Hi again and thanks for staying with me. I haven't had a lot of time to write recently so this took me longer than expected. Hope it was worth the wait!
I just wanted to clarify something that confused at least one reader. This story is a sequel to Carnival Town, notEscape to Argentina (the sequel to that was called Undercover). In both stories Kate and Jack had 2 sons and their names were Mason and Ryan. I probably shouldn't have done that because it's confusing, but I couldn't think of more perfect names for the kids. Sorry if I confused you!
So, here's chapter 8. As always, I want, need, am down on my knees begging, for your reviews!
Chapter 8
Sunday morning dawned clear and warm with no hint that the previous day had been marred by rain. Rico stretched and looked at his watch. It was after 8 o'clock; he had slept for over 12 hours and he was amazed that he actually felt rested. He sat up and began to think about what he and Ryan should do next when a familiar sound caught his attention. It took a second to process the sound but he quickly realized that it was a helicopter in the distance. Rico scrambled out from under the tree to see if he could see it.
"Ryan! Ryan! Wake up!" he shouted as he ran toward the clearing. "They're here! It's a helicopter. They're coming to rescue us!"
Ryan woke slowly from his deep sleep but soon realized what Rico was shouting about. Within a second or two he was right behind Rico in the clearing looking skyward to see the helicopter. It wasn't in view yet, but the rhythmic sound of the rotors was coming closer.
Lucy and Mason heard it, too. The miner's shack that they were sleeping in was only a couple hundred yards from where Rico and Ryan had been. The two squeezed through the door of the shack and out into the forest to find a spot where they could get a view of the helicopter and, hopefully, be seen.
"There's a clear area not too far away," Mason assured Lucy. "Remember? We saw it yesterday."
Lucy followed Mason for a few steps but realized that she had forgotten her backpack. "Keep going," she called ahead. "I'll meet you there. I need my backpack."
"Lucy, forget it!" Mason called back. "We have to get out in the open so they can see us."
"Go!" Lucy shouted. "I'll be right there." With that she turned and ran toward the shack while Mason started in the opposite direction.
Lucy covered the distance to the shack in less than ten steps. She glanced back to make sure she knew where Mason was going then pushed her way through the door. Her backpack lay against the wall on the other side of the shack. As she started to run across the floor, her foot landed hard on the floorboards that had creaked so loudly the night before. The boards groaned again but this time the groan was followed by the sound of splintering wood.
Mason was running through the woods when he heard Lucy scream. He stopped for a second not sure what to do. He wanted to continue running to somewhere that the helicopter pilot could see him, but Lucy's scream pulled him back. She probably found a snake, he thought. That's all it is. She went back and there was a snake or a big hairy spider and she screamed. Lucy, if you screamed over some stupid spider and that helicopter misses us, I will never forgive you.
Mason squeeze through the door and stopped dead in his tracks. A large area of the floor had caved in and Lucy was nowhere to be seen. Mason gasped as he looked down into the hole where the floor used to be. It was an old mine shaft and Lucy was lying in a crumpled heap at the bottom just visible in the thin line of sunlight coming in through the door behind him and dimly illumining the hole.
Mason dropped to the floor and put his head over the edge of the hole. "Lucy!" he cried. "Lucy, can you hear me? Lucy, say something!"
Lucy moaned quietly. It sounded a bit like "help me" but Mason couldn't really tell for sure. "Lucy, please, talk to me. Can you hear me?" Lucy moaned again but her responses remained unintelligible. Mason could still hear the hum of the helicopter in the distance. "Lucy, I'm going to go get help. Just lay still and I'll get you some help. We'll get you out of there, I promise."
Mason jumped up and ran out of the shack. He was crying now, tears rapidly streaking his face and he ran blindly toward the sound of the helicopter and the clearing he remembered from the day before. He found the clearing and ran into it shouting and waving wildly just as the helicopter passed over the clearing and back over the tree line. Mason continued running but knew it was no use. He tripped and fell to the ground sobbing.
"Please, come back!" he begged. "Please, come back. Lucy needs help. You have to come back and get her. She'll die without help. Come back! Come back!"
