Whirlwind

by Hilary Norman

  An act of terrorism, it was being deemed, not of the jihadist kind, but damn well fitting the FBI’s definition, and Carson was beginning to feel that if conditions were halfway normal, a Joint Terrorism Task Force and Lord-knew-who-else might already be at the scene, but as things were, so far as he could make out, for the moment it was just him, which was downright bizarre.

  The ASAC had told him not to do anything until the HRT or a Crisis Negotiation Unit or JTTF team got there. And that even then, no one was going anywhere near the church till the Bomb Techs had it all nailed down.

  ‘Orders?’ Clem Carson had asked.

  ‘Just get there,’ Balfour had answered.

  Clem Carson hadn’t wasted time asking why him, because he knew the answer. In normal conditions it would have taken the State Police, headquartered in Scituate, around fifteen to twenty to reach Shiloh, and not much longer for a Hostage Rescue Team from Providence. But these were horrendous conditions, and Clem Carson was, in practical terms, closest to the scene, added to which, he lived alone and had no one to argue with about going out in the Blizzard-to-End-All-Blizzards with the remnants of the flu and no chance of being home for Christmas morning.

  And he was, when all was said and done, The Snowman.

  ‘What now?’ William Osborn asked the big gunman as Liza and Nemesis came down the steps after them.

  ‘You’ll see,’ Amos said.

  The vaulted underground chamber felt cold to Liza after the relative warmth of the nave. She looked down the corridor, past closed doors on either side to the Emergency Exit at the end, saw wires and cables and plastic-wrapped something – same as upstairs.

  What now indeed?

  Amos picked up one of two large backpacks ready and waiting on the floor in the corridor, pulled it on and handed the second one to Nemesis as she put on the black zippered jacket she’d left in the vicar’s office. ‘Anyone wants to use the john, speak now, but the door stays open.’

  ‘I’m not proud.’ Osborn looked at Liza. ‘Mind if I go first? Age before beauty.’

  Liza smiled at him, respecting his courage, then turned away, waited till he was done, handed the camera to Nemesis and took her own turn, the relief exquisite.

  ‘Why can’t the others come down here, a few at a time?’ she said.

  ‘Not your problem,’ Amos told her.

  ‘You need to put your jacket on.’ Carefully, Nemesis removed Liza’s backpack.

  And Lord, that felt almost as good as peeing had.

  Except that as soon as she’d zipped up the parka, she realized that Nemesis had put all the camera equipment back on the desk in Keenan’s office.

  ‘You need to help me get rigged up again,’ she said.

  ‘You won’t be needing it till we get back,’ Amos said.

  ‘But Reaper said I was to “bear witness”.’

  ‘And you will,’ Amos said.

  ‘But I thought he meant—’

  Liza stopped, her mind shooting into overdrive, because this had to be bad news. Had Reaper said she should bring the camera just as a means to persuade her down here, or was this the big gunman playing his own side game? Clearly Amos didn’t want this next episode recorded, in which case why take her along at all, and was she even going to get back?

  She cut off the scary thoughts, and asked the obvious: ‘Are we going outside, and if you don’t want me to record, why am I coming?’

  ‘You’re coming because that’s what Reaper wants,’ Nemesis said.

  ‘Come on,’ Amos said.

  He went ahead down the corridor, Osborn behind him, then Liza, Nemesis bringing up the rear, passing the storeroom and a door leading to the parish hall, stopping outside another door bearing a small brass plaque engraved ‘Archive’.

  Amos opened it, leaned in and turned on the light. ‘Come on.’ He led the way between two rows of shelving with library-style ladders, then stopped again, crouched and pulled back a rug on the floor, exposing a trapdoor.

  Liza saw the round hole in the ground and felt a clutch of icy new fear.

  Going down, not out.

  ‘I see,’ Osborn said grimly.

  ‘I’m getting a very bad feeling,’ Liza said, feeling for the gloves in her pockets and putting them on.

  ‘No need.’ Osborn was comfortingly matter-of-fact. ‘There’s a tunnel system under the village, commissioned by the original owner of my house, long before the Cromwells’ time. I was told that the gentleman fancied a direct link to church, though I was also led to believe it had been bricked up long ago. Lot of tunnels in New England.’

