Algorithm - Book 1 - The Medallion

Chapter 12

            "I managed to lose him at the far end of the breaker. We need to hurry and get out of here before he figures out I doubled back."

***

            Linda held her hands to her face as she continued her sobbing. Through her fingers she saw Hedda's face turning a deep, dark red.

            "Now, now, my dear," Herman purred in feigned empathy. "There is no need for emotion. I am strictly interested in the artifact. I just want to examine it, perhaps purchase it, and then you can go on your merry way."

            "What will stop us from reporting all o' this to the authorities?  The police don't take kindly to gunplay, even from you," Hedda countered with a contemptuous look.

            "Ach, the police. Maybe you saw them leaving here?"

Not waiting for a response, Herman continued, uttering each word slowly to insure complete understanding. "The police belong to me, Hedda." 

As the message sunk in, Herman glanced at Linda whose head remained buried in her folded arms. She hunched over the tabletop, moaning. Herman, no doubt repulsed by such an outward display of emotion, turned his attention back to Hedda. "You should know this, Hedda. You have lived in this town long enough to know my influence."

Her parents begged the soldier to spare the children. He laughed in response, and when he inhaled to catch his breath, Linda brushed back a lock of hair with one hand, held out the stone with her right arm stretched back ,and with one enormous swing landed it directly on his knee. A staccato yelp left his open mouth. He grabbed at his knee and rolled to the sand. His eyes bulged, and when his mouth opened as if about to scream out for help, a second roundhouse blow from the stone directed between his eyes knocked him completely unconscious. He lay at the shoreline, unmoving, blood oozing from his nose and one leg in the water gently swaying to and fro.

            Hedda rapped her fingers in frustration, and then slumped into her chair in defeat. Herman laid the Luger on the table momentarily as he wiped his mouth once more. Suddenly, Linda lifted the table and flipped it onto Herman. As he collapsed beneath it, she glimpsed both the shocked look and the gun flying through the air. A look she could never forget now, or from long ago. She leaped onto the overturned table, pinning Herman underneath it.

The rain had come to a halt. The sounds of the gentle lapping of the lagoon resumed, interrupted only by droplets arriving from the palm tree canopy above. A gull swooped overhead followed by its call fading into the far side of the lagoon. Peace had descended. Her family stared at Linda in disbelief, and then, one by one, they turned to gaze at the soldier sprawled in the sand. No one spoke. No one moved. Linda arose, tossed the stone back into the mangroves, brushed off her soaked khaki dress, and with a voice only barely tremulous, said, "I think we should get in that boat now."

            "Hedda! Quick, get his gun."

            Linda was no longer sobbing. Hedda loped to the corner of the room to retrieve the Luger, all the while staring at Linda sprawled on the table and Herman's legs squirming beneath.