Mason had never been so frightened in his life and he didn't know what to do next. Should he go back to the shack and stay near Lucy? He couldn't help her there, but he could be near by. Maybe it would make her feel better to hear his voice. He could follow the sound of the helicopter and hope that at some point they would spot him. That seemed pretty futile. His other option was to go in search of the rescuers that he knew must be in the woods if the helicopter was over head, but then he was afraid that he might not be able to find his way back to the shack so they could rescue Lucy. No matter what he decided it seemed like it would be the wrong thing. He had heard his father talk about "no win" situations, but he never understood what that meant. Now he knew for sure what it meant because he was in the middle of one.
A few hundred yards away, Rico and Ryan stood in the middle of a large clearing waving and shouting at the helicopter just as Mason had. The helicopter pilot, Andy Fletcher, spotted them easily.
"Base, this is Air 1. Come in Base," he said into his radio. "I've got a visual on two of the kids here in the northwest sector."
All of the rescuers heard the transmission. Jack grabbed his radio. "This is Bauer. What's your location, Air 1? And what is the condition of the children?"
"We're about a two-and-a-half miles west of you, Mr. Bauer," Alan Harmon, a natural resources police officer answered. "The kids are standing up and waving. I can't tell much more from this distance."
"Can you set that bird down?" Wes Grimes asked from the command center.
"Negative, Lieutenant," Fletcher answered. "The clearing is big enough, but there's been a lot of mine subsidence around here and the ground isn't level. I'm going to drop below the tree line and lower Alan in a harness. He can assess the kids and I'll fly further north and see if there is some place close that I can set down. If not, I'll hover here and drop the harness and we'll bring them up one at a time."
"That sounds like a plan," Wes said. "Keep us apprised of any developments."
Seconds later, Alan Harmon was being lowered into the clearing. Ryan and Rico ran toward him as he unhooked his harness and stepped away from it.
"You have to help us! You have to help us!" Ryan shouted over the noise of the helicopter. "They're three people trying to kill us and they plan to blow up the festival downtown and they're going to blow up my mom's new warehouse, too!" Ryan spoke quickly without taking a breath.
"Slow down, young man," Harmon told him. "First I need to know who you are."
"I'm Rico Almeida and this is Ryan Bauer," Rico told him.
"Are you two boys okay or do you need to see a doctor?"
"We're fine," Ryan said, "but there are people after us who want to kill us!"
"We know about the three people, son. You're safe with me," Alan told Ryan. He looked at Rico, "That looks like a nasty cut on your face."
"It's just a deep scratch. I'm okay," Rico assured him.
"Where are the other two kids?" Harmon asked.
"We don't know. We separated yesterday morning to make it harder for those people to find all four of us and kill us," Rico explained.
"So you haven't seen the others since yesterday morning?"
"No, sir. They went in one direction and they went in another."
"Base, this is Harmon. I've got Rico Almeida and Ryan Bauer here. They've got some minor cuts and bruises, but overall I think they're doing well." He explained that the two boys had separated from the others and why. "It sounds like the three people from the campsite did make some attempt to capture or kill the children. Ryan is also telling me that he over heard a conversation by the same people about explosions being set off at the Asian festival and at a warehouse. Has Homeland Security or the FBI warned us about these kinds of terrorist activities?"
"Negative, Harmon. We've not been notified by any of the federal agencies that there are any threats against Seattle. How sure are you that the information is accurate? You're getting it from a 7-year-old boy. They tend to have over active imaginations."
Jack was listening to the conversation on the radio. "Wes, if Ryan is telling the story, you can believe him. I'm not going to guarantee that he got all of the details right, but he's never been good at making up stories. Mason could invent a story like this, but not Ryan. Your best bet is to get both kids back to the house as soon as possible and debrief them."
"Harmon, we'll go with Jack's idea. Let's bring the kids back and see what they can tell us," Grimes said. "Fletcher just called in on another frequency. He landed the chopper about a half mile east north east of your location, Harmon. Take the kids there. He'll fly them back to the Bauer's house and we'll debrief here. Jack, do you and Tony want Fletcher to pick you two up somewhere so you can come back with your boys?"
