“Good move. It’s a mean mother.”
Lonnie stood up, pulled on his pack, attached the baton to a hook on his belt, and looked down at me.
“You ready?”
“No,” I said, standing up and throwing the pack on. “But let’s go anyway.”
I had on the hiking boots that Marsha’d talked me into buying, along with a pair of jeans and a checked black-and-white flannel shirt. I figured that was about as much commando as I could stand.
Lonnie, on the other hand, looked like something out of Ninja Rambos from Hell: shiny black nylon pants, black long-sleeved T-shirt, black leather gloves. And to top it all off, as he’d navigated us down the Cumberland, he’d smeared lampblack all over his face.
A wall of undergrowth, trees, vines, snakes, critters, and only God knew what else lay ahead of us. Lonnie pulled out his sealed beam and flicked it on as we made our way across the fallen tree and retied the boat. To random boat traffic, we’d look like a couple of night fishermen. And we were tucked in the bluff far enough forward to be unseen by anyone who might be wandering around above.
I still wasn’t sure this was really happening, but then I gritted my teeth, pulled out the Khyber knife, and started climbing.
Chapter 35
Halfway up the slope, I thought my lungs would finally, and mercifully, give out.
I stopped for a moment, panting. “If we even make it to the top, how the hell are we going to get them down?”
Lonnie was a half a body length ahead of me, his boots kicking mud and clumps of rotting gunk down on me. He turned, his face shiny, sweaty black in the dim light.
“This is the worst of it. It levels off near the top.”
“I’m not worried about Marsha,” I said, “but Kay Delacorte’s a middle-aged bureaucrat.”
“She’s a middle-aged bureaucrat who wants to go home very badly.”
I dug my toes into the soft earth, grabbed another hunk of vines, and pulled myself up. Thornbushes had whipped scratches across my face that would be scarlet and on fire by morning. Maybe fifty yards lay behind us, and the boat was only a tiny speck bobbing in the water, hidden from view by the twisted debris of dead vegetation.
There was a rustle to our right; we’d disturbed something that I hoped would head away, rather than toward us. We climbed on, yanking and gashing our way through the undergrowth. Lonnie was right, though, and the last few yards were actually a gentle slope upward to a line of trees, the bases of which were buried in thick vines.
Lonnie stopped. “We’ll have a time hacking through that,” he said. “But I don’t see a way around it.”
Off to our right, a TVA high-tension tower jutted into the black sky. “Are we even in the right place?” I asked.
“I think so,” he whispered. “There’s the brick smokestack at General Hospital. It looks to be in the right place.”
Once we stepped into the bed of vines, we sank in up to our waists. I wasn’t meant for this sort of thing. Lonnie was loving it, though. He hacked away, ripping vines and working his way upward. I followed him as best I could, driven to stay close by fear as much as anything else.
We got to a little rise on the slope, just below the trees that marked the back of the morgue property. He dropped down, flicked off his flashlight, and motioned me to follow him. I turned my light off, and we crept forward.
“Damn,” he stage-whispered.
“What is it?” I came up behind him. His fingers were wrapped in the wire spiderweb of a chain-link fence.
“Okay,” I said, “we cut through it.”
“Did you see the good news?”
I shook my head. He grabbed a fistful of vines and pulled them back. Beyond the fence, the brown brick of the Nashville morgue stared back at us, not twenty feet away. For the first time, I let loose with a grin.
“Nice shooting, cowboy,” I whispered.
I pulled the bolt cutters out of his knapsack, and he got mine.
“Be careful not to make any noise,” he said.
He started on the left; I took the right. We cut slowly, carefully, quietly upward, then curved toward each other and met in the middle. It took about five minutes, and when we finished, we pulled back a piece of fence in the shape of a four-foot mouse hole.
“What time is it?”
I checked my watch. “Two-thirty.”
“Damn, we’re really behind schedule. I hope they haven’t given up on us.”
“They haven’t,” I said. “What’s next?”
