Spyder Web

by Tom Grace

  Gasping for breath, Falk threw his right forearm across Kilkenny’s face and drew back his weapon to fire.Kilkenny slammed both of Falk’s arms up violently into the car’s roof; the blow knocked the pistol from the killer’s hand and into the Mustang’s rear seat. Falk’s belt buckle glistened with the fire’s reflection, a glowing target through the shattered window of Kilkenny’s door. Pinning Falk’s arms with his left forearm, Kilkenny struck just above the killer’s groin with the flat palm of his right hand. The angle and force of Kilkenny’s attack lifted Falk several inches off the ground, jamming him against the concrete barrier. Falk’s pelvis made an audible snap as it cracked in two and twisted against the tail of his spine.

  Falk staggered as his body lost all its strength. Shock would soon give way to unconsciousness and finally death from internal bleeding. Kilkenny locked eyes with the killer as the last flickers of understanding died out and the penetrating stare glazed over. Falk’s body went limp and Kilkenny released his hold, letting the unconscious form slide to the ground.

  The wind shifted and sent a black curl of oily smoke over the Mustang and across Kilkenny’s face. The eddies and whorls seemed to drift with an unnatural sluggishness to Kilkenny, who was in a deeply focused mind-set, his warrior one. All his senses were charged.

  He’d eliminated one threat and was searching for any others through the haze. His search stopped on what he thought was a person in the road ahead. The figure stood motionless, fading in and out of Kilkenny’s vision as the billowing clouds of blackened smoke passed between them. He tried hard to focus clearly on the figure, but the air around him seemed to thicken as the smoke mixed with steam from the Mustang’s cracked radiator.

  Kilkenny’s eyes burned as he tried to stare through the smoke and blood that obscured his vision.He began to suspect what he saw was simply a mirage, when the wind shifted and the smoke began to clear. Not ten feet from Kilkenny stood an Asian man staring directly back at him. The man made no move toward him, but Kilkenny felt an intense rage, as if they were sworn enemies. He’d never seen the man before, but, like Etienne Masson, the man’s hatred filled the space between them.

  He wiped his bloodied face with his sleeve to get a better look, but, as soon as he cleared his eyes, the man was gone. Kilkenny looked around quickly, but he found no sign of the man.

  The driver of the pickup rushed past the battered Mustang and fled in the killer’s van. Nolan was unable to make out the van’s license number as it sped away. Seeing no other dangers, he turned and cradled Kelsey in his arms.

  36

  Michigan state trooper Jean Gordon was approaching the area where several bales of hay had stopped traffic, when she saw the fireball rise over the crest in the road ahead. She pulled onto the shoulder, to drive around the growing line of cars stopped there, and sped toward the explosion.

  ‘This is car forty-one-five. I have a large explosion on I-Ninety-four near mile marker one forty-nine, and I am moving to investigate. We’re going to need fire and medical teams and additional units to block off the highway in both directions. Do you copy, base? Over.’

  ‘We copy, forty-one-five,’ the dispatcher at the Jackson State Police post responded.’Additional units are en route to your position. Please advise when you reach the scene.’

  ‘Roger, base. Forty-one-five, out.’

  Gordon slowed as she approached the accident. She could make out three vehicles in the cloud of swirling smoke: a battered car, a pickup truck, and an overturned tanker that was engulfed in flames.

  ‘Forty-one-five to base, over,’ Gordon called out on her radio.

  ‘Go ahead, forty-one-five.’

  ‘I have a multivehicle accident blocking eastbound I-Ninety-four. One vehicle is a gasoline tanker that is burning. We’re going to need a lot of help out here.’

  ‘Understood, forty-one-five. Additional support is on the way.’

  Survival Flight lead pilot Dean Waters had just rescued the POWs from the enemy prison camp and was racing his helicopter across the desert sands of the Middle East when his pager began beeping furiously. He paused the game on his computer, grabbed his flight bag, and sprinted out of the basement-level offices housing the University of Michigan’s Survival Flight Service. Waters ran past the elevators, bounded up four flights of stairs, and quickly emerged on the rooftop lobby of the Taubman Center, next to the helipad.

  ‘What do we have?’ he asked as he reached the dispatcher.

