Nick and Kate hid at the edge of the vineyard and studied an eight-foot-tall cement enclosure a hundred feet away. A lone gunman leaned against the structure, rubbing his neck to stay awake and looking at his watch every couple of minutes.
“I’m guessing that guarding the vineyard’s mechanical pad isn’t a plum assignment. He looks like he’s just killing time until his shift is done,” Nick whispered.
The guard stretched, put down his gun, looked around, walked over to a tree, and unzipped his pants.
“Big mistake,” Kate said. “If I were him, I would have held it.”
Jake emerged from the shadows just behind the guard, encircled the man’s neck with his right arm, and grasped his own left biceps with his right hand.
“He’s got that poor schmuck in a rear naked chokehold,” Kate said. “In a few seconds, his brain won’t be getting any blood, and then it’s game over.”
Jake brought his elbows together, applying pressure to the guard’s neck from both sides. After a few seconds of struggling, the gunman went limp and Jake lowered the unconscious man to the ground before dragging him behind the walled mechanical pad.
“It’s like watching Michelangelo at work,” Nick said, “if Michelangelo was an MMA fighter instead of a painter.”
Jake poked his head out of the enclosure, gave Nick and Kate a thumbs-up, and motioned them to join him in the enclosure.
Nick scanned the area. “Looks like the coast is clear. Let’s go see what he found.”
Nick and Kate sprinted out of the vineyard and over to the pad and snuck inside. A dozen five-thousand-gallon tanks of propane filled the space, leaving not a lot of extra room for the three of them to stand. Mounted to the wall was a network of valves and control panels for adjusting the rate and flow of propane to the equipment in the vineyard.
“Did you time me?” Jake asked Kate. He nudged the sleeping guard with his foot. “How many seconds until Tweedledum hit the floor?”
“Seven. Maybe eight.”
Jake looked a little disappointed. “I guess I’m out of practice. That’s what happens when you retire. You get soft.”
“You probably have jet lag,” Nick said. “In a day or two, you’ll be strangling bad guys like a champ. I’ll bet you even set a personal best.”
“I like this guy,” Jake said, pointing to Nick. He removed what looked like blobs of modeling clay from his fanny pack and plopped them on top of all the tanks, one by one.
Kate raised an eyebrow. “You’re going to blow up the propane tanks?”
Jake shook his head as he set blasting caps in each of the blobs of C4. “What do you think this is? Amateur hour? I thought you wanted a big distraction.”
Kate looked at Nick. “Bigger than sixty thousand gallons of propane going up in flames?”
Jake turned all the valves to one hundred percent and adjusted the flow rate to “Maximum” on the control panel. A loud hiss of propane filled the air as it was pumped out of the tanks, through the pipes, and into the fields. “Any idiot can blow up a propane tank. I’m going to blow up a vineyard.”
“I guess that should get their attention,” Nick said. “It’s not every day that a vineyard explodes.”
Jake removed a remote control from his fanny pack. “We should probably vamoose. We don’t want to be anywhere near here when we send an electrical signal to the blasting caps.”
Nick and Kate grabbed the unconscious guard and dragged him behind a rock wall a football field away from the equipment pad. Jake joined them thirty seconds later. “I checked all the charges. We’re good to go.”
Jake handed Kate what looked like a garage remote that had been customized with a single red button in the center labeled “Krakatoa.” “It’s my lucky detonator. I was going to pass it down to you on your wedding day, but this seems like the right time.”
“Boom,” Kate said and pressed the red button. A second later, the mechanical pad exploded in a giant fireball. “Good gravy,” she yelled over the noise. “They can probably see that from outer space.”
Nick looked down. “Do you feel that? The ground’s rumbling like an earthquake.”
Seconds later the torches in the vineyard began exploding in series, one after another, sending flames in all directions and turning the metal poles into giant propane-powered flamethrowers.
“Holy moly,” Nick said as the entire vineyard instantaneously caught fire. “I swear I’ve seen some crazy stuff, but it doesn’t get any crazier than this.”
Kate watched as one of the giant propane-powered fans groaned, followed by another and another. “Ooh. That can’t be good,” she said.
The groaning stopped and only the roar of the fire could be heard. A millisecond later, the wind machines exploded, hurling giant razor-sharp fan blades in every direction, some at least a hundred feet into the air. They reached the top of their trajectories and plummeted back to earth.
Jake grinned as it rained giant fan blades throughout the vineyard. One embedded itself into the earth just behind Neklan’s mansion, sending the guards scrambling for cover. “This is turning out even better than I imagined. I’ve still got it.”
