Black and blue magic

I'd gotten badly burned financially speaking not long before this story begins. So I was hurting!

I was also struggling to recover from what seemed to be a recurrence of my awful depression over the loss of Bridget. It wasn't as bad as the original-- but that's like saying breaking one leg in three places isn't as bad as breaking both that way.

Combine this with my general thrashing about as a college drop out, trying to figure out what to do with my life, and you get something damn close to desperation on my part.

So although I was skeptical when an associate of Harvey Sheffield's first approached me in Gatlinburg Tennessee, I was also hungry for a chance: a chance at just about anything.

I'd had Shadow parked alongside a road in Gatlinburg, after dark, watching a parade of others' customized autos slowly idle by. The road was one of those which ran up one of the mountains which surrounded the place. So the parade was slowly moving down the hill before me, on something like a 30 degree slope. The place was illuminated well enough, with street and building lights, as well as the lighting from all the vehicles. There was remarkably little chatter from the dozens of other watchers within easy earshot of me. Or else the moderate noise of the idling cars was drowning them out.

Shadow's nose was jutting over the sidewalk, the center of his hood serving to prop me up in my current stance of leaning backwards against him, my arms folded, taking in the view.

Shadow himself probably rated as far more radically modified than the majority of cars in the line. But I'd made no effort to be included in the group-- as I wasn't a joiner by nature.

I noticed a slim, tall fellow coming up the hill sidewalk. His gaze at Shadow and me seemed somewhat more fixed than the usual passerby. So I expected he was going to ask me a few hot rod questions about my car. That happened on occasion. And this parade was an annual hot-rodding event, after all.

But instead of the trivial chit-chat I expected, I got a job offer! Or at least something like it. The guy was awfully vague regarding just about every aspect of the thing. The gist of it seemed to be that his boss had an opening for a driver of the sort I might be-- and I was invited to come see him about it on a certain day, at a particular time and place. There was no guarantee I'd get the job, and this was a one-time offer. But if I got it, I was told the pay would be more than I'd made with any previous employment.

And no, the guy wouldn't answer my questions regarding how he knew of me and my previous jobs and driving-- or just about anything else. And yes, this perturbed me. For back then I wasn't much of one for the cloak and dagger stuff-- especially where potential employers were concerned.

I almost blew it right then, in fact, by telling him to go shovel his secret bull shit somewhere else.

But I was hurting for money, having been swindled out of nearly $3000 in savings by a woman con artist not long before. My immediate prospects looked dim. And with no job to keep me busy, I was spending way too much time thinking about the life I'd missed out on with Bridget.

So instead of rejecting his invitation out of hand, I told the man I'd be there.

The appointment was for the following week, in a place a considerable distance from my usual haunts.

I would never again see the tall fellow who delivered the message to me.

Harvey Sheffield would turn out to be a surprisingly small guy. Almost a full foot shorter than me (and I'm not tall). His small stature often seemed emphasized by the large bodyguards who usually accompanied him. Harvey was slender, and a somewhat handsome guy, with a thin mustache, and a sometimes imperious manner. He wore wire-rimmed glasses.

I never ever saw Harvey in a suit (though at times he wore a dressy sport jacket). He usually dressed like an average guy on the street. This meant when you saw him anywhere with his well dressed bodyguards, you might mistakenly think the bodyguards were plain clothed law enforcement personnel, and Harvey a prisoner being escorted between jails. Sometimes Harvey would dress up a bit with a nicer shirt and pants and a tie. But that was rare.

Harvey always wore dress shoes though. With dark socks.

Over the time I worked for Harvey, I'd come to regard him as a stern but fair man, who seemed to care about his business more than almost anything else.

However, Harvey also seemed to realize his business success depended heavily upon the merit and well being of his employees. So although I wouldn't call Harvey generous, I did witness him a time or two go far beyond what the typical company boss in America would likely do for his employees.

And Harvey paid pretty well. Or at least well by my youthful standards. Basically matching what I could have made as an engineering graduate at an average company during that time (if I'd already gotten my diploma-- which I hadn't). Of course, if you considered the fact many of Harvey's business enterprises weren't exactly legal-- and his jobs included no perks like medical insurance-- maybe most wouldn't have considered it such a great deal after all.

But I'd come from an impoverished home town, where unemployment was typically among the highest in the nation. And most any job you could get there tended to be hazardous and low pay-- and even possibly illegal. So to me, working for Harvey would seem pretty nifty while I was at it. But getting that job was a story in itself.

Up to that time I'd only held more or less legitimate jobs (or what passed for such, where I lived)-- some of them actually acquired through the government employment office in my home town.

Sure, I'd also made a little money in the 'underground', cash-based economy. But only through bets on races between myself and others, or cutting wood in the mountains, etc. Nothing that even my fairly straight-laced parents-- or uncle an actual court judge in those parts-- would likely have wrinkled their brow over for more than a moment or two (regarding the purely legal implications, I mean).

So pretty much all those earnings opportunities had come to me by way of filling out an application-- or via handshake.

For this latest job though, I had to attend my first ever job interview.

I'd heard about such things at college, but never actually experienced one (that I could remember, anyway). In years to come I'd have other, more conventional interviews of various sorts (or even be the interviewer myself).

But my very first job interview seemed wholly unique from any which followed. For example, the later interviews didn't include armed guards standing to either side of me during the meeting.

Another oddity was a pretty woman sitting apart from me and my prospective boss in the room. While I was firmly planted by the bodyguards into the hot seat in front of Harvey's desk, the lady sat several feet away to my right, against the wall. Sort of as an observer, it seemed.

No one introduced the woman to me (or me to her) at the beginning of the meeting. But more on that later.

The meeting place turned out to be an old dilapidated warehouse in a fairly run-down looking Tennessee border city. It looked deserted. But when I walked up to and knocked the man-sized door as I'd been instructed, I got a response within seconds.

A tiny slit opened at eye level in the steel door, and a voice asked "Who are you?"

I told them my name. Then they asked a strange and unexpected question regarding the tall guy who'd delivered the offer to me. I answered as best I could, then the slit closed again.

I didn't know what else to do, so I simply waited. About a minute later I heard something like latches or locks being turned over, and the door finally opened.

A big man in a suit stepped outside, looked around for a moment, then ushered me in.

But rather than see the vast empty interior of the warehouse as I'd expected, I found myself now in a small room with the big man, a single chair, and a small and flimsy table, with a second closed door in sight. A naked incandescent light bulb illuminated the somewhat cramped space.

The desk held a telephone, a note pad, an ash tray, a soft drink, and a comic book.

The man took a moment to re-lock and re-latch several different security devices on the outside door. While he was doing that, I noticed he was wearing a holster on his hip, with a small revolver much like mine, only not stainless steel.

He turned around to face me. And bluntly told me to "hand it over".

"What?" I asked.

"Your gun. You are carrying, right?"

Suddenly I was lots more apprehensive about this meeting.

"I thought I was here for an interview?" I stalled.

"Yes. You are. But nobody's allowed to see the boss with a gun on them, but us. His employees, I mean."

I glanced around the seedy little room.

"How do I know this isn't a trick, and it's just you and me here?" I asked him. I wasn't too keen on giving up my gun.

The man sighed, stepped over to the table, and picked up the hand set of the phone there. He didn't dial or anything: just picked it up and talked into it for a moment.

Now the sounds of unlatching and unlocking could be heard from behind the second door. Then it opened, and two more big guys stepped into the now definitely crowded room.

"You don't have to give us your gun, sir. But you can't see the Boss with it in your possession. It'll be returned to you after your meeting. Please hand it over now, or else leave the building," the first fellow I'd met now told me.

Man, but was this an uncomfortable situation! However, they did seem to be acting pretty business-like. I knew if I had guards, I'd probably have them remove guns from my visitors too. And they did offer me the opportunity to leave...

Knowing my pistol wasn't my only weapon, I decided to give it up. The first man accepted it, and placed it into a small pull drawer under the table that I hadn't noticed before.

I was then shepherded through the second door-- only to see beyond it was merely a second (if larger) version of the first room!

I turned around to face the latest two guys (who'd accompanied me there), and asked "Hey! What's this? Where's your boss?" One of the men was busy re-locking the door by which we'd entered.

"Calm down, sir. We've just got to check you for other weapons first, is all. Turn around and put your hands on the wall. And spread your legs, please."

Damn it! A pat down!

The first item I lost was my little pocket black jack. Basically it was my key ring with a short, strong nylon lanyard attached to it, which also linked to my Swiss Army knife and tiny adjustable wrench. There was a small thumb-latched metal belt clip on the thing, too. The whole shebang usually resided in my front right pants pocket, with only the belt-clip and an inch or two of the lanyard strap showing. The way it was configured though, I could easily release the clip and pull the assembly out of my pocket, to instantly have a formidable flailing weapon at my disposal. The Swiss Army knife served as a good handle, while the keys and wrench on the other end whipped and slashed an enemy.

Naturally they found my ankle knife too. A small one, designed for scuba divers. They removed only the knife, leaving the empty hard plastic sheath strapped to my leg.

They even checked my shoes and belt buckle. It was a good thing I hadn't worn my buckle knife that day!

I'd been pretty nervous about the meeting. And so more cautious than usual. That would turn out to be a good thing.

After they were finished with their inspection, and had placed all my items into a drawer in the table of the present room, I was escorted beyond a third door.

This time I finally beheld the emptiness of the warehouse that I'd originally expected.

The two men and I walked the length of the building, with one in front of me and one behind. We reached some stairs and climbed them.

We entered a long and somewhat spacious room then, which was divided by a partition of floor to ceiling steel bars. The two guards and I now occupied the third of the room on this side of the jail cell-like bars, while on the other, roomier side, sat an old beaten-up office desk, and a couple chairs.

The protected end of the room had its own entry way, and soon a small man and a tall woman emerged from it, to settle into the chairs.

The woman was taller than me, by maybe an inch or so. And she wasn't wearing high heels here, I'd later notice. She was quite fetching, with somewhat blondish hair. She wore it relatively short, with the ends splashing over her collar bones. It was straight hair, splaying out at the bottom, with some medium length bangs swept to the right across her forehead.

She wore silver wire rimmed glasses, which seemed to nicely accentuate her well lashed eyes. Her lips were full and her body contours well rounded. Though she had fashion model height, she didn't have the exaggerated long legged proportions of same, rather being more like a normal woman in that respect. She was wearing something like a business suit.

On my side of the bars the only furniture was a single chair, which I was strongly encouraged to sit in by the two guards (and I did).

The small man beyond the bars began to speak. "Hello Mr. Staute. My name is Harvey Sheffield. I want to thank you for meeting with me on such short notice. I apologize for the security measures. They are necessary evils, I assure you."

"Uh, you're welcome, I guess," I replied.

"I understand you might be in the market for a driving job," Harvey stated, rather than asked.

"Yes. Maybe."

"And you are experienced at, let's say, high pressure driving situations?"

"I guess you could say that," I answered. I wondered just what he knew about me. Or thought he knew.

"And your car includes some special equipment for such conditions?"

