Arc V: Executive Protection
Part 5: The Chase – Act 2
Hartmann grimaced in pain as he cranked the wheel to the right, pursuing the fleeing nun into a side street that required both drivers to brake rapidly. The van skidded around the corner, its front right wheel lifting off the ground for a brief moment.
His bleeding shoulder continued to give him grief, and both he and Fox knew that he needed immediate medical attention. Nevertheless, catching the President's would-be-assassin mattered more to Hartmann than his own health at this point.
The narrow side street wedged between a cluster of warehouses ended with an intersection that spat the two speeding vehicles out on an eight-lane road with a moderate amount of traffic. Undeterred by the number of vehicles on the road, the nun guided her car into a gentle left hand turn and sped towards a massive overpass a quarter mile up the road. Practically riding the nun's damaged rear bumper, Hartmann noticed a highway on-ramp lane on the right side of the road, two hundred feet before the bridge.
The nun dove for the onramp, screaming past two other cars by driving on the road's dirt-covered shoulder and creating a cloud of dust in the process. Hartmann kept after her and skirted the pedestrian traffic, but the nun still managed to gain an advantage. She began to pull away as the onramp transitioned into the extreme right hand lane of a massive interstate highway, complete with no fewer than five lanes of travel.
As the blue compact merged into traffic, its driver kept the gas pedal pegged against the floorboards. The car's diminutive size proved to be an advantage and allowed it to weave through all five lanes with surprisingly little effort. This boded well for the nun, but not for Hartmann, whose blood red shoulder continued to distract him. He looked for an opening to merge into traffic and continue the pursuit, but the sheer volume of cars around him prevented him from doing much of anything.
Finally, he slammed his hands against the steering wheel and shouted, "Fox—you're going to have to take the wheel! I can't handle this anymore! Take your seatbelt off and get ready to jump into the driver's seat!"
Fox balked. "Wait—what?"
Not bothering to say another word, Hartmann made sure that the steering wheel was pointed straight ahead and then unclipped his seatbelt. He then dove over the center console and landed in the rear cargo area with a soft 'thud.' Realizing that he had no choice but to act, Fox clambered out of his seat and snaked his legs over the center console, being careful not to catch the bottom of the steering wheel with his boots and send the van flipping out of control.
With a deep breath, he dropped into the driver's seat and clicked on his seatbelt.
"Thanks, Fox," said Hartmann from the back of the van. "I'll be right back up there—I've just got to wrap up this arm first. Keep after that nun!"
"Got it," Fox replied.
Far ahead in the distance, he saw the nun's blue compact speeding away while swerving through traffic. Seeing his target beginning to slip away infuriated him. For him and Hartmann to have come this far only to lose their target—that was unacceptable. Not only that, but as a secondary goal, he wanted to uncover the nun's identity. He had a sneaking suspicion that he knew who she—or possibly he—was.
Finally spotting a hole in traffic, Fox floored the gas pedal and honked his horn. The van responded to his movements slowly, but with a 300-horsepower engine under the hood, it began picking up speed. Much of the interstate traffic barreled along at seventy miles an hour, but Fox knew that he would need to move more quickly than that if he wanted to catch the nun. He had to avoid the traffic entirely to have a chance.
Then, an idea occurred to him. Taking advantage of a small gap in traffic in the far left lane, he swerved onto the unmarked pavement between the solid white line and the six-foot-tall concrete median a few feet to the left of it. The 'lane' barely accommodated the van, but it would have to do. Fox kept his foot planted to the floor, accelerating to over a hundred miles an hour. The van's speedometer only went up to 120, and Fox had a feeling that he had almost topped out. Even in a straight line, the rear end of the van became squirrely, and every bump in the pavement threatened to jolt the vehicle either back into traffic or into the concrete wall to his left.
Yet, his plan seemed to be working.
Up until he saw the unthinkable—a stranded car parked on the unmarked pavement, exactly a quarter mile ahead.
He glanced to his right in hopes of finding an open lane, but closely-packed traffic kept it on lockdown. He knew he would have to act quickly to avoid slamming into the parked car up ahead. Flicking his right blinker and blaring his horn again, he hit the brakes to slow himself to highway speeds and slowly pulled to the right. The maroon wagon immediately to his right refused to move. When Fox looked frantically at the driver, he realized why. The wagon's driver—a young opossum woman—had her visor down and a mascara applicator in her hand. Virtually oblivious to everything around her, she dotted her eyelashes with a brush while occasionally glancing at the pavement ahead of her.
