by John Farris
They went down four steps to the salon, turning on more lights. It was hot inside. Bertie and Eden were behind Sherard. They looked around. Eden walked slowly through the salon to the galley, but not in a straight line. She appeared to be walking around something on the deck, her face growing taut. Bertie went the other way, into one of the staterooms.
Carlisle said, "What's going on? What are they doing?"
Eden walked back into the salon, taking the same little detour, glancing at the floor. She was breathing hard.
"It's not here," she said. "It was here, but they took it away." She pointed to the alcove where cases of fishing rods and a trolling motor were stored. "Not too long ago, though."
"What was on the floor in the galley?" Sherard asked. "Where you didn't want to walk."
"Body. A woman's body. Her neck's broken. Heidi was right." Bertie came out of the second stateroom.
"Two women. Both dead. I don't get it, though. I sense fear. That was one of the women. She died right here." Bertie leaned over, passing a spread hand above the deck carpeting. "But him. No emotion. No anger or plea sure. Casual as wringing a dove's neck. He's blond. Five-eleven, six feet. Not bad-looking, except he has arms as long as an ape's." Bertie held up something in her other hand. "Throwaway razor. Whoever cleaned up after these two missed it. I don't care much for the aftershave the blond guy uses. I forgot to mention. He has tattoos. Barbed wire, a sailing ship below his right shoulder."
Carlisle's eyes were huge. "W-who are you people?"
"You said two men, honey," Alex said to Bertie.
"Right. There were two women and two men. Don't have a fix on the other guy yet."
"Dump," Eden said, looking as if she was about to gag. "Oh Jesus. They're buried in a dump! Burning garbage. Oh shit." She walked swiftly upstairs, Carlisle literally jumping out of her way, and went outside.
"I need to use the bathroom," Carlisle pleaded. There were beads of sweat on his forehead and chin. His eyes had sunk back into his head.
Alex nodded to him, looked at Tom Sherard.
"Just wait," Tom said, his eyes on Bertie. She was prowling around the salon. Studying objects with her hands, not actually touching anything. The furniture, the projection TV, the table where Randy and Herb and their doomed guests had whiled away the time playing canasta. Two decks of cards were on the table. Bertie picked up a deck, shuffled thoughtfully, replaced it. She had a long look at the TV, then passed into the galley, taking a giant step over the place where the body of Sandi Goldfarb had lain.
When she came back she stood a few feet from the TV again, staring. "Turn it on for me, Tom."
"Can't you?"
"No. Not permitted. You. Please."
He walked past her, picked up the remote control, and pushed the button marked POWER.
Nothing happened. A spot of light appeared in the center of the screen but there was no picture, no sound. As far as his own senses could detect.
Bertie went reeling back with her hands clasping her ears, a scream of pain hung up in her throat. She fell, writhing.
"Turn it off!"
Sherard thumbed the OFF button. The blip of light faded from the screen. Bertie struggled to her feet, the heel of one hand pressed against her forehead.
"Oh. Damn. Damn, did that ever hurt!"
"Bertie, what happened?"
She looked at him. Tenderly touched her ears. "What? I'm sorry. Can't hear. The crowd, it's the biggest, loudest—I'm almost deaf."
Alex looked at Sherard. "How often does she get like this?"
"Only when she's on high-burn."
Eden came back down the steps into the salon, two at a time. She glanced at Bertie. What's up? she asked subvocally.
"Huge crowd. Lights. That big stadium we saw, on the river in town. That's where they went."
Eden said excitedly to Alex and Sherard, "In a red pickup, maybe an SUV; I couldn't tell. It's a big one. Whoever's driving had trouble getting through the gate."
"ESP?" Sherard asked her.
"No, logical deduction." She held up her right hand. There were flecks of red paint on her fingertips.
"What? What did you say, Eden? I'm deaf."
Eden showed them what she had in her left hand. A shard of thick curved plastic.
"He must have popped a parking light when he sideswiped the gate. So we want a red truck, minor fender damage, left front unless he was backing out."
Bertie shook her head a couple of times as if to clear her mind.
"Where's the biggest show in Nashville tonight?" she asked Carlisle, who had come unsteadily out of the bathroom blotting his face with a towel.
"Garth Brooks. Sold out. Seventy thousand tickets." He glanced at his chronometer. "Started at seven-thirty." He had a sickly smile. "Wish that's where I was."