We were huddled just below the tree line. If we stepped forward two feet, we’d be potentially exposed. I stuck my head up slowly and looked; the front end of a tan Winnebago was visible around the corner of the building. A lone man stood in front of it, cradling a weapon. I couldn’t see the other direction, but assumed they were still there as well.
“What if they’ve got foot patrols?”
“We’ll have to take them out,” he said.
I glared at him. “I’ve never taken anybody out before!” I whispered. “They’ve got guns!” I wished I hadn’t made him leave the guns at home.
His white teeth shown in the darkness. “Nothing to it. Listen, dude, I’m going to crawl up to the tree line and cover the area. You’re going to play hero.”
“I’m going to what?”
“You’re going to crawl on your belly up to that gate and rattle it just a bit and hope somebody comes out.”
“Oh, shit,” I said. “You up for it?”
“Oh, shit,” I said again, then gulped. “Yeah. Let’s do it.”
He moved forward and poked his head out of the underbrush. He leaned as far as he could to the left, then back to the right. Then he motioned with his arm.
I crawled up next to him. “I think I have to go to the bathroom.”
“Stop joking.”
“Who’s joking?”
He turned to me. “You going or not?”
I moved up past him. He touched my arm. I looked back. “I see anybody coming, I’ll rustle the bushes, okay? Then you haul ass out of there.”
I nodded, then slid the pack off my back. I gently pulled a clump of vines out of the way and crawled forward. Every time a stick cracked, my heart stopped. Sweat ran down my sides. I crawled forward a few more steps, then past the tree.
I was out in the open, on a lawn that needed mowing and was wet with dew.
Thank God for high grass, I thought as I hugged the ground and moved slowly toward the chain-link fence. I figured there had to be a gate somewhere; it was just a matter of finding it. It was too dark to see, so I crawled along feeling a few feet at a time. For once in my life, I took the right direction the first time. I got to the gate and reached forward to rattle it, then looked up. The padlock was hanging there. Open.
God, what a woman.
I looked to my right, then left. The only person I could see was the lone sentry at the head of the last Winnebago in the circle. He had his back to me. I stood up slowly, lifted the padlock out of its hole, lifted the latch, and pulled.
The gate squealed. I stopped, hoping not to need a change of shorts before this was over. I pushed, putting pressure on the metal hinges, then pulled again.
The hum of the generator helped. Then the compressor on the air conditioner for the cooler cut in and I nearly jumped a foot. The fenced-in area was knee-high with uncut grass. I stepped quickly across, to the door, and turned the knob.
It moved in my hand. Please God, don’t let them have any lights on.
I opened the door and stepped into the darkness. I pulled the door shut behind me.
“Marsha?” I whispered.
Then she was all over me, with flashlight beams held by four desperate people dancing behind her. She wrapped her arms around my neck, pulling me so hard I nearly broke. I wrapped my arms around her and lifted her off the floor. She wept silently, choking sobs caught in her throat, tears pouring down her face.
We rocked back and forth, locked together until our muscles ga
ve out.
It was the finest moment of my life.
Somebody came up and put an arm on my shoulder. I turned. Kay Delacorte’s tired, dirty, tear-streaked, gorgeous face stared at me, “Hi,” she whispered.
I let go of Marsha for just a moment and wrapped my arms around Kay.
“We thought you’d given up,” Marsha said.
I looked back at her. “Just late, as usual.”
The three men stepped over. Marsha held out her hand. “Harry, this is-”
“No time for introductions,” I said. “We’ll have a party later. For now, we’ve got to get the hell out of here.”
“Okay,” she said. “How?”
“Kill those flashlights,” I said. “In fact, leave ’em behind. We’ve got plenty. Lonnie’s waiting for us at the tree line. We cut a hole in the fence. We’re going to scale down the bluff. There’s a boat down there. When we step out of here, drop down on your bellies. Go through the gate and straight for the trees. There’s one sentry, to our right by the last Winnebago. He’s the only one I’ve seen. I’ll lead. Kay, you follow, then Marsha. You three guys take up the rear and watch out for each other, okay?”
“Okay, man,” the oldest guy said. “Let’s go.”