The parked car loomed large in Fox's sights. No time.
Fox gritted his teeth and avoided looking to his right, as he already knew what would happen. He pulled the steering wheel to the right, ramming the maroon wagon in the driver's side door and shoving it out of the lane. The distracted opossum panicked at the wheel and dropped her mascara. She gripped the wheel and tried to force her way back into the stolen lane, but thanks to her prior distraction, she lost her bearings. Her feeble attempt to regain control had the opposite effect. She careened into a large luxury SUV to her right and then spun back to the left, where her car was rammed by an armored security truck that lacked the ability to stop in time to avoid hitting her. The wagon barrel rolled down the freeway and came to rest on its roof. Behind Fox and Hartmann's van, traffic came to a virtual standstill.
After the collision with the wagon, Hartmann popped up from the back of the van and demanded, "What the hell was that?"
"Car was parked on the left median and I had to get over," Fox gasped, using as few words as possible. "I hope that lady's okay."
Now with a freshly-applied wrap on his shoulder, the dyed husky vaulted into the passenger's seat and looked in the rear view mirror. He saw the rolled wagon as it began to shrink in the distance behind them. "Dammit! My insurance is going to have to pay for that!"
"As if all the things you did earlier hadn't already made that a given," Fox retorted. "You know—like ramming two police cars and getting your rear bumper torn off by a freight train?"
Hartmann gave Fox an evil, dark scowl. "I'd punch you, but I've got to keep my blood pressure as low as possible so that I don't bleed out. Where's the nun?"
Fox squinted and tried peering around the cars surrounding him while ignoring the numerous middle fingers being directed at him by the other drivers. He spotted the nun's blue car, over three hundred yards ahead at this point. Shaking his head, he told Hartmann, "She's still pulling away. How much longer are we going to have to deal with this damn traffic?"
Hartmann pulled his military-grade phone out of his pocket and opened a GPS app. He stared at the screen for a number of seconds, then answered, "There's only one more exit left until the highway reaches Lake Abrugarvo. There's a huge bridge that crosses the lake, and there's not much of anything on the other side. Traffic should clear before long. Just stay as close behind the nun as you can."
Fox nodded in response. Although he feared that he would find himself hit with a rapid case of déjà vu, he pulled the van onto the left shoulder and stomped on the gas. This time, the 'lane' ahead looked clear apart from small chunks of rubber created by eviscerated semi-truck tires. The cars to his right began falling behind, although the nun's vehicle still seemed to be pulling away up ahead.
Then, Fox noticed an overhead electronic highway sign. In bright yellow digital print, it read, "Bridge Closed Ahead – All Traffic Exit."
No sooner had he seen it than the traffic to his right came to a virtual crawl as the rush to merge into the two right lanes began. Fox raced past rows upon rows of gridlocked cars, speeding by at such a rate that they seemed like blurs. He held the wheel with white knuckles, realizing that the slightest miscue could send him into the back end of a stopped car and kill both him and Hartmann.
After passing a half mile of slow-moving vehicles, Fox laid eyes on the reason for the traffic exiting. While all five lanes of traffic attempted to wedge into the two exit lanes, two police cars sat in the center of the highway, positioned behind a barricade of barrel-shaped cones that looked to have been hastily set down. But two other details stood out to him: the completely open road beyond the parked police cars—and the nun's blue compact that continued to speed down it. Holding the gas pedal to the floor, Fox raced past the police barricade on the left median. At the exact same time, one of the two police cars activated its siren and accelerated from a standstill.
Looking in his rearview mirror at the police car, Hartmann cursed and slammed his hands against the dashboard. "Dammit! Not this again!"
"What am I supposed to do here?" Fox shouted. "We can't let that nun get away!"
Hartmann clutched at his head and growled, "I don't know what to do! But wait—why is the bridge closed on a Friday afternoon, of all times?"
The pursuing police car's siren grew louder behind them, the vehicle's superior engine and lighter weight allowing it to catch up with the van at a frightening speed. But then, the cruiser raced past on the right, ignoring Hartmann's van in favor of the blue car that looked more like a tiny blue dot on the horizon than a car by now.
"No way," Hartmann gasped. "Fox—the cops actually got your memo! They're going after the assassin! In fact…"
"What is it?" Fox demanded.
