“So you figured you’d use me.”
Sammy shook his head. “Not at first. For all I knew, you coulda been involved. I followed you for a coupla days. But after the Erickson shooting, it was obvious to Sammy that someone was setting you up.”
“It was you who left Kate’s e-mail at my front door.”
“Had to keep you in the game, Flash. I wanted to know who killed Tartaglia, and why. You knew the woman, and you understand ‘bout vaccines and shit. You were the perfect man for the mission.”
“You threw me out there like a piece of bait.”
“No. You did that when you wouldn’t let go of the kid’s death. Sammy just accommodated your natural tendencies.”
Luke felt the helicopter lean into a turn. Stevens and his copilot were maneuvering the aircraft onto a direct path toward the hospital.
Luke switched to channel one and told Stevens, “Go past the hospital and fly toward Griffith Park.”
“What?” the pilot said. “Where the hell are you taking us?”
Luke reached forward and placed his pistol against the copilot’s neck. “You’re going to do whatever I tell you to do, and your copilot is going to convince ground controllers to go along with our little deviation from the flight plan.”
The copilot seemed to wait for Stevens to make a decision.
“Do what he says,” Stevens said finally.
The copilot’s voice was convincingly dry when he radioed air traffic control and reported a rattle in the fuselage that they wanted to investigate before landing at the hospital. They’d do a few angled turns and rapid decelerations over the unpopulated park to investigate the noise, he said. When controllers didn’t respond immediately, he added, “Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.”
After a long pause in the transmission, ground controllers gave them clearance.
Luke switched back to channel two and said, “My father—what did you mean about taking him out of the battle zone?”
Sammy nodded, as if being brought back to a thought. “When this whole thing began, I wired Barnesdale’s office. He was connected to Zenavax, somehow. I don’t know exactly how and it probably doesn’t matter anymore since he’s dead. Anyway, the CEO thought the guy was acting a little squirrelly and wanted me to monitor things.”
“So?”
“Those bugs are still in place, but now a fella named Caleb Fagan is sitting in that office. One of my people was listening to a tape and heard one side of a cell phone conversation where Fagan was talking about sending your ol’ man and Wilson back to Abraham’s bosom once they, as he put it, ‘finished their work.’ Calderon’s name was mentioned.”
Luke’s mind called back an image of the mosquitoes. “Did my father destroy his mosquitoes?”
“Negative. Wilson and your dad weren’t exactly chatty when I first snatched ’em from the hospital. They didn’t tell me how the mosquitoes figured into this until a few hours ago.”
Luke pounded his fist against a strut.
“They told me ‘bout you coming after Caleb,” Sammy continued, “so I was waiting when you showed up at the hospital. Following you to Long Beach wasn’t too hard after you stole that puke-green jalopy.”
The pilot’s voice suddenly came through on their channel. “We’re coming up on Griffith Park. Where you taking us next, Captain Nemo?”
Stevens probably didn’t think his mood could worsen, but it did when Luke instructed him to land the Sikorsky on the front lawn of the Griffith Park Observatory.
Luke ignored the pilot’s shouted curses and held up three fingers to Sammy, signaling him to switch to channel three.
“Why’d you disconnect the cell phone number I was using to contact you?” Luke asked.
“The truth?” Sammy said. “I figured you were dead. When I didn’t hear from you after your meeting at that castle, I called and a Latino guy answered. He was saying something in Spanish about a park bench. You’re not the type to get sloppy and lose a phone. “
“That doesn’t explain disconnecting your cell phone.”
“If you were dead, sooner or later the LAPD would hear about it. They’d go sniffing around to tie up loose ends. Your phone had my number stored in memory. I didn’t know who that guy was that had your phone, and I didn’t want a trail that led back to Sammy. So I cancelled service on that number. I got a guy at the phone company that purges my records as soon as I pay the final bill on a discontinued number.”
“I appreciate your concern for my well-being.”