The flashlights went out, submerging the room into complete blackness. “We’ve only got about twenty feet of open ground,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “Then we’re in the bush. Once we get there, we’re fine. Be careful, and good luck.”
Marsha touched my arm, and in the darkness I leaned over and kissed her quickly. There’d be more time for that later. I dropped to one knee, pulled the door open, and peered out.
Nothing.
I went out first, low, on my belly until I hit the gate. Vague black shapes followed me, their movements clumsy and slow. I crept across the slick grass, slithering side to side, hoping I’d get us back to the hole in the fence on the first try.
By the time I crossed the spread of open lawn, I realized I’d hit it wrong. We were on the wrong side of the big oak. Lonnie’d cut the hole on the left side, not the right. I hunkered down and followed the fence, hoping everyone was still behind me. Random night noises caught my ear: a siren in the distance, a tugboat’s deep whistle upriver.
The breathing of people behind me.
My senses seemed on edge, on fire. I felt the ground beneath me as if it were moving itself, breathing in and out as we crawled across it like fleas on a dog.
Finally I came to the hole. I pulled off to the side. Lonnie poked his head out from behind the tree.
“Got ’em,” I whispered. He held an index finger to his lips.
Kay Delacorte came up behind me. I leaned in to her. “Sit up on your butt, then slide legs first through the hole. Get out of the way and be quiet until we’re all through.”
I pulled a piece of the fence aside, Kay sat up, pushed herself up on her haunches, then slipped in the wet grass and raked her leg across the cut chain-link wire, ripping her pants and gashing her leg bad enough for me to see it even in the darkness.
Her squeal of pain cut the night air like a thunderclap.
I looked up. The sentry had turned our way, holding his rifle out in front of him.
“Damn,” I grunted. “Get on through.”
“Who is it?” the sentry called. Then, from inside the Winnebago, a spotlight came on, sweeping the area until it froze on the seven of us, lying there frozen on the grass.
“Move!” I shouted.
Kay tumbled through the fence just as the sentry fired. Marsha slithered forward on her belly. There was no time to do this gracefully; I jumped up, grabbed her by the waist, and threw her through the hole.
The sentry fired a second time, the round zinging off above my head. There was running, yelling from both our left and right. I lost sight of the sentry as I stared straight into the spotlight.
There was a clatter above me. Lonnie scrambled up the nine-foot fence with a mad rush. The chain link bent forward under his weight, which gave him something to hang on to. With one hand holding on to the fence, he managed to pull a pin on the smoke grenade and fling it straight at the Winnebago. Before that one landed, he’d cocked his arm and flung another.
There was a muffled whomp of an explosion, followed by another. Within a split second, we were engulfed in a choking purple-and-green cloud. My eyes burned, my throat ached. I coughed and spit, hard and disgustingly.
“This way!” I yelled. The last of the three men looked blinded.
Above me, Lonnie threw off two more smoke grenades to the right. There was a steady stream of gunfire now, all mixed in with screams and cries. The firing was coming from our left and right; with a little bit of luck, they were shooting each other.
The last man stood straight up. I ran over and grabbed him. He coughed and gagged, then threw up in front of me.
“C’mon, you can make it,” I yelled. Then I grabbed his shoulder and pulled him forward. When we got to the fence, I pushed down on his head and shoved him through. Then I dropped on my back and slid through the hole feet first.
I scrambled a few feet down into the undergrowth.
“Marsha!” I called. From the smoke and haze, I heard her call my name. Then Lonnie was next to me.
“We all here?” I asked.
“Yeah, five of them, two of us, right?”
I squinted my eyes and forced myself to focus on him through tears that were part chemically induced, part just from being plain damn overwhelmed.
“Yeah,” I gasped, breathless. “That’s it.”
He coughed and spit a wad himself. “Let’s get out of here.”
Getting down was a hell of a lot easier than getting up. The smoke drifted mostly upward, so by the time we’d gone halfway down the bluff, most of it had dissipated. A few minutes later we hit the mud bank. Marsha slipped and fell in the soft goo, but was laughing so hard she didn’t care. I found myself giggling as well, my heart beating like a jackhammer.