"They've probably set up a roadblock just for her."
Without any traffic to impede him, Fox merged back onto the main part of the highway, keeping his foot to the floor all the while. The van's speedometer crept above 110, but Fox realized that no matter how much power the van had, a proverbial barn at any speed was still a barn door.
The distance between the van and the nun's car remained unchanged, but the police cruiser that had passed them began to gain ground on the compact. On both sides of the highway, the buildings and palm trees that had formerly lined it gave way to a wide open view of the desert that lurked outside the metropolis. Off to the right, Fox and Hartmann noticed the vast Lake Abrugarvo attempting to cut into said desert.
Up ahead, the Lake Abrugarvo suspension bridge loomed large, its blue-painted supports glowing in the sunlight. The tall concrete median blocked Fox's view of the traffic on the other side, giving the impression of an empty highway. The nun still maintained a commanding lead over the van, but as it cleared the first quarter of the bridge, her car's engine made a sickening shuddering noise and began spewing white smoke from the exhaust.
The blue compact lost speed, allowing the lone police car to gain ground on it even more rapidly than before. Fox kept his foot down. For the first time in minutes, he felt confident that the nun would be stopped. Up ahead in the distance, both Fox and Hartmann spotted a line of police cars—along with a yellow ambulance positioned on the left side of the road—stretching across the entirety of the highway, aligned front to back with only two feet separating each of them. Six armed officers stood in front of them. If the nun wanted to clear the roadblock, there was no way to do it apart from ramming the police cars and crippling her already-sputtering vehicle.
As the nun's car neared the roadblock, the police car tailing her backed off, not wanting to create a potential fiasco when there remained no option for her except to stop and surrender. Still, the nun refused to slow down. With white smoke billowing from the back, the compact blazed towards the line of police cruisers at ninety miles an hour.
Even from two hundred fifty yards behind, Fox and Hartmann felt the police officers' panic. All of them darted off to the side, diving for the ground in a frantic attempt to avoid being run over by the crazed nun. Then, at the last possible second, the nun jerked her steering wheel hard to the right. The blue compact slammed into the low concrete wall bordering the right shoulder and vaulted into the air. The car barrel rolled off the bridge and soared into the open air above the lake, threading the needle between two of the bridge's support beams. While the police officers and the two mercenaries watched with mouths agape, the nun threw her door open and leaped out of the car as it plummeted towards the water below.
Then, both she and her vehicle disappeared from sight.
Fox hit the brakes and slowed the van to a stop fifty feet in front of the police roadblock. Turning the vehicle off, he and Hartmann leaped out and sprinted towards the edge of the bridge. Both of them looked over the side. Below, all that remained was the large wake created by the nun's car when it splashed down; and to its left, a smaller set of ripples stood out. Fox and Hartmann waited for over a minute to see if the nun would surface, but to their discomfort and dismay, she never did.
As if reading Hartmann's mind, Fox asked, "What's that supposed to mean?"
With the chase over, Hartmann's heart rate dropped to a more reasonable level. However, his adrenaline began to leave his system as well, amplifying the pain in his arm. "I don't know," he winced. "It's a least a seventy foot drop to the water. That would kill anyone. That's not to say that no one could possibly survive a fall like that, but it's really unlikely. Damn—my arm hurts!"
As they looked over the side of the bridge, an iguana police officer approached them with his hands behind his back. When Fox and Hartmann turned around, the lizard offered his hand to both of them and introduced himself. "I'm Supervisor Grzeskiewicz," he said.
"I bet that's spelled a lot differently than how it's pronounced," Hartmann commented.
"Well, you'd be correct," Grzeskiewicz confirmed. "I'd like to apologize for the problems you had with my men near the auditorium. It was all moving so fast—we hardly had time to respond after what happened at the President's rally. I really want to thank you, though. Your phone call got us on the right track. If you hadn't done anything, the assassin would have made a clean break."
"Speaking of the assassin," Fox replied, "You're going to drag the lake, right?"
Grzeskiewicz nodded his head. "Absolutely. I don't see how anyone could expect to live through a fall like that, but when we're dealing with something this important, we're not going to leave a single stone unturned."
Letting out another grunt of pain, Hartmann asked, "Do you know if the President is okay?"
"As far as I know, the Secret Service got her out of the auditorium safely. I'm not completely sure, though."
