There was nowhere to go but through. “Ramming speed,” Riley shouted, slamming into the barbed wire at seventy-five miles per hour. The fence strained for a moment and snapped as the ATV plowed through.
“More good news,” Emerson said. “We must be off the Pohakuloa Training Grounds and onto private property.”
Riley squinted into the distance. “What’s that sea of black ahead of us?”
“You don’t want to know,” Emerson said.
“I really, really do.”
“We’re on one of the biggest privately owned ranches in the state,” Emerson said.
“Crap on a cracker. They’re cows. There must be a thousand of them.”
“Black Angus,” Emerson said. “They’re the Cadillac of cows.”
“Good to know. Are they dangerous?”
“I wouldn’t run into one at seventy miles per hour. They weigh up to two thousand pounds. It would be like smashing into a brick wall. We should be fine as long as you don’t excite them.”
“Hello. I’m driving an ATV at seventy miles per hour right through their herd. I think they’re going to get excited.”
Emerson gripped the side door of the ATV. “Yes. That might complicate things,” he said as Riley weaved around the first of the cows.
Startled cows snapped to attention as the other three ATVs invaded the herd as well. In a moment, the docile mass of cows was transformed into an angry sea of black, thundering down the mountain, together with the unwelcome ATVs.
“Ten years from now this will be an amusing anecdote,” Emerson said. “You don’t get to be a part of a stampede every day.”
Riley looked around her. All she could see was a swirling vortex of two-thousand-pound cows.
“This is even worse than the artillery dump,” she said. “At least the shells didn’t move.”
Emerson looked around. “Did you know the average cow produces 200,000 glasses of milk in her lifetime? The highest lifetime yield of milk for a single cow, named Smurf, was 478,163 pounds.”
“That’s really fascinating, but I’m sort of trying to concentrate on not getting us killed right now.”
Emerson was silent. He squirmed in his seat a little.
“You’re dying to tell me more about cows, aren’t you,” Riley said.
“A dairy cow makes 125 pounds of saliva every day,” Emerson blurted out in one breath. “I have more fun facts about cows, but I suppose we can discuss them later.”
One of the pursuing ATVs swerved hard right to avoid a cow, and the driver lost control, the ATV rolling several times and launching himself and the two other passengers through the air.
“One more ATV down. Only two left,” Emerson said. He watched the three soldiers scramble to their feet. “Looks like they’re okay.”
A mass of stampeding cows collided with the three men, knocking them down and trampling them before continuing to run down the mountain.
“Whoops,” Emerson said. “They might not be so okay anymore.”
Riley worked her way to the front of the herd and sped down the hill. The ATV containing Tin Man and one other were still behind them.
“I see a road,” Riley said.
Emerson looked. “I think it’s the Old Mamalahoa Highway. There’s nothing in the area but uninhabited cattle ranches. Just cross the road and keep going.”
A couple minutes later, Riley burst through another barbed wire fence and launched the ATV across the Old Highway. Emerson was right. Just more pasture on the other side, but at least it wasn’t as steep as the upper slopes.
“Are they still there?” Riley asked. A bullet whizzed by Riley’s head. “I guess that answers my question. I thought they were afraid of hitting the Penning trap.”
“Something tells me Tin Man doesn’t care too much. He’s flat-out crazy.”
Riley passed through a grove of trees and exploded across Hawaii Belt Road, barely missing an eighteen-wheeler. Across the road, the landscape was more lush and lightly forested.
“This is good,” Emerson said. “We may be able to lose them in the trees. Just keep going and look for an opportunity.”
Riley dodged the trees and entered a meadow covered in tall guinea grass.
“I can’t see a thing,” Riley said.
“Neither can they.”
Seconds later, the ATV rocketed out of the guinea grass and Riley slammed on the brakes. The ATV fishtailed and rolled over several times, coming to a stop at the edge of a thousand-foot cliff overlooking a green rain forest in the valley below.
Riley unbuckled herself from the ATV and struggled out and over to Emerson. He had blood on his forehead and was still dazed from the impact. She unbuckled him and dragged him out of the ATV.
“Emerson, are you okay?”
“Cows can walk upstairs but not downstairs because their knees don’t bend that way,” Emerson said.
Riley smiled. “You’re fine.”
She looked up and saw Tin Man and six armed Rough Riders standing over her.
“You won’t stay that way for long unless I get back what you stole,” Tin Man said. “It’s not in the ATV, and I’m assuming it’s not at the bottom of the cliff, or there’d be no more cliff by now.”
Tin Man grabbed Riley and put a gun to her head. “Tell me where it is, or I’ll shoot her.”
“If I tell you, you’ll shoot her. Then you’ll kill me too,” Emerson said. “And, if you do shoot her, I’ll never tell you anything. That’s a promise.”
Tin Man held tight to Riley but lowered the gun. “What do you suggest?”
“Let her go and keep me as a hostage. She’ll get the Penning trap and we can arrange a swap. Me for the trap.”
“I have a better idea,” Tin Man said. “I keep the redhead and you get the trap and bring it to me. And if you break our agreement, I’ll hurt her and then I’ll kill her. That’s my promise.”
TWENTY-SIX
RILEY LOOKED OUT THE WINDOW OF THE SUV as they drove south along the Hawaii Belt Road toward Captain Cook. She was sandwiched in the middle of the back seat between Tin Man and a hulking Rough Rider. Bart Young was in the front.
“We’re not going back to Mauna Kea?” Riley asked.
“No,” Bart Young said. “That location is obviously compromised. Everything of value, including you, is being moved to our other base of operations in Kilauea.”
Riley thought it probably wasn’t a good sign that they hadn’t blindfolded her and were taking no precautions to hide the new location from her.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked the director.
“Are you familiar with the writings of Machiavelli?”
“Wasn’t he the sixteenth-century philosopher who thought it is better to be feared than loved?”
“That’s part of his writings. Taken as a whole, they were a guidebook for how to rule. He believed that a prince who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good.”
“And you fancy yourself a prince?”
“Why not? For a century, my predecessors have been protecting a secret that they never truly understood. Yes, they knew it was a destructive force the likes of which the world has never seen. But I alone saw its potential. I alone set about to harvest and refine it into a weapon. With it, I can obliterate whole nations in the blink of an eye. Who would dare to stand in my way?”
“How many innocent people have died because of your quest for power?” Riley asked.
Bart Young shrugged. “Immaterial. A prince who wants to keep his authority must learn how to be ruthless, and to use that knowledge as necessity requires.”
“You’re no prince,” Riley said. “You’re just a thug in a thousand-dollar suit.”
“Time will tell. Was Napoleon a thug? Was Alexander the Great? Was Genghis Khan?”
“Yeah,” Riley said. “Those guys were thugs.”
Bart Young shook his head. “You’re not seeing the big picture. The winners write the history books. Only two things stand in my way. Emerson Knight and the Penning trap he stole.”
“Why?” Riley asked.
“That particular trap contains a little more than a third of my supply of strange matter, and I need it to complete Armageddon.”
Riley leaned forward. “ ‘Armageddon’?”
“The weapon my troops will carry into battle.”
“You don’t have enough from your other collection sites?” Riley asked.
“In microscopic quantities, it isn’t stable enough to do any significant damage. The larger the mass of strange matter, the more stable it becomes.”