BP 255
As I mentioned a month ago, I will be sharing an excerpt from each of my fiction books in my Jack Sutherington series over this five-week period. Today’s excerpt comes from the fifth book in the series which is entitled Death Sentence.
In this excerpt, the evil Draegan DaFoe and his henchmen infiltrate the giant underground cavern where Jack and his Academy friends have gone to find a treasure that was deposited in a small room inside the cavern over a century ago. Jack has just discovered the treasure in the small room when he hears shouts coming from the cavern . . .
Jack rushes to the cave entrance and looks out over the rubble pile. To his horror, an all-out brawl is under way. He scans the large cavern that is marginally illuminated by the portable work lights. At first, he has no idea who is fighting who. Then he sees Chan, the bodyguard who had almost killed him at The Abyss. He is standing several feet away from the convalescing David Abramovich, beckoning for the Mossad agent to come and engage him in hand-to-hand combat.
So, these are Draegan’s men! There must be fifty of them. But how did they find a way into the cave? Did they enter through his dorm room trapdoor? Or did they gain access through some other entrance?
His scanning eyes spot Clare Tunstile and then Steve Slotter, the academy mole or, better yet, the rat.
Before he can think another thought, his eyes fall on a horrifying sight: Draegan DaFoe is standing near the river–reason alone to be terrified. But even worse than that, Jack observes that the huge man has his arm around the waist of none other than Emily Parker! What is she doing here? The monstrous man is holding a knife to her throat and speaking something into her ear. A wicked smile is fixed on his evil face—the one with the small eyes and the hanging jowls.
Jack does not pause to think but acts totally on instinct. Even as several gunshots boom and reverberate in the mammoth River Room, he scrambles over the rubble that blocks most of the portal of the Duel Room. With the silver cannonball still in his hand, he sprints toward the wicked progeny of Philip DaFoe, the murderer of Jacob’s wife and children whose body lies only sixty feet away from his great-great grandson.
Jack has one advantage: the devil incarnate is not looking in his direction. Emily is. She sees him coming and it only energizes Jack more when he sees her beautiful green eyes brighten.
At the moment, Jack leaps at the man who is threatening Emily’s life, Draegan turns and sees him, but it is too late for him to react.
Jack strikes the side of the huge man’s head with the cannonball and hits him hard with his body. Draegan drops the knife and staggers backward. He does not fall, however. Emily wrenches herself free from the man’s compromised grip and runs over to Jack.
Jack takes three seconds to scan the room to his left. He sees David lunge forward and grab Chan’s hand in a hold that must be a technique from Krav Maga, an Israeli combat technique. Stewart throws his body against the legs of the man charging at him, knocking him hard to the stone floor. His cousin, Clyde, is fighting with a fury in his eyes undoubtedly fueled by a desire to get revenge for his cousin, Donnie’s, murder. Colonel Windsor and Chaplain Bloomstrom engage two other men. One is drawing a gun from his waistband. Rachel and Aly run at Clare and grab her arms.
The sounds of grunts, shouts, shoes scraping over the stone floor and body blows bounce off the towering ceiling. Several more gunshots explode in the cave and echo loudly. The scene is pure chaos.
Stunned by the impact of the cannonball, Draegan shakes his head like a prize fighter attempting to recover from a knockout blow. He stares at Jack with eyes that are volcanoes of rage. The cannonball is in his left hand. Then he glances down at the floor of the cavern. Jack follows the man’s eyes and sees the knife. Both men dive for the weapon at the same time.
Despite his massive girth, Draegan proves quicker and grabs it just before Jack’s hand swipes across the empty floor. The large man immediately slashes at Jack’s neck. Jack ducks under the blade and then, pushing off his back foot, slams his shoulder into the man’s chest with great force. He is not successful in knocking the heavy man off his feet, but Jack’s momentum drives Draegan backwards.
Before Jack can disengage, both he and the large man fall off the floor of the cavern and splash into the underground river. Jack sees the water coming and has time to draw in a deep breath.
