As Long As We Both Shall Live (Dangerous Women & Desperate Men) Page 5

  Legend held that the last time a Canadian Prime Minister toured Africa, one journalist got malaria and was taken off the plane in a stretcher hallucinating about spiders – gigantic spiders – crawling all over her.

  After Ethiopia, we were back on the plane to Nigeria, where one of the press vans was shot at – just a warning shot, mind you – for not slowing down for a Nigerian politician’s motorcade. No one was hurt. Then it was on to Dakar, Senegal, a gorgeous city. The rest of the trip kept me busy reporting and filing stories but in the back of my mind forces were at work.

  I was fearful my possible exposure had left me with a ticking bomb. In private moments, I constantly re-read all the rabies literature the doctors had given me, wondering if I would start exhibiting symptoms. On the long flight home, it gnawed at me.

  Nothing came of it, in terms of my personal health.

  I was fine, although my wife may argue I still foam at the mouth on some issues. But creatively, a seed had been planted. Something had taken root. Over the years, I would come back to the incident and several others I had experienced as a journalist.

  Some research led me to understand how bats got rabies from eating insects, like disease carrying mosquitoes. My imagination took me back to Africa on a Conradian Heart of Darkness expedition to pursue a rare bat – at times it was lactating – in order to collect its saliva, which carried an agent far more lethal than rabies. The saliva, when combined with other agents, could lead to something beyond comprehension.

  That’s what I was thinking.

  In time, pieces of many other moments, I had experienced as a reporter, and things I had read about, started coming together for Jack Gannon, the hero of my newest series.

  Readers first met Gannon, who had a blue-collar upbringing in Buffalo, N.Y., when the first book in the series, VENGEANCE ROAD, was released in 2009. The International Thriller Writers named VENGEANCE ROAD a finalist for a 2010 Thriller Award in the category of Best Paperback Original.

  Gannon was striving to escape his troubled newspaper, The Buffalo Sentinel, to work for the World Press Alliance, a global wire service based in Manhattan. He needed another fictional assignment for the next book.

  I wanted him to go global.

  I reached into my travels as a journalist to the story that had been taking shape since my Ethiopian adventure. I got to thinking about a million other things as well and began pulling together what I needed for the next Gannon book. I had a story for him.

  Picture this: A windswept reach of Wyoming and a young mother, Emma Lane, thrown clear of a devastating car crash that killed her husband. Dazed, she sees a figure pull her infant son from the flames. Or does she? Police believe it's a case of trauma playing cruel tricks on her mind, until the night Emma, in her anguish, hears a voice through the phone, “Your baby is alive.”

  A world away a bomb explodes in a Rio de Janeiro café, killing ten people including two journalists with the World Press Alliance. Jack Gannon's first international assignment is to find out whether his colleagues were innocent victims or targets who got too close to a story.

  In the Caribbean, the cruise of a lifetime ends in horror leaving doctors desperate to identify the mysterious cause of a passenger's agonizing death. They turn to the world's top scientists who determine that someone has resurrected their long-buried secret research; research that is now being used as a deadly weapon. With millions of lives at stake, experts work frantically against time. And as Emma searches for her child and Jack Gannon hunts for the truth, an unstoppable force hurls them all into The Panic Zone.

  This essay appeared in Crimespree Magazine.

  Reprinted with the kind permission of Crimespree Magazine. More information at http://www.crimespreemag.com

  The Story Behind The Panic Zone

  By Rick Mofina

  Newsrooms tend to be arenas of understated tension.

  Not much drama until something breaks over a police scanner.

  Then emotion hijacks a dispatcher's voice as it crackles in code about shots fired, or a burning building, or a jetliner in trouble.

  Reflecting on my years as a reporter in newsrooms across Canada, the only thing that topped the adrenaline rush of breaking local news was when an editor dispatched me out of town for a major story.

  "There's been a school shooting near Denver, we want you on the next plane. Don't pack, take a laptop and go. Buy what you need down there." Or, "we need you to chase something for us in The Bahamas and all we have is this unlisted number." Or, "we need you to go to Africa."

  In the case of Littleton, when my plane lifted off, the fear was ten people were dead. A few hours later upon landing, I glimpsed a TV screen in the airport. The toll had climbed and President Clinton was offering condolences.

  My stomach lurched.

  It was gut-churning moments like that in Littleton and in places like The Bahamas to Africa and Kuwait; that I drew upon for Jack Gannon, the protagonist in my new novel, The Panic Zone. In this second story in the series, Gannon, joins the World Press Alliance (WPA), a global wire service based in New York and gets his first international assignment.