"Ah...yes. It's got a couple tricks," I admitted.

Harvey seemed to study me for a moment, before continuing.

"Mr. Staute, you strike me as someone who likes to be prepared for anything. Would you agree with that assessment?"

"Um. Maybe. But I'm not sure I follow you."

"It's just that from what I've been told about you, I wouldn't expect you to so easily surrender all the weapons at your disposal. For a meeting like this, I mean."

"Well-- you run a pretty tight ship here, Mr. Sheffield! What with that first guy and room, then the other two guys and the next room. All of them armed and everything. There wasn't much else I could do-- unless I decided to leave without seeing you at all."

"So you're telling me you possess no other means of defense now? That you've given up every item you brought here with which to deal with the unexpected?"

"Well-- no. I still have my mind. And my hands and feet."

"And nothing else?"

"Should I have something else?"

"Yes, Mr. Staute. You should," he told me. Yikes! That sounded ominous!

"Why?" I asked, uneasily.

"Because the man I want for this job must be crafty, and always thinking ahead. He must be able to surprise others on a regular basis. If you are that man, I'd like for you to surprise me now. Are you that man?"

Damn! "Are you saying I get the job if I can surprise you?" I pressed for more information.

"No. There's obviously more to it than that. But a surprise would score you some points in that regard."

"Well, your guards are pretty thorough, you know. Didn't any of the items they took from me surprise you?"

"Yes. I liked the improvised blackjack. It skirts the law nicely for its purpose. And yet looks like it'd be very effective."

"So did it score me points?"

"Not as many as a new surprise now would. Have you such a surprise for me, Mr. Staute?"

I fidgeted in my chair.

"If I did surprise you, would that bring these guys down on me?" I thought that a valid question under the circumstances.

"Only if you appeared to threaten me or them, Mr. Staute. I would advise no rapid movements accompany your surprise. Have you a surprise for us?"

"Well-- is it okay if I get my wallet out?"

"Slowly," one of the big guys reminded me.

So I unhurriedly reached to my back pocket and pulled my wallet. Then I retrieved a card-sized piece of metal from its confines.

It was a custom-made survival tool, with several handy features-- one of which was a cutting edge. So technically I was still armed, even after the frisking.

I held it up and explained its various elements to everyone. Harvey asked for one of the guards to hand it through the bars for a closer examination. The woman sitting to the right side (my right) of Harvey's desk immediately stood up to take the card, then hand it over to Harvey, who looked at it appraisingly.

After a moment's inspection to verify my claims, Harvey spoke again.

"Not bad, Mr. Staute. Have you anything else?"

"Man! Isn't that enough?" I protested.

"Perhaps not. I do hope there's more."

I looked up at the two guys to either side of me, then back again at Harvey and the woman.

Then I reached into my wallet again. It had several inconspicuous pockets.

This time I pulled out a flat bit of metal rod, its length about as big around in diameter as some nails, but looped into a ring-- with the two sharpened end points protruding outwards. I could wear it on a finger to make for a wicked double spiked punching weapon. But also easily store it in my wallet.

This one actually brought a smile to Harvey's face. The woman's, too.

Harvey closely examined the ring, as he had the card. Once finished, he grunted. Then spoke once more. "Have you any more surprises for us, Mr. Staute?"

"Holy cow, man! Isn't that enough? You're killing me here!" I laughed, a bit nervously.

"This is an important part of your interview, Mr. Staute. Have you anything else?"

"You do know that I wasn't told I was expected to carry lots of hidden weapons on me for this," I protested once more.

"Yes. You were given precious little information about this meeting. Which-- to my mind-- and considering the other circumstances-- would definitely have spurred you into preparing just as you have.

"The question now is: will you score any more points in this respect?"

Man! This guy was tough!

I reached up to my shirt collar and felt around there, to find a couple tiny balls. Then I pulled on them.

I now held in my finger tips a couple of needles with itty-bitty balls for heads, which had been hidden in the fabric of my shirt. I handed them to the guards, who then gave them to Harvey and the woman.

They smiled again. Even the guards too, this time. Although I figured the guards should be feeling a bit embarrassed by the show.

I apparently didn't have to inform everyone of all the different ways I could use the needles to my advantage.

"Is this it?" Harvey asked.

"It's plenty, isn't it? Any of that stuff could be lethal if correctly applied. Plus help me escape from a fairly wide range of circumstances, too," I stated confidently.

"Yes. I agree. But could it be you're still more resourceful than this?"

Agh! This guy sure did expect a lot, didn't he?

"Aw! Come on! Surely this is enough to get me in!" I pleaded. With a somewhat worried smile.

"You've impressed me, Mr. Staute. I like being impressed. And I'd like more of it, if you've got it. Is there anything else?"

I sighed. Then I bent over and removed a shoe. Then a sock. Then reached into both front pockets to retrieve the significant amount of loose change I'd made sure to carry with me on this trip.

Then I dropped the change into the sock, and knotted it in place. And held it up in display.

In only seconds, I'd made a blackjack. A flail for beating someone senseless with. Or busting through windows, and even thin wooden doors or plaster walls.

This one they allowed me to disassemble again, and return everything to where it'd been before.

Harvey and the woman were grinning widely now.

"Please tell me you have something else, Mr. Staute." Harvey asked, looking almost eager. Like maybe he hadn't been so well entertained in quite a while. I guess I made for a decent criminal jester.

"Well-- I do have a folded up piece of plastic in my wallet I could use to suffocate someone. Or do other things," I informed them.

"You're kidding," Harvey challenged me.

"No. It's in here," I told them, then pulled out my wallet again, and freed a small, tightly folded piece of thin plastic sheeting from its confines. Completely unpacked, it would measure around a few square yards in area. Enough to make for a decent poncho or rain shelter outdoors-- or various other things. But it could take a while to get it so compact for storage (any trapped air would prevent it from reaching maximum size reduction). So I hoped I wouldn't have to open it up.

"See?" I asked, holding up the small plastic square between two finger tips.

"More!" Harvey demanded.

"You are aware I could do quite a few things with my belt. Right?" I asked.

"Yes. But what if we'd taken it from you? Or does the belt possess hidden features?"

"Oh, it's a plain old belt. But it'd have several uses in a survival situation. However, like you say, you could have taken it from me..." I replied, even as I simultaneously removed my belt, and handed it to one of the guards.

I didn't mention I also owned a couple of other belts, which did possess things like special buckles, or hidden storage compartments. Belts I wasn't wearing at the moment.

"Let's say you did take my belt. And that other stuff I showed you. Would I have anything left? Maybe," I teased them.

"What?" Harvey prodded.

"Well..." I spoke, smiling. As I also stood up.

The guards didn't move to stop me. The meeting seemed to have passed beyond the wary stage, and into something more like an elementary school show and tell.

With both hands I fiddled around with a couple of my front belt loops on my pants. Loosening the twisted ends of a thin wire tightly wrapped around my waist, running through all the belt loops, and normally mostly hidden beneath my belt. Even with the belt gone, the wire was tough to distinguish from my denim jeans material-- for the wire was coated with blue insulation of nearly the same color. Plus, it was thin, and pulled fairly tight in place.

I undid the ends, then pulled it free of my jeans.

"With this I might could garrote someone, or blow out electrical fuses, or make a trap. Etc." I told them ("garrote" is a fancy old word for strangulation; I mainly used it in an effort to impress Harvey).

I didn't reveal that the actual wire strands inside were made of silver rather than copper, which made the item still more versatile for a variety of purposes.

I guess all this might sound fairly bizarre to regular folks. All the hidden weapons and such, I mean. But I'd been something of a James Bond fan from way back-- with regular viewing of TV shows like Mission: Impossible and The Man from U.N.C.L.E helping feed my mania. One of the first things I ever bought with my own money as a child was an AM radio disguised as an ink pen.

All the violence of my teens had increased my interest in self-defense, hidden weapons, and incapacitation techniques. My college ROTC military experience had broadened my gadget interest still more. And, of course, my adventures with Shadowfast had encouraged me to pursue various on-person contingency measures too-- for those times that I might be without the protection and support of my car. Like now.

Being a voracious reader across all genres my whole life had also helped me build my collection of unusual gadgetry and tricks.

But no: I didn't routinely carry an armory of such items on my person. I did, however, have a fairly extensive and growing collection of such gadgets I could pick and choose from for meetings like this one. A collection which I regarded as my own version of Batman's utility belt, or the folder of potential accomplices the Mission: Impossible chief would go through to select a team for his latest job.

I was getting weary of being Harvey's jester of mayhem-- plus had run out of hidden gizmos. I needed to wrap this up somehow. So I launched into one of my trademark rants (my closest friends and family were very familiar with those in general, even if they'd never heard this particular version).

"You are aware-- I presume-- that there's a zillion different ways someone in the know could improvise weapons or escape tools from all sorts of items in a typical environment. Right? Anyone who knew what they were doing wouldn't need anything extra like I'm carrying. They could always make do if they had to. And I've made do plenty of times. Heck: I could make weapons out of chicken bones from meals you gave me, or break a light bulb in a room to set up an ambush plus gain a weapon at the same time. Or simply store up enough water or spit in my mouth to squirt in someone's eyes to give me a split second advantage. I could improve such a distraction by forcing myself to throw up, then collect some of the puke, dilute it with water for easier pitching, then put it in a cup, to throw in someone's eyes later. It'd have stomach acid in it then, and help blind them longer than plain water. Heck: the smell might even make them vomit too, slowing them down in another way. Especially if I got some where they could taste it.

"I wouldn't need a stash of coins to put in a sock or towel to make a blackjack. A bar of soap or batteries would be even better.

"I could tear strips of cloth from just about any clothing or bed sheets or curtains to make escape ropes or strangulation cords, or set up traps.

"There's several common household chemicals usually sitting close by anywhere people live or work, that I could use to various purposes, from blinding others, to gagging them with stifling odors, to setting fires, and more.

"In theory there's no limit to the number of ways I could cause trouble in order to benefit myself, and cause setbacks for others. For almost any environment would offer up its own set of opportunities.

"So could we wrap up this dog and pony show and get to what's next, please?" I ended my speech. Hoping it was enough to finally slake Harvey's seemingly unquenchable thirst for me to demonstrate survival, evasion, and escape techniques.

Harvey and the woman exchanged wordless glances with one another. Then turned back to me.

"Yes, Mr. Staute! By all means! Let us move on!" Harvey declared. Apparently satisfied at last.

With that, I sat back down again, in relief. Unfortunately, I wasn't pleased in the least with what came next. For it turned out this interview was only preamble to a far more strenuous test.

Harvey actually wanted me to audition for the job! And by that I mean do a whole other job for him first, to prove I was qualified for the real thing!

Damn it!

"Hey--" I objected in frustration. "I thought this little talk was supposed to be about a paying job. Not an interview to get to an audition, which might somehow, someday lead to an actual job!"

"It is. A very well paying job, if you're qualified. Thing is, there's only one way to prove you're the man for the job: by aiding my friend Angela here in her little project."

