Girl Fights Back (Go No Sen) (Emily Kane Adventures) (6 page)

“She can’t handle these people!”

“She won’t be any safer on Naxos,
and if she’s there, they’ll be in danger, too.”

“Goddammit, George! Why the hell is
she so important? Just who the hell is she, really?”

“She’s
my
daughter, Mike. And she’s not going anywhere now. You need to
make sure Yuki is safe. I’ll keep Emily with me. We’ll go our own way when the
time comes, meet up with you later.”

Michael was taken aback. George had
never spoken so directly to him. He had always been all deference up to this
moment. But it was clear he could not be moved on this point. Michael had planned
to get all of them out of Virginia, to a hideaway in the mountains of northern
New Mexico. Now he needed a new plan, simpler perhaps, two people instead of
four. But he always felt safer with George than without.

Michael thought
about this conversation as he prepared the scene for their departure. He burned
a lot of papers in the furnace, the ones he wanted really destroyed. He set up
a fire in the living room on the main floor for other papers he meant to be
only partially burned. Yuki packed the clothes they would need. She also tried
to create the impression of a hasty departure, stray clothes tossed everywhere.
She had prepared a huge meal earlier for the security guards, including snacks
to take with them on the bus. But she made much more than was necessary. The
kitchen was a mess, food was everywhere. The freezers were left open. A kettle
of water was cooked dry on the stove. To an intruder, it would look very much
as if they had all left in a great hurry. It would be reasonable to conclude
they had not been able to make careful preparations.

For her part, Yuki couldn’t stop
worrying about Emily and George. Where were they? She was pretty sure Emily was
back in the woods. No one had said anything to her, but this seemed like just
the sort of weekend for one of their camping trips. She had never interfered in
these trips before. But she hoped George had enough sense to provide for
Emily’s safety. She loved him dearly, but there were definitely moments when he
seemed utterly obtuse. “Oh, God, please let this not be one of those times!”
she prayed.

And where was
he, if he wasn’t with Emily? No doubt Mr. Cardano had sent him on one of his
errands. It had better have been important, if it was going to keep George away
from her and Emily at a moment like this. She moved like a whirlwind through
the apartment above the garage, packing and strewing. She left two packs in the
driveway by the garage door and proceeded to do the same thing in her room in
the main house. As she passed through the kitchen one last time, she thought
about Emily and quickly made her favorite snack, rice balls, and left them on
the counter where she would be sure to see them if she happened through. No one
else would notice them in the general mess, just a few balls of sticky rice wrapped
in seaweed and sesame seeds and a little surprise in the middle, certainly no
one unacquainted with Japanese cuisine. But Emily could hardly fail to see
them. Yuki thought better of that plan. She put the rice balls in a bag and
stuffed them in Emily’s pack.

A few moments later, the family car
lumbered up the drive and pulled up to the garage. It sat motionless and dark
for a few moments. Yuki watched apprehensively from the kitchen door. Finally,
the driver’s side door swung open and George stepped out. He looked weary,
maybe even sad. He took a deep breath and walked over to the front entrance of
the main house where Michael was waiting. He scanned George’s face for clues.
What had happened? Had he met with Burzynski? Was he receptive?

“Burzynski wasn’t there,” George
announced. “Porter was waiting for me with a couple of heavies.”

“What happened?”

“They’re in the trunk. It seemed
unwise to leave them behind.”

“What’d you do with the
packet?"

“I left it there, in case you’re
right about Burzynski. He’ll know where to look. Porter was definitely not
interested in the data. He only wanted Yuki,” George snarled.

“We’re ready to go. We’ve just been
waiting for you,” Michael offered. “We haven’t seen any sign of Emily. She
wasn’t with you, was she?”

“No, she’s been here the whole
time. Out there,” he said, gesturing to the woods.

