The Loch Ness Legacy (28 page)

“You know how to drive here better than I do,” he said. “And I have to navigate.”

“Why?” she asked as she got in and stepped on the gas.

“After we thought Alexa went missing in Seattle, Tyler got her permission to track her phone, and Aiden set it up. He transferred the software to my phone.” He showed her a map of Edinburgh with a moving green dot.

“Is she on foot?”

“It’s moving too fast,” Grant said. “She must be in a vehicle. I got them pulling away right after you called me. Did you see anything?”

“My God! I saw police cars and ambulances coming out of the castle.”

“I saw two ambulances pass me on my way to pick you up, but Alexa wasn’t in them. Or at least her phone wasn’t.”

“But what about Tyler?”

He pressed his lips together.

“Where do I go?” she asked.

“You’re on the right route. They’ve turned onto a road called A700. Make the next right.”

Brielle turned onto King’s Stables Road. They both were quiet as they contemplated what could have happened to Tyler and Alexa. Since she and Grant had come across Marlo Dunham, it was very likely that Tyler and Alexa had a run-in with Victor Zim. If that were the case, then someone was killed in the encounter.

Brielle could barely keep her hands from shaking on the steering wheel. Of course, she had gone through Tyler being injured before, but that was after the fact, when she knew he would be all right. For the first time she was really afraid of Tyler dying.

She sped past dawdling vehicles, yelling obscenities at each putz slowing her down. She wanted to be there as soon as Alexa arrived at wherever she was headed.

Grant guided her onto another road and then through an interchange to Queensferry Street.

“They’ve stopped,” Grant said with a confused look.

“They’re at the station?”

“No. That’s strange. The map says they’re in the middle of a bridge.”

“Where?”

“Just up ahead.”

She rounded a crescent of buildings and saw lights flashing on the road in front of her. The unmistakable sound of automatic weapons shattered the air.

“What the hell?”

“Ambush!” Grant yelled. “They’ve got the police in a crossfire.”

The police cars were sprawled across the road, boxed in by two SUVs blocking their path in either direction. Two ski-masked men on each end poured withering gunfire into the policemen, who were dropping right and left.

Instead of putting the car in reverse, Brielle jammed her foot on the accelerator.

She went up on the sidewalk and around the stopped cars, their drivers ducking as low as they could to avoid stray rounds. The police seemed to have been finished off, so the gunmen by the Range Rover closest to her lowered their weapons and walked around the vehicle to mop up. They were so focused on their targets that they didn’t notice her coming.

At the last moment, the gunmen heard the roaring engine behind them. They turned in time to face her as she plowed into them. One of the men went flying over the side of the bridge. The other sailed into the boot of the rear police car and didn’t get up.

Screeching to a halt, she jumped out and grabbed the weapon from the downed gunman, the habits from her service in the Israeli Army coming back instantaneously. The gun was an Enfield L85 assault rifle used by the British military and Ministry of Defence. She took cover behind the bonnet of her car and lifted the weapon to her eye, aiming with the red dot sight. She shot twice at the attackers behind the vehicle at the other end, but they took cover while replying with errant potshots that kept her down.

She heard two people banging on the back window of the rearmost police car. Brielle took a quick peek, and to her surprise and relief she saw Tyler and Alexa, both in handcuffs.

“They can’t get out!” Grant yelled to her.

“Did you get the other weapon?”

“No. It went over the side with Peter Pan.”

“You get them! I’ll cover you!”

She laid down suppressing fire as Grant crabbed his way to the police car. He opened the door, and Tyler and Alexa scrambled out. They got back to the cover of the SUV just as they were bombarded with fire from up ahead.

She didn’t take time for greetings, although she wanted to throw her arms around Tyler.

“Are you both all right?” she asked them.

“We’re fine,” Tyler replied.

“We have the journal,” Grant said as he unlocked their cuffs with a key he’d plucked from a dead policemen.

“Then we need to get out of here.”

One of the gunmen at the other end of the bridge ducked low to get to the first police car. He opened the rear door, and someone got out. He poked his head up once to look and then dropped again, but it was enough for her to see that it was Victor Zim.