Jack looked at Tony who shook his head. "Negative, Wes. As long as the boys are alright, we'll stay out here and keep looking for the others." Jack would have loved to go home. Ten years of having an uneven gait had resulted in some arthritis in his hip and along his spine. Hours of rain the day before had made it worse than usual. He desperately needed a long, soak in the Jacuzzi, but that wasn't going to happen until they found Mason and Lucy.
Harmon started through the woods with the two boys who practically ran all the way to the helicopter. They both admitted to being hungry and were thrilled when the pilot produced two granola bars from his pocket, but other than that, they didn't seem to be any worse for the wear. The flight back to the Bauer's house was brief. The pilot landed the helicopter in the clearing that the children had been playing in four days earlier. Kate and Michelle, along with Carmen, Loretta and Bob and Grace Warner, were all waiting for them. Michelle and Kate ran to the helicopter before the rotors even stopped turning. Bob held Carmen back until it was safe for her to be near the helicopter. The two boys literally jumped into their mothers arms both apologizing profusely for causing so much trouble. Neither mother heard a word they said over the thousand kisses they were planting on the boys' faces; they were just happy to have their sons back.
Hugs were exchanged all around and everyone headed back toward the house. Carmen clung to Rico as if he had been missing for weeks. He picked her up and kissed her wondering when she stopped being a pest and started being a cute little sister.
"Now when Lucy and Daddy come home we can be a family again," Carmen said brightly.
Wes Grimes waited impatiently while the boys were checked out by a doctor. Michelle had already made him promise that he would wait until the doctor had seen them and pronounced them fit before he was allowed to debrief them. She agreed that they could debrief while they ate, but they had to see the doctor first.
Wes was grateful that the doctor was quick. The boys were both a little dehydrated and needed to eat, but they were otherwise healthy. They washed up a bit and both dropped into chairs at the kitchen table to eat the mounds of food that Loretta made. With Kate and Michelle close by and Carmen practically in Rico's lap (She had refused to eat her own breakfast earlier, but was now reaching regularly onto Rico's plate to help herself to strips of bacon. Michelle was amazed that Rico was taking it in stride and not complaining that Carmen was annoying him.), Wes and another officer started the debrief. Wes listened skeptically to Ryan's description of how Roger, Peggy and Vernon's planned to wreak havoc at the Asian Heritage Festival and then blow up the warehouse. Despite the fact that he had no intention of believing Ryan when the child started telling his story, by the end Grimes had been drawn in. He was amazed by how grown up the almost 8-year-old sounded when he told the story. Wes questioned him carefully and Ryan repeated the details the same way every time. Wes became convinced that the child was telling the truth.
"Send a unit over to the warehouse. Have an explosives team meet them there. Warn them that the place might be booby trapped to explode on entry. And get a sketch artist over here. I think the kids can give us a good description of the hostiles," he told one of his subordinates. "Set up a real time link so that we know what's going on there at all times. If they find explosives at the warehouse, we need teams ready to evacuate the festival and start looking for bombs. Also get the mayor and the city police commissioner on the phone. I need to bring them up to speed on the situation."
"Lt. Grimes," Ryan started, "when you find those people, what are you going to do to Peggy?"
"I don't know that yet, Ryan. Why do you ask?"
"Peggy was nice to us. She didn't want to kill us. That Roger-guy was making her go along with him. I just don't want you to arrest her or anything," Ryan said pleading his case.
"Ryan, we'll consider all of that before we do anything, but if Peggy is involved with something that might hurt other people, we'll have to arrest her. Let's just wait and see what happens," Wes told him as gently as possible.
Ryan nodded in a very adult way as if this all made perfect sense to him. Wes couldn't help but notice how like Kate he was.
Mason was frantic. Since her fall, Lucy had been unable to talk to him, but each time he called her name she moaned in response. He checked on her every few minutes and in between times, he ran short distances from the shack in various directions and shouted for help. This time, when he lay on the floor with his head down in the gaping hole and called her name, he was met with silence.
"Don't do this to me. Lucy. Talk to me. Say something, anything." The silence was deafening. "Please, Lucy, please!" he begged but his pleas were met with more silence.
