David Morrell - Brotherhood of the Rose

by Brotherhood of the Rose(lit)

  The roar of shots was amplified by the polished walls of the lobby. Bullets walloped against the banister on the staircase, flinging splinters. But already Saul had reached the protection of the corridor. Charging harder, he veered toward a door at the end, in an alcove behind the staircase, yanking it open just as a guard on the other side reached for the knob. The man must have heard the shots and hurried to investigate, But he wasn't prepared for the heel of Saul's palm slamming against his rib cage. As the man groaned, falling, Saul tugged an Uzi from his grasp and swung to spray the hallway behind him. The guard out there dove frantically for cover.

  Saul didn't wait. No time. He leapt across the man he'd dropped, then raced down a short set of stairs, yanking at a ceiling-high metal case with towels, soap, and toilet paper on shelves. The unit crashed behind him, objects cascading, forming a barricade in the narrow corridor.

  A puzzled maid appeared at an open door to the right, understood quickly what was happening, and ducked back, frightened. Again Saul spun with the Uzi, fired a warning volley at the guard in pursuit, and charged out a door in back.

  When he'd first arrived at the rest home, he'd automatically obeyed one of Eliot's rules and scouted his hunting ground, familiarizing himself with the layout. Now as he burst outside, he faced the short flight of concrete steps he'd expected. He took them three at a time and rushed ahead.

  The clouds hung lower, gray and dismal. The bleak grounds stretched before him, the mist-enshrouded motor pool to his right, the chopper pad to his left.

  As drizzle dampened his cheeks, chilly in contrast with his burning sweat, he knew exactly where to go and what to do.

  Out of breath, stumbling frantically along the side toward the back of the lodge, Don yelled to the guards before him, "Dammit'@--he puffed-"split up! Head him off!" He stopped and panted, wiping drizzle off his face. "The chopper pad! The motor pool!" The guards obeyed.

  Straining to breathe, mustering strength, Don lurched into motion once again, swerving around to the back of the lodge as a guard crept out, his pistol trained. "Where is he?" Don shouted. "He came through this door." The guard kept his voice low, crouching beneath the concrete steps, warning, "Get down before he shoots you."

  "He's not armed."

  "He grabbed an Uzi off Ray."

  "That was Grisman shooting in there?" A tingle ran up Don's spine and made him shiver. I thought it was... Jesus! " He dove to the lawn, his shivering worse as the wet grass soaked his checkered pants and burgundy sport coat. "Where the hell is he?"

  Hunkered, the guard kept switching his aim to different sections of the grounds.

  Don struggled with paralyzing fear and surprised himself by rolling toward the guard, scrambling down the concrete steps, and hunching near the door. "Your walkie-talkie. Give it to me."

  Not shifting his gaze from the grounds, the guard pulled the radio from its holster on his belt and handed it over.

  Don pressed the send button, alarmed by the croaking sound his voice made. "This is the director. Motor pool, check in."

  He released the button. Static crackled. "No sign of him," a voice said. "We're still searching."

  "Chopper pad," Don blurted into the radio. "Negative," a voice said. "We've established a perimeter around the bird. With this many guns against him, he'd be nuts to make a try for it."

  Don flinched as the door came open behind him, another guard creeping out. "I just left Ray," the new guard said. "A doctor's with him."

  Don took a moment before he realized the implication. Again his spine tingled. "You mean he's alive?"

  "Grisman slammed his chest. Broke some ribs. The doctor says Ray's gonna live, though."

  I don't understand. Grisman's too good to make a mistake like that. I can't believe he slipped up."

  "Unless it wasn't a mistake."

  "You're telling me Grisman deliberately didn't kill him?"

  "if Grisman had wanted to, he would have. All he'd have needed was a little more force behind the blow."

  "Then why the hell didn't he? What's he thinking of?"

  "Who knows?" The guard made a sound that might have been a chuckle. "Maybe he didn't want to piss us off."

  Abruptly the walkie-talkie crackled. "There! I see him!"