Brielle was about to debate the wisdom of leaving the scene of a police ambush when more shots pelted the Range Rover, from three weapons this time. Zim was now armed, and she had to be down to the bottom of her magazine. Continuing with a gunfight when outgunned wasn’t a smart strategy.

“Tyler’s right,” Alexa said. “If the police take us in, we’ll be questioned for days. We’ll never get the antidote in time.”

Brielle nodded reluctantly. “Okay. Let’s go.”

They jumped into the sedan and peeled away. Brielle was still hopped up on adrenaline, but the rest of them slumped in their seats from exhaustion. In the rearview mirror, she could see Zim’s car tear off as the sound of more sirens headed their way.

Now all of them were fugitives from the law.

Getting out of the Edinburgh metro area was a challenge for Zim and Dunham. Zim ditched the Range Rover that was pocked with bullet holes from the gun battle with the police, and they piled into the one Pryor was driving, with Dunham in the passenger seat. Zim certainly wasn’t going to sit in the back, so he made Pryor switch.

The only advantage they had was that the police were overwhelmed with three extensive crime scenes—Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh Castle, and the bridge. Few were left over to throw up any roadblocks on the myriad highways and back roads leading out of the city. Still, they prepared themselves to fight the few times they spotted a police car.

By the time they got to Stirling, an hour’s drive west of Edinburgh, Zim felt confident that they were out of immediate danger of being caught. He and Dunham would have to wear their disguises in public from now on knowing sketch artists would soon be blasting their faces out to the world.

Zim was glad that he’d taken the precaution of having Pryor monitoring the police bands. As soon as Pryor heard that a muscle-bound caucasian man had been taken into custody and would be transferred to the Lothian and Borders Police headquarters, he had quickly drawn up the likely route that would be followed and sent the Scottish part of his team to ambush the convoy.

What Zim wasn’t happy about was losing men one after the other. Five more were either dead or injured because of Tyler Locke and his group. Their persistence was infuriating.

Dunham’s whining was almost as bad.

“Why are we still going to Loch Ness?” she asked. “I burned up the journal.”

“Did you see it burn?” Zim countered.

“I saw it start to char, yes.”

“Start to char…Did you see it finish charring?”

“Well, no.”

“Then they might have it. Even if they don’t, Locke won’t give up. I saw him get away.”

“You should have—”

Zim raised a fist. “So help me God,” he growled, “if you say I should have killed him when I had the chance, I will kill
you
right now.”

For the first time, Dunham looked meek. She swallowed and licked her lips. “Fine. We both could have done better. And you did well to get rid of the sample from the other deer trophy. That was quick thinking. You must have been shocked to see it.”

“Thank you. See? A little compliment doesn’t hurt anyone now and then.”

Pryor got a phone call.

“Yeah? Uh huh. Okay, hold on.” He looked at Zim. “It’s the captain of the
Aegir
. They want to know where they should meet us.”

“Send him the GPS coordinates I gave you. Tell him to send the Zodiac to pick us up.”

Pryor conveyed the plans and told the captain they’d be there in two hours. Before he hung up, Zim asked another question.

“Have they been keeping an eye on the other ship?” The
Aegir
had two men in the Zodiac observing an odd ship that had entered the loch the day before.

Pryor relayed the question and after a long pause said, “They’ve kept their distance like you told them, watching with binoculars all morning, but they haven’t been able to figure out what they’re doing.”

“Is it a fishing vessel?”

“No. It’s like no boat the captain has ever seen.”

“Have them record some video of the ship. I want to see it when I arrive.”

Pryor gave the instructions and signed off.

“What do you think Locke is up to?” Pryor asked.

“He’s going to have to assume Nessie is real and alive, just like we do. If he’s got Edmonstone’s journal, he has to be coming up with a plan for capturing the creature.”

“I think it’s about time I hear your plan for
destroying
the creature,” Dunham said.

“I thought you trusted me to spend the money wisely.”

“I did. Now I want the rest of the story.”