Mason ran from the shack shouting fervently for help. He had to attract attention but he didn't know how else to do it. He looked around hoping for an answer when he noticed a rather spindly looking tree nearby. It wasn't nearly as tall as the surrounding trees, nor was it as full, but its many bare branches near the bottom made it a good tree for climbing. He reasoned that if he could climb ten or fifteen feet up, his shouting might be better heard by rescuers. Mason scrambled up the tree ignoring the pine needles that were prickling his skin. He found a reasonable perch that he estimated to be about twelve or fifteen feet up and once again began shouting for help.
Jack and Tony continued to search their assigned section of the grid. They had taken a few minutes and talked to their sons over the radio and now were quiet again. Their relief and elation over finding Rico and Ryan was short lived. Since Rico and Ryan had confirmed that the people from the campsite were pursuing them, they were more worried than ever about Lucy and Mason. On top of that, Jack's back pain was excruciating and he was now slowing them down to a crawl. He told Tony to go on ahead and he would eventually catch up, but Tony refused to get more that a few yards away in case Jack needed help.
They were climbing a particularly steep hill when Tony suddenly stopped. "Did you hear that?" he asked Jack.
"No, what was it?"
"I thought it was a voice, maybe it was just the wind," Tony speculated.
"Tony, there's no wind today," Jack pointed out.
They both stood still and listened. "There it is again," Tony said.
"I heard it that time, but I'm not sure what it was," Jack agreed. "I'm not even sure what direction it's coming from."
"Hello!" Tony shouted. "Hello! Is someone there? Hello!"
He waited for a few moments and got no response. Tony walked several steps in another direction and tried again. Again he got no response. He changed directions once more, cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted.
They both heard it. There was a definite response to Tony's last call. His heart pounding, Tony called again. Jack and Tony smiled at each other as they heard the response.
"It's that way," Jack pointed. "Go! I'll catch up!"
Tony didn't have to be told twice. He took off at a steady trot through the forest. He continued to call out at regular intervals and each time there was a response. As he got closer he recognized Mason's voice and called back to Jack to tell him.
Mason clung to the tree unable to believe that someone had finally heard him. He continued to shout in response to the voice he heard in the distance hoping that they could follow the sound. The closer the rescuer got, the surer Mason was that it was Tony's voice he was hearing. He scanned the trees hoping to see Tony's figure come into view. As soon as he did, he started down the tree.
"Uncle Tony! Uncle Tony!" he shouted. "Over here!"
Tony watched as Mason swung from a branch and dropped the last six feet to the forest floor below and hit the ground running. If Tony hadn't known better, he would have thought he was watching Jack fifteen years earlier. He had seen Jack make similar moves in pursuit of a suspect.
He reached out trying to catch Mason in his arms and was surprised when Mason didn't stop, but grabbed his arm and pulled him along. "Hey! Hey! Slow down, Buddy!" Tony told him. "Are you okay? Where's Lucy?"
"You have to help her," Mason panted as he dragged Tony toward the miner's shack. "We found a miner's shack and there was a trap door over the mine. The wood around the hinges must have rotted. Lucy fell down the mine shaft!"
"What?" Tony gasped as he picked up the pace. "When did this happen? How far did she fall?" Tony saw the shack in front of him and he pushed through the door. The four-by-four section of missing floor lay almost directly in front of him. He was immediately overcome by a wave of nausea and had to force himself to choke back a mouthful of bile as he looked twenty feet down at his daughter lying lifelessly at the bottom.
Tony turned and grabbed Mason by the shoulders and leaned down so they were looking eye to eye. "How long ago did this happen?"
"I don't know. I guess a couple of hours. I don't have a watch."
"After she fell, was she awake? Could she talk to you?"
"For a while she would moan when I talked to her but I couldn't understand her. A little while ago she stopped making any sounds. Uncle Tony, I'm sorry. I tried to take care of Lucy. I really did. She ran back for her backpack when we heard the helicopter this morning. I tried to stop her, really I did. I'm sorry." Tears streaked his face as he apologized.