“When your daddy told Sammy that you were still alive, Sammy cried like a little itty-bitty baby.” Sammy’s head bobbed up and down. “No lie.”
The helicopter’s airspeed slowed as they approached The Observatory.
Luke glanced out the porthole, then back at Sammy. “Why are you here?”
Sammy shrugged. “I figured I owe you one.”
• • •
As soon as they touched down at The Observatory, Luke took the communications cord from Stevens’s helmet and herded the copilot, crew chief, and paramedics outside at gunpoint. Sammy used a roll of plastic handcuffs from one of the helicopter’s supply drawers to tie them to a heavy cast-iron fence. Luke took the male paramedic’s coveralls and put them over his street clothes.
Sammy did likewise with the copilot’s uniform before climbing into the cockpit.
When Luke jumped back into the aircraft, he said to Megan, “This is where you and Frankie get off.” He pointed outside, to his right. “You can make your way down that road, over there.”
At first her eyes showed confusion—that is, until her temper had time to come to a boil. “After everything we’ve been through,” she shouted, “how can you even think of doing this?”
“I don’t have time to argue. This isn’t your fight anymore.”
He turned, but she moved with him. “You think I’m here because I want to be part of this? Sometimes, you are so dense.” She shook her head. “Why do you think I’m here, Luke? Have you even stopped to think about that?”
“Megan, listen to me. I have no idea what I’m up against, and there’s a good chance that anyone who comes with me will die. You’ve done enough. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“Good. Me, neither.” She thrust her thumb in the air. “Now that that’s settled, let’s go.”
He looked at Sammy, who held up his hands as if to say he didn’t want any part of their argument.
Luke drew a long breath and rubbed the back of his neck. He stared at her for a long moment, then said, “If you’re coming, you’ll need a pair of coveralls.”
63
As they lifted off The Observatory lawn, ground controllers were squawking at Stevens and demanding to know why he’d disappeared from ground radar and broken off radio communications. Stevens offered a “guess” that the hilly topography had interfered with their radar and radio signals. He quickly added the “good news”—his crew chief found a nonstructural wing nut that had come loose and caused the fuselage to rattle. Problem solved, he told the controllers.
They vectored Stevens to the hospital but added that they’d be writing up an incident report.
Sammy craned his neck from the copilot’s seat and held up two fingers.
As soon as Luke switched to channel two, he heard, “So, Flash, what’s the plan?”
“We need to get to my father’s lab on the second floor.” Luke pointed at Frankie, who was taking everything in with a wide-eyed expression. “He should get us past the cops on the roof, and onto the elevator. We’ll get off on the third floor, find a place to hide Megan and the boy. Then you and I’ll take a fire stairway that will put us about thirty feet from the lab.”
“And then?”
“And then we improvise.”
Megan glanced up from working on her jumpsuit. She was curling the end of each pant leg into a cuff, trying to disguise the fact that it was several sizes too large.
Stevens suddenly broke into their channel
and said, “So tell me something, McKenna. Why you going back into the hornet’s nest? You gotta know that LAPD’s got every rifle in their arsenal at the hospital. We were listening to it on a tactical frequency before you crashed into our evening. They got an army of uniforms and a coupla SWAT units looking for you. You got a suicide wish or something?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I already heard most of it,” Stevens said.
Luke cocked an eyebrow at Megan.
Stevens had eavesdropped on their communications channel.
“So,” the pilot continued, “you expect me to believe all that crap?”
“I’m not asking you to believe anything,” Luke said. “Just fly us to the hospital.”
Stevens turned to Sammy. “Well, for some goddamn reason, I think I do believe it.”
Luke and Megan exchanged a glance.
“But then, I probably got my head up my ass,” the pilot added. “So how do you wanna do this?”
“Just put us down on the heliport.”
Luke signaled Frankie to jump onto the collapsible gurney, and Megan secured the boy’s chest and legs with canvas straps.
