The Eighty-eighth Key Ch. 15

No, what concerned him most of all was what one of the detectives said as he left this very same porch...

"If Harry calls, would you have him call me at this number?" the detective said, handing over a business card.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Callahan," Bullitt interjected, "but do you have that card?"

"Yes, of course. Let me go and fetch it for you."

And then Parish noticed the strangest thing. Callahan looked at a solid black commercial van parked on the street, and then he made what appeared to be signal of some sort.

And when Mr. Callahan returned with the card, Bullitt looked it over.

"I'll need to keep this, sir," he said as he turned to the black van once again.

And just then several men in black BDUs exited the van and jogged up to the porch. Parish noted the weapons these men carried, too - Israeli-made Uzis - and he suddenly realized things were not at all what they seemed.

"Mr. Callahan?" one of the commandos said as he stepped onto the porch. "You are no longer safe here. You will need to come with us - right now. And Major Parish? You and the young lady will need to come with me as well."

"What the devil is going on here?" Lloyd Callahan growled, and again Parish could hear his friend's voice in the old man's menacing thunder.

"Not now, sir," Frank Bullitt added in quietly hushed tones. "There really isn't time."

Several commandos entered the Callahan house, including an older man in civilian clothes who looked remarkably like Lloyd - at least from a distance, yet Parish didn't have time to gather his thoughts before Bullitt and other men in black ushered the three of them to another black van.

No one spoke to them during the short drive out to the airport, and only after they arrived did Parish notice that Bullitt was no longer with them. Their small convoy of vans drove to a large aircraft hanger near the freight terminal, and as they approached the building one of the hanger doors slid open just enough to let the caravan enter.

It was dark inside the cavernous space, almost as dark as night, yet Parish could just make out a small jet parked inside a deeper shadow, then a doorway sliding open, followed by spindly little air-stairs that reached down to the smooth concrete underneath.

The commandos in their van stepped out and one ran up to the waiting jet and spoke to someone inside the cabin before motioning to the others.

"Okay," one of the other commandos said as he opened the sliding side door on the van's right side, "we go for a little ride now. All is good."

Lloyd Callahan looked at Parish - who only shrugged - and then he looked at An Linh.

"It will be alright," she said calmly as she stepped out of the van and walked towards the jet. "Harry would never let anything bad happen to us."

And as confused as Major James Parish, MD, was inside that moment, he realized she was probably right. All this had to do with Harry and the attempt on his life, and as he walked up the air-stairs and into the stuffy cabin he willed himself to relax. Even after the cabin door closed and the jet's engines began spooling up, he sat and watched An Linh and wondered what was the source of the preternatural calm that had taken hold of her.

She was a remarkable girl, he thought as the jet turned onto the runway, and just as suddenly he realized that he probably loved her too.

© 2020 adrian leverkühn | abw | as always, thanks for dropping by...

[note: I typically don't post all a story's acknowledgments until I've finished, if only because I'm not sure how many I'll need until the work is finalized. Yet with the current circumstances that might not be the best way to proceed, and I'd hate to have this story stop 'unexpectedly' without some mention of these sources. Of course, the source material in this case - so far, at least - derives from two Hollywood films: Dirty Harry and Bullitt. The first Harry film was penned by Harry Julian Fink, R.M. Fink, Dean Riesner, John Milius, Terrence Malick, and Jo Heims. Bullitt came primarily from the author of The Thomas Crown Affair, Alan R Trustman, with help from Harry Kleiner, as well Robert L Fish, whose short story Mute Witness formed the basis of Trustman's brilliant screenplay. John Milius (Red Dawn) penned Magnum Force, and the 'Briggs' storyline derives from characters originally found in that screenplay. Most of the other figures in this story derive from characters developed in the works cited above, but as always this story is otherwise a work of fiction woven into a pre-existing historical timeline, using the established characters referenced above.]