Lonnie jumped in the boat and started barking instructions to everybody. Kay limped in, blood running down her leg, and sat at the end of the boat holding a life jacket like a teddy bear. Then Marsha got in, followed by the three guys. The whopping of helicopter blades grew louder from somewhere, but we couldn’t see where. The gunfire lessened, and then seemed to stop. I untied the boat and pushed out hard, my two-hundred-dollar hiking boots sinking up to their laces. I jumped onboard; Lonnie fired the Merc up, and within a few moments we were out in the middle of the river, watching the heights above like dazed survivors of a great conflict reverently studying the battlefield as the smoke cleared.
Which I suppose wasn’t too far from the truth.
Epilogue
Marsha reclined on a beach chair near the edge of the surf, an unread newspaper folded on her lap, a drink nestled in a depression she’d created in the sand. On the other side of her beach chair, a black plastic boom box sat baking in the Bahamian sun as well, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones softly pouring from the pair of speakers. Marsha looked relaxed for the first time in days, and she’d managed to gain back part of the ten pounds she’d lost, thanks largely to my insistence that we eat everything in sight. I came up behind her and rattled the sack I had in my hand as a warning; she’d been a little jumpy lately. This time, though, she didn’t flinch. Maybe she was getting over it.
It had taken us a few days to quit buzzing. When the shooting started that Saturday night, the police assault team rushed in and took most of the Pentecostal Evangelical Enochians without a fight. Expecting a final confrontation at dawn on Sunday, the boys in MUST had gone on an all-out, edge-of-your-seat alert. At the first crack of gunfire, they did their own remake of The Sands of Iwo Jima. By the time Marsha managed to raise Howard Spellman on her cellular phone about halfway up the river, it was all over. The Enochians, with all their fundamentalist rantings and Second Amendment ravings, folded faster than a squad of Iraqi draftees. In the assault, a dozen were wounded, most just slightly. A couple of hour
s later, after the last of Lonnie’s smoke drifted away and order was restored, three bodies were found in back of the morgue. In the wild, chaotic firing, they’d shot each other.
Police casualties: zip.
There was hell to pay for us, of course, mostly from the news media. How a penny-ante private investigator and a ragtag car repossessor managed to free five hostages when the police, the FBI, the National Guard, and the Boy Scouts were all held at bay was a subject of keen interest. The hardest ones to fend off were the tabloids. Marsha flat out refused to give interviews, but Kay Delacorte and the others were telling everybody to take a number, take a seat. Lonnie went to ground, as I expected. The last thing he wanted was anyone paying attention to him.
As for me, I thought about trying to parlay the whole situation into a few bucks. But then I decided money was too expensive to be made that way. I’d had my fifteen minutes of fame, and frankly, that was plenty. Maybe that was stupid, but I still had to look in the mirror every morning.
So Marsha and I ran and hid. At first, Dr. Henry didn’t want to give her comp and vacation time. Something about getting right back on a horse when you’ve fallen off. She threatened to quit, then sue the dog snot out of the city. He reconsidered. She told him we’d be out of the country for a few weeks-at least until the hubbub died down-and that she’d call him when she got back.
Maybe.
I sat down in the sand next to her and pulled a CD out of the sack. “Look what I found in the hotel gift shop.”
She opened her eyes halfway. “Wow,” she said, her voice almost sleepy. “I didn’t know country music was so popular down here.”
I yanked the plastic off and replaced Bela. I stared at the picture on the square CD case, with the word BECCA painted across the top in a bright yellow swash. I hit the play button and Rebecca Gibson’s voice was there just like she was sitting next to us. I thought of that first night I’d seen her, her last night on earth, back home at the Bluebird Cafe. The first song was one that she and Slim had cowritten, a soft love ballad called “When Your Heart Gets Lonely, Call Me.” It was a sweet, syrupy song that gave me a pain in the middle of my chest. Her voice was genuinely unique, pure, cutting, powerful. Now it was gone. Well, maybe not, I thought.
Way Past Dead d-3 Page 31