The digital clock mounted on an overhead panel read 6:07. His enemy was already inside the mosquito lab.
Stevens exchanged some chatter with a police helicopter on their approach to University Children’s and was cleared to land only after the other pilot contacted the Emergency Room to confirm the transport. The LAPD pilot informed them that the E.R.’s medical team hadn’t expected them for another fifteen minutes and wouldn’t be on the heliport to meet them.
The hospital rooftop was dark, and Stevens trained his spotlight on the heliport. He circled the hospital twice before centering their aircraft over the platform.
On the second pass, Luke looked out a side window and saw the rental truck sitting at the loading dock.
He spotted two sharpshooters along the roofline as the Sikorsky descended toward the helipad, but he knew there might be others hidden in the darkness.
He put his gun into a thigh pocket.
When the Sikorsky thudded down on the heliport, the only thing he could see through his porthole was flying dust.
He lowered the tinted visor on his helmet, signaled Megan to do likewise, then swung the hatch door open. A soupy mix of soot and fuel exhaust streamed into the cargo hold.
A man and a woman wearing backward-facing caps and black fatigues with LOS ANGELES SWAT patches were at the door when Luke opened it. The man had a shouldered rifle with a sniper’s scope. He was holding a semiautomatic in his left hand. The woman had oversized binoculars hanging from her neck—a spotter.
“Transport from Long Beach?” the spotter yelled over the yap-yap-yap of the rotor blades.
Luke cracked open his visor only enough to expose the lower half of his face. “Head wound,” he shouted. “I hope they’re ready for us downstairs.”
The sniper threw a hand up at Luke and glanced through the copilot’s window at Sammy, who saluted him with two fingers. “E.R. told us you wouldn’t be here for another fifteen,” the man said.
Luke shrugged in apparent puzzlement, then pointed at Frankie. “We need to get him to the E.R. Now.”
The sniper’s partner was already talking into a throat mic, her eyes darting between Megan and Luke the whole time. Finally, she waved them toward the elevator.
The gurney’s collapsible legs sprung to life with a loud clack when Luke and Megan pulled it from the helicopter’s belly.
When they reached the elevator, the male cop pointed to a spot where he wanted them to stand and used a key to call the car. The woman stepped back to the edge of the roofline and aimed her spotting scope across the street.
“You know the way?” the sharpshooter asked.
Luke nodded.
The Sikorsky’s engines powered down and their heavy throb was replaced by a high-pitched whine. Stevens and Sammy remained in the helicopter.
The sniper eyed Megan’s baggy uniform. “What’s your name?” he asked.
Luke’s eyes went immediately to the stenciled name on Megan’s coveralls: E. RIVERA
“Eleanor,” she replied while holding the cop’s gaze.
“So what’s the deal?” Luke jumped in and asked the sniper. “Lots of chatter on the radio, but no one’s saying what this is all about.”
Instead of answering, the cop turned to the sound of the elevator doors opening.
A vertical band of light from the elevator’s interior painted the sharpshooter at the same moment a bullet punched through the side of his neck. He slumped to the ground.
Luke’s eyes darted to the cop’s partner, who had turned to the sound of the gunfire. Two rounds struck her mid-chest, in her Kevlar vest, but the bullets’ force sent her over the edge of the roof.
Luke threw off his helmet and lunged at the door. He glimpsed a uniformed LAPD cop lying in a heap on the elevator floor just as Calderon charged through the doorway with a 9mm Glock semiautomatic.
Luke unfurled a front snap kick. The gun flew out of Calderon’s hand.
Calderon’s other hand flung a knife at Luke.
But Luke had seen it coming and jolted sideways.
The steel blade flew past his face before impaling Sammy’s chest as he leapt from the helicopter.
Wilkes looked down, cursing as he went to his knees.
Luke grabbed the pistol from his thigh pocket.
“Face down on the ground. Now!” a voice behind Luke yelled.
He turned and was staring down the barrel of a Remington Model 700 sniper rifle. The SWAT sniper holding it screamed, “I said down!”