"I'm sorry, but I'm not in the free favor business. I just got burned last month in a scam sounding a lot like this one--"

"Yes. I know about that," Harvey interrupted.

"How do you know?" I asked, further annoyed.

"My people always do background checks on anyone I'm planning to interview. Just to be on the safe side."

"Well then you should appreciate why I'm not eager to repeat that experience."

"Yes. I do. But I'm a busy man, and don't have time or money to waste on anyone who can't deliver. If you succeed at helping Angela, I'll know you're the man for my job."

"Sorry, but I just can't afford it," I waved my hand in exasperation, and got up to leave. One of Harvey's bodyguards reflexively moved to block my way to the door. I was in no mood for this, and looked up at him as I said in a low voice "Move it or lose it, bozo."

Yeah, in objective terms it was a bluff sure enough. For it was unlikely I'd be able to do serious damage to the guy. And in addition to that, he was armed. But subjectively I was deadly serious. And willing to tangle to prove my point. The major fiasco weeks back which had ruined me financially had hardened my attitude quite a bit. And I was now badly disappointed to think that this whole visit with Harvey had been for nothing.

Plus, despite my having been thoroughly disarmed, they all knew I was well versed in improvised weapons-- and maybe knew a few hand-to-hand tricks, too. So I was definitely someone to be taken seriously.

"Wait Troy," Harvey stopped my antagonist from answering my challenge.

"Mr. Staute, unlike your previous venture, you will enjoy considerable third party support on this one, as well as have all your expenses-- including car damages-- paid. Even if you fail."

My ears perked up at that, and I turned back to face him again.

"All my expenses?"

"Yes."

"Food, drink, housing-- and repairs to my car?"

"Yes."

Keep in mind that just getting my daily living expenses paid for a while seemed like getting ahead in my book. And I tended to put Shadow in need of repairs even when I wasn't holding a paid job. So getting his repair expenses tended to as well definitely sounded like frosting on the cake to me!

"What sort of third party support are we talking here?" I probed further.

"Pretty much whatever you and Angela decide you need for the project. Within reason, of course."

Hmmm. Now things were starting to get interesting. If my audition wouldn't cost me anything, I could try out for the good paying job beyond it for free!

But yeah, Harvey could have been lying to me too. I could have been walking into a trap much like the previous one where I'd been scammed.

But unlike that mess, this time I had no money left to steal. Nothing left to lose-- that seemed to me to define my current state.

Yes, this was probably way too impulsive of me, but I pretty much decided right then that I was in. Of course, I could always change my mind again if the project sounded too crazy... And did he say the woman's name was Angela?

"I won't know what I'll need until after I've heard the plan," I told them.

"Oh, our plans are still in flux, I'm afraid. Right, Angela?"

"Yes," the woman spoke, looking in my direction. "The main goal is to rescue someone from a secure facility--"

I interrupted her. "Oh no! You're not talking a break out from prison, are you?" I definitely wasn't going to step into something like that! Rats! I wouldn't be able to take this job after all--!

"No! It's nothing like that! We're not aiding a prison escape! We'd be-- freeing a girl from bondage!" the woman responded.

"Huh? What sort of bondage?" I asked.

The woman's face turned red. "It's-- it's my sister. She's gotten herself mixed up in something vile, and I have to get her out."

"What sort of vile are we talking about?"

"I know it sounds ridiculous, but-- it's sort of-- um, ah--" Angela stumbled in her effort at explanation. Harvey stepped in to help her.

"Angela's sister's been forced into sexual slavery, Mr. Staute. Along with several other girls, we believe. By a very powerful man. We don't currently know where Angela's sister Wren is being held. The man in question has access to quite a wide variety of locations. But we expect wherever Wren is, there'll be some difficulty involved in extracting her."

"Sex slave, huh?" I repeated, somewhat surprised by the information. And skeptical.

"Yes," was Angela's simple reply.

Angela seemed to believe what she was telling me. And although I might have automatically been skeptical at the use of terms like 'sexual slavery' or 'sex slave', that was mostly because I'd not personally encountered many people in such situations in real life. Or even heard much about farther flung cases. And had just plain found such things tough to imagine at all, not so very long ago.

However, I had to admit that I had had some experience with situations not all that far removed from such crimes. For Angela's sister's plight made me recall Bridget's own predicament with Paul, before I put a stop to it. But perhaps it more closely resembled the trouble Lindsay Finch and her sister had been in with a local pimp, before that.

"Well, I don't like the sound of her location being unknown-- that could stop this whole thing before it even gets off the ground. But I have rescued girls from similar situations before," I told them.

"Really?" Angela asked, clearly skeptical in her own right now. I mean, it's not like you run across true sex slaves all that often. But I felt my reference would hold up well enough in the details.

Then a much more pleasant thought occurred to me: apparently they didn't know everything about me, after all! I sure liked that!

"Yes. More than once," I replied-- somewhat just to annoy Angela. Though I had to admit it sounded odd to say. For although it was the truth, it just seemed to make me sound like an oddball-- or nut job. I mean, how many normal people can really list such stuff on their résumé? Agh!

Though it'd sure taken me a long time to realize it, I was definitely one strange guy. No wonder I had so much trouble with women! But what was worse, I didn't know how to change! I mean, look at what I was contemplating doing now! Sheesh!

Oh Bridget, I thought: why couldn't you have lived, and married me? Maybe then I could have been a normal person, with a normal life.

Angela interrupted my inner dialogue. "Well, I'm afraid this time there's likely to be armed guards, and dogs--"

"Yes, it seems like there's always armed guards and dogs," I sighed aloud. Mainly recalling the rescue of Lindsay and Sharon. But there'd been dogs and armed guards to deal with at D.C. Evans' mansion, too. I suddenly remembered the full company I was keeping just then, and turned to glance at Harvey's guards still in the room, to say "No offense."

"None taken," one replied, with a slight smile. They seemed to be taking a liking to me.

"But besides that," Angela continued, "we'll have the police to deal with too."

"Huh? But sex slavery's against the law, isn't it?"

"Yes. But Brooks has ignored the law on plenty of matters for years, now," Angela said angrily.

"Brooks? Is that the man holding your sister?" I asked. The name rang a bell. But surely it wasn't anyone I personally knew, I thought.

"Yes. Timothy Brooks, as a matter of fact."

"You know, there's a politician with that same name--" I said, before Angela cut me off.

"That's him," she confirmed.

I was surprised by the coincidence here. I mean, I'd heard of Brooks plenty of times before, due to his political career. But my main memory related to him was of my best friend Steve wanting to steal all the pro-Brooks campaign signs from yards and poles we could find in the weeks leading up to an election, a year or two back.

I'd drove Steve around our home county in Shadowfast, sometimes all lights out at night in the vicinity of a place with signs, and Steve would jump out and seize the things, bringing them back to the car with him.

Amazingly enough, I don't recall us even once encountering a dog along the way. Maybe we purposely avoided such properties: I can't recall now if that's how we dodged watch dog trouble.

Together we stripped all the pro-Brooks signs from a sizable portion of our home county over the span of several nights.

We knew we might get into trouble if caught with the things. So what did we do with them? There were several unfinished crawl spaces beneath the roof of my parents' place-- one especially roomy one which could only be entered from a small door in my own bedroom closet. So that's where we'd stashed them. They would remain there for a number of years afterward, unknown and unsuspected even by my own family. For there simply wasn't much reason for anyone to visit that spot.

To me the theft of the signs was just an indulgence of one of Steve's many eccentricities, while at the same time being sort of a mischievous adventure. Or something new and slightly daring to do for a few nights.

If Steve ever explained to me what he had against Brooks, I can't recall it now. But being a teenager, he most likely was just reflecting the politics of his parents.

I guess he or they turned out to be right about Brooks in the end. For he was apparently rotten to the core.

Timothy Brooks was a prominent Tennessee politician. And also (it turned out) secretly chief male witch of a coven which basically served him as a private harem. Most of the women were apparently there by choice. But some it seemed were not. And there could have been members of both groups who were under-age. This new and weird stuff I learned from Angela and Harvey, as they continued their briefing of me.

It was around then that Angela decided to formally introduce herself to me for the first time. She stuck her hand out at me, through the bars. I stood up and moved closer to take it.

"My full name's Angela Huff."

"Mine's Jerry Staute, Angela," I reciprocated both the shake and identification, and added a smile. Then I sat back down and returned to the business at hand.

"How were you figuring to go about rescuing your sister, Angela, if you don't know where she is?"

Angela looked at Harvey and then back at me again.

"I was thinking we'd need two separate runs with you and your car," she began, and I immediately noted this was more than Harvey had implied.

"Two runs?"

"Yes. One for reconnaissance and one for the rescue."

Well, reconnaissance didn't sound so bad. Rescues though could definitely be hairy: I knew that from experience.

But hopefully this one could be much more professional in nature, than anything I'd tried before. My previous missions with such laudable goals-- though usually successful-- had also been marred with some amateurish mistakes.

It was around then that I realized we'd skipped over too quickly the possibility of law enforcement resolving the situation.

I was ambivalent about broaching the subject again after Angela and Harvey had so quickly dismissed it before. Plus, I might be out of a job if the cops took it over. But heck: wasn't stuff like this what the police were for? I mean, no matter how much money or connections Harvey might have, he surely couldn't match what the law could apply to the case. Especially for locating the girl in the first place.

I gave a glance over to Harvey, then asked "And the police can't find her? I mean, you have reported this, haven't you?"

"I am police. Or was. Tennessee state highway patrol," Angela answered my question, rather than Harvey.

"Oh." I was suddenly uncomfortable. Attractive women always put me somewhat ill at ease, but so did state troopers in general: and Angela was apparently both! I usually considered state troopers to be my enemy on the interstates.

"So...maybe you should turn it over to the FBI," I told her. For this sure did sound like something odd for us to be doing on our own, now that I'd heard more about it. But once again Angela waxed negative on such stuff.

"No, if it were to be handled through official channels it'd first be referred to the TBI, and only possibly later to the FBI. And the TBI is subject to undue influence in this case."

"Huh? What does that mean?" I frowned.

Angela began to answer and Harvey cut her off.

"Mr. Staute, those details can be provided to you later. At the moment we need to focus on learning where Wren is."

"Oh. All right," I shrugged. But made a mental note to dig a little deeper into the topic later, when I got the chance.

The recon mission some days later wasn't what I expected. Driving had little to do with it. It actually entailed breaking and entering into a major league rich person's estate near Nashville, and snooping around. I hated every minute of it. Even if it was the place of a worthless and crazed politician, possibly holding some girl against her will.

I felt badly exposed in such a task, and itching to get it over with.

To make matters worse, everyone insisted we be armed. And not with our own personal weapons, but others which would be untraceable to us if discarded. We wore gloves too, to prevent finger prints. And face coverings.

It was awful! Way too much like out and out criminal behavior for my taste. I was having a lot of trouble figuring out how to explain myself if caught.

Unfortunately our scouting visit was cut short by unanticipated events, with one result being Angela only getting out with the names of two other current members of Brooks' cult: Kim Herriot and Megan Michele Samms.