"You're going," Eden said, grabbing his shirtsleeve. "We need your boat." When he was slow to budge Eden released him and dashed up the stairs again.
Tom Sherard was closest to Eden when he heard the shot. She stopped suddenly outside on the lower deck of the houseboat, looking in surprise at someone on the dock to her right. Eden's hands rose slowly, an attitude of vulnerability. And Sherard was thrust back in time to a New York street, to gunshots and screams, Gillian down and already beyond his help.
Not again. Not to Eden!
He pushed off on his good leg and lunged with a yell through the doorway, throwing himself at the motionless girl. He didn't hear a second shot as he tackled her, lifted her off her feet, his momentum carrying her out of the line of fire. They sprawled together on the deck, rolled over. The only pain he felt was in the shoulder and elbow he landed on. He pinned the stunned girl to the deck, shielding her body with his own, and looked back.
Heidi was on the dock with a rifle, efficiently working the bolt, chambering another round. She fired again. Sherard knew he'd been hit but the impact was slight, near the middle of his back.
"Gun!" he shouted, warning the others. Winchester, perhaps, about a twenty-inch barrel, probably .223 caliber. The size of the magazine told him she had several rounds left.
There was nothing he could do. Heidi was too far away. She would drop him before he took three steps in her direction. And Eden wasn't moving. If anyone tried to come to their rescue, Heidi had a clear line of sight.
Heidi jacked another cartridge into the chamber. Her thin face looked drawn from migraine, but her expression was calm. She moved a step closer. Sherard judged, with a faint feeling of regret, that the range was about fifteen yards. Heidi would go for the head shot now, put him away, then continue rapid-fire until the magazine was empty and Eden also lay dead in his arms.
He had a glimpse of someone else on deck, near the doorway. Heidi was seeing him down the barrel of the rifle but she also caught the movement and was distracted. Her fourth shot struck a chrome railing a few inches above Sherard's head.
Then Heidi didn't have the rifle anymore. For an instant it appeared that she had tossed it away. Both of her hands were clutching air. The blue steel barrel of the rifle caught light from one of the overhead floods as it rose a good ten feet above Heidi's head, spinning like a propeller, then came down muzzle-first toward Heidi's upturned face. Heidi was gaping in astonishment. The rifle barrel struck her with great force as shattered teeth flew from her mouth. Heidi's body jerked and turned rigid while the barrel, like a second, steel spine, penetrated her body—down her throat, through the esophagus, into the stomach.
Heidi trembled, hands still outstretched, feet on the deck as if they had been nailed. Her eyes bulged from her head. Blood burbled like a slow fountain from her stretched gummy mouth.
The bolt of the rifle snicked back, rammed a cartridge into the breech.
Sherard, still crouched over Eden, looked away and into the face of Alberta Nkambe. The Nilotic strain in her mixed-blood features was more prominent than he'd ever seen; the planes of her face looked as harsh as a killer god's. Her eyes gleamed with unearthly life. It was a memorable sight, equal to the memory of a
lion bursting out of high grass and charging in ten-yard bounds, coming in three blinks of an eye so close that he could, forever after, smell the animal's blood heat and rage.
It seemed to him that he could smell Bertie's rage now—an odor like acetylene-melted steel or lightning in a seething sky—as she turned all of her chi on the transfixed, luckless Heidi.
The rifle she had half swallowed began firing in Heidi's gut, shots coming so quickly the action of the bolt and trigger were only a blur. The shots couldn't be heard, only followed as puckers appeared all over the front of
Heidi's pleated pants near the crotch, the cloth staining red. Then her feet came unstuck and Heidi did a little feckless flopping dance that reminded
Sherard of a secretary bird chopping up a grounded snake with its claws. All movement ceased abruptly as she stepped off the end of the dock and plunged out of sight.
Sherard sat up slowly. Only then did he pay attention to the back of his neck, which was numb on the right side, warm and bloody. He reached up carefully and found where the bullet had entered. It was still there in the muscle meat of his neck and, hopefully, hadn't fragmented; how close it had come to the spinal cord or the vital hindbrain he didn't know.
The other bullet had plowed at an angle through the flotation vest he hadn't had time to remove. He took it off now but couldn't find the bullet with a prodding finger. Doing something, anything, reduced the trembles and diverted his thoughts from how close the other one had come to killing him.