Half the guards had run into the fields to fight the inferno. The other half, joined by an assortment of cooks and housekeepers, were frozen in place, staring glassy eyed at the spectacle with open mouths.
“What do you think?” Kate asked Nick.
“I think an entire marching band could waltz in the front door and not be noticed.”
“I don’t know,” Kate said. “It’s been a fun evening so far. I really don’t want to ruin it by getting shot.”
Nick snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it. Zombies.”
“What?”
“The key to getting past a horde of zombies is to act like a zombie so they think you’re one of them.”
“So, basically, your plan is that we should wander around Neklan’s backyard like a couple of disoriented morons in hopes that it will fool the other disoriented morons into ignoring us while we walk into the house and steal their boss?”
“It’s not the stupidest idea,” Jake said. “There are so many people milling around out there, we just might blend in.” He held up one of his guns. “And if it doesn’t work, I still have my Desert Eagles.”
Nick mussed Kate’s hair and smeared some dirt on her face. “Try to look befuddled.” He undid the top button on her shirt. “There, now you’re perfect.”
Kate glanced at her cleavage. “How is that going to help me look befuddled?”
Nick looked down at Kate. “It’s not. That’s to help befuddle me.”
“Good grief.” Kate buttoned her shirt and took in the chaotic scene. “What if the zombies don’t buy it?”
“They usually eat your brains, but you never can tell with zombies,” Nick said.
“Whatever. Let’s do it.”
Nick, Kate, and Jake left their hiding spot behind the rock wall and meandered around the yard, making a slow, indirect path toward the house. They stopped every so often to look bewildered. Between the fire raging in the vineyard and the propeller blades littering the grounds, no one was paying attention to them as they skirted the perimeter, looking for an entrance to the house.
“There’s our way in,” Nick said, pointing to an open door.
Kate stepped inside, gun drawn. “It’s a commercial kitchen, but it’s deserted. Everyone must be outside watching the fire.”
A pastry chef walked out of an adjacent room carrying a small tray of croissants and stopped in his tracks. He looked from Nick to Kate to Jake. “Who are you? You’re not supposed to be here.”
“We’re the health inspectors,” Nick said. “We’re investigating a complaint that your croissants aren’t big and buttery enough.” He snatched a croissant off the tray and took a bite. “Oh man, this is good.” He handed it to Kate. “You’ll want in on this.”
Kate pushed the rest of it into her mouth. “Okay, we’ll let you off with a warning this time,” she said to the chef. She took a second croissant from the stunned man and stuffed it into her pocket. “I’m confiscating this, though, for testing down at the lab. By the way, you wouldn’t happen to know where we can find Viktor Neklan?”
“He’s in his bedroom, waiting for his croissants. It’s on the second floor, overlooking the vineyard.” He looked at Kate’s gun. “Look, I’m just the pastry chef. Personally, I can’t stand the guy. He rings me at all hours of the night.” The chef pantomimed answering a cellphone. “Stuart, send me up a sandwich with no crusts. Stuart, send me up an ice cream sundae with two cherries. Stuart, send me up a basket of croissants heated to 102 degrees.”
The chef pointed at a small door in the corner of the room. “Once the dumbwaiter was broken and he docked me two weeks’ pay because his food was late.”
“Interesting.” Nick walked over to the dumbwaiter and looked inside. “How many people do you think we could fit in there?”
Kate looked over Nick’s shoulder while Jake kept an eye on the chef. “Somewhere between zero and none.”
“It leads directly to Viktor Neklan’s bedroom. We won’t have to risk running into any of his goons.”
“I’m not even trying to stuff myself into that death trap,” Kate said. “What’s plan B?”
Nick took a couple of double-breasted white chef’s jackets and a couple of white pleated hats off a nearby coatrack and handed one to Kate. “We disguise ourselves as master chefs, and bring Mr. Neklan his croissants.”
Kate put on the coat and hat. “How do I look?”
“Like an FBI agent in a chef’s coat. How do I look?”
“Like a criminal in a white hat.”
Nick grabbed the tray of croissants and placed it on top of a food trolley, along with an assortment of jellies and a little flower in a vase. “What are you doing?” Kate asked.
Nick adjusted the vase. “Just because we’re ruthless kidnappers doesn’t mean we can’t take a little pride in our presentation.”
Kate rolled her eyes. “I’m sure he’ll be very impressed. Just before I stun-gun his ass and stuff him under the food cart.”
Jake escorted Stuart out the back door, told him to run like the wind and not look back. “What should I do now?” Jake asked Kate.
“Wait here and keep a lookout,” Kate said to Jake. “And, don’t blow anything else up.”
Jake shrugged. “No problem. I’m all out of C4 anyway.”
