Mystery of the 19th Hole (Taylor Kelsey, Mystery 1) (19 page)

             
Susan tried to sit up.  “Don’t sit,” said Mike.  “You just got shot.”

             
The paramedic spoke, “We’ve got an ambulance just outside.  We’re taking you to the hospital and you’re going to be just fine.”

             
Susan laid back in bed, but couldn’t help thinking of what danger Taylor was in.

             
Taylor grunted and pulled.  Blood from her wrists was dripping down the ropes and soaking the floor.  Abby’s too.

             
“I don’t think it’s any use,” she screamed.

             
Abby pulled at her bindings a few more times.  Each time with a moan.  “That guy knows how to tie a knot.”

             
Sitting back, Taylor drew a few deep breaths.  “Seven minutes left.  I don’t think we have a chance.”

             
Abby sat back as well.  “I think you’re right.”

             
Jeff was behind the bunker, alone.  He bobbed up and down and shot.  Ducked, shot, ducked, shot.  Bullets hurtled past in scary proximity every time he rose.  Reloading, he wiped sweat from his forehead.

             
Boom!  Boom!  Boom!
  The gunshots were relentless.  They were tearing up the green overhead.  Dirt and grass was constantly spraying over his head like a mister at Disneyland.  Cocking his gun, he jumped up, fired three times, and then dropped back down.

             
So far, they’d exchanged hundreds of rounds of ammunition, but still only one man was shot.  And that was in the hand.  Yelling, he rose again, leveled his gun, shot.

             
And then, slowly and painfully, he fell with a piercing scream.  A bullet had tore through his shoulder.  Blood gushed down his shirt.  The pain was more intense than anything he’d ever experienced.  He fell supine in the sandpit, gun at his side.

             
Andrew Kelsey was zooming around cars like a maniac in his monstrous old truck.  He’d already scratched the paint off several vehicles.  But he could really care less.  He had only a few minutes left with more than a few minutes to reach the destination according the the GPS.

             
Honk!  Honk!  Honk!
 

He continued honking as he skillfully weaved his way through traffic on the freeway, which was clogged up at the moment.  Coming to a reluctant stop in the slow lane, he peered around the line of stopped cars to see his exit just ahead.  He pulled onto the side of the freeway and sped through the dirt.

             
Susan watched the roof change into the sky as the paramedics wheeled her toward the ambulance.  She couldn’t shake Taylor out of mind, though.  Giving in, she sat up, turned toward Mike, and said, “Give me your car keys.”

             
Mike eyed Susan, then the paramedics.  “No.”  He put a hand in his pocket to feel for the keys.  Susan memorized which pocket.

             
Swinging her legs off the gurney, she stood.  Pain flashed through her leg.  “What are you doing?” said one of the paramedics.

             
“What I should be doing,” she said, plunging her hand into Mike’s pocket and swiping his keys.

             
“Hey,” said Mike.  “You can’t—”

             
“I can and I am.”  Mike’s hands went up in surrender.  The paramedic on the other side of the gurney started to come around, arms flailing in anger.  Susan pushed the gurney into him as hard as she could.  The man hit the concrete.

             
While he was on the ground, she limped as fast as she could toward the cars in the lot.  She glanced at the keys in hand and saw a key for an Accord.  Head darting every way, she spotted the silver car and made her way to it.

             
The paramedic she’d knocked over and now his partner were coming at her.  She shut and locked the doors.  They started pounding on the windows.  “Well, I’ve never driven before,” she muttered to herself.  “This should be fun.”

             
She twisted the key, turned the automatic to reverse, and pushed the pedal.  Not expecting the gas to be so touchy, the car launched backward with a screech.  The two paramedics jumped aside in terror.

             
Then she switched the car to drive and did something she’d always wanted to do.

             
Floored it!

             
Blood was still spilling from his wound and soaking through his clothes.  Bullets rutted the green overhead.  Jeff was awash with fear.  And pain.

             
Abruptly, the gunshots ceased.  Laying there in the dirt, shoulder bleeding, he listened.  When he got used to the quiet, he could make out the men rambling.  Their voices steadily rose as they walked closer.

             
He heard footsteps—one of them was on the top of the green!  Carefully listening to the steps, he figured the man must be near the flag, which is what marks the hole.  The hole was just a matter of feet away from him.  The only reason he hadn’t yet been shot was because the bunker was deeper than normal, which was weird, but he was in no position to question it.

             
“Should we do this?” asked one of the men.

             
“It’s the best way to trap him.”

             
“Fine.”  A few beats.  “But are you sure?  Hamell will be mad.”

             
“He won’t be mad if we kill this lieutenant.”

             
Jeff couldn’t figure what they were talking about.

             
“But are you sure?”

             
“Will you just open it?” yelled one of them.

             
Something bad was about to happen, Jeff knew.  Quietly whimpering, he got onto his knees.  Slowly and painfully, he rose to his feet.  He took a few steps up the bunker until he could see a man’s head.  He had to get this shot.  Had to.

             
Lifting his gun with his good arm sent pain down his bad arm.  Weird.  He held his breath and…

             
A cracking and throbbing noise rose from beneath him.  It sounded like machinery.  Suddenly, the bunker he was standing in split down the middle.  Then, like glass sliding doors, the opening grew, separating apart.  He had a foot on both sides of the widening opening, and it was making him do the splits.  Sand spilled into the aperture.