  "Where?" Don yelled, his voice unsteady as he held the radio near his mouth. "The motor pool? The-?"

  "Not even close! The stupid bastard's way the hell past the jogging track and the greenhouse!"

  "What?"

  "He's running across the grounds! The river! He's headed toward the river!"

  Don leapt up, lost his balance and nearly fell, then started running toward the drizzle-enshrouded greenhouse. The two guards sprinted past him. Other guards converged out of nowhere.

  Saul gripped the Uzi and raced through the increasing drizzle, his legs like pistons, his chest like a bellows. He heard murky shouts behind him. At once the shouts seemed louder. He ran faster, legs pounding, adrenaline fueling him.

  A shadow seemed beside him. On his left. Glancing quickly that way, he knew he had to be imagining things. Even so, he would have sworn he saw Chris. They seemed to pace each other. Then Chris gained distance on him. You never used to be faster than me, Saul thought. Excitement almost made him grin. You were smarter, but I was stronger. Think you can get there ahead of me, huh?

  Well, brother, you're wrong. As a rifle cracked, echoing behind him, Saul forced himself to the limit, stretching his legs, gaining on Chris. An Uzi rattled in the distance. Saul came abreast of Chris. He urged his legs to work harder.

  The shouts became close. Chris disappeared, and through the drizzle, Saul faced the river, pounding toward a bank near the spot where he'd argued with Eliot, He crashed through shrubs down a slope. Reached a rocky outcrop.

  And dove. The cold water numbed him instantly. The force of his dive took him down into blackness. The surge of an undercurrent swept him along. He twisted beneath the water, struggling to level off and fight to the top. His overworked lungs rebelled, demanding air, threatening to inhale. As a roar began behind his ears, he surged and kicked and strained, breaking the surface, gasping, hearing gunshots, diving back down as bullets peppered the river. The strength of the current amazed him. Where he'd argued with Eliot, the water had seemed almost placid. But that had been a kind of cove, away from the river's flow. Here powerful hands seemed to twist and tug at him. Desperate for air, he fought to the surface once more, and as soon as he caught a breath, he ducked back down, too quick to hear further shots but not too quick for him to realize how far the current had already taken him.

  He'd left the guards behind, he understood with relief. Now all he had to do was fight the river. Get to the other side, he kept thinking. Dismayed, he realized he didn't have the Uzi anymore.

  But he was alive. The first stop in his plan had been accomplished. Raising his head above the surface, breathing deeply, he kicked and stroked and aimed himself toward a tree dipping into the water a hundred yards down on the opposite shore.

  Staring despondently toward the river, Don brushed rainsoaked strands of hair from his forehead, sickened by the frantic pounding of his heart. That fucking Grisman, he silently cursed. Chasing after him nearly gave me a heart attack. "Any sign of him?"

  A guard shook his head. "The other team hasn't checked in yet, though."

  Don nodded. As soon as he'd understood what Grisman intended to do, he, radioed to other guards, telling them to post themselves farther down along the river. "Sooner or later he's got to come up for air. The water's too cold for him to stay in it long."

  The guards continued scanning the river. "You never know," Don said, pulling his rain-drenched slacks away from his thighs. "Maybe we'll get lucky. Maybe the bastard drowned.". Two guards turned to him, their brows furrowed skeptically. "All right, all right," Don said. "I don't believe it either."

  Static crackled on the radio. "We just missed him," a voice said.

  Don jerked up from the rock on which he'd been sitting. ,"Say
again. Repeat," he told the radio. "We missed him. About a quarter mile down from your position. Just as we got here, he crawled up on the other side and disappeared in some bushes."

  "But I didn't hear shots."

  "We didn't have time., You want us to swim across and continue after him?" Don watched as the guards around him turned to study his reaction. Pausing, he glanced at the angry gray sky. "Just a second," he told the radio. He asked his guards, "So what would you do?"

  "He didn't kill Ray," a guard reminded him. "He could have, but he didn't."

