Chasing Gold

CHAPTER FORTY TWO

Alicia hit the top edge of the beach very quickly. The terrorist who’d fallen out of the back reached for his gun. Alicia kicked it away. He lunged upward, kicking her in the stomach. She fell forward, dropping and then rolling into a better position. The terrorist was already in her face, sending a knee toward her cheek, which she pulled away from. At that moment, he simply jumped on top of her.

Russo raised his gun as Ricci staggered out of the oddly angled vehicle, but gunfire from the back of the truck made him dive to the right. The bullets, however, were destined for the four chasing agents that were coming around the other side of the chopper.

Two went down, clutching their chests. The rest jumped to safety. Behind them, the incoming boats were still five minutes away. Above the boats, police helicopters sped.

Russo gathered himself and rose but then Ricci was directly before him. The terrorist leader led with three devastating punches; the third of which made Russo drop his weapon. Ricci pulled out a knife. Russo staggered back and evaded the thrust, but only by millimeters.

“It’s bloody over,” the big man gasped. “Give it up.”

“You think I’m letting you take me back alive? All that matters is taking as many of you pigs as possible.”

Caitlyn and Austin approached the truck, seeing a brief window of opportunity. The terrorists in the back were concentrating their fire and energies at the agents, but Crouch and Terri were crawling slowly out of the rear doors. Caitlyn met Crouch’s eyes and saw intense pain there. She saw red flesh and bruising from his forehead to his throat. She saw how Ricci had hurt him simply because he enjoyed it.

Terri urged him on from behind. The black-haired woman looked wild, desperate to escape. Crouch fell into the sand and brush, face first.

Caitlyn crept carefully forward so as not to alert the gunmen.

Alicia grabbed her assailant around the waist and rolled over, staying on top of him. Without pause she swept down blow after blow, each one aiming for something sensitive — eyes, nose, ears — until the man’s leaking blood made her knuckles slick. He fought back, letting her hit him three times as he slipped a knife out from under his jacket.

Snarling through a red mask, he thrust the blade at her ribs.

She was ready for it, catching it with a firm right wrist, bending it and then reversing it into the man’s own body.

“Thanks for the knife,” she hissed. “Dropped mine down in the water.”

With gun and blade clasped in two bloody hands she rose, a contradictory vision of splendor and death.

Terri rolled out of the car, right over Crouch and ended up on her back, scrabbling for purchase. Finally, her legs dug in and she managed to heave herself upright. Uncaring of the terrorists firing to her left, uncaring of those that fought to help and those that fought to kill her, she vented all her anger, her disgust, and crushing disappointment at Paul Cutler.

“We were a team! I would have died for you! I gave up my family… for you!”

“It was the biggest score of my life.” Cutler climbed carefully out of the damaged F150, jumping onto undergrowth at the top of the beach. “Not even you could jeopardize that.”

“My only family…” Terri fell to her knees, sobbing.

Cutler split for the trees.

Alicia hauled Terri and Crouch up even as the terrorists in the rear of the truck set eyes upon them.

Russo landed crushing blows on Ricci, but nothing heavy enough to debilitate him. The terrorist leader ended up tripping Russo to the earth just as Cutler took flight.

Alicia couldn’t escape the bullets. Instead, she put herself in front of Crouch and Terri. Crouch reached for her but she fended him off. With no time to aim she fired anyway, her shots burying themselves in the sand and then dirt as they traveled in an upward arc.

Austin and Caitlyn appeared on either side of her and opened fire. Both terrorists were struck an instant before they pulled their triggers. Both went flying back into the truck’s bed, shooting at the clouds, spraying blood. Alicia heaved a sigh of relief and handed Crouch and Terri over to the two younger people.

“Guard them with your lives.”

Caitlyn nodded. Terri made to run off. Alicia caught her arm and said, “I’ll go get that motherfucker. Don’t worry. He’ll answer to you.”

And then she was off, racing through the sand. She saw Ricci just ahead and Russo almost level with her. The big man was bruised and bloody, surely depleted after his near drowning, but looked up for anything.

“You all right?” she asked quickly.

“Better than you look.”

“I stopped off to make a couple of sandcastles.”

“Did you roll about in ’em?”

“Is that a fetish of yours?”

“Always have to dumb it down to your level, don’t you?”

They were running flat out now, leaving the deep sand and crossing the soil at the top of the beach, aiming for the thick, rich undergrowth. Only Ricci and Cutler ran ahead of them. It occurred to Alicia that they had saved everything they’d set out to save — Crouch, Terri and the banner.

But ledgers were still in need of balancing.

Tree growth increased, and the vegetation thickened as they ran. They followed a rough path with the terrorist leader just steps ahead of them. The path twisted and turned, meandering through impassable undergrowth. It was dark under here, and almost silent, the waning sun barely able to break through.

Alicia still carried her gun and could easily put a bullet in Ricci’s back but that wasn’t at all what she wanted. The words she’d spoken to Terri were true as much for him as Cutler. Merciless, heartless, ruthless individuals deserved an unforgiving end.

The chase went on, as hot and essential and fraught now as it had been when it started all the way back in Washington DC. Trees marched endlessly to left and right and in front, covered in hanging vines and forestation. Alicia felt the sweat dripping off her in rivulets. Russo panted at her back.