"Mason, listen to me. You didn't do anything wrong. You took good care of Lucy. Now I need you to help me. Your dad is right behind me and he has the radio. Go back the way we came and you'll find him. Tell him to radio in for medics and a med-evac helicopter. Got it?"
"Yeah, I can do that," Mason said as he turned and ran through the woods.
Tony dropped his backpack and pulled out a 50 foot length of rope and looked for something to attach it to. Nothing on the structure itself looked sturdy enough to hold his weight, so Tony ran outside and secured the rope to the nearest tree. He pulled hard on it to make sure it would hold him and then ran back into the shack and dropped the free end down into the mine shaft.
"Baby, it's Daddy," he called into the hole. "I'm coming down to help you, Sweetie. Just give me a second." Tony lay down on the floor to spread his weight out and prevent a further cave in, then he grabbed the rope and eased himself down over the edge of the hole in the floor. He carefully worked his way down the rope trying to forget that the last time he tried something like this he was not even thirty, an age that had passed him by more than a few years ago. "I'm coming, Baby," he assured Lucy. Or was he assuring himself, he didn't really know. What he did know was that there was no room for error here. If he slipped and fell he was going to land on top of her and that would likely kill her.
Tony eased himself down onto the dirt floor next to Lucy. He immediately dropped to his knees and kissed her face. It was cool and clammy. "Lucy, sweetheart," he whispered as his voice cracked with emotion. "It's Daddy. Can you hear me, Honey?"
He put is fingertips on her neck to check for a pulse. It was weak and rapid, but she had a pulse. "Thank you, God!" Tony whispered to the air. "Thank you!" He watched her chest rise and fall as she took quick, shallow breaths. She was breathing and her heart was beating. At the moment, he couldn't ask for more.
"Dad! Dad!" Mason shouted as he ran through the woods.
The sight of his son running toward Jack brought tears of joy to his eyes. He was beginning to think this might never happen and yet here was the boy just yards away. And he didn't appear to be hurt, just scraped up and in need of a good bath.
"Mase!" Jack called happily. He stopped walking for a moment and held his arms out to engulf his son. Once he had the boy in his arms, he wasn't sure that he would ever let go. He felt the same flood of relief that had washed over him that night so many years ago when Kim had been kidnapped and he was finally reunited with her at CTU. His relief that night was short lived, and he didn't know it yet, but it was going to be short lived again today. "Are you alright? God! I'm happy to see you. Let me radio your mother."
Mason pulled away immediately. "Dad, you have to call for help. Lucy fell down a mine shaft and she's hurt really bad. She might be dead, I don't know. Uncle Tony said to tell you to call for medics and a med-evac helicopter."
"Slow down! Where is this mine shaft?"
"It's that way," Mason pointed back the way he came. "I'll take you there, but call for help first!"
Jack pulled out his radio while he followed Mason between the trees. "Base, this is Bauer. Come in, Base."
"That's Jack!" Kate cried as she heard Jack's voice over the radio. She jumped up from her chair at the kitchen table next to Ryan, who along with Rico, was regaling their mothers, Bob and Grace, Loretta and Carmen with tales of their adventure in the forest. Kate ran to the dining room command center with everyone else right behind her.
"I copy, Jack," Wes responded. "What have you got for us?"
"I have Mason here with me. Tell Kate that he's fine." Kate smiled broadly and covered her mouth to stifle a sigh of relief. Bob put his arms around his daughter and kissed the top of her head.
"What about Lucy?" Michelle asked. She had grabbed the nearest headset so she could talk directly to Jack.
"Lucy's hurt, Michelle. I don't know the extent of her injuries. Tony ran ahead and he's with her now. He sent Mason to tell me that he needs a paramedic unit and a med-evac helicopter. Did you copy that, Wes?"
"I copy, Jack. I'll have them dispatched immediately. Give me a second, I'm going to patch you through to the medic unit on standby so you can give them an idea what they're facing when they get there."
"Jack, what happened to Lucy? Did the hostiles from the campsite hurt her?" Michelle asked.