  "So you're saying let him go?"

  "I'm saying he didn't kill Ray."

  Don thought about it, finally nodding. He pressed the send button on the radio. "Cancel. Return to the lodge."

  "Repeat," the voice said. "Request confirmation."

  "He's off the grounds. Out of our jurisdiction. Go back to the lodge."

  "Roger. Affirmative."

  Don set down the radio. The guards continued studying him. "Besides," he said, deciding to let them feel confided in, "I've got a hunch that the old man sent for teams to watch the exits from bete-in case Grisman tried this kind of stunt. He'll be running into snipers shortly. I'd just as soon none of you got caught in their fire,"

  "Suits me," a guard said. "I wasn't thrilled with the notion of hunting Grisman on his turf. Hit and run in the forest. That's his specialty."

  "Well, it's Eliot's problem now," Don said. Though angry, he nonetheless began to feel buoyant now that the crisis was over. "We did the best we could. I suppose Grisman left a car out there somewhere when he came in, but those woods are so thick it'll take him hours to reach it. By then, Eliot'll be out of the country. The difference is the same-whether Grisman stayed here for twenty-four hours or wandered around the forest. Either way, the old man got his head start." He turned, his legs weary as he started back to the lodge. Rain trickled down his neck. Even so, he suddenly felt amused. "It's a hell of a thing," he told a guard walking beside him. "Sometimes an operative tries to break into a rest home. But breaking out? Especially if you haven't killed here? That's a new one."

  There were arrangements to be made, of course. For one thing, Don had to contact his superior and explain what had happened. He considered this task so important he didn't even wait to put on dry clothes before he made the call. Back at the lodge, dripping on the carpet in his office, he spoke into the phone while he peered through the wall-sized window at the rain making dots on the swimming pool. He sneezed once. His voice shivered a couple of times from the chill of his wet clothes soaking into his bones, but by and large he managed to sound professional and calm. "I agree, sir. The board will want a detailed report. I'm preparing one now. The point I want to emphasize is this. Sure, Grisman got away. I accept the blame for that. It shouldn't have happened. No excuses. But we promised the old man time, and practically speaking he has it. No real harm's been done."

  The conversation ended with Don's superior cautiously telling him to wait for the board's decision. In the meanwhile, Don assured him, things were finally back to normal.

  Hoping there wouldn't be repercussions, Don set down the phone, gulping a shot of bourbon, and went to his room, where he soaked himself for half an hour in an almost scalding tub. His emotions pulled him in different directions. On the one hand, he still felt angry. Grisman had been such a nuisance, had caused so much trouble that Don had looked forward to taunting him. And now that Grisman had escaped, the sonofabitch had caused even more trouble. Dammit, I wish we could have caught him before he reached the river. I'd have shot the bastard myself.

  On the other hand, Grisman was finally gone. The crisis was over. The rest home, as Don had told his superior, was back to normal, if anything about this awful place could ever be described as normal.

  On balance, Don felt relieved. He put on freshly pressed green slacks, a crisp yellow shirt, a brand-new beige checkered sport coat. Tossing down another shot of bourbon-his limit for the day-he stretched his arms, at last relaxed. He went downstairs to the office, rested his white shoes on his desk, turned on his dictation machine to begin his report, and frowned as the roar of an engine passed so close it shook the window behind him.

  Now what? he thought in disgust. His heart plummeted. A terrible premonition squeezed his stomach, making him fear he'd throw up the bourbon.

  He grabbed the phone, pressing three buttons to contactbut it wasn't necessary. A fist pounded on the door. Before Don had a chance to say "come in," the captain of guards threw open the door. , "That goddamn Grisman!"

  "Say it."

  "All that shit about swimming the river, escaping into the forest!"

  "Tell me."

  "He was jerking us around!.He didn't want to go through the forest! A feint! That's all it was! To put us off balance! As soon as we relaxed surveillance on the chopper, he came back!

  That's him up there! He stole the goddamn bird!"