"If that's all you know, so be it," Fox replied.
At that point, the sound of an approaching helicopter reverberated through the air to the right of the bridge as a police chopper hovered over Lake Abrugarvo and began scanning the surface of the water for any signs of life. Fox, Hartmann, and Supervisor Grzeskiewicz all glanced at the helicopter for a moment, but their attention soon turned to Hartmann's bandaged shoulder. The previously-white cloth had been stained solid red.
"Here—get in the ambulance, and the paramedics will take care of you from there," said Grzeskiewicz, placing a hand on Hartmann's good shoulder.
"Thanks," the painted husky groaned. Trying to control his breathing, he lumbered across the asphalt towards the large yellow vehicle. But then, his sensitive ears picked up on something coming towards them. He looked to his left, in the direction of the distant metropolis, and saw a tiny black and white speck hurtling towards the police roadblock. "What's that?" he asked Grzeskiewicz.
The iguana stopped and narrowed his large eyes. "That's the other police car that was supposed to stay at the exit. I have no idea what he's doing. Hold on—give me a second." Reaching for his belt, he pulled out a walky-talky, raised it to the level of his lips, and pressed a button on the side. "Unit 24, what are you doing? You're supposed to stay at the exit and divert the highway traffic."
"I am at the exit!" the police officer affirmed. "One of the interceptors just tore through here at almost 180 miles an hour with a motorcycle behind it! Are you aware of any of this?!"
"No," said Grzeskiewicz, his face assuming a pallid green coloration. He watched as the speeding interceptor grew closer, approaching at a dizzying rate. In that moment, his brain froze. But his gut told him what he needed to do next.
"Move one of the cars!" he roared, turning towards the roadblock.
One of the other officers on the bridge nodded feverishly and jumped into the cruiser in the center of the bridge. With the police cars positioned so closely together, he struggled to break out of the roadblock without bumping into one of the other cars. But then, he looked to his left and saw the interceptor closing in on the roadblock; and to make matters worse, its speed had not diminished in the least.
Terrified, the officer shoved his foot to the floor and broke out of the roadblock, ramming the police car in front of him in the process. A mere second later, the interceptor raced through the open gap in the roadblock. Three seconds after that, a blood red motorcycle followed it through the block before it—along with the interceptor—became little more than speeding dots in the distance.
Wide-eyed, Fox watched the two vehicles disappear from sight and wondered, "Was that Rena on the back of that bike?"
- § -
On the back of the bike, Rena circled her arms around Lucas's torso and hung on for dear life with her borrowed machine pistol held in her dominant left hand. On the entirely clear road, Lucas accelerated his motorcycle to its factory limited top speed of 180 miles an hour. Nevertheless, the overpowered police interceptor continued to put more and more ground between it and its pursuers. Other issues concerned Rena and Lucas as well—namely, their lack of helmets. Then again, those would have a snowball's chance in hell of saving them in the event of a high-speed crash.
The wind noise proved to be deafening, forcing Rena to lean forward and scream into Lucas's ear to communicate with him. "How are we supposed to catch up? That farking car is too fast!"
Lucas looked over his shoulder and shouted back, "The road drops two lanes and starts winding in about five miles! We'll catch them in the turns!"
Rena took him at his words and avoided straining her vocal chords any further. Still holding onto Lucas's hoodie for support, she watched the scenery race past. With the bridge cleared, the road ahead gradually became narrower, dropping one lane immediately after the bridge and losing another after three more miles. The terrain was flat, but up ahead, Rena saw a vast array of canyons and rocky outcroppings. The road did not diverge on account of them. Rather, it appeared to snake directly through the rock formations, gaining altitude in the process.
The sun continued to sink in the afternoon sky. Near the horizon, its rays painted the copper-colored sands on the sides of the road a brilliant shade of dark red. The desert highway sped over a short overpass that marked the first exit after the Abrugarvo suspension bridge. Traffic re-entered the highway from there, although the number of cars was so minimal that Lucas made no attempt at slowing down.
Despite traveling at three miles per minute, Lucas lost sight of the fleeing police interceptor. He said nothing to Rena, but he desperately hoped that the car had not taken the exit. Thanks to the light traffic, he pulled onto the right shoulder to avoid having to weave between cars on the road, which had now dropped to only two lanes in each direction of travel. Accompanying the narrowing road, the pavement began sloping upwards. The flat deserts on the sides of the road gave way to steep red rock walls and outcroppings. As Lucas had predicted, curves overtook the long, monotonous straightaways that had previously defined it.