Holy crap! I'd dated Megan Michele Samms in high school!

Megan Michele Samms had been a girl Steve and I had both known back then. It's difficult to recall now exactly how I first made her acquaintance. But I'm pretty sure that basically Steve bedded her-- or tried to anyway-- and she sort of fixated on him after he immediately moved on from there. Being his side-kick, I became her next natural target in her continuing campaign to either win him over or maybe exact revenge on him (to this day I'm unsure what Megan Michele really intended to do there).

In my experience, Megan Michele had always seemed to project about her a thick cloud of uncertainty. For instance, she'd turned out to be an inveterate liar-- but skilled enough to include just enough truth as to always keep you guessing in all manner of ways. Thus, you tended to be continually befuddled in regards to how to properly deal with her.

Megan Michele was tall for a girl: about even with Steve or me. She was also quite attractive, with shoulder length straight blonde hair which curved slightly in at the bottom, and a ready smile.

Megan Michele was also pretty smart. But alas, those smarts seemed usually spent on conniving and scheming.

Being lonesome and sexually frustrated myself, I did little to discourage Megan Michele when she suddenly swooped into my life to declare me her boyfriend one day. Heck: I was in need of a girlfriend, and Megan was attractive-- so I said to myself 'why not?' I was very open to the possibilities!

Basically all I knew about her then was that she was pretty.

Yeah, I was a little put off by her coming on so strong. But I sure hadn't been doing too well on my own for quite some time before that. So I figured why not go with the flow for once.

I also knew of Megan's very brief prior fling with Steve; but so what? It couldn't hurt to just date her for a while, could it?

Boy, was I wrong.

Even today, decades later, I'm still uncertain what Megan was after in regards to me in high school. All I know for sure is she annoyed and frustrated the hell out of me the whole time I was with her.

So we'd dated a bit. But mostly racked up tons of phone time and plain conversation, more than anything else. She liked to talk constantly. And mercilessly tease me-- especially in situations where just about any response at all on my part was impossible (like when we'd be standing two feet from her mother, or happened to be in the most public places imaginable). She from time to time would show me racy photos of herself and her friends, too. She also seemed to want me to be physically rough with her when we were alone-- maybe to the point of hurting her (and I don't mean just playing rough). Of course, I wouldn't do that-- couldn't do that. And so was turned off by her behavior in private, again and again. Early on, I thought such stuff would surely pass, and soon: but it never did. I often couldn't understand what she was doing, or why. So in the end, I soon came to feel less like a boyfriend, than a lab experiment.

Amazingly enough, all the wrongs that existed in my relationship with Megan Michele had nothing to do with the usual bad luck which seemed to follow me around in my dating. For unlike the times I'd been out with girls I liked a lot more than Megan, nothing apocalyptic happened when she and I were together. No fires or floods or blizzards, no surprise car chases, no unprovoked attacks by strangers: nothing at all. No, my dates with Megan were in that way perhaps the most normal ones I ever experienced during my high school years. But I guess that's the best thing I can say about them.

Megan also stood me up unexpectedly at times. With excuses which definitely didn't seem to ring true. And it sure didn't help matters that by then evidence was mounting from just about every direction about her incessant lying and manipulation.

Since I was nowhere near being in love with her-- and she had sought me out rather than the other way around-- I got tired of all this pretty quickly, and broke off whatever it was we had with one another.

But darn if that didn't seem to re-invigorate her interest in me! Sheesh!

Megan's annoyance campaign really took off after that. Basically it seemed she was trying to get back into my good graces again, and resume dating. But heck: I didn't need someone to teach me how to be lonely and frustrated, and waste great leaping gobs of my time; I was already an expert at those things!

Plus, by that point I'd learned more than I'd ever wanted to know about Megan's habitual lying-- both via first-hand experience and from tales of others who'd known her-- and her credibility with me had plummeted to zero.

If I recollect correctly, we were together for not more than a couple months or so. It was Megan's unrelenting harassment campaign which followed, that never seemed to end. Mostly it consisted of daily phone calls, and awkward encounters at school. But some of it was rumors she tried to spread around the place-- some of them possibly meant to get certain bigger and stronger specimens of the male student body to come looking for me with blood in their eyes.

But I eventually just quit accepting her phone calls altogether. And the rumors couldn't get far-- once people learned of their source (it seems I'd been one of the very last few people in the whole school to learn about Megan's trouble with the truth).

Eventually (months later) she claimed in a phone call she'd bought herself a Mustang much like mine (this was before most of Shadow's supercar modifications), and wanted me to come see it sometime. I refused.

In her final call to me maybe weeks afterwards she claimed she was in a hospital fifty miles distant (after having been in a horrific accident in the Mustang) and wanted me to come see her.

I know this may sound bad of me. But I'd gotten fed up with her long before, and told her to stop calling me. I also no longer believed a single word she said (and had told her that repeatedly, both over the phone and in person). So I told her I definitely wasn't coming to the hospital-- if she truly was there.

And that was it. For a long time. Until this. Now I learned that Megan Michele was sharing an apartment with an attractive red-head named Kim, and they were both claiming to be witches. No kidding!

I only got this latest update due to the frustratingly inadequate results from Angela's little reconnaissance mission to discover her sister's whereabouts. For Megan and her roommate turned out to be the only leads we could get to maybe discovering where Angela's sister was being kept.

That was surely one time I should have thought before I spoke. For I suddenly blurted out to Angela that I knew Megan, and found myself almost immediately drafted into playing spy to find out if Megan or Kim knew where Wren might be. Agh!

That meant I had to call Megan up out of the blue for a get-together. Agh! After all the trouble I'd gone through to rid myself of her, before. Agh!

Of course, I tried to explain to Angela Megan's lying ways, and how very unlikely if was that we could get any useful intelligence from her about anything at all. But Angela was adamant on the point, and Harvey backed her up. They both kept insisting that any lead at all would be better than nothing, and that Megan (or her room mate) might reveal something useful merely by accident, if nothing else.

So what choice did I have? I badly needed this job! But I'd only get it if we succeeded at rescuing Wren: something which at this point seemed to pivot wholly upon my ability to get the truth out of Megan Michele Samms.

Megan turned out to have some small scars she claimed to be from the Mustang crash described in that phone call of times past. But I remained privately skeptical about her story.

Believe it or not, Megan didn't make a big deal of me not coming to see her in the hospital that time. Maybe because she hadn't really been there at all. Or maybe because she'd exaggerated her injuries. Or maybe because she didn't want to scare me off before she'd pulled some sort of new scam on me.

Megan's roommate Kim was a more petite girl, with long straight red hair (more petite, compared to the more athletic and voluptuous Megan). Kim possessed the pale sort of red hair, with the pale red eyelashes to go with it. Pale skin, too. Kim's hair ended about mid-way down her back. Kim was slender and small, but pleasingly proportioned. I believe she was a bit freckled. It was difficult to guess her age from her appearance. She had the kind of female look which might remain virtually unchanged between the years of sixteen and mid thirties. But I think she was roughly early to mid-twenties, close to the same age as Megan (or slightly older) at the time.

The three of us sat in their apartment and talked for quite a while. Though I was trying not to show it, I was pretty apprehensive, being there on false pretenses and all. Plus, I was wondering how difficult it'd be to get rid of Megan again after this (oh man!). I was sure I'd have to move away somewhere...

Megan began getting awfully friendly with me on the couch, as Kim looked on, and we all continued talking.

I'm definitely not an exhibitionist. Nor an expert at being a secret agent. But I had seen all the James Bond films. Plus Megan and I had made out before. So I tried to hold up my end in the three-way conversation even as I went along with Megan's smooching too. With Kim not three feet from us, watching intently.

Megan and I were together on a couch. I was sitting upright at the left end, while Kim occupied a separate, comfortable looking chair very near to me. Megan soon maneuvered herself into a position where she lay on her back on the couch, facing up at me, with her head resting in my lap.

Megan and I were smooching, even as all three of us somehow held a conversation with one another at the same time.

Yeah, it was interesting. Interesting that Kim seemed to like watching us make out about as much as I was uncomfortable with it.

Keep in mind I was still a young man at that time, raised in a family so sexually puritanical it could verge on the hysterical regarding any public signs of physical affection towards the opposite sex. And I probably had less experience with women in general than most guys my age, too.

But I wasn't losing my head over the situation. I stayed focused on my true purpose there, and didn't intend to do anything more than absolutely necessary to accomplish my aim.

Being a young man though did mean I had to perform a few mental gymnastics to avoid being too aroused by the circumstances. Yes, I may have considered Megan as borderline psychotic-- but she was still a good-looking woman! And her playful tongue was in my mouth during much of our little three-way meeting.

Things did get dicey for a while when both Megan and Kim began making suggestive chatter about a menage a trois along the way. Holy smokes!

Folks, by that point I didn't have all that much experience with merely being part of a plain old fashioned couple: so becoming part of a sex trio was definitely not on my agenda. Especially not a trio including Megan, and a whole different woman I knew absolutely nothing about but for what I'd seen and heard during my visit so far.

I won't mention names here. But by this time I had buddies who'd been a little too free with their own sex lives, and gotten venereal afflictions of one sort or another. Afterwards, they'd related all the gory details to me, and I'd resolved not to make the same mistakes if I could help it. Yuck!

And beyond disease were the possibly still more excruciating social consequences of relationships gone wrong. I'd already suffered through one long experience with Megan, and definitely didn't want another. And there was no telling what complexities might arise from a tryst with Kim herself.

Plus, the threat of unwanted pregnancies always dampened the thrill of unexpected sexual adventures too. At least if you took the time to think about it.

I sure as hell didn't like the idea of one-- or maybe both!-- Megan and Kim showing up on my doorstep a couple months later, telling me I was going to be a daddy. Yikes!

However, as I previously described, Megan was plenty attractive. And Kim was no slouch either. So yes, theoretically speaking (and under far different circumstances) a purely physical three-way could have been very desirable with these two. Just for fun, of course!

And yes, it was also possible these girls were just bluffing-- even probable, I figured. Maybe even seeing if they could easily intimidate me. As their whole association with Brooks and his cult seemed to be one largely built upon intimidation.

So I let out my inner machismo for a while there. Heck: I didn't let him out very often, due to all the immense trouble he could cause me. But these girls seemed to want to see the lion. And I figured why not throw open the gate for just a short while, then slam it shut again?

I was on an important mission here, after all.

So I indicated I was indeed up for a threesome, if they were. And tried to show them my best possible leer.

(I honestly don't know if I'd ever displayed a true leer in my life, before that moment. At least purposely.)

I don't profess to know how women signal one another in such situations. But I believe after that Megan surreptitiously let Kim know they'd pushed me far enough, and it was time to stop the threesome nonsense altogether. For Kim soon left Megan and I to ourselves in the living room of their ground floor apartment.

And so I'd successfully avoided a dodgy threesome by staring down the two grown women hinting at same. Yay! Score one for the home team! Ha, ha.