  ‘Mostly smuggler tunnels, I thought,’ Liza said. ‘Near the ocean, like the Salem system.’

  ‘My sources said these were dug for different purposes,’ Osborn said. ‘A fear of being cut off by snow, and a rather more paranoid need for an escape route in case of attack.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ Amos said.

  Osborn smiled at Liza. ‘I don’t think I’m being paranoid in assuming that the intention right now is to get to my house and rob me, hence the decision about your camera.’

  ‘Move it,’ Amos said.

  ‘Steps or a ladder?’ Osborn eyed the hole. ‘I’m not sure I’ll fit.’ He patted his stomach. ‘Too much good food.’

  ‘It’s a ladder, and you’ll fit.’ Amos gestured with his shotgun. ‘Now.’

  ‘Does this young lady really have to be put through this?’ Osborn said.

  ‘Move,’ Amos said.

  ‘I tried,’ Osborn said to Liza.

  ‘And I’m grateful,’ she said.

  She watched him start his descent, the gunman shining an LED flashlight down into the hole for him, felt admiration and compassion for the overweight old man, heard him wheezing as he went, found it hard to listen to, but was glad they had each other for support.

  ‘Your turn,’ Nemesis said, as Amos climbed down after Osborn.

  Liza moved to the edge, looked down into blackness.

  ‘I’m not keen on tunnels,’ she said.

  ‘Too bad,’ Nemesis said, and shone her own flashlight into the void.

  Liza lowered herself, found the first rung of the ladder.

  ‘Why isn’t Reaper coming with us?’ she asked, trying to keep her mind off what was happening.

  ‘That’s his business,’ Amos said.

  ‘How sick is he?’ Liza asked, still descending. ‘How long does he have?’

  ‘Like Amos said, that’s nobody’s business but his,’ Nemesis said.

  Outside the church, Shiloh was deserted, the wind’s incessant wail and the groaning of roofs under pressure blotting out any other sounds, the snow still blowing into white dunes, the houses and the inn at the far end of Main Street in darkness.

  The four-by-four parked hours ago on North Maple by Amos’s hired guns had all but disappeared, nothing but perfectly smooth white humps showing now.

  No one inside the vehicle.

  Reaper’s Volvo opposite buried too.

  Likewise, Osborn’s Bentley outside St Matthew’s.

  Amos had called it a ghost town when he’d driven through on Tuesday evening.

  More like a moonscape now.

  A village imprisoned and snowbound.

  Helpless.

  SIXTY-TWO

  If they had been able to walk above ground, even in snow with the old man, the hike between St Matthew’s and Shiloh Oaks would probably have taken no more than ten to fifteen minutes, but in this tunnel, with the ground uneven, slippery and barely visible despite the two flashlights, the path littered with stray bricks and broken boards, the journey seemed interminable.

  Pitch-dark, narrow, damp, foul-smelling and claustrophobic, and the only halfway good news from Liza’s perspective was that Amos and Nemesis seemed in a hurry, which hopefully meant that the plan was to get there and back as fast as possible.

  Reaper had said she’d be coming back.

  But then, Reaper had told her to take the camera and backpack.

  She cut b
ack on thinking, kept her head down and followed.

  The most disturbing features, to her, were the gaping black holes to left and right – an awful, foul stink coming from one as they passed, probably from some old cracked sewage pipe. All those black holes leading someplace, she supposed, though she couldn’t picture where, had already lost her bearings, only Osborn’s company keeping her from full-blown panic.

  She could hear his labored breathing up ahead, and she was finding this tough at age thirty-four, but that poor man had to be around eighty.

  ‘You OK, Mr Osborn?’ she called.

  ‘As well as can be expected,’ he called back. ‘Though I think, in the circumstances, Liza, perhaps you might call me Bill.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ Liza exclaimed. ‘A rat!’

  ‘With or without a shotgun?’ Osborn asked.

  Liza laughed. Which felt good, despite everything.

  And a moment later, Osborn said, ‘So much for bricking up our end of the tunnel.’