Knowing that the police interceptor could only carry so much speed on the curvy roads, Lucas pushed his driving skills to the limit, diving into 45-mile per hour turns at over ninety. The traffic remained light and offered him little resistance, yet Lucas halfway wished that more cars had been on the roads. If that had been the case, the fleeing interceptor would have had more obstructions to deal with than he would. His motorcycle's exhaust note echoed against the canyon walls as the road climbed further upwards.
A concrete median arose to take the place of the simple double yellow line that had previously separated the mountainous highway. This alerted Lucas to the presence of upcoming sharp turns, as the winding road would prove potentially lethal to truck drivers heading down the mountain towards Abrugarvo. Hence the need for a strong central barrier.
Lucas sped past a yellow sign on the right warning of upcoming switchbacks. He grinned. Now was the chance to make up significant ground on the police car. Spotting the first corner—a sharp right-hander—he swung the bike all the way out to the left edge of the pavement and then shot towards the opposite side of the road, cutting off a car in the right lane in the process. He ignored the driver's infuriated horn blast and pulled through the corner at twice the legal limit, then set himself up for the upcoming left-hand bend that pulled even farther uphill.
After that point, the road straightened and leveled out. Dead ahead was a towering desert cliff; and built into the side, a tunnel. At the edge of his vision, he saw the white and black police car as it sped into the darkened shaft. Rena continued to hold onto his ribcage. By now, he had come to feel the pain of her grasp as nothing more than a mildly annoying ache.
He kept his right hand cranked back and plunged into the tunnel at full speed. To avoid the few pedestrian vehicles in front of him, he skirted the right side of the road, coming within mere feet of the metal railings that flanked the tunnel's side walkways. Inside the shaft, his motorcycle's already-loud engine erupted into a brazen scream; but even above the noise, he heard the muscular howl of the interceptor's 650-horsepower V10 engine up ahead. The tunnel's lights flashed by as if part of a sadistic strobe display at a concert of maniacal speed.
The tunnel gradually curved to the right, forcing Lucas to lean his handlebars to within inches of the right side rails in order to hold the corner. Once the shallow turn ended, he shot out into the empty right hand lane only to find that the police car was only a hundred feet ahead.
"Rena! Get ready!" he shouted, hoping that she would somehow hear him inside the deafening echo chamber.
The interceptor swerved into the left hand lane to avoid a slow-moving van on the right, but lost speed in the process. Lucas began closing the gap at the same time that the light from the other side of the tunnel began flooding in. A brilliant wash of white overwhelmed them for a moment, then the view of the tunnel ended in favor of a winding road overlooking a breathtaking desert valley.
Lucas pulled his bike to within fifty feet of the interceptor's rear bumper. Sensing the opportunity at hand, Rena drew Lucas's assault pistol and tried to aim it in the general direction of the fleeing car. Her first instinct was to try to shoot Rafa through the back window, because she had a feeling that even if she managed to make the car crash, Rafa would somehow find a way to survive. After all, he had taken five bullets in the chest earlier and walked away as though nothing had happened.
The wind, the insane speed of the chase, and the winding roads themselves conspired to keep Rena from being able to line up her sights. Having her immediate vision blocked by Lucas did nothing to help her, either. Her hand trembling as she struggled to aim and hold onto the gun at the same time, she finally felt ready to pull the trigger.
Suddenly, the police car's brake lights flashed. Lucas swerved wildly to the left, nearly throwing Rena off. In the process, the yellow vixen dropped the gun and reached for Lucas to prevent herself from falling onto the pavement and being shredded to pieces. The police car dropped back, and it only took a matter of seconds for Rena and Lucas to figure out why.
A hail of rapid-fire bullets erupted from the right side of the police car, now thirty feet behind them. Lucas dove to the right as hot lead riddled the pavement around him. He shot in front of an RV in the right hand lane, forcing the larger vehicle to take the brunt of the attack.
Realizing that he had to fall in behind the police car again, he slammed on his brakes and skidded to a virtual standstill on the side of the road. The interceptor rocketed off again and disappeared over a quick hill in an upcoming left hand turn. Lucas prepared to pick up speed and pursue the interceptor again, but when he happened to look over his shoulder, his heart sank. "Did you drop the gun?" he asked Rena.
