Pegasus opened the hatch. “Be safe, Vernon Dunham,” it said.
“Whatever you do, don’t let that little creep go,” I warned, slowly stepping through the hatch.
“Be careful,” Floyd mouthed, so low I almost couldn’t hear him.
Pounding on Doc Milliken’s door, I realized I had no plan for dealing with the situation. Heck, he was getting old. I had thirty years on him. Even banged up as I was, I could just knock him down.
I heard sirens down on the Wichita Highway. Probably I had a couple of minutes’ grace before the Sheriff’s Department, the Police Department and the United States Army showed up in the front yard. Landing an airplane on a residential lawn was pretty much guaranteed to attract attention, especially in a town as tightly wound as Augusta must have become today.
Certainly no one would be surprised to find me at the heart of things yet again.
The lights came on in the Millikens’ front room. Ruthie Milliken pulled back the lace curtain on the glass of the front door. Her mouth made an ‘O’ of surprise as she saw me, then she threw open the door.
“Vernon, you look awful,” she exclaimed. “Come in you poor dear. Merriwether isn’t here, he’s out with—” She stopped as she looked over my shoulder at Pegasus parked on the lawn. “Oh my stars,” she said. Behind me, the sirens getting closer. “What is that?”
“Top secret experimental project from the Boeing plant,” I said. “I stole it,” I added with my best imitation of an evil grin. “Now, I’m here for Dad. He’s in the back, in Doc’s surgery.” Too bad the Doc wasn’t there, too, I thought, but that also meant one less hassle for me tonight.
“Vernon, you must have had a bad knock on the head. Merriwether sent your father into Wichita to the hospital, and he—”
I pushed past her and hobbled through the parlor towards Doc Milliken’s office door.
“Hey, young man,” she called behind me. “You can’t just go in there!”
I tried the door, but it was locked. I stepped back and threw my weight against it. The door popped open and I landed shoulder first on the floor of Doc Milliken’s office. His old pigeon-hole desk towered above me. I had narrowly missed the pedestal in my collapse. Desk or not, the impact with the floor hurt like the blazes, so much I could barely stand up again. Good thing that lately pain had become an old friend to me. And I had to find Dad.
Ruthie Milliken came up behind me, grabbing my elbow as I reached my feet. “Vernon, I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but I can try to help.”
“Shut up!” I was instantly sorry, for Ruthie Milliken had always treated me well, ever since I was a child. “Your husband’s a foreign agent, he tried to kill Dad, and I think he tried to have me killed.” I thought of old Mrs. Swenson and her boarding house on fire. “He’s holding Dad prisoner back in the surgery.”
Mrs. Milliken put her hands on her hips and glared at me. “Vernon Dunham, how could you say such things? You have lost your wits completely.”
I turned away from her and gingerly walked across the office to the door of the surgery. It was locked, too. My right shoulder was telling me it had done all the door breaking it was going to do, and my left shoulder was just about the only part of my body that remained uninjured. I was pretty sure I couldn’t break this one down. Outside, sirens shrieked and tires squealed as the cavalry arrived. Unfortunately, they weren’t here to rescue me. I’d gone over to the side of the Indians, and everyone knew how that always turned out.
“Do you have the key to this?” I asked.
She glared at me. “If you think I’m going to—”
I grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “Mrs. Bellamy’s dead because of your husband.” Not precisely true, but it would do in a pinch. Besides, maybe they got her out before the fire swept the house. The very thought made me sick all over again. “My dad’s dying in there, and those cops outside are definitely here to shoot me first and ask you questions later. I don’t have time to argue. Now open the God-damned door. If Dad’s not in there, I’ll just sit down quietly on the floor and you can turn me over to the police yourself.”
Mrs. Milliken opened a drawer in the instrument cabinet by the door and pulled out a key. “I can assure you, Vernon, that no one is in here,” she said, opening the lock.
I stepped into the room and turned on the lights. Mrs. Milliken crowded in behind me. Outside, I heard shouting. In front of me was an operating table, a countered area like a small kitchen. Along the sink and the refrigerator there was an autoclave instead of a stove. Everything was white, except for the dark gray, blood-stained lump of blankets under the operating table.
“See?” she demanded. “There’s no—” Mrs. Milliken stopped as she saw the rolled-up blankets. A pool of blood leaked from one end onto the floor around the blanket.
I’ll give her credit, Mrs. Milliken didn’t scream. She got straight to work, like a good doctor’s wife should, and reached Dad before I did. Together we rolled him over.
The blanket, soaked in blood where it had met the floor, fell off his face. His lips were puffy and blue, and he was far too pale, but by some miracle he was still breathing. Pegasus’ scan had not lied.
My heart surged as my deepest worry lifted away. Dad looked like heck, but he was alive. And I had the world’s fastest ambulance waiting out on the lawn.
“Oh, Vernon, I’m so sorry,” she said quietly. “I knew Merriwether was under a lot of pressure, but to allow this… in his own surgery.” Shaking her head, Mrs. Milliken touched Dad’s temples, then his forehead. “He’s… he’s in shock.”
She didn’t have to say he was dying. Even I could figure that out. But I knew what to do about it. “Help me get him outside,” I said, pulling Dad out from under the table by the corners of the blanket. “I’m going to fly him to Wichita in my airplane.”
He opened his eyes and peered at me. “Vernon? Boy? Is that you?”
My eyes filled with tears again. “Yes sir, Dad, it’s me.” He was alive and I was never going to let him die.
“Where’s your mother, boy?” Dad asked. “We’re going to be late for church.”
I couldn’t say anything to that. I started to choke, trying to keep from crying in front of Mrs. Milliken. She stroked Dad’s forehead again. “It’ll be okay, Grady,” she said gently. “Vernon’s going to get you to the hospital now, and everything will be okay.”
Dad sighed and closed his eyes. I staggered to my feet, grabbing the wrapped blanket with both hands. “I’ve got to get him out into the yard,” I sniffed.
“I’ll help,” said Mrs. Milliken. She grabbed his feet and we staggered into the examining room. Out in the yard, I heard gunshots. The Doc’s wife didn’t even flinch at the noise.
We made it to the front door, where I had to stop from sheer fatigue. Standing behind the wall to one side, I peered out through the open door. Pegasus sat in the front yard, open hatch facing me. I could see the inviting orange glow only a few steps away.
The moon was out again, and the view was distressingly clear. Out in the street there were Police and Sheriff’s cars, and an Army deuce-and-a-half troop transport. The MPs must have gotten a land convoy in sometime this evening after I’d heard from Ollie. A plane buzzed overhead, rattling the old glass windows of the Milliken house. It was so loud that it had to be a fighter or an interceptor. The Army was serious about this, sending in combat aircraft at night over a civilian area.
“I don’t think I can make it to my airplane,” I said to Mrs. Milliken. “I’m pretty sure they’re going to shoot me as soon as they can get a clear line on me.”
“What have you done, Vernon?”
“As little as possible, believe me.”