"No, Michelle. Mason and Lucy came across an abandoned silver mine. The floor over the mine shaft collapsed and Lucy fell into the mine shaft," Jack paused for a moment. He could hear Michelle gasp and begin to cry on the other end of the radio.
"Wes, make sure the medics have the equipment to lift Lucy out of there."
"I copy, Jack. We'll make sure they have the equipment."
"I just got to the mine," Jack reported. He was silent for a second while he got control of his emotions. What Mason told him simply hadn't prepared him to see Lucy lying like a ragdoll at the bottom of the mine shaft. Tony knelt next to her trying as best he could to assess her condition. He suppressed the urge to cry. Tony and Michelle's children had been nearly as close to him as his own children. He didn't think that he would have hurt much worse if it were one of his children lying there. "Tony, I've got the medics on the radio. What's her condition?" he asked fearing the answer. From this distance he had no way of knowing if she was even alive.
Tony, like Jack, was fighting to keep emotion out of his voice. He had to focus if he was going to help Lucy and he struggled to do it. "Tell them she's unresponsive. She's breathing and has a weak pulse," he reported mechanically. "Her skin is cool and clammy."
Jack repeated Tony's assessment to the medic on the radio and then listened to his instructions. "Tony, is there any blood that you can see?"
"There's some dried blood around her mouth and nose. It looks like she might have had a nosebleed but it stopped. Her lip is cut and there's blood around that, but not much else. Her left arm is in a funny position. I'm sure it's broken and she may have other broken bones, but she doesn't have any other visible injuries. She might be bleeding internally."
Again Jack spoke to the medic and then called down to Tony. "Shine your light in her eyes and see if her pupils react."
Tony did as he was told. "Both pupils react, Jack. Ask them what their ETA is. We need to get her out of here now."
"ETA is just a few minutes, Tony. They going to land the chopper in a clearing not far from here and the team will come in on foot. Just hold tight a little longer and we'll have her out of there," he tried to encourage Tony but knew how hollow his words rang.
The team of paramedics arrived, but extracting Lucy from the mine proved to be both difficult and tedious. The mine shaft was too narrow for three adults, so Tony was hoisted back up to the surface using a harness so that two paramedics would fit in the space. He paced anxiously in front of the shack alternately praying for her recovery and fearing the possibility that she might not.
Emotions at the Bauer house were mixed. The rescue of three of the children without major injury was cause for celebration for the families and for the police agencies but Lucy's condition had the families numb with fear and the police silently chastising themselves for not finding the children sooner. Wes was responsible to calling off the search at sunset the first two nights despite Jack's and Tony's pleas to continue thought the night. He was a father, too, and although he hadn't seen her, but the image of a little girl lying at the bottom of a mine shaft haunted him nonetheless.
At the same time, the police focus had changed. With the rescue operation over, they were now paying attention to the teams that had recently arrived at the warehouse. It wasn't long before the bomb squad confirmed that the door to the facility was rigged to explode. The bomb squad commander, an ex-military explosives expert, knew this bomb was not set by an amateur. It took the squad nearly a half hour to defuse it. Once it was safe the team made their way inside of the vacant warehouse. There they found two types of bombs all set to detonate that afternoon. The first type were strategically placed around the structure to result in an implosion of the structure. The second type were less in number but were highly incendiary and would result in a huge fire. The combination would have resulted in the building being reduced to ash in mere minutes. The fire department would have been unable to stop it regardless of how quickly they responded.
The bomb squad methodically moved from bomb to bomb carefully defusing each device. It wasn't until they reached the far end of the warehouse that they came across the two bodies. Between the bodies rested one of the incendiary bombs. Roger had taken great pains to ensure that no one could ever identify Peggy or Vernon.
The bomb squad commander took one look at the bodies and shook his head. As if he didn't have enough trouble here with a warehouse full of dynamite, now he had a murder on his hands. Jesus H. Christ, he thought, can this possibly get any worse? He reached for his radio and called Grimes.
Wes listened attentively to the bomb squad commander's description of the bodies. They sounded like they matched the descriptions that Ryan and Rico had given him of two of the hostiles. He, too, shook his head wondering what other bizarre twist this whole thing might take before it was over.