  Ten people have been killed in a café bombing in Rio de Janeiro, including two journalists from the WPA’s Rio bureau. Gannon is dispatched to help find the truth behind the attack, wherever it leads. Were his colleagues random victims of a narco war, or on the trail of a bigger story?

  My real-life Littleton assignment was one of the hardest I’d ever faced, covering a monumental tragedy while everyone grappled with the how’s and why’s. In The Panic Zone, Gannon faces greater challenges than I ever did. Not only must he contend with the cultural shock of a country he’s never visited, but he has to deal with the anguish and arrogance of WPA reporters who tell him he is not equipped for the job.

  Aided by a local translator, Gannon does what he does best, he digs for the truth. And it does not take him long to learn, as I often found with a major story, that the truth can take you places.

  In Gannon’s case, it pulls him from Rio to London where a source points him to Morocco. In Rabat, the capital, Gannon races through the medina, the ancient market, with its and labyrinthine alleyways, in a desperate hunt for a key piece of his story.

  I had my share of heart-racing times like that, flying in to an alien situation, scrambling to deliver a story while a clock is ticking down on you. As anyone with first-hand reporting experience knows, it’s part of the job.

  Imagine, you fly into Kuwait City at night. An armed guard seizes your passport and detains you. The next morning you find that the trusted source who had insisted you come has misled you.

  It happened to me.

  My only option was to find another story. Fortunately, I did. It cost me a few arguments and a day of intense pressure, but little more. For Gannon it’s a different story. What he discovers in Africa is devastating and he pays an enormous price for it. As Gannon intensifies his search, he also reflects on – almost longs for – the time of understated tension, when not much was happening in his newsroom.

  That is, until the WPA learned of the café bombing in Rio de Janeiro and his editor tells him: “There’s a TAM flight that leaves JFK in five hours. It’s direct to Rio de Janeiro, arrives eight thirty a.m. tomorrow.”

  “You’re sending me to Brazil?”

  “We need you to help our team there.”

  That’s when Gannon’s heart started beating a little faster.

  This essay appeared in Mystery Scene Magazine.

  Reprinted with the kind permission of Mystery Scene Magazine. More information at www.mysteryscenemag.com

  This book is for

  Lou Clancy,

  who gave me my first job as a reporter.

  In Desperation (Excerpt)

  DAY 1

  Chapter One

  Phoenix, Arizona, Mesa Mirage

  Cora Martin was propped against two pillows in her bed when she heard a faint noise and put her book down.

  Was that Till
y?

  Her daughter was asleep down the hall.

  No, that sounded like it came from outside.

  Cora listened for half a minute. Everything was quiet. She dismissed the noise as a bird or the Bannerman’s darned cat. The clock on Cora’s night table showed the time: 12:23 a.m. She returned to her book. After reading two pages she began drifting off when she heard another strange sound.

  Like a soft murmur. This time it came from a far side of the house.

  What the heck is that?

  Cora got up to investigate, groaning because she had to go to work in a few hours. She needed to get some sleep.

  Wearing only a cotton nightshirt, she padded down the hall to Tilly’s door. It was partially open as usual. Her eleven-year-old daughter was asleep on her stomach. One foot had escaped from the sheets. Cora moved to her bedside, adjusted it then took in the room, Tilly’s stuffed toys, posters of teen idols and Cora’s favorite: the drawing of two happy stick figures holding hands, titled: ‘Mommy & Me.’

  Cora smiled.

  Soft light painted Tilly’s face. She was more than a beautiful child to Cora; she was her lifeline, her hope and her dream.

  I love you more than you’ll ever know kiddo.

  She stroked Tilly’s hair then went from the room to check the rest of the house. Cora had rented the small, ranch-style bungalow at an affordable rate from a widowed realtor who didn’t hide her maternal fondness for single-working moms and their daughters.

  Cora checked the front and back doors then the windows in each room. Nothing was amiss. She reconsidered what she’d heard. It kind of sounded like someone walking around the house.

  She thought of calling the police but pushed it aside for now.

  Should I go outside?

  It would be better to check the alarm system. She went to the console on the wall to inspect the indicator lights. Cora wasn’t afraid to check the yard. This was Mesa Mirage, almost hidden among the larger east valley suburbs of metropolitan Phoenix. Mesa Mirage was a tranquil community of retirement villages and golf courses. It didn’t have its own police department. It was served by the County Sheriff’s Office, supported by volunteer posses and was safe.

  Almost crime free.

  Everything was in order, according to the light sequence of the alarm system. Good. Cora was thirsty. She’d get a drink in the kitchen then crawl back into bed and sleep.