Michael’s mind reeled, astounded he
had left her alone in the woods at such a moment. He was also sorely
disappointed Burzynski had not come. His plan had involved interesting elements
of the CIA in the truth about the Predator program. The packet contained all
the important data from Dr. Kagami’s lab, along with the results of some
further investigations Yuki had carried on in the intervening years. There were
no breakthroughs. No wonder drug an ambitious agent could use to catapult his
career forward. But Burzynski could use what was there to fend off Meacham,
keep him at bay and solidify his own position. If only he was interested. That
he had been unwilling to meet George was not encouraging. Even more so that he
had turned it over to Porter.

Michael knew Porter was ready to
make his own move. He would have no use for data purporting to show the program
couldn’t be salvaged. For him, only a positive result would be of interest. And
that would inevitably entail taking custody of Yuki. There was no room for
George, or himself, in Porter’s vision of the future. It was almost a relief
that he was now in the trunk of the limo, though Michael was sure he was not
working alone. There would be others, maybe even Burzynski himself.

There was a little bit of comedy in
Michael’s offer to Burzynski. Of course, there was all the data, and Yuki’s
analysis of what it means. But there was also the estate itself. Michael knew
Burzynski had been looking for a facility he could use as a shadow power base,
and the estate would certainly be suitable for such a purpose. What Burzynski
didn’t know is the estate was already the property of the CIA. Michael had
managed to obscure the agency’s own records concerning a fifty acre parcel of
land at the south end of the George Washington National Forest. And, of course,
the agency had concealed the fact of its ownership in all public documents. He
then added to it a much larger adjoining parcel from the National Forest
unbeknownst to the Forest Service. In fact, he had amassed an immense holding
at very little cost to himself, relying entirely on the inability of federal
agencies to adequately control their own papers. He always knew once he left
the forest land would revert to the Forest Service. They would merely discover
some papers that had seemingly been misplaced, and then reassert their
authority over this section of the forest. None of the estate buildings had
been built on park land. As for the agency, it would probably never recoup the
loss, or even know of it.

It was a high
stakes game, playing one covert power broker against another. But Michael could
see no other path through the current situation. The only way to take their
attention off Yuki, and George and himself, was to get them to turn their
attention on each other. And all things being equal, it was probably better for
everyone if Burzynski prevailed, rather than Meacham. Best of all, however,
would be if they destroyed each other.

George went back to the car to
dispose of the bodies. There wasn’t much time. All he could do was start a fire
in the woodshed. That would be hot enough to obscure their identities for a
while. He also half hoped Emily would see the fire and come back early. When he
returned to the main house, Yuki stood in the doorway as he approached
glowering at him.

“Where is she?” she demanded.
George looked at his shoes and took a step a backward, as if afraid she would
strike him.

“She’s out there,” he said nodding
to the woods.

“What were you thinking, leaving
her out there at a time like this?!”

“She’s on her way back,” he said
defensively, trying to sound confident. “She’ll be here soon.”

“If anything happens to that
girl...,” Yuki snarled turning back into the house.

Michael loaded Yuki’s things into
the cab of an old pickup truck and motioned to George to bring her out.
“There’s not much time. We gotta go now!”

Yuki was reluctant to leave without
at least seeing Emily. Anyone could read the anxiety written across her face.
George’s attempts to reassure her did not rise to the level of persuasion, nor
did Michael’s supportive facial expressions. In the end, Yuki understood the
necessity of leaving right away. She knew Michael had made arrangements to keep
them all safe, and they depended on decisive action. She got in the truck,
rolled down the window, looked George in the eye and growled: “Find her. Keep
her safe.” He felt the full force of her anger and frustration.

“I will,” he said.

Michael drove off with Yuki,
leaving George watching after them in the driveway. He followed them as long as
he could still see their tail lights. They passed through the main gate, turned
right and disappeared behind the front hedge. They would head over to Route 64
and then go west through West Virginia and Kentucky, changing vehicles several
times along the way.