  ‘MVA out on I-Ninety-four, a nasty one,’ the dispatcher replied. ‘Two passenger vehicles and a fuel truck. We’ve got two injured and the truck is burning. Here are your maps with possible landing zones. Your contact on the scene is a state trooper named Gordon. You can reach her on this frequency. Byrd and Landis are already on the pad.’

  Waters nodded.’Our patients are in good hands today. Let’s get to it.’

  Waters walked out to the Bell 230 medical helicopter, where the two flight nurses were loading supplies. ‘A lovely day to fly, don’t you think?’

  ‘We’re ready when you are,’ Landis replied as Byrd climbed aboard.

  Waters boarded the helicopter and strapped in. Landis and Byrd took positions in the rear, linking up with the on-call physician in the emergency room. After running through the preflight check,Waters powered up the helicopter and opened the throttles on the Bell’s engines. The helicopter responded with a near-deafening roar as the rotors chopped through the air.Waters increased the angle on the main rotor blades and lifted the helicopter off the helipad.

  As soon as the helicopter reached its cruising altitude, Waters saw where they were headed. A plume of black smoke smeared the horizon, creating a hazy filter over the late-day sun. The winds were light, out of the south, with visibility that was measured in miles. Waters estimated this would be a fifteen-minute trip to the accident scene. In the seat behind him, Landis made contact with the state police officer on the scene.

  Five miles east of the crash,Waters flew over the start of a long traffic jam. I-94 would be closed for a while and everyone parked below would be better off finding an alternate route. He banked the helicopter into a wide circle around the smoke plume as he looked for a place to land that was free of fuel. A smooth patch of gravel, just upwind of the burning truck, met his needs nicely. Below, paramedics fed Byrd and Landis status reports on the survivors.

  Once on the ground, the flight nurses bolted from the helicopter. Two firemen met them at the door to help with their medical gear. Waters kept the chopper warmed up and ready to move once the patients were on board.

  ‘How are they?’ Landis asked a paramedic by the car.

  ‘One’s unconscious, with possible internal injuries. The other one’s banged up, but not too badly. The doors on the car are a mess, so we’ll have to tear them off. Both of these people have been bounced around a lot, but the woman took the worst of it.’

  The firemen were working their hydraulic cutters on the passenger-side door of the Mustang. The car’s steel skin and frame groaned as the hydraulic pressure increased inside the device, tearing away at the crumpled metal of the car. Landis quickly glanced at the black body bag on the ground, a few feet away from the Mustang, before squeezing into the narrow space beside the driver’s door. The driver was bruised and bloodied as he held the unconscious woman beneath a protective cover that the firemen had placed over her.

  ‘Sir,’ Landis said as she placed her hand on Kilkenny’s shoulder, ‘my name is Michelle. I’m here to help you. Can you tell me how you’re feeling?’

  Kilkenny turned toward the voice and saw a woman in a dark blue flight suit. ‘To be honest, I feel like shit, but I’m alive, so I guess that’s a start. I’m Nolan Kilkenny and this is Kelsey Newton. I can’t say for sure how she’s doing, but Kelsey’s been out for a while, and she doesn’t look too good. We took a hell of a shot from that semi before it rolled.’

  Byrd was now on the Mustang’s hood, assessing Newton’s condition while Landis checked Kilkenny’s vital
sings and kept him talking. The metal of the car’s door groaned loudly before releasing its hold and pulling free from the car. Byrd moved over to the opened side and began treating Newton.Kilkenny eased away to give Byrd room to work, but his hand remained firmly wrapped around Newton’s.

  Landis gently wiped away the blood from Kilkenny’s face to inspect the gash across his forehead. ‘Can you tell me what happened?’

  ‘The fuel truck blew a tire and started jumping all over the road. A pickup rammed us from behind, and we got hit by the back end of that burning hunk of junk.’

  Landis placed a dressing on his forehead.’sounds awful.’

  ‘It got worse,’ Kilkenny replied.