Yes, I'd truly been bluffing there. Those two would have had to drug me and tie me down for such a scene, at the very least. At that age, anyway. And with the two women being who they were. Yikes!

My plan had been to run like hell before things got too far there. But I'd have paraded my inner machismo regarding the possibility all around right up until the last possible moment. Even making out hot and heavy with both up to a point, if necessary. Then scramming for all I was worth! Ha, ha.

Somewhere amidst all the threesome hints the girls themselves brought up Brooks, and his (as they described it) powerful magic. They didn't refer to him by name, of course: for the coven thing was a secret part of his life. But I knew who they meant, due to my briefing from Angela and Harvey.

Megan and Kim also used some sort of specialized jargon when speaking about Brooks or the cult, and its shenanigans. But to be honest I can't recall most of it now, decades later. Basically because I considered it gibberish at the time.

I couldn't help it: I'd laughed out loud at their claims several times, showing extreme disdain for their warlock-in-chief.

At that age I was nowhere near to having all the angles figured out on the so-called supernatural and other fringe areas of human experience (or lunacy). But I wasn't entirely clueless either. I knew people could be talked into believing practically anything by others sufficiently charismatic. Heck: I'd seen Steve talk folks into amazing things since I'd befriended him. He'd done his trick on me too a few times before I realized what was happening and rendered myself largely immune thereafter. I think the turning point had come when he'd angered me one day, and I'd-- without warning-- drove off after letting him out at a store within easy walking distance of my parents' house, thereby forcing him to walk there as punishment. It was only maybe an eighth of a mile-- uphill. But I felt that was sufficient to put Steve on notice for his actions, without going overboard.

So I told Kim and Megan their warlock would have no power over me-- and indeed, I might bend him to my will instead, if I ever got near him: for I'd dealt with his kind before.

I probably didn't convince them that I could best their leader in a contest. But I know I exuded confidence in my statements; because I truly believed what I told them.

Having Steve for a best friend had rendered me immune to charismatic persuasion from practically any source.

Of course, I was still vulnerable to feminine wiles-- but not from these two particular women. Megan had used up her chances long ago, and I would have had to gotten to know Kim considerably better for her to even have a shot at such a thing...

Plus, I still had lingering feelings for Sue Anne-- and painful memories of Bridget-- to shield me from quite a lot of female-related threats...

I still had to deal with Megan herself after Kim retreated. I had absolutely no intention of having sex with her. But I had to keep up my act for a while longer. After all, if Angela and I couldn't get another lead, the whole mission might fall through, and I definitely wouldn't get that job working for Harvey.

Megan and I carried on for a while on the couch, then moved to the carpeted floor. I cannot recall today exactly how I managed to pull it off, but by some miracle I actually did get some useful information out of Megan, regarding where Wren was likely being kept(!) All it took was hours of combination making out and talking with Megan, to get it.

I also cannot now recall how I then extricated myself from Megan's arms to make a graceful exit-- and all without alarming Megan enough to cause her to alert Brooks about our meeting.

I must have been unusually slick that day. Either I was amazingly lucky, or I remembered enough of Steve's womanizing maneuvers and manipulation techniques to get me through.

Or perhaps Megan and Kim had both been on some sort of drugs which made them easier to fool that day, and I just didn't realize it. Brooks' cult did seem to use such stuff pretty regularly, according to Angela.

Angela and Harvey worked some magic of their own with Megan's revelations after that, to soon determine a probable location for Wren. Once that was accomplished, Angela and I were able to throw together a basic rescue plan in just a couple days. Indeed, we felt compelled to move fast: for Brooks might move Wren to a different location at any time.

It helped that Angela turned out to be familiar with the place Wren was likely being kept. It was a big estate much like the one we'd previously raided, only much closer in to Nashville. Angela had worked on security details for many such places in the Nashville vicinity, in recent years.

But on the downside, it looked like this was going to be one difficult rescue! Lots more complicated than what me and Brock had done to free Lindsay and Sharon. I was definitely going to be playing in the big leagues now!

Angela made up a list of the basic requirements and potential problems she expected for each stage of the mission, related to each of the localities involved (we expected the adventure to span a sizeable chunk of middle Tennessee). Having served as a trooper, as well as spent time at the estate herself in more aboveboard times and circumstances, she was able to put together quite a comprehensive list.

This particular estate wasn't owned by Brooks, but was part of some historic trust run by the state. Maybe someday to be opened to the public as a historic tourism site. But at the moment it mainly served as a ritzy playground for V.I.P.s and/or powerful politicians like Brooks.

Once equipped with Angela's list, I drew up my own, based on my personal experience and knowledge of rescue runs and escaping pursuit. Then we used both lists to devise our master plan, along with quite a few contingency loops and branches.

I'd personally never before participated in a basically outlaw mission so elaborate and complex as this one.

Some of the possible challenges we faced here would be the worst of Shadow's entire lifespan. Such as possible helicopter search and pursuit. Agh!

Fortunately, Harvey came through with a ton of extra help in the manpower and machine departments. It seemed Harvey really liked Angela a lot-- and maybe despised Brooks roughly the same amount.

One of my personal favorites among the preparation tasks was getting hold of two white 1970 Mustangs and applying some quick and dirty mods to them to make them roughly resemble Shadowfast from a distance. Using some sturdy plastic sheeting and duct tape to add mock rear spoilers, front air dams, and hood scoops to the autos. Then painting over the mods with white paint to make them blend in better with the rest of the body.

These cars were meant to be decoys, driven by some of Harvey's men.

But white? To act as decoys for a black car? you might ask. That had to do with one of our many tricks we worked up to aid in our getaway. For in this mission, Shadow would sport a white paint job too. Of easily removeable whitewash. My own mixture.

(Of course, I was banking on mission day being a dry one, there. But if it turned out rainy instead, I had an alternative trick to use in its place.)

I mapped out and rehearsed (in Angela's car) the getaway course from the estate several times at night over the course of a week. We booked a hotel room nearby under assumed married names for just this purpose. I'd have preferred separate rooms, but Harvey insisted on one for purposes of economy, and scrambling any possible later investigative leads.

This would be the first time I ever slept in the same room with a woman who was neither family nor girlfriend. I didn't like the idea. To make matters worse, Angela was attractive, too.

I knew from experience the knowledge alone of what was to transpire over coming days might keep me too excited to sleep much during the nights-- especially the final one. But being a young man, having a sexy woman in a bed just feet away all night might do that too. Combine both elements, and I was afraid I'd be tossing and turning the whole week through-- and so not be adequately rested for the main event.

I tried to explain this to Harvey. But he was unsympathetic: gave me a big talk about professionalism, and self-control. And basically wrapped things up by saying this was part of my job audition. Damn it! But at least Harvey did spring for a room with two separate beds.

Shadow was kept out of sight until the mission began, in the garage of an associate of Harvey's. I'd driven Shadow into Nashville under cover of darkness, and would drive him out the same way. I figured this would result in the least number of eye-witnesses getting a good and memorable look at him before the rescue.

Angela had a good idea of how long it'd take to get helicopter pursuit after us, and we could use our extensive radio gear to narrow that down more precisely when the time came. We hoped to be long gone before any helicopters could threaten us. But we did some extensive preparations for the possibility, just in case.

Given the decoy cars and the tow truck ice breaker (for gate-crashing), and Angela's insider info-- plus Shadow and mine's own capabilities-- I was pretty sure I could get us away from the ground pursuit and into position to evade the helicopter search in the time allotted. For contingency purposes we'd scoped out several different possibilities for waiting out the air search: we'd choose whichever was closest when (and if) the crunch came.

The tow truck barely held four men and their gear inside the cab. All four were basically military-trained commandos either current or previous by trade (that was my impression, anyway). Three spilled out from the vehicle as soon as it breached the estate gates, while the driver continued to use the truck to damage any possible pursuit vehicles as much as he could, before himself abandoning the ruined truck.

Those four distracted the main security forces as Angela and me and two more guys arrived on the scene, me and Angela in Shadow and the two others in their own car.

Just as before, Angela and I were armed with disposable and untraceable firearms ala Harvey. But I'd also brought along my own 38 Special and 12 gauge pump (the pump filled with bird shot), just in case. This was the first time I'd ever loaded my shotgun with bird shot in a non-hunting use. But I wanted to dial back the injury potential of any rounds fired on this trip, since this was basically a contest between two groups of good guys-- only with most of one group taking orders from a bad guy without knowing it. Everyone on our side was taking measures to reduce the severity of injuries to everyone involved, wherever possible. For instance, we all hoped to mostly just frighten and intimidate with our weapons, rather than actually shoot anyone. But destruction of property was okay, and even encouraged, wherever it helped achieve our ends, or emphasize our determination to our opponents.

Avoiding serious or permanent injuries to the other side was one reason for the large number of well-trained soldiers on the force: they were to incapacitate people by hand rather than firearm, wherever they could.

My job at that stage was mainly to hold and protect Shadow from damage or seizure. To that end I was allowed to park in a sort of out-of-the-way spot to hide him while Angela and others broke into the big house to get her sister.

I liked this much better than the earlier recon mission. Though just waiting around can be awful nerve-racking in its own right.

They went in wearing gas masks, and gas-bombed the house ahead of them as they progressed, thereby either flushing out more security, or forcing them to retreat.

I had a mask in the car too, but hoped to avoid using it. It would be awful hard to drive wearing it.

It'd be up to Angela and me to get Wren out of the vicinity.

We'd ended up spending over a week to prepare for this. I also created more elaborate and specialized items for this run, than any other of this period. Items like a camouflaged car cover, which could make Shadow resemble a huge boulder if correctly applied; fake folding road signs; and fake automotive crash scene accessories.

All this extra gear seemed necessary, as Brooks and his cronies would have the power to use state police helicopters in any search, according to Angela. Yeah, we'd enjoy some cover from the decoys and other tricks. But I was too accustomed to going it all alone to depend overly much on those. And events would prove me correct not to underestimate our difficulties.

With Harvey's help we managed to end up with two other Mustangs to help decoy pursuit. Both were white 1970 models. I didn't learn until later that they'd been stolen for use in this job, by Harvey's men.

(if one of those Mustang owners reads this now, I apologize for all that; I hope you got your cars back after these events!)

I prepped their outer appearances myself, applying stiff plastic strips to the front and rear to mimic Shadow's front air dam look and rear spoiler profile, and then doing a rush job of blending everything in with white spray paint all over, including over their chrome bumpers.

I laid down some dark gray pin stripes on the hoods to emulate Shadow's louvers, and concocted some rough simulations of my Boss 429 hood scoop from more plastic sheeting as hood ornaments.

It was easy to use duct tape to attach much of the plastic, as the results were all painted over afterwards anyway.

I created fake driving lights to hang under the front bumpers of both cars from strong cigar box-type cardboard and aluminum foil (these cars only had to roughly resemble a white Shadowfast from a distance, and even that, for only a short time).

Fortunately, as the primary driver, I didn't have to accompany Angela into the house for what I personally regarded as the worst part of the rescue. Instead, a couple of Harvey's henchmen helped with that.

