eyes opened.

Epilogue

I was done working for the U.S. government. Officially retired, I took a long sip of my iced tea, leaned back, and felt the pool’s cool water lapping against my legs.

After the events in Baden-Baden the previous month, I returned to Drako’s estate, now legally mine, in the rocky cliffs outside of Kingman, Arizona.

Cassie cheerfully greeted me as I walked through the front door as naturally as if I’d lived there for years. Truth be told, I had no idea what I was going to do with the place—or with my life, for that matter.

In the end it had been the ring’s heart-defibrillating capability that not only saved Pippa’s life—but my own. Both Pippa and Baltimore had found a way to pull their I.V. needles from their arms—though both had bled out to dangerous, near fatal, levels.

Baltimore never understood why anyone, namely me, supposedly of a sound mind, would purposely go and shock themselves with seven hundred volts. But he didn’t need to know. I hadn’t tapped in during that fraction of a second jolt, per se, but it gained me another few minutes of life. As the three of us waited in that Neo-Nazi assembly hall—each of us knocking at death’s door, it was none other than Pippa’s Great Aunt Ingrid’s boyfriend, William Genz, who’d found us. He was our
inside man
, within the German Verfassungsschutz.

Even now, as I float in the pool, working on my tan, I wonder: was it worth it? Sure, we’d stopped the Spatz program and acquired the code. But Heidi and Leon Goertz were in the wind, somewhere. Once the alarms started blaring, mere minutes before I had come upon Pippa and Baltimore, the whole kit and caboodle of them fled through subterranean tunnels and escaped.

The German Verfassungsschutz forces had been alerted, I suspect, by Baltimore … Maybe, once he was certain I’d accomplished what we’d come there to do, he used his ring … I’m not really sure. When they stormed the castle they found it pretty much emptied—with the exception of Pippa, Baltimore, and me, and a few badly mistreated prisoners … and oh, yes, the guy dressed up as a Nazi soldier. Horris, under U.S. government provided protection and medical assistance, along with Baltimore, was escorted back to Washington, D.C.

The truth was, I’d only accomplished half my mission. The WZZ, albeit significantly disrupted, was still out there—somewhere. I had a score to settle with Leon and Heidi Goertz, but that wasn’t going to happen today, or tomorrow, and probably not the day after that, either. But happen it would.

I watched the heat rise in distorted blurry waves off the desert floor in the distance. A lone hawk circled above, then dove out of sight below a rocky ridgeline. I thought about Pippa and how I’d almost lost her. I wasn’t going to let that happen again. I closed my eyes and recalled those last moments when I was certain she was dead.

I felt her vinyl float lazily bump into mine. She was lying on her tummy with her bikini top untied. She turned her face toward me and smiled. “Yikes, you might want to turn over—looking a bit pink there,” she said, splashing me and then pushing her float away from mine.

“Mr. Chandler,” Cassie interrupted.

I looked over to the edge of the pool. “Yes, Cassie?”

She held up a wireless phone. “Phone call.”

“Take a message.”

Cassie continued to hold out the phone. I knew what she was going to say before she said it. “You may want to take it; it’s the White House.”

Thank you for reading Mad Powers. To be notified of my next book’s release in this series, entitled Deadly Powers, email me at: [email protected]
.
Subject Line: Deadly Powers.

If you enjoyed this novel and would like to see this series continue, please leave a review on Amazon.com. It
’
s very much appreciated.

Books by Mark Wayne McGinnis:

Scrapyard Ship
(Scrapyard Ship series, Book 1)

HAB 12
(Scrapyard Ship series, Book 2)

Space Vengeance
(Scrapyard Ship series, Book 3)

Realms of Time
(Scrapyard Ship series, Book 4)

Mad Powers
(A Tapped In Novel, Parts 1, 2, 3)

Acknowledgments

First of all I'd like to thank my wonderful wife, Kim, and my mother (again) for the support and encouragement to write these books. Out of all the books I've written, this is the most thoroughly edited, so thank you to my amazing editors, Lura Lee Genz , Rachel Weaver, Marta Tan and Mia Manns-the many hours invested are so very much appreciated. Thank you Mia for all the research and going above and beyond the call of duty. Much appreciation goes to Brad Leppla for his technical firearms review. Thank you L.J. Ganser for your audiobook support on past and future books (and friendship). Thank you Erin Arik for your amazing cover art with two of my books. Thank you to Lura and James Fischer for your continued support, it really means a lot to me. Thank you to Chris Derrick for the help with formatting the print version and making everything look so professional. I'd also like to thank the many subject matter experts and others who supported, contributed, and reviewed this book, I'd also like to thank the fans who enjoyed the initial novella, Tapped In, and pushed me to finish the complete book, Mad Powers. I read every one of your emails and enjoy your comments.

Copyright
©
2014 by Mark Wayne McGinnis All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed
“
Attention: Permissions Coordinator,
”
at the address below. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author
’
s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 

Edited by:

Lura Lee Genz

Mia Manns

Rachel Weaver

Marta Tan

Avenstar Productions

ISBN: 978-0-9903314-4-5