Then a clearing opened out — a large oval shape with the western side suddenly clear of obstacles all the way back down to the beach. The vista unfolded dramatically, with the sparkling seas and crimson horizon sitting in magnificent repose beyond the wide, curved resplendent beach. Ahead, the flat plateau of land stretched until it came up against a sheer rock wall that rose a hundred meters straight up. At first it seemed like a dead end for the runners, but then Alicia saw an arch of rock, some old monument, that curved in front of the cliff, a progressively rising arm that rose ten meters and then disappeared around a crevice in the rock.

A secret path?

Cutler was already racing toward the arm, head down. Ricci appeared to realize they weren’t going to make it. Alicia just knew exactly what he was going to do next.

“No! Cutler, down!”

She fired into the air. The nightmarish report of her weapon made Cutler flinch. He collapsed and rolled into the rocky arch, blood drawn from his face. Ricci didn’t bother to shoot him in the back after all and swiveled to face Alicia.

“At least I get to kill you first, bitch.”

“I see the humidity has ruined that perfectly trimmed bush of yours, Ricci.” She laughed without slowing. “Shame.”

Confusion clouded his features at first, and then grim understanding as he saw her distraction tactic. Incredibly, he threw the loaded gun straight at her face. Alicia hadn’t been expecting it and took the weapon point blank; the impact knocked her backward and caused her eyes to water.

“Fuck!”

Then Ricci tackled her around the waist, bearing her to the ground. He was up a moment later, swatting Russo’s weapon away and concentrating on the big man’s legs until he staggered. Ricci then whirled and leapt once more at Alicia as she started to stand.

She turned a shoulder toward him, caught his chin, but that was never going to be enough. Again, Ricci tripped her by hooking a foot around her ankle. She hit the earth hard on her spine, feeling the air rush out, but saw his boot stamping at her face. The right thing to do would be to roll aside, but he would be expecting that.

Bringing both hands up, she caught the boot just in front of her face, stopped its momentum and then jerked it to the right. Ricci stumbled off balance. She wrenched hard on the foot, pulling him further out of sync. Ricci fell to one knee. Alicia rose in a moment and leapt forward with a strike, which he blocked and rolled away.

Warily, both combatants circled each other.

“Give it up,” she tried. “You fanatics will never win. There’ll always be someone willing to stand up to you.”

“We will keep on coming.” Ricci waded in, telling punches causing Alicia pain and misery. She blocked them for the most part, and delivered some of her own. Then Russo was standing behind Ricci.

The terrorist sensed it, hesitating suddenly and whirling with an elbow outstretched, his feet dragging on the floor, creating dust. The elbow hit Russo hard, sending him to the right with a yelp. Ricci continued the spin, dropped and struck at Alicia with an outstretched leg.

She hit the dirt on her tailbone once more; the breath squeezed out of her.

She was becoming used to Ricci’s up-close knee by now, expecting a blast of pain as it made contact with her quickly lowered head. She managed to reach out and grab his leg, then pull with all her might and send him onto his own tailbone.

Sitting, they faced each other.

And then Russo hurled his immense bulk down onto the terrorist’s back like a collapsing brick wall; smashing the figure into the ground. Alicia heard the crunch of several breakages and Ricci’s muffled scream. Russo didn’t let up, just let all his bulk and all his momentum crush the terrorist into the Hawaiian earth. At the end of his descent he rolled right past Alicia, coming up to one knee at her side.

Alicia rose to a crouch, but it wasn’t necessary. Ricci was done, limbs sprawled at odd angles, breathing straight into the dirt so that dust blew in front of his lips. Alicia imagined it was going to take a contortionist to untangle and set him right.

She raised both eyebrows at Russo. “Wow, did he piss you off, mate?”

“Yeah, I got sick of his stupid karate bullshit.”

Alicia rubbed several painful bruises. “Think we should help him up?”

“That’s gonna be a painful exercise.”

“He hurt Crouch a lot and intended on burning the Star-Spangled Banner live on air just to set this country alight,” she said. “And then there’s all the other shit he’s done since the Smithsonian.”

Russo rose and helped her up. “Cutler got away?”

“They’ll catch up with him. I don’t have the energy for any more chasing.”

“I guess I agree there,” he said. “And it’s not like we’re chasing gold.”

Alicia eyed him speculatively. “You do know that’s all we’ve been doing, right? All this time. Crouch. Terri. The banner.”

“Duh, of course I know.”

The trees rustled to their right just before Caitlyn, Austin and several agents burst into the clearing. Alicia saw relief cross her team’s features and waved immediately at the young woman.

“How’s Michael?”

“He’ll be fine, eventually. As will Terri, at least physically. Where’s Cutler and, shit, is that Ricci? What the hell happened to him?”

Alicia watched Ricci crawling around in the dirt, limbs refusing to act as they were supposed to. “Russo,” she said. “Russo is what happened to him.”

It was done.

She grinned and embraced her team, shook hands with the newly arrived agents and Vino, when he finally burst from the trees. She turned and stared into the distance, at the shimmering Pacific and the setting sun — just a glowing fireball where the sea met the sky, the bright orb sheathed in a mantle of smoldering oranges and reds — and took a long moment to unwind and loosen up.

Almost time to get back to the real man in her life, and the team of splendid misfits he ran with.

But, for now, she threw an arm around Russo’s shoulder and asked him the most important question of the day.

“Where’s the fucking pub?”