Nick and Kate pushed the cart through the kitchen and out into the hallway. Dim pathway lights led them through the warren of passageways toward the main living area. “I’m guessing that most of Neklan’s security is focused on the outside grounds,” Kate said. “He never expected anyone to actually break into his house.”
They rolled the cart slowly through the mansion, into a foyer and up to an elevator leading to the second floor. Nick pressed the call button and waited. The elevator doors opened, and two men dressed in black fatigues and carrying automatic weapons nodded at Nick and Kate, exited the elevator, and continued on their way.
Nick and Kate pushed the cart onto the elevator, and waited for the doors to close behind them.
“I have to admit,” Kate said. “Sometimes your crazy plans actually work.”
The elevator slowed to a stop, the doors opened, and Kate stood face-to-face with Olga Zellenkova. The redhead stared openmouthed in surprise at Nick and Kate for a couple of seconds.
“This is a little awkward,” Nick said. “You probably don’t recognize us on account of we’re in disguise, but we’re here to kidnap your boss.”
Kate reached out toward Olga, grabbed her with both hands, and pulled her into the elevator. She reached into her pocket, pulled out her stun gun, and pressed it to Olga’s chest.
Nick watched as Olga twitched and collapsed onto the elevator floor. “Not that she would have told us, but you might have at least asked her where we can find Cosmo and Vicky.”
“I was in a rush. Some people are talkers, and some are doers. I’m a doer.”
Nick pushed the cart out of the elevator, opened the elevator control panel, ripped out a handful of wires, and watched the doors close behind them. “How long until she wakes up?”
“I gave her a good shock. Her neurons should be scrambled for at least ten minutes.”
Nick hid the wires under the food cart. “It will take a while for them to restore power to the elevator. She’s stuck there until someone rescues her. Hopefully, that will buy us a little more time.”
Kate pointed to an ornate set of double doors at the end of the hallway. “That must be the master bedroom.”
Nick and Kate pushed the cart through the door and into Neklan’s bedroom. He barely glanced at them. All of his attention was on the large floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the vineyard and the raging fire.
“Late as usual,” he said. “Just leave the food and get out. I’m going to flay the skin off whoever is responsible for this fiasco.”
Kate drew her gun and pointed it at Neklan. “You found her. And, also, gross. You’ve been watching way too much Game of Thrones.”
“That’s it?” Nick said. “You’ve got a lot to learn about being a loose-cannon cop with a bad attitude. You just got the drop on the bad guy. This kind of situation calls for a clever one-liner.”
“Like what?”
“How about ‘Say hello to my little friend’?”
“Already taken. Al Pacino in Scarface.”
“Okay,” Nick said. “How about ‘I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and I’m all out of bubblegum’?”
“They Live. Great movie, but I don’t chew gum. I look like an idiot.”
“Right. I forgot about that.” Nick paused. “‘Give my regards to King Tut, asshole’?”
“Kurt Russell in Stargate. And that doesn’t even make any sense.” Kate looked at Neklan. “You don’t know King Tut, do you?”
Neklan clenched his fists and glared at Kate.
“You see,” Kate said. “He doesn’t get it.”
“Well, I’m all out of suggestions. Do you have any ideas?”
Kate handed her gun over to Nick. “If you have to shoot him, go for his privates. I know it’s probably a tiny little target but it’s always a satisfying hit.”
“I’m on it,” Nick said, taking the gun.
Kate pulled her stun gun out of her pocket, lunged at Neklan, and shot a bunch of volts into him.
Neklan’s muscles contracted, but he managed to stay upright. She shot him again, and he collapsed in a heap on the ground.
Nick looked down at Neklan. “What’s that he’s holding in his hand?”
Kate unclenched his fist and removed a key fob. “Uh-oh. It looks like a panic button.” She cracked the master bedroom door and peeked out. Half a dozen men armed with semiautomatic weapons had just crested the stairs and were running down the hallway toward the master bedroom. “We’ve got company, and we’re not getting out the way we came.”
Nick grabbed Neklan by the arms and dragged him to the dumbwaiter. “Can you buy me some time?”
Kate removed a flash grenade from her pocket, pulled the pin, slid it along the floor in the direction of the gunmen, and slammed the bedroom door shut. A second later, she heard the explosion. “That should slow them down for a couple minutes. I have one more grenade. If you’re going to do something clever, now would be the time.”
Nick already had Neklan half stuffed into the dumbwaiter. “I’m trying, but he’s like Jell-O. He keeps oozing out,” he said, shoving a stray arm into the small compartment. Nick stepped back a step and surveyed his work. “There. Perfect.”