Initially, Jack is on top of Draegan as they sink into the cold water but then Draegan rolls over on top of him. For a few moments, there is enough light to see his opponent’s face. The man’s teeth are bared, like those of a snarling wolf. His eyes are twice their normal size—engorged with insane emotion. Jack has both hands wrapped around the right hand that wields the knife.
As the two men struggle, they sink deeper into the river and the light from above is slowly replaced by gloom. Draegan’s face grows darker and more grotesque until it appears that he has the countenance of a demon. Eventually, it is enveloped by darkness.
The men writhe in the water like entwined snakes. While Jack maintains his two-handed grip on Draegan’s right wrist, the heavy man–who is all anchor and no life preserver–pummels Jack with the heavy cannonball that is still in his left hand. He lands blow after blow to Jack’s face. Fortunately, the severity of the blows are tempered by the resistance of the water and Jack’s grip. Still, Jack feels like he’s being pounded by a slow-motion sledgehammer.
Eventually, it strikes Jack that he and the human behemoth are still sinking deeper into the river and the water is growing colder by the second.
**
Just when it looks like Draegan’s thugs might win the day, the cavern is overrun with a small army of law enforcement officers wearing bulletproof vests and carrying handguns and shotguns. A dozen are members of local law enforcement while the others are FBI agents and highway patrol troopers. Their guns are drawn and pointed toward the floor of the River Room as they run.
They rush toward the scene of the battle shouting at everyone to get down on the ground or risk being shot. All the combatants eventually drop to the floor of the cave on their stomachs. Chan is already lying on the ground, unconscious.
From his prostrate position on the floor of the gloomy cavern, Armando looks around and shouts, “Has anyone seen Jack?”
“I saw Jack and Draegan go into the river,” Rachel cries back with fear in her voice.
“When?” Armando shouts.
“It was minutes ago, Manny,” the woman says with tears beginning to form in her eyes.
Armando gets to his feet slowly with his hands raised. “I’m a good guy,” he yells loudly to the swarming officers. “Our friend is in the river with Draegan DaFoe. We have to help him,” he says, his voice quavering with emotion.
Stewart gets to his feet and so does David who is wincing, and bleeding from his right arm. Soon all the members of the mini-cohort move to the edge of the river while the interdisciplinary task force restrains Draegan’s crew with zip ties.
“It looks deeper over here where they went in,” Stewart says as he begins taking off his shoes. “I’m going in.”
“I’m coming with you,” David says.
Aly and Rachel begin to pray. Armando and Miguel join the two women since neither man knows how to swim.
“Where’s Emily?” Rachel asks abruptly, interrupting her own prayer.
Everyone looks around the cave, but Emily is nowhere to be found.
After Stewart and David have kicked off their shoes and ripped off their shirts, they turn toward the river. Just before they dive in, a head breaks the surface of the dark sheet of water, and they hear someone gasping for breath.
“Emily!” Rachel cries out.
A second later, Emily pulls a body to the surface next to her. It’s Jack. “Help!” she cries out breathlessly. “Jack has drowned!”
Stewart and David jump into the river and pull Emily and Jack to the shore. Many hands lift Jack from the water and carry his lifeless body to a smooth part of the cavern floor in front of the Duel Room. Emily immediately falls on her knees next to Jack and places her ear next to his mouth and nose. As she suspected, there are no sounds of breathing.
“I don’t feel a pulse,” David Abramovich says gravely, his fingers on the side of Jack’s neck.
Without hesitation, Emily places her left hand on the center of Jack’s chest and then places her right hand on top of her left. She begins rapidly pushing down on his chest. Every thirty seconds, she pauses to see if Jack has started breathing.
After two minutes and hundreds of compressions with no results, Emily begins to weep.
“Jack,” she almost yells to her friend as her tears fall on his chest, “You never gave up on me, and I’m not going to give up on you. Breathe, Jack. Please breathe. You have to breathe, Jack. You can’t die now! I—I came back for you.”
After another minute of compressions, Emily snaps at David, “Tilt his head back and lift his chin.” She quickly feels around in his mouth and throat with her fingers for obstructions. After a few seconds, she extracts a small gold coin that had blocked his airway.