Regardless, the little bullet in his neck meant trouble and he knew it. Eden's eyes had opened. She wasn't focusing very well. She made sounds but not words.
Bertie, her face relaxed now, knelt beside Sherard and looked at his wound. He knew from her face what she thought, but she said cheerily, "Hey, it's nothing, a nick from a panga, Tom."
"Yeah, I've been hurt worse in thornbush." He turned his head and spat some blood onto the deck, clenched and unclenched his hands, alert for any sign of weakness. Then he stood with Bertie's help. Eden sat up slowly, still looking blankly at the two of them, trying to get her bearings.
Carlisle cleared his throat several times. "I've got a first aid kit aboard my boat."
"Where did the rifle come from?" Sherard asked. There was a slow seep of blood onto the back of his tongue.
"It's my varmint rifle. Use it for snakes, mostly. She wouldn't've had no trouble finding it. I'm sorry."
"Not your fault." Sherard was growing woozy. No time for that. But he feared going into shock. "You have any snakebite medicine in that kit of yours?" he asked Carlisle.
"Yes, sir. Hundred-proof bourbon."
"Let's get to it, then."
Carlisle looked as if he were about to cry. "I have to report this. God damn. How do I explain a woman gut-shot from the inside out with the barrel of my rifle stuffed down her throat?"
"Unfortunate accident," Bertie said. "But it cured her migraine. And she's down there in the deep for good. So is your rifle. Unless you want it back, Carlisle."
"What are you saying?"
Alex draped an arm around Carlisle's shoulders. "She is saying you don't have to worry about something that never happened. If nobody saw, then it didn't happen, honey. That is one bitchin' Russian philosophy. Now we need to haul ass. Did I say that right? Haul our lovely asses out of here."
"Can you take us by boat all the way to Nashville?" Bertie asked.
"W-where y'all wantin' to go?" Carlisle asked, looking as if he dreaded spending another moment in their company.
"The stadium," Bertie said. "Garth Brooks is about to bomb for the first time in his career. Tom, I'll patch you up as well as I can. But you ought to—"
"No hospital. Not yet. What's become of my cane? Oh, thank you, Alex." Sherard's face had turned cold, along with his hands. He gripped the lion's-head cane tightly, made an effort not to breathe too fast. His shirt collar was sticky with blood. "How are you feeling, Eden?"
"I'm okay," she said, holding the back of her head, staring in horror at Tom. "Who shot you? Would someone please tell me—"
"I'll post it on the Astral Internet," Bertie said, giving her a nudge toward the cruiser. "You can read while we're under way. It's good practice for you."
CHAPTER 30
BIG COUNTRY RANCH, MONTANA • JUNE 7 • 8:15 P.M. MDT
"Buck Hannafin! As I live and breathe! You're about the last person I would have expected to show up on our doorstep tonight."
Buck and Courtney Shyla had been announced, so Rona had had the time to get over her surprise. The fact that she was now greeting them personally confirmed to Buck that, serendipity aside, Rona had calculated having him there was a piece of luck she could make good use of. Keep your friends close ...
"I do humbly apologize for the intrusion, Rona, but as I happened to be right next door—"
"At the Broken Wheel?" Rona waved away all explanations as unnecessary, though Buck saw an instant of calculation in her eyes. Replaced by feminine curiosity as Rona turned her attention to Courtney with her most appealing smile and said, "Come in, come in, don't be strange! You will join us for dinner? I'll have one of the boys grain your horses." She looked sharply past Courtney to the hitching post at the foot of the steps. "Three horses? Is someone else with you, Buck?"
Buck and Courtney both removed their Stetsons as they stepped across the threshold. Buck gave Rona a brief embrace and the customary air-kisses near her cheeks.
Courtney said, "The piebald's name is Ezekiel, Mrs. Harvester. We picked him up at the vet's a little while ago; he's been limping and needed hock surgery." She held out a gloved hand. "I'm Courtney Shyla." Her Adam's apple bobbed nervously. "This is just the greatest honor of my life, meeting you, Mrs. Harvester."
"Pleasure's all mine, Courtney. Are you and Buck related?"
"Courtney is my half brother Max's oldest girl," Buck said. Having been officially welcomed, Buck and Courtney began to unbuckle their chaps.