  As she finished her water at the sink she was suddenly haunted by an old secret that kept her hostage to past mistakes. She touched her fingers to her lips. She had forged a good life here and she would do anything to protect Tilly.

  Especially from the monsters she’d buried long ago.

  Cora’s attention shifted to the knock on her front door. Who could it be at this hour? Moving through the living room, she looked at the window and glimpsed two uniformed officers at the door.

  Police?

  She opened it.

  In the instant Cora absorbed their grave faces, half in shadow under the porch light she was pricked by a twinge of unease.

  Something was wrong.

  Not the kind of wrong that often accompanies a late night visit by police, but something darker but she had no time to ponder it.

  “Sorry to trouble you ma’am,” one of the officers said. “We’re checking on the welfare of residents here. Is everything all right?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Can you tell us how many people are in your home tonight?”

  “Just me and my daughter, why?”

  As one of the officers took notes, a thousand points of concern flashed across Cora’s mind. She glanced to the street for a patrol car, finding a late model sedan. She didn’t think the two men were with the County or the volunteer posse. She scanned their uniforms for a shoulder patch. But since she really never encountered police she was not sure if the officers were from, Mesa, Tempe, Chandler or Gilbert.

  “I’m sorry,” Cora said. “Who are you with?”

  “We’re with the task force,” the first officer said. “Ma’am, my question was, are there any firearms in your residence?”

  “No. I hate guns. What task force? What’s this about?”

  “Earlier tonight, an inmate escaped custody, a convicted murderer. He was sighted in this area of the community.”

  “Oh my god.”

  “I’m afraid there’s a bit more to this, may we come in?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Cora let the two men enter her home. Inside, the officers looked around Cora’s living room.

  “Where’s your daughter located at this time?” the first officer asked.

  “Down the hall, in her bedroom, she’s asleep.”

  The officer nodded to his partner.

  “We’ll check on her welfare.”

  “But she’s fine.” Cora watched the second officer quietly enter Tilly’s room, while the first officer spoke to her.

  “It’s routine,” he said, indicating the kitchen. “Let’s go there and I’ll explain.”

  The first officer went directly to the sink over the kitchen window that looked out to the Cora’s back yard. He pulled a pocket telescope from his utility belt, clenched one eye and gazed through it.

  “The suspect is in the house directly behind yours, one row back.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  The officer turned to her and she noticed a scar running along his jaw.

  “We’re here to help set up a perimeter for the SWAT Team,” he said.

  At that point the second officer emerged, nodded to his partner and approached them at the sink.

  “Ma’am?” The first officer offered Cora his scope. “Take a look. It’s the house with the pool lights.”

  She was apprehensive.

  “Go ahead.”

  Her kitchen seemed to be closing in on her as the two officers now stood near. Was this a dream? She took the telescope, raised it to her eye, not sure what she was looking for when pain shot through her skull. Her hair strained her scalp, pulled by some force. Duct tape peeled, Cora’s mouth was sealed before she could cry out. The invaders moved her swiftly and silently to a kitchen chair, taping her ankles, her wrists then her chest to it.

  Terrified, Cora looked down the hall.

  The first man drew his face to Cora’s.

  “Your daughter is fine. Look at me!”

  Cora tried to talk.

  “Are you going to cooperate so we can get through this quickly?”

  Cora nodded.

  “We do not want to hurt you, or your daughter. Understand?”

  Cora nodded.

  “If you scream, or resist we will kill your daughter in front of you.”

  Cora sobbed against the tape.

  “Do you understand? If you cooperate you survive.”

  Cora understood.

  “We know you work for Lyle Galviera at Quick Draw Courier.”

  Cora nodded.

  “I’m going to remove the tape and we’ll talk. If you scream, if you refuse to cooperate or lie, you and your daughter will die. Do you understand?”

  Cora nodded and the second man peeled the tape from Cora’s mouth.

  She gasped, swallowed and listened to the first man: “Lyle uses his company to distribute our product and move cash to be cleaned. Where is the money?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “He has stolen five million dollars from us.”

  “No! This is a mistake! Are you looking for drug money? Lyle’s not involved with drugs. I’ve got nothing to do with drugs. This is all wrong, it’s a mistake. Please leave us alone! I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “We can’t find him. Where’s the money?”

  For the next thirty minutes the invaders ransacked the house. What did they do with Tilly? They must’ve tied her down.

  Or worse!

  “Where is our money?”

  “Did you hurt my daughter?”

  “She’s not
hurt. Where is it?”