  She saw what he meant, saw in the beam from Nemesis’s flashlight the remains of a wall, stepped carefully over scattered, crumbling old bricks, saw a big sewage pipe to their right, wondered suddenly if there were tunnels below their own house on Maple, though no one had ever mentioned them, and surely, when her great-grandfather had bought the place, he would have been told of their existence …

  ‘Nearly there, I’d say,’ Osborn said, gasping with effort.

  ‘Can we take a break?’ Liza said.

  ‘No time,’ Amos said, up ahead.

  ‘Mr Osborn’s really out of breath.’

  ‘No break,’ Amos said. ‘Not even for Mister Osborn.’

  ‘Thanks for the consideration,’ Liza said, loathing him.

  ‘The sooner we get there,’ Nemesis said, ‘the sooner we’ll be above ground.’

  ‘You do realize,’ Osborn said, ‘that my house won’t be empty?’

  ‘As a matter of fact’ – Nemesis raised her voice – ‘it’s as good as empty.’

  ‘Your housekeeper’s gone to her son’s, remember?’ Amos said. ‘And if you’re thinking about your dogs, they won’t be bothering us.’

  Osborn stopped dead. ‘What have you done to them?’

  ‘Keep walking,’ the gunman said.

  ‘What did you do to my dogs?’ Osborn didn’t move.

  ‘They’re fine,’ Nemesis said. ‘Locked in your bedroom, sound asleep.’

  ‘You doped my dogs?’ For the first time, the old man sounded frightened. ‘What did you give them?’

  ‘Reaper organized it,’ Nemesis said. ‘He likes animals. He won’t have done anything to harm them.’

  ‘Likes animals so much he cut his own cat’s throat,’ Osborn said bitterly. ‘Children who kill animals often turn into psychos, you know.’

  Amos walked back to where the old man had stopped and prodded him with the barrel of his shotgun. ‘Move.’

  They began walking again.

  ‘So.’ Osborn panted after another minute. ‘I’m presuming it’s cash you’re after. In which case, I should warn you there isn’t much. We never keep more than five hundred dollars in the house.’

  ‘Save your lying breath,’ Amos told him.

  ‘If your Reaper thinks there’s more’ – Osborn was puffing with effort – ‘he’s been misinformed. But don’t worry, I’ll give you what there is. I have a wife I love and no aspirations to heroism.’

  Amos halted so abruptly that they all almost collided.

  Spiral steps to their right. Narrow, but better than a ladder.

  Shiloh Oaks, Liza presumed.

  Carson was well on his way, though it was no day at the beach, visibility so poor at times that he’d had to stop, but even if the biggest problem was that too few roads had yet been cleared, the upside of that was the absence of other cars for him to run into. For one thing, they’d issued a travel ban, plus it was still the middle of the night, and most people traveled ahead of Christmas Day – and hey, maybe next year he might buy himself a sleigh and a couple of reindeer, he thought, lifting his foot off the gas as the Wrangler went into another skid.

  Snowman or not, however, Clem wasn’t too happy not knowing how things were going to play out when he did reach Shiloh, because it was going to take a while longer for the CNU or JTTF to get through, let alone the Bomb Techs. And it was all well and good Balfour telling him not to do a damned thing till backup arrived, but sitting on his backside doing nothing while fifty-six hostages were inside scared out of their minds – one already dead, a little girl, for crying out loud – was not the reason he’d joined the FBI.

  Not that Balfour wasn’t one hundred per cent right.

  Nothing one guy could do if those church doors really were booby-trapped.

  Another way in was what they needed.

  There were guys in Providence right now trying to get hold of architectural plans.

  Not the easiest thing to do in the middle of the night on Christmas morning.

  Carson not holding his breath.

  The spiral steps up to Shiloh Oaks were dizzying, Amos moving fast, Osborn painfully slow now, stopping a couple of times, and the gunman yelled at him twice, then reversed down a few steps and took hold of the old man’s left arm.

  ‘I’ve got no time for this,’ he said harshly.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ Liza protested. ‘You think this is easy for him?’

  ‘He’s not some nice old man,’ Amos said. ‘He’s a bastard.’

  ‘I may not be nice,’ Osborn said weakly, ‘but I’m definitely old.’