Kate looked over. Neklan looked like a store-bought Butterball chicken, ready to explode out of its packaging. “He doesn’t fit.”
Nick used his entire body weight to shove Neklan deeper into the opening. “He’ll fit. I’m not sure how we’ll get him out, but he’ll fit.” Nick tried to close the dumbwaiter door. “Whoops. Maybe he won’t.”
Kate ran full speed at the mostly closed door and slammed into it. Neklan groaned and the lock clicked shut. The dumbwaiter was bulging, but it was holding shut. “Easy peasy lemon squeezy,” she said, pressing the call button and sending Neklan down to Jake below.
“That takes care of Neklan, but how are we going to get past the goons in the hall?”
Kate opened the bedroom door. The six men in the hallway were still disoriented but beginning to regain their footing. She pulled the pin on the second grenade, tossed it in their direction, slammed the door shut, and waited for the explosion. “That should give us another couple minutes.”
Nick looked down the dumbwaiter shaft. “It sounds like Jake is pulling Neklan out.”
Kate leaned over Nick’s shoulder. “Dad, we could use a little help here,” she shouted.
“Roger that,” Jake shouted back. “If I were you I’d stand back.”
Kate pulled Nick away from the opening as Jake blasted five or six dinner-plate-size holes in the roof of the dumbwaiter. Jake poked his head up through the demolished dumbwaiter ceiling. “Outstanding. I knew the Desert Eagles would come in handy.”
Nick lowered Kate into the shaft, allowing her to drop feetfirst for the remaining four feet into the dumbwaiter. She crashed through what remained of its roof and scrambled into the kitchen.
“I’m out,” she shouted up to Nick.
There was a full minute of silence above her, and then she heard the doors to the master bedroom bang open followed by the sounds of gunfire. A second later Nick landed on his feet at the bottom of the shaft and jumped out.
“They’re in a really bad mood,” he said. “I guess their day’s not going so well.” He tossed a small computer laptop to Jake. “Stash this somewhere. I liberated it from Neklan’s bedroom. Maybe we can find out what he stole from Sentience.”
Jake stuffed the laptop under his belt. “Their bad day is about to get worse.” He held up a gray block of C4. “I thought I was fresh out, but I found this in the secret pocket of my fanny pack.” He plopped it down inside the dumbwaiter, together with a blasting cap, and locked the door shut.
Jake grinned at Kate. “Krakatoa,” he said, activating the detonator. An explosion blew the dumbwaiter door off its hinges and rattled the whole house.
Kate waited a couple of beats for the dust to clear before she checked out the damage. “The shaft is filled with rubble. Nobody is following us down that,” she said. “I’m guessing Neklan’s going to need an interior decorator ASAP for his bedroom too.”
Nick retrieved a shopping cart full of groceries and dumped its contents onto the floor. “Come on, Viktor. Time to go.” He and Jake heaved the still scramble-brained Neklan into the cart.
Kate cracked the door and checked outside for guards. “The coast is clear,” she said. “Let’s make a run for it.”
Nick maneuvered the rickety shopping cart outside into the night air and started off in the direction of the cliffs. “Why do I always choose the one with the crazy wheel?” He looked around as he rolled Viktor down the lawn. “So far so good. Maybe no one will notice us.”
“You think that nobody’s going to notice a geriatric commando and two people dressed like chefs pushing a two-hundred-pound crime boss through an open field in an old shopping cart?”
An alarm sounded in the house, and guards poured out into the yard, all desperately searching for Neklan and his kidnappers. Amid the chaos, one of them pointed in Nick and Kate’s direction and shouted something in Czech to the others. Time stopped for a moment as the rest of the gunmen froze in place and watched Nick, Kate, and Jake sprint toward the cliff with Viktor Neklan bouncing around like a giant rag doll in the speeding cart.
Nick took a quick look over his shoulder at the twenty armed guards now chasing them. He turned the cart over to Kate and Jake and dialed the Kahuna.
The Kahuna answered on the fifth ring. “What’s up?”
“Start the boat!” Nick yelled into the phone.
Kate and Jake struggled to keep going over the rough grass. They were aiming for a makeshift ATV path that was cut into a gulch leading down to the Shotover River.
“Did you find Mr. Big?” the Kahuna asked.
“We need more muscle,” Kate said to Nick. “We have to get the cart over the high grass at the edge of the path.”
“Yes, we found him,” Nick shouted at the Kahuna. “Start the boat.”
Kate ripped the cell out of Nick’s hands. Neklan’s bodyguards were maybe thirty seconds behind them. “Start the freaking boat!”