  The paramedics cut Newton out of her safety belt and eased her gently onto a backboard. Her slender neck was already wrapped in a cervical collar and a breathing tube was inserted down her throat. Byrd rolled out a pair of MAST pants and zipped them up around Newton’s legs; the inflatable device acting as both a splint for any broken bones and as an antishock aid for the trip back to Ann Arbor. After setting an IV, Byrd and a paramedic hustled Newton to the waiting helicopter.

  ‘All things considered, you’re looking pretty good,’ Landis commented as she packed up her kit. ‘I’m going to leave you with the paramedics; they’ll get you to Ann Arbor. I’ve got a flight to catch with your lady friend.’

  ‘Take good care of her,’ Kilkenny asked as he squeezed Landis’s hand. ‘She means a lot to me.’

  ‘We’ll do our best for her,’ she assured him. ‘See you soon.’ A moment later, the helicopter bearing Newton lifted off into the sky.

  Kilkenny’s condition, though more stable than Newton’s, was still considered serious. The paramedics gingerly extracted him from the driver’s seat and strapped him to a backboard. A waiting ambulance rushed Kilkenny away from the hellish scene.

  37

  Kilkenny awoke several hours after his arrival at University Hospital. The EMTs had given him a painkiller in the ambulance, and after that, everything seemed just a blur. Gradually, memories of the accident came back to him: the truck, the fire, and the man with the gun. And Kelsey.

  He remembered Kelsey lying there beside him in the mangled car, covered in blood. He tried to sit up, but he was still sore and his eyes were swollen to narrow slits.

  ‘Easy,Nolan. Save your strength,’ his father said quietly to him. He felt a firm hand on his shoulder. ‘You’ve had a rough ride, but you’ll be fine.’

  ‘Dad, how’s Kelsey?’ Nolan asked with a raspy throat that felt parched.

  ‘She’s hurt pretty badly, but the doctors think she’ll pull through. They finished up with her about an hour ago.’ Sean Kilkenny couldn’t hide the concern he felt over the seriousness of Kelsey’s condition.

  Nolan took several short sips from a glass of ice water; the first few seemed to evaporate halfway down his throat. ‘Can I see her?’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ his father advised, patting him on the leg for reassurance. ‘You both need your rest. Everything will be fine.’

  Exhausted from the effort, Nolan closed his eyes as the painkillers took hold once more and he drifted into an uneasy sleep.

  It was almost two in the morning when he awoke again. His face still throbbed from the bruises, but the swelling around his eyes seemed to have receded a little. Slowly, Nolan eased himself off the hospital bed, carefully testing his strength. He found a gym bag that his father had left for him and with only a few muffled groans managed to change into a pair of sweats. He remembered only a handful of missions where he’d felt this bad afterward, and those pains were the result of selfinflicted hangovers.

  At this hour of the night, most patients were asleep and the medical staff was at a minimum.Kilkenny quietly made his way down the empty hallway. He could hear one of the nurses attending to a patient as he passed, but he didn’t know how many others would be on duty at this hour. Kilkenny quietly walked down the hallway, following the signs to the Intensive Care Unit.

  Once inside the ICU, he found Kelsey’s name written in bold black letters on the bed-assignment chart. He slid the curtain open slowly and only wide enough to squeeze inside before closing it again. If she was asleep, he didn’t want the bright lights of the nurses’ station to wake her.

  Kelsey lay in the hospital bed with her upper body slightly elevated. Several tubes flowed to and from her body and one of the machines beside her bed made an ungodly hissing sound. Under the faint glow of the room’s indirect lights, she looked so fragile.

  Memories of his mother’s final days returned in a painful flood of emotion. No, he thought, pushing the memories of that loss back, this is different. Kelsey will survive.

  He approached the bed slowly, moving as quietly as he could, hoping not to disturb her.At her side, he grasped her hand and felt the warmth of the life still within her. Kelsey’s face, now framed with sterile dressings instead of a flowing mane of blond hair, still radiated beauty and peace in her sleep. The guilt and responsibility Nolan felt over her injuries subsided as he memorized every detail of her exquisite face.

  A sudden flash of light nearly blinded him, ending his quiet meditation. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw a woman silhouetted in a fluorescent halo.

  ‘All right, Mr Kilkenny,’ a hushed but stern voice called out to him like an arresting officer, ‘it’s time for you to get back to bed.’