  Oh, fuck, Don thought and, thinking of the board's reaction, wondered if he could come out of this alive.

  Saul shivered in his soaked wool clothes and wanted to cheer in triumph. The two men guarding the chopper had been so relaxed after Saul's escape that they hadn't seen him crawl to the greenhouse, then across the jogging track to the fountain, finally to the flower garden, the bench, themselves.

  Again, he'd made sure to disable them without killing. That was important. If he killed within the confines of a rest home, he'd be pursued by the fullest might of the profession. He'd likely never catch Eliot, and for sure he'd never survive to enjoy his revenge. Hell, if necessary, the world's intelligence community would hunt him with missiles, anything to guarantee his punishment for violating the sanctity of a rest home.

  This way, however, the worst crimes he'd committed were roughing up personnel and stealing a chopper. Compared to violating the sanction, what he'd done was roughly analogous to getting in a fight and stealing a car. The decision makers would under-stand the control he'd exercised. They'd know he wasn't attacking the system but instead only getting even with Eliot. This wasn't political; it was personal. And understanding the duel in progress, perhaps they'd make allowances.

  He hoped. But his principles made sense at least, and more to the point, Saul took delight in sensing Chris would have approved. Indeed it seemed that Chris sat next to him, grinning, urging him on. Saul grinned in response. He hadn't flown a chopper in seven years, but Eliot had trained him well, and he needed only a minute to feel confident at the controls. He lifted off the pad, swooped past the rest home, and soared up over the trees along the perimeter. On the seat beside him, he had a jacket he'd taken from one of the guards and two Uzis plus several loaded magazines. His heart soared along with the chopper. Eliot logically had only one choice. Oh, sure, he could pretend to leave but actually stay in the area, hoping Saul would pass him. But considering the head start Eliot had been guaranteed, it was smarter for him to drive as fast as he could, reach Vancouver, and catch a flight to the farthest corner of the world, where, Saul admitted to himself, he had no chance to find him. Naturally Eliot would have hired men to watch the rest home, killing Saul when he was allowed to leave. The chopper-and less ideally a car-had been his only practical options.

  This, more than anything, was to Saul's advantage. The area was wilderness. Few roads went through the region. Saul remembered the route he'd used to reach the rest home. Nothing complicated. Calculating in the reverse, he knew he couldn't go wrong if he chose whatever road headed southwest toward Vancouver. Eliot had a two-hour lead. But that was on a zigzagging road whose route was controlled by the complex topography of the mountains, while Saul could chase him as the crow flew. What was more, the chopper was faster than the station wagon. Much, much faster.

  Forty minutes, Saul guessed. Everything'll be finished then. He imagined Chris would have cheered.

  The drizzle thickened, falling harder. When Saul had taken off, the weather hadn't been a problem. Now, however, the rain was dense enough to reduce visibility and
make the chopper's controls feel unstable. Studying the meandering road below him, Saul began to worry about crashing into an unseen barrier, a tree, a cliff, a hydro pylon obscured by low-hanging clouds. He had to watch for sudden changes in the terrain.

  His sole consolation was that the gloom had discouraged travelers. The traffic below him was sparse, most of it vans and motor homes. The few cars he saw were easy to identify and dismiss. A Ford LTD. A VW Sirocco. A Pontiac Firebird.

  But no Chevy station wagon. In the first minutes of the hunt, he hadn't been concerned. After all, Eliot should'have passed through several valleys already. Though it never hurt to be thorough, Saul really didn't expect to see the station wagon yet.

  But the minutes accumulated. Thirty. Thirty-five. Forty.

  As the rain fell harder and the roaring helicopter became less responsive to commands, Said feared he'd miscalculated. Hae, Eliot anticipated Saul's response and headed inland instead of to the coast9 Had Eliot gone to ground somewhere, hoping Saul would lose the trail by running past him to Vancouver? Check and countercheck. The possible variations were like a dizzying maze whose exit could never be found.