“Draegan’s greed infects us all!” Isaiah Windsor growls.
Emily does not pause to reply. She pinches Jack’s nose shut and covers his mouth with her own. Then she blows two quick breaths into his mouth, watching his chest out of the corner of her eyes. It rises.
“Yes!” she says as she goes back to the chest compressions.
After half a minute, she gives Jack two more breaths. She pauses to listen for signs of breathing but hears nothing.
“Let me take over,” Emily hears an authoritative male voice demand. “I’m an EMT.”
Emily shakes her head and begins chest compressions again.
“No!” she cries through her tears. “I have to do this. I’m a trained lifeguard. I’ve done CPR multiple times in the past on the beaches of Florida. I know what I’m doing.”
“Then let me at least use the AED to give his heart a jolt,” the man says.
Emily keeps up the compressions as she glances over her shoulder at the EMT. “Can’t you see he’s too wet. He’s lying in a puddle of water. You’ll injure yourself and only do more harm to him.”
Emily bends over and breathes into Jack’s mouth yet again, pinching his nose closed while she does so. “Feel for a pulse, David,” she orders the Mossad agent as she returns to the compressions.
David grabs Jack’s wrist with both hands and feels for a sign of life. He soon looks up at Emily and shakes his head slowly.
As Emily continues to press down hard on Jack’s chest, she begins to pray for only the second time in recent years.
“Jesus,” she cries, “help, Jack. Don’t do it for my sake. Do it for his. He’s been so faithful to you and . . . to me. Deliver your son from death. Please, Jesus. Please, hear me!”
After administering several more breaths, Emily glances up at some of the fifty people gathered around her in the gloomy cavern. Her eyes quickly travel over the faces of Rachel, Aly, Armando, Stewart, Drew, Embee, Dr. McNeely and the big man from the cemetery. She is confused by his presence. Some of the faces are weeping openly. Others look on grimly. Yet others have their eyes closed and are praying.
The big man with the long stringy hair and crooked nose is one of the faces that is weeping. His whole body is shaking. “I can’t lose another cousin,” she hears him say.
Emily feels a hand on her shoulder. She turns her head and looks into the face of the EMT. He is shaking his head. “It’s time to call it,” the tech says. “He’s not coming back, young lady. It’s been five minutes.”
Emily stares into the man’s gentle eyes for a few seconds. Then she ceases her compressions and covers her face with her hands and begins to weep.
“I’m so sorry, Jack,” she sobs. “I was so harsh with you, but you never gave up on me . . . I failed you.”
Emily cries for only a short time because a voice speaks in her head so loudly that, at first, she thinks it is the EMT again.
Trust me, daughter, it says.
Emily wipes away her tears and turns her attention back to Jack’s lifeless body. She begins chest compressions more vigorously than before.
“I’m not going to quit!” she declares loudly as she pushes down hard on Jack’s chest. “I know for a fact, Jesus, that you didn’t bring me back here to watch Jack die. You brought me back here for a reason. It’s not going to end like this!”
**
Thank you for reading this excerpt from the fifth and final book in the Jack Sutherington series. If you enjoyed it, I invite you to check out the entire series beginning with book one, The Rumbling Beneath. This series is God-honoring, integrates faith and psychology in a manner relevant to real life, and is deeply anchored in strong character development. Check out my author website at davidgkirbyauthor.com for more details about all five books or find them on Amazon.
I will see you next week for at least one more post before I step away from the Designertherapyforlife.com blog for at least a season.
“I waited patiently for the Lord;
he inclined to me and heard my cry.
2 He drew me up from the pit of destruction,
out of the miry bog,
and set my feet upon a rock,
making my steps secure.
3 He put a new song in my mouth,
a song of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear,
and put their trust in the Lord” ~ Psalm 40:1ff
“The cords of death encompassed me;
the torrents of destruction assailed me;[a]
5 the cords of Sheol entangled me;
the snares of death confronted me.
6 In my distress I called upon the Lord;
to my God I cried for help.
From his temple he heard my voice,
and my cry to him reached his ears” ~ Psalm 18:1ff