  ‘A fucking loan shark is what you are,’ Amos said. ‘Worst kind.’

  ‘You have proof of that?’ Liza said. ‘Or is that another Reaper story?’

  ‘You questioning what Reaper’s been through?’ Amos was cold as ice.

  ‘I guess I’d better not.’

  ‘Can we just get up there?’ Nemesis said from behind her.

  Amos started up again and they followed.

  ‘Not a loan shark at all, Liza,’ Osborn’s voice carried down to her. ‘I helped some people who needed it. Not a charity.’

  ‘And I don’t need to know about that,’ Liza told him.

  ‘You’re a journalist,’ Osborn panted. ‘You need to know everything.’

  Finally there was a door and Amos got it open easily, as if he’d done it before, and they all sped up, even the old man, and Liza’s heart rate accelerated with the anticipation of light and air.

  More darkness.

  ‘Our cellar,’ Osborn gasped. ‘Light switch somewhere. Lost my bearings.’

  Amos went on ahead, found it, came back and hauled the old man up.

  A wine cellar, Liza saw, when she’d stopped being dazzled by the brightness. Racks of bottles, rows of them.

  ‘A decent collection.’ Osborn, breathless and wheezing, leaned on a wall for support. ‘Not worth a fortune, but by all means help yourselves.’

  Amos took a bottle from a rack and dropped it on the tiled floor.

  ‘Wasteful,’ Osborn said. ‘And ignorant.’

  ‘You think?’ Amos used his shotgun to sweep about a dozen bottles of red off a rack.

  ‘Wasting time,’ Nemesis said.

  The masked man nodded. ‘Care to lead the way?’ he asked Osborn.

  ‘I’m sure you’ve worked out where you want to go,’ Osborn said.

  ‘We disabled your alarm system same time as we doped your dogs, old man,’ Amos told him. ‘So if you were hoping we’re going to set it off, forget it.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ Nemesis said.

  In more of a hurry than Amos, Liza noted, wondered why, guessed she’d probably find out soon enough.

  ‘You’ll be wanting the safe, then,’ Osborn said, wearily. ‘First floor. Library.’

  SIXTY-THREE

  ‘They’re getting very restless,’ Michael told Reaper, up on the chancel. ‘If this goes on too much longer, someone’s going to blow.’

  ‘They’re fine for now,’ R
eaper said. ‘Half of them are asleep.’

  There had been some heated discussion a while back, after Eddie Leary, the redheaded young guy ordered by Amos to the ninth row, had suggested they tie up John Tilden, and several others had agreed. Tilden had taken fright, protesting, and Mark Jackson had asked Simon Keenan if he’d loan them his cincture, his narrow rope belt, which had angered the vicar, but Reaper had pointed out that Tilden was not about to escape, and everyone had subsided.

  ‘How much longer?’ Jeremiah asked, passing by just below.

  He and Joel patrolling now, checking every pew, every hostage.

  ‘As long as it takes,’ Reaper answered steadily.

  Michael regarded Joel, presently near the back of the nave. He looked exhausted and unhappy, the shotgun suiting him no better than it had at the outset. No balaclava, no real sense of threat about him, and if he thought that, then one of those younger guys had to be similarly aware – and come to that, if this blew up into some open act of defiance, what the hell would he do? he wondered, gripping his own shotgun. He had limited knowledge of what was going on now, what they were waiting for, was seriously worried about the fact that Liza had become involved in that too, and Revelation might finally be wholly clear to him – the link between their two stories, as Reaper had promised – but at what cost?

  Another thing seemed clear to him now. That Reaper – Joshua Tilden – had only really been using him to help in the slow, painful exposing of his father’s guilt. Which surely he could have done without bringing Michael along for the ride – and maybe he’d just been the icing on Reaper’s cake?

  Or maybe there was worse to come.

  ‘Waiting’s always hard, Isaiah.’ Reaper was watching him.

  ‘Why are you still calling me that?’ Michael asked quietly.

  ‘It’s your Whirlwind name,’ Reaper said.

  ‘I need the bathroom, and I need it now!’

  Janet Yore again, her voice high and sharp with distress.