The yellow vixen's ears dropped, and she looked to be on the verge of breaking into angry tears. "Yeah."
"It's okay. We can go back and…" Lucas's eyes scanned the road behind them for the discarded weapon, only to see a massive tanker truck drive over it with an appalling crunch. "…Well, I guess not."
Crossing her arms, Rena hunched her back and stared at the ground while seated on the motorcycle behind Lucas. The realization that stopping Rafa and his car was all but impossible hit her at the same time that the pain in her right leg flared up again. Wincing, she sighed and gingerly climbed off Lucas's motorcycle, then limped across the winding two-lane road and leaned on the guardrail overlooking the vast desert at the bottom of the mountain. A half mile away, a twin-rotor helicopter rested on the dark orange sands, its rotors churning up a storm of dust. From the distance, Rena failed to make out any identifying marks or insignias with which to place it.
That question answered itself when the police interceptor came into view and sped across the flat desert in the direction of the chopper. Within seconds, the car came to a stop. Two figures—Rafa and his accomplice, who looked to be a large, white-furred ursine—leaped out, then sprinted into the large helicopter's opened rear cargo door.
The door closed soon afterwards, and the chopper lifted off. As it turned and began traveling farther away from the already-distant city, Rena flattened her ears in rage and roared at the top of her lungs, hurling a metaphorical flock of 'birds' at the fleeing helicopter.
- § -
Onboard the helicopter, Rafa brushed off his pants before taking a seat on one of the side-mounted crew benches inside. His comrade who had been driving the car—a massive polar bear wearing a fake police uniform—plopped down onto the bench opposite him and let out a sigh of relief. The chopper's pilots continued guiding the vehicle away from Abrugarvo. Within a matter of minutes, they would be far enough from the city to avoid the possibility of the Titanian Air Force sending a team of fighters after them.
In spite of his escape, a furious scowl covered Rafa's muzzle. He glared at the wall on the other side of the chopper as if angry at an invisible something.
"What's wrong, Commander?" the polar bear asked, opening his hands.
"You know perfectly well what's wrong, mi amigo," Rafa growled. "Sure—we got away, but President Vinca is still alive, which means that our plan to help Senator del Rio get elected in her place and forge an alliance with us and Macbeth is shot to hell. And guess whose fault that is?" He paused, clenched his fists, and then slammed them down on the faux leather bench. "It's her fault! You know what, Desmond? I am absolutely sick of that woman! All she's done so far is fail; and even when I tried to send her on suicide missions like this one, she not only manages to fail, but she survives anyway! "
The polar bear crossed his arms, partially to look tough, but also because Rafa's anger put him on edge. "That's true, but she's the one with the deep pockets we need to keep our operation going and to fund the weapons that will give us the upper hand on the Cornerians."
"Yeah—too bad she blatantly refuses to fund my nuclear project. She must be stupid to think we can win this war without a reasonable deterrent. At this point, I'm sick of her trying to chaperone me by forcing herself into my operations."
"Still," Desmond replied, "She has the money."
"Not if I have anything to do with it," Rafa rasped, his teeth showing. "She's blood—if she dies, her money becomes my money. Her entire fortune should be mine right now, but of course she had to stay alive somehow. Wait…you know what, Desmond? I have an idea."
"I'm listening," said the polar bear.
"Since the one thing she seems to be good at is tracking targets, and because she seems to have a thing for Corneria's mercenary golden boy, I think I'll kill two birds with one stone."
"How so?"
"I'll send her on her final mission: track Fox McCloud to his next location, separate him from his team, kidnap him, and then take him to a location of my choosing, which I will have rigged to blow, just like at Northpoint. Oh, the irony. And to think that the Northpoint strike was her idea to begin with. Poetic justice, don't you think?"
"It's a decent plan," Desmond admitted. "However, you do realize that it's not going to be that easy to fool her. If you really plan to kill her, she'll see straight through you."
Rafa replied with a dismissive hand wave. "Relax, mi amigo. My mind is far stronger than it used to be. I am confident that she will not see my motives in this. Once she is dead, I will inherit the rest of the Ortega family's fortune and start funneling some of that money to things that matter, such as our nuclear program. Oh—and of course, I wouldn't want to forget about the genetic warfare project, either. I'm sure you'll be quite thrilled about that."
The polar bear across from him cracked a sinister smile. "Oh, indeed."