             
Finally, he stepped onto one of the sliding doors and watched the ground open before him, giving way to an underground chamber.  Dogs started barking from inside, followed by a growl from a lion.  Then a grumble from an elephant.

             
It dawned on him.  This was where the ring of robbers was hiding their loot!  In a hole in the golf course.  A
nineteenth
hole.  Stepping inside and forgetting about the men overhead, he saw all sorts of animals in cages on either wall, glowering at him.  A large painting was rolled up in the back.  A golden statue, a small mountain of jewelry boxes, crates brimming with weapons—it was all here.  Everything stolen in the last few months.

             
Behind him, sand spilled off the side of the round opening. 

One of the men dropped into the room.

             
“Please move!” yelled Andrew at the car in front of him, though it was no use.  The car was going strikingly slow.  Probably the speed limit, but everything seemed slow to him right now.  He’d just pulled off the freeway, ran a red light, and now the golf course loomed a half-mile ahead.  His GPS showed Taylor’s destination a few minutes past the golf course.

             
He couldn’t pass the car because a score of motorcyclists was roaring by in the left lane.  He looked to the right.  It was nothing but a short drop into a ravine.  No shoulder.  The ravine curved and met a mountain further ahead.  There was a shoulder there.  But he wouldn’t meet it for at least a minute at the rate he was going.  The speedometer read forty, which was just about the speed limit on this road.

             
Honking several times, he reared the car in front of him.  Their bumpers were almost touching.  Then it happened, and he saw it all too clearly.  A squirrel ran up from the ravine into the road.  The car in front of him applied the brakes.  And he had no choice.

             
Wrenching the wheel to the right, his truck plummeted into the small ravine.  The grill smacked into a rock with a
crack!
  White smoke from the engine mounted against the stark blue sky.  Before his car completely stopped rolling, he was out the door, running up to the road.

             
He flipped open his phone and dialed the police.

             
There was no way he could get to Taylor now.  Only pray Chad was on it. 

             
The golf course was his best bet—from what he could tell, Taylor was there when the chaos started.  And the sound of gunshots in the distance confirmed his suspicions.

             
Susan was on the road, going fast, slow, fast, slow.  She couldn’t seem to keep her foot steady on the pedal when she rolled over bumps.  Fortunately the Accord was an automatic.  Going about sixty miles an hour, she came up to a car.  Without slowing, she drove onto the dirt shoulder and swerved around the car, coming back onto the asphalt with a shriek from the tires.

             
Knowing Taylor had gone down this road, she continued.  But she had no idea where Taylor was.  She simply had a hope that she would spot
something
.  What that
something
was she had no idea.

             
She came to the next speed-limit-going car, this time passing on the left lane, for there were no cars in it at that moment.  Then, on the right shoulder, she saw a small golf cart putt-putt-putting along.  Cars were passing it left and right (if you’ll excuse the expression).  Passing it herself, she realized it was Chad.  She couldn’t help but laughing as she slammed the brakes and quickly reversed.  When she was alongside she rolled down the window and said, “Hop in.”

             
It took him a second to realize it was Susan.  Once he did, he quickly scrambled into the passenger seat faster than Susan had seen anyone enter a car.  Speaking hurriedly, he said, “We’ve only got a few minutes.  Keep following this road.”

             
Susan punched the pedal.  “On it.”

             
It was now that Chad remembered to put on his seatbelt.  “Do you have a driver’s license?” he asked over the strident engine.

             
“No.”

             
“Have you ever driven before?”

             
“No, why do you ask?”

             
He gripped his armrest in fear.  “No reason.”  The words came out in a small voice.

             
Susan reared a truck.  As she’d already done a few times, she pulled onto the shoulder to pass the car.  Only this time, two backpack-toting kids were walking on it.  The kids froze in terror.  Chad was screaming as well.  Susan tugged the wheel sharply to the right, sending them up the mountain adjacent the shoulder.

             
In a maneuver that reminded her of the Matrix, the car rode sideways on the sloped mountain, passed the kids, and pitched back onto the shoulder with a crunch.  When they’d gotten just ahead of the truck, Susan heaved the car back onto the road.

             
Chad was still screaming.

             
Lieutenant Jeff Arterman was at a loss.  He was shot in the arm but was okay.  He’d just discovered the ring’s secret hiding place for all their loot.  But he’d forgotten they had just been shooting at him.  Why did he have to be so dumb?

             
Now all five of the men were standing in the doorway.  Staring at him.  One of the men, the one with the bleeding hand, stepped in front of the rest and took vengeful aim.

             
Jeff still had his gun in hand, dangling at his side.  He didn’t know if he could pull it off, but he didn’t have much of a choice.  In a swift move, he brought his arm parallel to the ground and fired.  And fired, fired, fired, fired!  The gun blasts perforated the air inside the chamber like mini-explosions.  The animals roared, bellowed, clawed, and bit at their cages.  The man that was standing in front of the others collapsed, possibly dead.  The others turned tail and hid behind the entrance.

             
Knowing he didn’t have much time, Jeff punched another magazine into his gun and shot the locks on the animal’s cages from point blank.  The animals violently head-butted their doors open, snarling.  The men were coming back into the entrance when the animals, which they’d captured, came charging at them.  A lion, a tiger, many vicious, angry dogs, and an elephant interspersed and pressed through the aperture, knocking the men over, biting them, and chasing them away.