After spending an awfully long time inside, Harvey's two guys and Angela finally re-emerged and manhandled Wren into Shadow, then the two men went their own way.

With Wren safely sedated (via chloroform) and securely tied down on Shadow's interior rear shelf for safety reasons, Angela and I then began our escape run.

Shadow's police scanner had been equipped with the proper frequency crystals for the regions we figured to be hottest in the chase. The CB radio was useful too. But Angela brought along her own police radio gear as well, for still more nefarious mischief. And Harvey's contacts had supplied us with a special gadget capable of jamming police radio bands too (at my request). It hadn't been too difficult to wire it all into Shadow, as during my original mods to the car I'd purposely made it easy to integrate additional such items. Adding the separate police radio antenna to Shadow had been the most annoying part of the task.

Our seizure of Wren from the estate caused one hell of a brouhaha.

Although Harvey's men did a great job at incapacitating the security in and immediately surrounding the estate, they seemed to scatter to the winds once Wren was inside Shadow. Or at least all those except the decoy Mustang drivers.

The decoys didn't congregate with Shadow and me while we waited, for we didn't want anyone to realize there were three white Mustangs early on. No: the two decoys burst out of hiding a couple blocks away on vectors entirely different from ours, to help muddy the waters if witnesses alerted the police of Shadow's presence at the estate, and/or Wren being abducted via the vehicle.

And sure enough there were witnesses! Quite a few of them, since the estate was in a relatively densely populated area. I mean, there were few folks evident when we first arrived there after dark-- but after the commotion we set into being had gone on for 10-15 minutes, a lot more people appeared as if by magic out of the shrubbery in the high class suburban locale.

Not too many of them paid much attention to me waiting in Shadow-- until Angela and the henchman came trotting out with Wren and stuffed her into the car. We really started getting focused upon then.

But since Angela and I were able to drive off in that moment-- and Harvey's two guys had to make a different exit on foot for at least a ways to reach their own vehicular means of escape-- me and Angela might have gotten off pretty lightly there. Well, unless you count our description being handed over to the cops soon after.

Though I did make a fast getaway from the eye-witnesses, I immediately thereafter slowed down again, once out of their sight, so as not to attract new attention. Our sedate speed enabled us to pass by one incoming police car unmolested.

By that time you could hear multiple sirens all over the city, it seemed. Calls had gone out not only for a police response, but fire trucks and ambulances too, due to the smoke-like gas expelled in the area, and the general confusion as to what was happening. I guess the expensive and large nature of the mansion involved had something to do with that as well.

I was trying to casually make my way to the nearest interstate entry ramp. Unfortunately, it was some distance from the estate.

Our two decoy Mustangs were basically making ever wider circles in the region surrounding the estate, attempting to stay inside an expanding perimeter marked by me and Angela's own progress from ground zero.

Our hope was that if the police got wind of a suspect customized white 1970 Mustang fastback, at least some of them would end up chasing a decoy rather than the real thing.

A few miles from the estate we got eye-deed by an alert cop coming our way at an intersection. He got a good look at us, since we were both momentarily stopped on opposite sides of a red light. Me completely exposed at the front of my line, he the second car from the light in his.

I tried to act nonchalant and relaxed body-language-wise, even as I surreptitiously watched him like a hawk.

When I saw his own body language suddenly change, and him use his radio, I was sure the jig was up. And Angela agreed.

Angela's radio didn't pick up what he said, or else it got covered up or garbled by the other radio traffic we had going on in the car at the time. But we were positive we'd been made.

We still had a red light, with traffic passing before us. I considered my options, and watched for any gap we could shoot through. Then took it, when it presented itself.

It was a squeaker though. So I couldn't just stomp the gas. For that would have wasted time and power in useless wheel spinning. No, instead I gave Shadow the closest thing to a perfect measure of gas feed for the situation I could muster, so that we rapidly ramped up from zero to maybe 40 mph, before I pressed deeper to maybe 2/3 throttle-depth.

We shot across the intersection in-between passing cars like some mad character dashing through a life-sized pinball machine. We left much angry car horn honking and hard braking screeches in our wake. Maybe even a fender bender or two; I don't know. But I was pretty sure I'd given all the civilian drivers involved adequate spacing to avoid a serious crash. You can't, however, always prevent people from panicking unnecessarily in such situations; and so maybe over-reacting to the moment.

Plus, if I did leave a minor wreck in my wake, it might help delay the cop from taking after me, I figured.

I took the cop by surprise with that move; I saw it in his face as we passed him by. Still worse (for him), he'd made the rookie mistake of getting his car trapped too close behind the one in front of him. Combined with the car on his own tail, he had effectively trapped himself with zero maneuvering room, and so couldn't go anywhere until someone else allowed him to.

I'd considered the other two directions available at the intersection. But thought driving directly opposite the way he was currently pointed would at least delay that one officer's pursuit of us by a minute or so more than the other choices.

However, he'd now gotten the word out. So Angela contacted the decoy cars via CB, and I soon turned Shadow so that we'd pass near the course of the closest decoy making its rounds behind us, to add to its usefulness.

But before the police could start reporting on that decoy's movements radio-wise, Angela and I encountered a wholly random but still formidable other type of obstacle: a road-block. Not a road-block set up for us; not this early in our caper. But a road-block caused by a fairly substantial traffic accident which had nothing to do with us.

There were two cop cars present at the scene. One officer was directing traffic around and away from the central mess.

Somehow we hadn't gotten advance warning about this over Angela's police radio-- or else we'd missed it due to the other stuff going on at the time.

I don't know if it took them a bit to recognize us from our description, or if they were only then first hearing of our existence over the radio, but we had a moment there where they did nothing at all out of the ordinary towards us.

Then the moment was gone. The officer still in his car yelled at the one directing traffic, and the second began signaling all the cars in every direction to stop dead (all these stalled cars would make it tougher for me to escape the situation). At the same time I saw the first policeman disembarking from his car and headed around to his trunk-- probably to get his shotgun.

I badly needed to get turned around! But the close conditions strongly limited what I could do.

I turned my steering wheel to the right, and motored Shadow's front end partially up onto the sidewalk there. Then I power-braked the car, which is basically holding down the brake pedal enough to prevent the front wheels from rotating, while the rear wheels spin (in my rear wheel drive car, my engine could overpower the brake hydraulic pressure holding the rear wheels locked, if you tipped the balance of throttle and brake pedal pressures just so).

This was a common drag strip maneuver, meant to heat up the rubber of your tires, and so give you a better grip for 'shooting out of the hole' faster, once you got the green light.

Here though, I was using it to economically turn us around in the cramped quarters we currently inhabited.

This action required a much shorter time to implement than it takes to explain it. It had to. For if I'd waited until we were fully stopped after climbing the curb before doing the power-braking, the turn might not have happened at all. We had to have a little momentum for it to work as I wanted.

I only got nearly a 90 degree turn out of it. But that was enough. I was then able to get the remainder of a full 180 degree turn in more normal driving fashion, as we invaded the sidewalk and the adjoining street edge not usually occupied by traffic (luckily no parking meters blocked my immediate path).

I honked my horn and turned on my siren to get pedestrians to vacate my course, and at the end of the block managed to shoulder my way back into street traffic again (which also allowed me to switch my siren back off).

The siren helped a lot, as it confused people, and made some drivers try to make room for the emergency vehicle they expected to follow the siren's wail.

Apparently Harvey's men had done an excellent job at stymieing pursuit from the estate itself. But our luck was finally running out with regards to the city police. Not long after escaping the road block, siren squeals and flashing blue lights behind us announced the presence of two other patrol cars. The crackling from the onboard radios indicated another couple more ahead of us.

Damn! We'd almost made it to the interstate, too!

This chase was sort of an unusual one for me. Because I wanted to do everything I could to minimize harm or even problems in general for those chasing us. After all, virtually none of them knew about the heinous things Brooks was up to in the mansion and elsewhere around Nashville. Those now chasing us were just doing their jobs.

I needed a clear route to the interstate. That meant I needed to make my four police cruisers think I was headed somewhere else.

So I pulled a 180 degree turn on the fly, and floored it right at the first cop car previously behind me, at the same time switching on every forward light I had, plus emergency blinkers, and letting my own siren wail again in response to his.

Cops won't usually play chicken with you that way-- or at least back then they didn't. So he swerved off, which exposed the second police car behind him to my charging display.

But I didn't try to ward off the second car as I had the first. Instead, I immediately swerved into the direction opposite that the first police car had taken to avoid a crackup (so I now turned to my right), to race down another street entirely. This forced the second cop to have to make a fast stop, and double back to make the turn, while the first soon took up position behind him.

But by the time they'd made the turn I'd already made another one at the next corner, this one to the left rather than the right, with various intervening buildings helping to shield my moves from the sight of my pursuers.

Fortunately the traffic was relatively light this time of night, and in this section in town. Plus, I was basically depending on Shadow's tight handling around corners and his decent low end torque and acceleration here, rather than his top end. So we rarely broke above 80 mph even for brief spurts during this span.

I returned to the original road we'd all been traveling, only this time headed back towards the estate, and at a very leisurely pace. I wanted all four cars to get behind me and maybe think I was confused in direction. And it worked. For three, anyway.

I couldn't afford to wait around for the fourth. I sped up as I got them lined up behind me, but not nearly enough to lose them.

Once I had us all positioned as I desired, I hit the strobes and the stealth lighting circuit simultaneously.

I let the strobes flare for a good five seconds before switching them off, then skidding around another corner, leaving my pursuit half-blinded and instinctively decelerating. Thereby putting still more distance between us and them.

I made sure to lay out a further tangled path between me and them too, as I drove away, as an added security measure. Then I began making my way back to the interstate again.

The missing fourth car though managed to get behind me as I took the entry ramp. Damn it. I'd hoped to rid myself of these guys before this point!

Luckily this was one of those ramps with a follow up exit very close by, so I took that. Taking the police car with me, of course.

I continued to run until Angela confirmed he'd called in our current course. Then I flipped on the onboard radio jammer and all our radios became useless. But so did his.

I flipped on my strobes again and wagged my tail as I let loose my tire poppers on him (here off the interstate and among the city blocks, our speeds weren't nearly so dangerous for him tire blow out-wise, and in any case he could likely receive any aid required quicker-- once I allowed his radio to work again).

After seeing him fall behind in the rear view, I then made for the next nearest interstate entry ramp and took it.

Once there I dialed up our speed to 120 mph and kept it there for a while, not being forced to slow down too often, due to light overnight traffic.

I switched off the jammer once we'd put a couple miles between us and the nailed pursuit car, and all our radio gear came back to life. The jammer's range wasn't very big, anyway. Plus, we could actually be tracked by the jamming itself if we used it for too long.