George went into the garage and
rolled out an old dirt bike. He concealed it in the woods behind the main
house. His plan was to put Emily on the back and ride out along some old
logging trails through the forest, slip into the Monongahela Forest in West
Virginia, switch to a car he had already stashed in Mill Creek, a little town
on the edge of the park. Now he just had to find her.

The sky was just beginning to get
light. It was probably approaching five am. He began to worry he would not be
able to find Emily in time. Yuki was right. He had blundered, sending her out
into the woods by herself. But he hadn’t known what else to do. He couldn’t
risk having her go with Michael and Yuki. That is, he was afraid to put
everything that mattered to him in one car. He knew she’d be safe in the woods,
no one would find her out there. If he had not been able to return from the
meeting with Porter, he needed to know she’d be safe, at least for a little
while. But after that, she’d be on her own. He had imagined the worst
contingency and tried to prepare for that. But now things were looking to be
not quite so dire, he realized the inadequacy of his plan. If he only had more
time, several hours perhaps, he could track her, maybe find her, though with
every weekend spent in the woods she was getting harder to track. As it was, he
wasn’t sure he had even ten minutes.

George went into the main house and
set fire to the curtains in the living room. He spread gasoline from a large
gas can. He hoped if Emily saw the fire, she would know something was wrong and
come back from the woods. It was a desperate move, he had no other way of
getting her attention. But the fire did not spread fast enough.

He went back out to the driveway to
keep a lookout for Emily. He scanned the tree line at the edge of the north
lawn for any sign of her. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted movement in
the hedges to the left of the main gate. There was no way that could be her. Meacham’s
tactical team was already here!

George ducked behind the garage. If
only they hadn’t seen him, he might be able to seize some slight advantage.
Meacham probably sent two teams of four. They would be heavily armed, probably
wearing kevlar body armor. They wouldn’t need night vision gear. With the
approach of dawn, the blazing fire in the woodshed and fire beginning to peek
out of the windows of the main house, there was enough eerie light to see the
entire scene pretty well. He couldn’t risk a shootout with these guys, even if
he had a gun. Emily might get caught in a crossfire. He knew they were focused
on the main house. No diversion would get them to forget their primary mission:
subdue the inhabitants, apprehend Yuki and Emily. His best chance was to induce
them to enter the main house as quickly as possible.

He knocked over some garden tools,
a rake, a wheelbarrow, a bucket, all to create a clatter, and ran quickly to
the front door of the main house. Bullets whizzed past him on all sides. He felt
one graze his side just as he burst into the house. It didn’t feel like a
serious wound, but it burned like a hot poker resting just below his ribs. He
tumbled into the dining room. The living room was pretty hot now. The drapes
were in full blaze. Some of the upholstered furniture near the outside wall was
beginning to burn. The bookcases would catch fire soon.

One team would
come in through the front door. If he was lucky, they would be temporarily
forced to focus on the fire in the living room. The other team would circle
around to the kitchen entrance, with an eye on the garage. He needed to find a
way to get the second team into the house before Emily arrived. At least then
she would have a chance to size up the situation before encountering them.

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Chapter 6:
If you can’t stand the heat
...

When Emily came to the edge of the
forest she had already seen the fire in the woodshed. She had only suspected
something was wrong from Promontory Rock, but now she could see that nothing at
all was right at her home. She just caught a glimpse of Yuki driving off with
Mr. Cardano, and then saw her father apparently setting fire to the main house.
Strangely, the security guards were nowhere to be seen. She had also spotted
something much more ominous: suspicious activity in the hedges off to the left.
There were several men moving as quietly as they could manage through some
rather dense and noisy underbrush. She circled around to her right, always
remaining concealed within the verge of the forest.

She made her way to the point in
the north lawn where the woods came closest to the estate buildings, about
fifty yards from the corner of the garage. From this position, she had a very
clear view of her father, crouching against the corner of the building, peering
over a low shrub toward the hedges. “Thank God! He sees them too!” she thought
with a palpable feeling of relief.