She already knew that Zim had paid a Norwegian crew more than a year’s wages to bring their whaling vessel over to Loch Ness disguised as a regular fishing boat. For that much money, the captain hadn’t asked any questions, even when he took on the remainder of Zim’s men as additional crew. Hunting minke whales in the Arctic Ocean was not only a rough business with hot and cold streaks, but because Norway was one of the only countries in the world still whaling, frequent run-ins with protesting ships made it even harder to catch their quota.

The hundred-foot-long ship was small enough to get through the locks into Loch Ness. The Caledonian Canal, built almost two centuries ago, slices all the way from the North Sea through the four lochs making up the Great Glen—Loch Dochfour, Loch Ness, Loch Oich, and Loch Lochy—to its outlet just above the Irish Sea. Built as a bypass around the rough waters off the aptly named Cape Wrath, the canal could handle vessels up to 150 feet long, making it no problem to bring the
Aegir
through.

“The whaling vessel was a nice idea,” Dunham continued. “But if we find the Loch Ness monster, how are we going to destroy it?”

“We’re not going to destroy it.”

Dunham was flabbergasted. “What? All they need is a few ounces of flesh, and they can synthesize the antidote.”

“I know,” Zim said.

“We have to make it so they can’t recover any part of the creature.”

“I know.”

“If we don’t kill it, all of this has been for nothing!”

“Calm down. I didn’t say we weren’t going to kill it.”

“So we’re going to haul it up onto the
Aegir
and sneak it out of Loch Ness? That’s insane.”

Zim was rather enjoying egging her on like this. They still had a long drive ahead of them, so he may as well be entertained.

“You’re correct. If Alexa Locke’s video is accurate, then Nessie is at least thirty feet long. I think it would be difficult to smuggle something that big out of the area.”

“Then what are we going to do? Just leave it there?”

Zim smiled and nodded. “That’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

Alexa was nauseated. Trying to read John Edmonstone’s jagged handwriting while swooping through the curves on the road to Loch Ness finally ended up being too much. When they reached the broad Glen Coe valley, she asked Tyler to stop the car at a scenic overlook so that she could decipher the journal without losing her lunch.

She still felt guilty for freezing up back at Edinburgh Castle. Just yesterday morning, Alexa had never even seen someone die before, let alone killed anyone. Now that seemed so long ago. First, she’d watched the two men killed on the go-karts, contributing to the death of one of them. Then she’d actually done the deed herself. The sickening feel of the blade sinking into flesh made it seem like she’d crossed some unseen threshold that she could never step back over again. The responsibility of ending a life was more than she had been ready to bear, even if it had been in self-defense. All those thoughts overwhelmed her so much that she couldn’t finish Zim when she’d had the chance, and the remorse gnawed at her.

Now Tyler’s reluctance to talk about his experiences in war made sense to her. In abstract, killing someone to save your own life or someone else’s might be a heroic deed, but reliving the carnage and celebrating the event wasn’t a prospect she would relish. If there were a pill she could take to completely forget that moment, she would swallow it in a heartbeat.

She stepped out of the car to get some fresh air. Tyler and Brielle followed suit, while Grant stayed in the car to rest. Alexa walked over to a fence and leaned against it for support as she tried to calm her queasy stomach.

Unlike cloudy Edinburgh, the canyon was awash with sunlight. The sloping valley walls, hollowed out by a glacier millennia ago, were painted green with grass and a handful of trees. The scent of earth and flora on the mild breeze bathed her in a revitalizing medley, spoiled only by the tinge of car exhaust from the multitude of vehicles traversing the pass through the rugged highland mountains.

Tyler sidled up and leaned on the fence next to her. “How are you doing?”

“The sandwich Brielle got me at that convenience store will remain consumed.”

“I meant about the castle. I thought I’d lost you there.”

Alexa massaged her temples to fend off a nausea-induced headache. “Do you ever get used to it?”

Tyler shook his head, knowing what she was referring to. “Getting used to it implies it becomes routine. Killing someone is never routine. Not for me, at least.”

“How many people have you killed?” she asked and then immediately regretted the question when she saw the pained look on Tyler’s face.