Around that time my 180 degree rear view mirror showed me blue lights anew in the distance behind us. At that point I couldn't tell exactly what sort of law we had back there, via sight alone. But the radio chatter soon informed us: state highway patrol. A trooper had just happened to be nearby when we lost our city pursuit, and figured if we'd taken the interstate we might be somewhere ahead of him. He'd known there was an entry ramp near to where the jamming had erupted over the radio waves. And both the state and city cops were now especially incensed by me and Shadow: for word was spreading fast about my high performance car, expert driving maneuvers, strobe lights, and tire poppers. To the cops, I was suddenly becoming one major prize for the capture. My original caper at the estate no longer mattered to these guys: this was now a contest between professional law enforcement personnel and equipment, and a professional getaway driver, equipped with a car specially designed to escape them all.

And what red-blooded American male police officer wouldn't see that as a personal challenge?

I knew this shift in perspective among all my uniformed pursuit wasn't good news for me. But I also knew it'd been inevitable. So I tried to look at the bright side: maybe the new consensus among them would cause them to make more mistakes in the chase, as teamwork fell victim to an every-man-for-himself tendency to make wild grabs for the glory of my capture.

Yeah, I was surely dreaming there. But even just a single little break of that sort could help me out in certain scenarios.

But enough daydreaming: I needed to deal with the here and now. Like that trooper in the distance behind us. Hmm. Some trooper cars had a top end better than our own. And drivers who dared to use it.

Well, he didn't know for sure we were here-- although if we continued here long enough he might get indications over the CB from frightened motorists or angered truckers we passed by at speed.

An exit sign flashed by, and I waited until the last possible moment to decelerate sufficiently to take it. There was much tire-screeching and gritting of teeth to accompany the sudden change.

We got off there and took a chance on an old state highway running parallel to the interstate there for a piece. It helped a lot to have Angela there with me, with her intimate knowledge of the lay of the land here.

We left the trooper chasing a ghost on the interstate. But on the radio there were discussions of road blocks soon being set up in spots ahead.

It was around this point that we learned the fate of the two decoy cars: they'd both been taken out of action. But at least they'd drawn off enough pursuit for Angela and I to get this far. We'd been unable to get expert drivers for the decoys. Plus, they'd only been stock Mustangs (possessing few (if any) extra cost performance options), which at best were rough matches for police cars (police cars with drivers not trained in hot pursuit techniques, that is). So I'd known they wouldn't last long. Too, the Nashville PD had turned out to be more competent than expected. I was mostly used to just one-on-one police chases, by rural cops, often equipped with largely factory stock cars and maybe little or no skill in fast driving. But the Nashville PD had turned out to be a different animal entirely. It was like the whole bunch were state troopers(!) So it was a good thing I'd also had experience with a few troopers too, along the way. And an especially good thing that I had one as an eager accomplice in this run!

I'd hoped to roll out enough distance fast to get us past such things. But no dice. Angela and I hurriedly discussed our options here.

According to the radio a second trooper on the interstate nearby was soon going to pass by our location. We talked it over and decided to try shadowing him after the next entry ramp.

So we returned to the interstate again, less than a quarter-mile behind the fresh trooper, headlights and driving lights on, and stealth circuit off.

As we rapidly closed the gap with him (he wasn't moving particularly fast) I took an opportunity to switch off my driving lamps when he wouldn't have us in direct view, in order to confuse his perceptions of how fast one particular car was coming up on him from behind.

This second trooper didn't have his blue lights on, and so was harder to track visually at a distance. However, I had pretty keen eyesight at that age (when wearing my eyeglasses), and could frequently spot and identify the telltale roof light structure of a trooper car quite a ways off. Even by the mere illumination of occasional street lamps or the headlights of other vehicles.

I could also readily identify police cars by their front or rear light signatures, in many cases. On long trips such as the three hour one-way drive between home town and college (if traveled at normal speeds), I'd frequently practiced this skill to pass the time. Testing how well I could distinguish cop car lights and roof racks from those of civilian vehicles, both night and day. And honing the skill by trying to learn from my mistakes.

By this point in my life I rarely erred at this particular chore.

In the here and now, I tried to be careful not to raise the ire of too many civilians along the way-- especially those with visible CB antennas on their cars.

Soon I'd managed to reduce the number of cars between us and the trooper to only three. But there I decided to hold my position.

Apparently this trooper was bringing up the rear of the first to insure I hadn't circled around and followed the other guy, according to the radio.

I loved it!

Not long after that the two troopers realized I'd lost them, and discussed their options between themselves and their dispatcher. It sounded like Angela and I had just squeaked through a spot fated to have a check point established there only a few minutes hence. Yay!

At that moment Angela broadcast from her radio a fake call like she was still on the force and had spotted me a long ways off in another direction. Angela purposely garbled her self-identification over the radio-- but made sure everything else about her call sounded perfectly legit. Then we punctuated the last half of her call with intermittent jamming, to help justify them losing contact with her after that-- while also seeming to confirm her contact with the wanted car.

Naturally, the two troopers and others around began to regroup in response. That soon left us with some clear interstate ahead, after we watched our trooper get off an exit.

Yay!

After that I figured it safe to do maybe 80-85 mph through interstate traffic, and 100-110 mph where the road was clear, without risking too much civilians alerting the authorities as to my whereabouts. So that's what we did for a while.

Brooks though had become aware of our intrusion himself by that time, and was apparently screaming bloody murder, demanding all resources be brought to bear on our capture. At least that's what Angela gleaned from the new chatter she began hearing over the airwaves.

Unfortunately for Brooks we weren't going to be in Tennessee much longer, having chosen a short route to the border-- which would hopefully put us beyond even his reach.

But that was still a trek of roughly 50-60 miles, and we couldn't use top speed without possibly drawing unwanted attention to ourselves.

And wouldn't you know it? Right about then we ran right through a solitary trooper's random speed trap on the journey. Right past his little hidey hole just off the highway. A trooper not called in on the big search, but just doing his regular job on the interstate. Of course he got plenty excited when he realized he might have in his sights the very car everyone was looking for considerably south of his position.

Damn!

Unlike the previously missed call about the wreck-related road block in town, this time Angela seemed to realize what had happened lightning quick, and immediately switched the radio jammer back on.

So far as I could tell, that shut down the lone trooper's alert to his buddies before it was too late (for us). Thereby leaving him on his own to take us down.

Of course we couldn't know that for certain until much later. In that moment, all we had to go on was that Angela believed she'd cut him off in time. And she would continue to interfere with his broadcasts from that point on, whenever he made such attempts, by reactivating the jammer as necessary (but we used it sparingly, in an effort to avoid the liabilities that could bring).

Without a working radio, it all came down to him against me; his trooper car versus Shadow.

There was still a chance he could call up aid via radio. If his signal was strong enough; and there were local cops around with the same crystals as state troopers; and they happened to be listening at the proper moment. But the lone trooper's signal probably couldn't carry farther than a quarter-mile from his car against the jamming, at best. Not until there was a lot more distance between us and him than currently existed.

We'd successfully dispelled most of our pursuers with our multitude of tricks. All this last trooper could get in a hurry now might be some local town cops along the way. In most cases of course, that was more than enough to stop a desperado. But Angela and I weren't your garden variety outlaws. And Shadow definitely not your average getaway car.

Still, this lone trooper was a wild card: something neither Angela or I could have fully anticipated in our plans.

He also wasn't half-bad in the pursuit department.

What followed would be the most difficult escape from legitimate trooper pursuit of my entire time with Shadow.

Angela and I quickly nicknamed the lone trooper "Buddy". Buddy seemed to realize his jammed radio predicament very quickly. And had apparently undertaken high speed chase of us within only seconds of us passing his hiding place. For within well less than ten minutes he was roaring up on our tail.

He had to have reached around 150 mph to do that, as we'd passed him at 100 mph or faster, and hadn't been slowed much by traffic complications after that.

Yes, I plainly saw him coming in my rear view mirror. And ramped up our own speed in response. But at that time Shadow didn't yet possess his nitrous oxide set up. And so Buddy had a considerably higher top speed than us.

I couldn't get away from him by virtue of velocity alone.

I'd already used up my tire poppers in town. I still possessed my crash bars, but loosing either of those anti-pursuit measures upon Buddy at our current speed would have very possibly killed him; and he didn't deserve that.

We were also going too fast to get much help from fancy maneuvering on my part; I had to slow us both down to expand my options.

So-- to maximize Buddy's safety-- I first made sure we were on a nice straight stretch, then flipped on my strobes. Not for long though. For I was afraid of totally blinding him for too long at this speed. So I didn't allow more than maybe three flashes or so-- which meant I basically flipped them on and then back off again in almost the same motion.

My generosity would prove to be a mistake.

As expected, he slowed down a lot for maybe 30 seconds or so after the powerful flashes. But then came on again, and strong.

I realized I should have made a longer-lasting impression on his retinas; for I had gained neither the time or degree of lower velocities desired.

This time Buddy changed his tactics. Namely, he didn't just get close behind me; he kept coming until he hit us! Then did it again, and again! I got the idea he meant to knock my rear wheels loose from the pavement and make me lose control. But I was too road-savvy for that. And Shadow way too good a handling car for it.

His true purpose didn't dawn on me right then. Not until after I decided to hit him with the full force of my strobes-- and couldn't.

Buddy had struck at my strobe lights with his front bumper and basically disabled them. One quit completely and the other got redirected downwards towards the road, which drastically reduced its effectiveness.

Apparently he'd managed to slide his front bumper underneath my rear just enough to impact the strobe light housings there.

That was no mean feat on his part: as Shadow's rear bumper wasn't elevated like many other hot rods of the day. No, I realized later that to strike my strobe housings like that he'd had to perform a delicate balancing act with his patrol car's own stance-- actually doing some significant braking just a split second before contact, in order to tilt his own bumper down slightly. And thereby slide in under my own. Damn! I switched off the ruined flashers.

Now that he was literally chewing on our ass, I felt I had little choice but to let him have some stronger medicine. I just hoped it wouldn't kill him.

But I'd never released my bars on someone right on my tail like this. I could imagine all sorts of things going wrong in such a situation, possibly causing me and Angela some grief too. So I badly wanted to put just a bit more of a buffer zone between us for that.

It was definitely risky. But immediately after he rammed us again and briefly bounced away once more, I swerved over to the other lane and jammed on the brakes before he could react, sending him shooting past us at horrendous speed.

This was a highly dangerous maneuver, as I had to get not only Shadow's wheels lined up straight again before hitting the brakes, but his whole physical inertia lined up with the road ahead, as well. For anything less and I'd be out of control in the massive deceleration following.

That meant I had to take us right up to the very limits of certain laws of physics here-- and do it with my all too human perceptions, thought processes, and reflexes: capabilities which often rate too slow for many real world aims like this.

I did have a few things on my side here though: Shadow's unusually light weight, tight racing suspension, and super-responsive performance in general. And my past driving experience, too. Those things would give me some margin for error here. I just couldn't know if they'd give me enough.

I was pressed badly from two directions on the timing of this maneuver. One, I had to execute it all faster than Buddy could respond to the move. And two, after the sudden lane change, I had to allow Shadow's mass sufficient time to get settled into its new course straight-ahead, before I slammed on the brakes. Although with his race car suspension Shadow would only require a fraction of a second for this, it still made my window of opportunity scarily small.