“On my way,” the Kahuna said and hung up.
The shopping cart cleared the high grass and gained speed as it hurtled down the switchbacks leading to the river.
Viktor Neklan attempted to sit up in the cart. His eyes were unfocused, and his body was slumped. “Stuart, send me up a cheeseburger with three pickles and a sesame seed bun with the sesames on the side,” he said to Kate.
“Right away,” Kate said. “Just go back to sleep, and I’ll bring it right up.”
“Sweet,” Neklan said.
A red speedboat with “Shotover River Adventures” emblazoned on the side and the Kahuna at the helm whipped around a bend and stopped in the river just in front of a small boat landing at the bottom of the trail. The Kahuna threw a rope over a piling and watched Nick and Kate as they barreled down the path toward him.
“There’s our ride,” Nick said. “We just have to get to the bottom.”
Jake glanced over his shoulder. “They’re gaining on us. I don’t think we’re going to make it as long as we’re slowed down with this cart.”
“I’m not giving up Neklan. We’ll need to take a shortcut,” Kate said as they approached a hairpin turn in the switchback path.
Nick looked at Kate and gave her a thumbs up. A second later they launched themselves and the shopping cart full speed over the bank of the canyon and plunged fifty feet into the Shotover River below. Jake, unencumbered by the shopping cart, sprinted down the path toward the boat landing and the waiting jet boat.
Kate struggled to reach the surface of the frigid water as the current dragged her downriver. Next to her, Viktor Neklan popped out of the water, spluttering and flailing his arms. Nick was a little upstream and swimming toward them.
The Kahuna’s jet boat raced around the landing and pulled up alongside Nick, Kate, and Neklan just long enough for Jake to fish them out of the water and drag them onto the deck. The Kahuna slammed the throttle into full speed, and the boat rocketed away.
Neklan lay on the deck, breathing heavily. “I’ll kill you all.”
“Sure. No problem,” Kate said, securing his hands and feet with a length of rope. “You can kill us all, just as soon as you return our friends and after you get out of federal prison, which should be somewhere between a hundred and a thousand years from now.”
Neklan smiled. “You think you’re the first person to threaten me with prison? Good luck.”
Jake turned and pointed at a speedboat that was racing toward them. “I imagine that’s loaded with Neklan’s goons, and it looks to me like they’re closing the distance.”
“Hold on tight,” the Kahuna said, pushing forward on the throttle. “It’s about to get gnarly.”
The speedboat leapt forward and accelerated through the narrow, winding canyon, creating a huge zigzagging wake of water in its path.
“If we collide with one of the rock walls at this speed, we’ve pretty much had it,” Kate said to Nick.
Gunfire echoed through the canyon, and the boat’s wind guard took a hit. The Kahuna swerved to the right. The back of the boat fishtailed and grazed a rock outcropping.
Nick’s cellphone rang.
“Are you kidding me?” Kate said. “You’re getting a call now? Here?”
Nick answered and switched to speakerphone. “It’s Olga,” he said. “She’s in the boat of maniacs behind us.” He turned and waved to Olga.
“You’re more resourceful than I thought,” Olga said. “Maybe you should stop the boat and we can talk.”
“I can’t hear you over the gunfire,” Nick said. “Speak up.”
Olga laughed. “Personally, I hate resorting to violence. There are a lot of other more fun ways to get someone’s attention.”
“Oh, for the love of Mike,” Kate said. She grabbed one of Jake’s Desert Eagles and fired off an entire clip of bullets at Olga’s speedboat, blasting multiple holes in the hull and setting one of the two engines on fire. The boat turned sideways and flipped over, sending Olga and everyone else flying through the air and into the river.
“She was right. That was fun,” Kate said, handing the gun back to Jake.
The sun had just begun to peek over the horizon, the sky far above them was a subtle orange, and the wrecked boat of goons was no longer visible.
Fifteen minutes later Nick and Kate cruised through the calm waters of Lake Wakitpu, looking for a safe place to dock.
The Kahuna glanced back at Viktor Neklan, bound, gagged, and lying on the bottom of the boat. “Well, we’ve got Mr. Big. Now what?”
“We trade him for Vicky and Cosmo.” Kate sighed. “I guess we’ll have to take Larry too. I can’t see leaving him with Olga after this.” She turned to Nick. “It’s going to have to be somewhere private. We can’t just walk around Queenstown with a hog-tied billionaire.”
Nick grinned. “I know just the place. It’s going to be epic.”
“I know that grin,” Kate said, shaking her head. “It’s either going to be unnecessarily expensive or unnecessarily dangerous.”
Nick shrugged and grinned again. “Why can’t it be both?”