"Wonderful," Rona said with the briefest glance at Buck, her smile shading to amusement. "So you've been over to the Broken Wheel, enjoying some R and R? Some of our people have been trying to locate you for days, Bucklin." She put an arm around Courtney's slim waist, separating her subtly from Hannafin, and walked them both toward the great room.
"That so?"
"Regarding S. 723. We wanted your input." Off his brief look she clarified, "Clint and I. But we won't talk legislation or policy tonight, even though I seldom have such a marvelous opportunity to hear your side of things. Now that we're four, we can play bridge after dinner. Do you play, Courtney?"
"Yes, ma'am." Courtney looked around the generously proportioned, multistoried foyer, her lips parted, childlike wonder in her eyes. There was a Marine captain ten paces away sitting on a bench with his back to the wall, one hand on a black attache case. He was the man with the so-called "nuclear football"—the case contained a code book with strike options for intercontinental ballistics and submarine-based missiles. Seeing him, and knowing what kind of shape her President was in, gave Courtney a sinking feeling, down to the heels of her boots. She wondered if it was Rona who now carried the coded authentication card that identified the President of the United States in an emergency. There was another man, probably MORG security, standing one flight up on the helical stairway. She counted three surveillance cameras. "You have such a fabulous home, Mrs. Harvester."
"Thank you. Clint and I put a lot of thought and effort into what we wanted for our sunset years. And call me Rona, please," the First Lady insisted, squeezing Courtney's waist above the belt line. Nothing but hard muscle there. "It will be you and me against the boys tonight." Another squeeze, higher. "Oh, Courtney, what I wouldn't give to be in the shape you're in! Or near your age again, for that matter."
Buck said, "Been looking forward to spending a little time with Clint. Didn't want to rush him, you understand."
"We're eternally grateful for the thoughtfulness of our good friends. But I'm sorry to say Clint is indis
posed tonight. He retired early."
"Indisposed? Nothing serious, I hope."
"It's fatigue, mostly. I'm sure you understand."
"Then who's our fourth for bridge?"
Victor Wilding, drink in hand, got up from his fireside seat as they entered the great room. His wavy red hair was slicked back, still wet from a sauna and shower. The tip of his snubbed nose and his cheekbones glowed like new pennies from the heat of the log fire.
"You and Victor have met, haven't you?" Rona said casually to Buck.
"On two widely separated occasions," Buck said, recovering from a brief hitch in his stride. "How're you tonight, Mr. Wilding?"
"Fine. Nice to see you again, Senator."
"And this is Courtney, Shiloh, did you say?—Shyla, I didn't hear you correctly. She is, somewhere in the thickets of Hannafin genealogy, related to Buck."
"Very nice to meet you, Courtney."
The ritual of politesse and false good cheer made Buck want to spit on the terra-cotta floor. He'd seen the First Lady like this before and knew how thin the façade was; she was wound tight as an old dollar watch and on some kind of ego binge; hell, they both were. Wilding's gestures were a shade too precise, and he smiled like a man who had started his drinking early in the day. With no real capacity for the hard stuff. A shine in his eyes like the peephole into the heart of a blast furnace. Both of them were keyed to some high expectation. It was bound to be a night to remember, Buck thought. If they lived through it.
There was a houseboy standing by the bar. Buck named his potion. Courtney asked for a Coke. Rona, who drank no spirits, kept Courtney close to her while arranging more intimate seating, dragging an ottoman closer to the soapstone hearth. The pre-dinner gab was animated but perfunctory. Buck and Victor Wilding eyed each other with little regard. Buck had always wondered how someone so youthful-looking could have been running an organization like MORG going on ten years now. Both Wanda Chevrille and the (presumably) late Robert Hyde had collected data that was mostly conjecture. Wilding had gained his reputation within Multi-phasic Operations and Research Group by greatly expanding MORG's presence in the worldwide arms trade, thereby enhancing the exchequer by several billions of dollars. The technique of moving rapidly up the ladder is the same in any business or government. Acquire a mentor, secretly turn his followers against him, then depose him. The most successful monsters in the intelligence game were both snake charmers and blood workers. Buck wasn't all that offended by bloody hands, he'd been around too long. The bad apples eventually rotted themselves to the core. What he disliked most about Wilding was the man's steady assault on Appropriations, looking for fresh billions for empire-building while arrogantly refusing to accommodate the various oversight committees on the Hill.