Unfortunately, even if all that worked, what had to come after it was still more frightening. And I had only time enough to give Angela the very briefest and vaguest of warnings about what was to come.

Almost before Buddy's tail flashed by our front end, I let off the main brakes, slammed the emergency brake pedal to the floor, and spun the steering wheel around, to make maybe the most dangerous 180 degree high speed turn I ever tried with Shadow. I truly worried we might roll over with that one! But with this guy I didn't have much slack time-wise.

And Wren and the mission equipment were situated low in the car too, helping to hold our center of gravity down.

In an example of how fast things change, I was now thankful to have the extra weight of Angela and Wren in the car. As well as the unusual extra anti-pursuit equipment. For we needed every ounce for this move!

Only a second or two earlier I'd been banking on our comparatively light automotive weight in regards to getting our inertia directed the way I wanted before the deceleration.

Unfortunately the 180 didn't come out clean. That is, I made a few 360 degree spins before I could get straightened out again, and yank the brake release. Maybe because the extra weight of the girls and equipment made Shadow respond a little differently than I expected to certain actions.

And in the confusion I ended up still facing in the original direction at the end. Not what I'd intended at all.

However, as I'd experienced on previous occasions, the 360 degree spins had helped me to slow down faster than Buddy, and in a shorter distance. So as I neared maybe 30 mph, he was still likely doing 60 or so in the same direction, down the road a ways, trying his damnedest to get stopped.

All of which still worked out pretty well for me! After regaining control, I just had to make a much more sedate 180 degree turn, run quickly across the median to the opposite lanes, and then accelerate again.

I didn't run as fast as I could have. For this time I wanted Buddy to get behind us. Only at something less than the previous speeds, and with a bit more separation distance, if possible.

I kept a close eye on Buddy in my 180 degree rear view mirror. Angela helped too. I believe our most recent maneuver had terrified and nauseated her somewhat-- and even Wren, unconscious as she was, had squealed and whimpered a bit on the rear shelf-- but thankfully neither girl emptied her stomach in the car during or after the event (that alone might have ruined us, as the smell of vomit in such an enclosed space might have sickened me as well, and endangered us all in terms of my driving capabilities).

Buddy recovered very quickly, and was soon fast swallowing the road behind us again.

I guess I was getting antsy from Buddy's dogged and eerily expert pursuit. Or maybe wanted a bigger than usual buffer zone between myself and crash bar pandemonium.

Buddy's lights grew rapidly behind us, and I dropped my crash bars.

He saw the crash bars and swerved off the road and into the median to avoid them, nearly wrecking himself in the process.

Yeah, that was a slick and savvy move on his part. I can only assume he'd had previous experience of some kind with such road hazards. That, combined with his present hyper-vigilance due to the excitement of past minutes, helped him to completely dodge my bars.

But I believe part of the reason he succeeded in evading my bars was because I jumped the gun in releasing them. I should have waited another second; that would have denied him the distance and time he needed to avoid them. And he sure was lucky he didn't crack up when he went off the road like that!

Virtually all civilians are so shell-shocked by a wipe out like that, that they immediately afterwards simply sit still for a while, to let their thoughts and perceptions catch back up to reality again. Quite a few trained police officers, too.

But not Buddy! That guy was tenacious! And couldn't be rattled, short of significant bodily injury! Within seconds of going off the road, it was clear he was going to come back at us again.

Whoa!

Well, I was heading in the wrong direction now anyway. Hopefully I could shake him with one more trick, now that I had the current breathing space.

At least I hoped I could! For my bag of tricks was getting awfully slim! Sheesh!

I managed to put nearly a quarter mile between us before he could begin rapidly closing again.

We approached the zenith of a hill the interstate ran over, and I was inspired.

Maybe I no longer had my strobes to flash-blind him. But I could still kill off my tail lights, in something of a reverse tactic to the strobes. He hadn't seen me do that yet. Maybe never seen or heard of anyone using that trick before (I hoped!).

I activated the stealth lighting circuit, then slammed on the brakes, doing my best to keep us straight as we violently decelerated.

Once we'd slowed down sufficiently I shut off all my forward lights too and turned into the median again, trying to see just by the indirect lighting of other traffic for the crossing.

I found a suitable break in the traffic and surged over to the emergency lane on the far side with no operating lights at all. There, I slowly drove along for a few seconds until we got appropriate cover from passing traffic that I could switch on my regular headlights and switch off my stealth circuit again, even as I massively accelerated to try blending in with everyone else in a hurry-- just as my trooper pal came roaring up the opposite lanes across the way, going all out at maybe 150 mph to catch me.

To Buddy from a distance, it'd looked like my tail lights had disappeared over the crest of the hill.

And that, dear officer Buddy, is how I lost you.

Once Buddy was out of sight, I increased speed up to only around 85 mph again-- once more to limit betrayal risks by civilians along the way.

Maybe a couple minutes later we used the jammer against him for the last time, as he tried once more to alert his fellows. Not using it then might have alerted Buddy that he was definitely moving away from us. Plus we were still near enough to him that any sudden reinforcements could have been the straw to break this mission's back.

After such a close call, Angela and I shared some concern that we might unexpectedly encounter more problems along the way-- or even at our planned destination not far from the Kentucky town where Angela had the next leg of her and Wren's transport arranged. So we decided we needed to use one of the few remaining tricks we had left among our preparations.

I left the interstate again at a place which looked likely to have a car wash somewhere nearby. Unfortunately, I couldn't find one. But I did find a secluded spot where I could pull off near a bridge, which crossed a good-sized stream.

Using some cloth rags I kept in my trunk, and the water from the stream, I removed most of the white-wash from Shadow, exposing his true flat-black nature. We basically stopped driving a white 1970 Mustang fastback, and began driving a black one instead.

This process took longer than it should have, as Angela and I kept cringing at the occasional traffic nearby, and shutting off our flashlights to avoid discovery. It was also necessary for Angela to keep close tabs on Wren, and give her more chloroform if she appeared to be rousing too much.

You have to be careful about stuff like that: too big a dose could kill someone, or cause them brain-damage, rather than merely keeping them unconscious.

But our fears proved unfounded. And Wren and Angela's transfer to other transportation in Kentucky sometime later went off without a hitch.

Angela gave me a smile, a hug, and a kiss on the cheek when we said farewell. And assured me she'd be in contact with Harvey soon to tell him what a terrific job I'd done.

The last I saw of Wren, Angela had her gagged and manacled (chains connecting both her wrists and ankles). By that point Wren was groggily awake and silently fuming. For it turned out that Wren had been with Brooks voluntarily-- or at least in her own mind that'd been true. Angela insisted that Brooks had brainwashed Wren, and that the rescue had definitely been necessary.

In the decades after that, I'd hear of other cults, and other rescues of cult members, by concerned families. Some of those cults turned out to be history-making crazy; sometimes even culminating in mass suicides of all their members. As for the rescues, some seemed reasonable, and some not. All these years later I prefer to think that Wren's rescue was a good and worthwhile one. But I can't honestly say I know that for sure.

From the hard stares she gave everyone at the hand-off point, I'm guessing Wren still remembers my face to this day. But I don't think she ever knew my full name.

Of course, if Wren ever reads this and recognizes the events despite all the changes I've made to certain details, my cover will finally be blown where she's concerned! Ha, ha.

As for me getting back home, I had to hole up in a series of cheap hotels for a week or so, until Tennessee was forced to give up their most strenuous search efforts for me. A few times I felt compelled to choose hotels within walking distance of good separate places to hide Shadow. For it was too dangerous to use the hotels' own lots in some cases (where they could be easily scanned in a drive-by), or park Shadow anywhere too many people might see him during the day. Even with the complete reversal of paint scheme (for I couldn't be sure how well that would work). I also only switched hotels (and drove Shadow) at night, when it'd be much more difficult for the law to pick me out of the other traffic.

I wasn't allowed to call or write anyone during this period. Especially Harvey! That had been part of the plan, so I'd made arrangements with family and friends beforehand not to expect to see me around for a while.

Man, was that ever a slow series of days for me! In all the hubbub surrounding the rescue, I'd neglected to round up some good books to read in my hotel stays. That left me stranded in a desolation of day-time TV soap operas and afternoon kid shows. Yuck!

The days were the worst, as I was confined to what activities I could undertake on foot-- since I didn't dare bring Shadow out of hiding. But night-time wasn't much better, for I still felt I had to minimize driving around much without a darn good reason.

To make the evenings more bearable, I did locate and attend some local movie theaters. And even killed some time in some gaming joints playing air hockey, and one bowling alley (which just goes to show how desperate I was).

For some reason I couldn't locate a decent local library anywhere during this span.

During all this, I was of course also making my way via low speed limit country roads and an excruciating sequence of zillions of course changes and mistakes just that side of the border with Tennessee, all the way into Virginia, where I then gingerly headed south through the tri-cities region to get back home (doing my best to avoid attracting attention of any kind).

Back then I-81 was still largely a fantasy. And would have entailed still more extra mileage to reach, anyway, had it existed (in case some of you were wondering why I didn't try it).

And all that's how I succeeded in my audition. Did I get the job? Yes!

Did Brooks' dirty laundry regarding the harem/coven ever get revealed to the public? I honestly don't know, as there was no practical way for me to keep up with news like that in the months and years which followed. It was far too low on my priority list, for one thing.

However, some events were big enough to break through my circumstantial news embargo.

Brooks eventually ended up being convicted for quite a wide range of crimes. I don't know if the list included anything about the coven and cult, but whatever there was, was enough to put him in prison for decades. He eventually became one of the most famous criminal politicians in Tennessee history, I believe.

As for Megan and Kim, I have no idea what became of them afterwards. It's now been decades since I last saw or heard from Megan. Hopefully she eventually found some guy she could be honest with and settled down to raise a bunch of kids-- and turned out to be a better mother than she ever was a single woman.

I expect Angela managed to become a police officer of some sort again. As for her sister Wren, hopefully she took a lesson from her ordeal and became much tougher to recruit for any other cult scheme.

In regards to me and Shadow-- I did have to repair my strobe lights and the brief sheet metal apron upon which they resided. And do a bit more work besides that on Shadow's tail. But compared to many other of our adventures, that amount of damage was almost not worth mentioning.

I'd end up never using some of the tricks described here again. But I'd hold onto the stuff just in case, for many years to come-- some of it even long after Shadow himself was gone.

(Of course, Angela took back her police radio gear, as well as Harvey's jammer, at our Kentucky stop; so I didn't get to hold onto that stuff)

One day decades later, the fake boulder disguise cover would become a back yard camping and play tent for children; the kids of one of my brothers.

Yes, by then I'd fairly freely tell them about my supercar days and adventures. Sometimes as bedtime stories when they stayed over. For they seemed to like them. Even demand them, at times! Ha, ha. It's a shame I had only a limited supply to give them.

On the brighter side, they didn't mind hearing them over and over again.

One of my nephews once gave me his expert seven year old opinion of one of my tales, by saying "I have to admit, it's not bad."

To my mind, that was high praise from a 21st century kid equipped with video games, DVDs, and the internet!