  The nurse was right, of course, but that still wouldn’t have kept him from Kelsey’s side tonight.

  ‘You caught me, warden,’ Kilkenny said with his most charming smile. ‘I’ll go peacefully. How’s she doing?’

  ‘They ran some tests on her, but the results won’t be back until morning.’ The nurse closed the curtain around Kelsey’s bed and escorted Kilkenny back to his room. ‘Your parents warned us about you two. They said if either of you was missing, just go looking for the other.’

  ‘How’s she doing?’ Nolan asked more emphatically.

  ‘She’s in pretty rough shape,’ the nurse said gravely, ‘but I’ve seen cases much worse than hers make a full recovery. Only time will tell if there will be any lasting effect from her injuries. Now, if I catch you out of your room again tonight, I’m going to have to give you an icewater sponge bath.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be good,’ Kilkenny replied in surrender. ‘I haven’t been treated like this since boot camp.’

  The nurse saw Kilkenny to his door, where he bid her a good night and walked back to his bed. The room was dark, as he had left it, but something seemd out of place. Throughout his years of martial arts and military training, Kilkenny had learned to use all his senses to protect himself, and those instincts were warning him that something was amiss. He slowly panned the room to see if he could detect whatever was triggering his defenses.

  ‘I’m in the back corner,’ a familiar voice called out. It was Cal Mosley of the CIA. ‘Is the nurse back at her station?’

  ‘Yeah, she’s gone.’

  ‘Good, then turn on some lights in here so we can see each other. I gave up this skulking-around-in-thedark shit years ago. Sorry if I startled you, but it is after normal visiting hours. I got here as soon as I could. How are you feeling?’

  Kilkenny eased himself into his hospital bed and flipped on the reading light. ‘I’ve been better.’

  ‘I don’t doubt that.’ Mosley looked Kilkenny square in the eyes. ‘I was quite relieved to hear that you and Ms Newton survived. This business of ours is getting ugly, which is why I’m here in the middle of the night arranging security for you and the professor. Your “accident” was anything but. You were set up. The state police ran the shooter’s fingerprints against the FBI database and they found a match. The guy you took out was a high-priced hit man, the kind crime bosses like to use when they want a neat job with no questions.’

  ‘Somebody paid to have Kelsey and me killed?’

  ‘Looks that way. The FBI is assisting the state police regarding your accident and we consider it officially pa
rt of our investigation. We’ve found the getaway van near the airport, completely burned out. Not much left of the two guys who were in it, either. The van was stolen, of course, but we’ve got a few other leads to follow up on. We’re getting warm, Nolan—I can feel it. I’m just sorry you and Kelsey had to prove our theories the hard way.’

  Kilkenny took in everything Mosley was telling him. It bothered him to know that there were people willing to kill to prevent the loss of the Spyder. ‘Is your director’s meeting still on for Wednesday?’

  ‘If you’re up to it, but don’t push yourself.’ Mosley handed Nolan a business card. ‘Here’s my number while I’m in town. If you need anything, just call. Take it easy, Nolan. I’ll be in touch.’

  38

  Throbbing knots of pain that seemed to fill every muscle in his body roused Kilkenny from a restless sleep. It was early in the evening, about half past six. A nurse, noticing that he was awake, took his vitals and changed his dressings. Once cleaned up and fed, he picked up the bedside call button and rang the nurses’ station.

  ‘Mr Kilkenny, how can I help you?’ asked a petite young nurse, who didn’t look old enough to be out of high school, as she entered his room.

  ‘You can start by calling me Nolan. My father is Mr Kilkenny, and I’m not old enough to deserve such formality.’

  ‘All right, Nolan.’ She giggled. ‘What do you need?’

  ‘I’d like to see Kelsey Newton. Is she up for visitors?’

  ‘I’ll go find out.’

  The nurse returned a few minutes later and parked a wheelchair beside Kilkenny’s bed.

  ‘I take it that permission has been granted?’

  The nurse laughed at her eager passenger as he sat in the chair. ‘Her exact words were, “Get that lousy driver over here so I can give him a piece of my mind.”’

  Nolan ran his hand across the stubble on his chin. ‘Maybe I ought to rethink this…’