Luke spread his arms and let the pistol fall to the ground.
Calderon said, “Officer, this man—”
The sniper stepped forward and swung his rifle at Calderon.
Luke shouted, “No,” but it was too late.
Calderon’s left hand angled the barrel skyward at the same instant his right hand plunged a knife into the man’s armpit, just above his Kevlar vest.
A loud sucking sound came from the sniper’s chest just as Luke’s right foot connected with Calderon’s torso.
A grunt came from Calderon as he went down, and Luke followed through with a spearing jab to the man’s head.
Calderon dodged it, then rolled twice and came back up onto his feet in a low stance.
Luke’s left foot flew up, but Calderon caught the sidekick with crossed wrists and twisted violently.
There was a snapping sound and a searing pain sent Luke to the ground.
He scissor-kicked Calderon just as a twenty-million candlepower spotlight pierced the night sky and blinded him.
• • •
“You got a positive ID on the target?” the SWAT commander asked.
The LAPD sniper sitting on the edge of the helicopter’s bay door turned to O’Reilly, whose assignment was to make the ID on McKenna. The detective peered through his binoculars again and nodded reluctantly.
Something wasn’t right. Why would McKenna try to fight his way into the hospital? He had to know an army of cops was waiting for him.
“Affirmative,” the sharpshooter replied.
O’Reilly could hear the anger in the man’s voice. One of his team members had gone over the side of the building and two others were lying face down in the wash of the light.
“Flight suit, sheriff’s colors,” the sniper continued. “Struggling with…it looks like a security guard. Guy’s holding his own.”
O’Reilly watched McKenna and the guard roll toward the edge of the landing pad, locked together like crazed beasts joined in a death struggle.
A man in a flight suit suddenly jumped out of the pilot’s door and ran to where a woman and small boy were trying to drag two downed SWAT officers into the elevator.
What the hell was going on?
“You’re clear to take out the target,” the SWAT commander said.
“Wait,” O’Reilly said. “Any transmission
s from the sheriff’s chopper yet?”
“O’Reilly, stay off the air.” It was Lieutenant Groff’s voice.
The sniper cinched his strap tighter and trained his rifle on the rooftop.
• • •
Megan and Stevens had pulled Sammy into the elevator and then gone back for the two cops.
Frankie was yelping in Spanish when Megan and Stevens dragged the two men into the elevator.
Megan pressed the button for the first floor, then said to Stevens, “Keep the boy with you.”
She bolted out of the elevator just as the doors were closing.
• • •
Calderon easily pried free of Luke’s grip and jumped to his feet.
The blinding spotlight replaced Calderon’s silhouette. Luke rolled to his left, but a boot slammed into his side, cracking several ribs.
Calderon landed on him like a rabid animal and grabbed his neck in both hands. Unable to catch his breath, weakened by pain, Luke couldn’t break the man’s grip.
Calderon choked off his oxygen and a curtain of red descended over Luke’s eyes.
Suddenly, a scream penetrated the growing darkness.
Then something—someone—landed on top of Calderon.
• • •
“Shit,” O’Reilly heard the sharpshooter whisper.
“What’s going on up there?” the SWAT commander asked.
“Can’t get a clear shot,” the sniper replied. “A woman just got into the middle of it.”
• • •
Megan’s shouts sounded distant in Luke’s air-starved brain.
The helicopter’s spotlight angled away and an outline of her head appeared behind Calderon, her arms flailing at his back.
Her hand came around and a finger found Calderon’s right eye. She dug it into his socket.
Calderon let out a rumbling growl and his grip loosened.
Luke took a gasping breath.
Then Calderon’s head shot back and struck Megan in the face.
She fell away with a loud shriek.
Luke made a spearing jab at Calderon’s throat that was deflected.
Then another at his eye.
The second jab connected and Calderon rolled off of him, yowling in pain.
Stigma Page 38