by Phil Bowie
Donny walked away quickly toward the brush, holding the Sig inside the front of his camo jacket. Davis waited a few seconds and then moved off. Winston gave it a three-minute count and followed. They each carried a pocketed filtered Mini-Maglite but would use them only if necessary.
Sam had gone back to the cottage because it was the closest place that came to mind where he would not be drawing them down on people he knew, and to buy some time to think. He had left the bike close by the side of the cottage, partially concealed behind a dead bush. There had been two of them in the Blazer. The one with the cigar and the driver. He was standing in the living room in deep shadow, where he could look out onto the street through the bay window that still had stickers on the corners of the panes and had not been cleaned.
He thought, I’ve got to draw them off, away from the island. He was close to the harbor here, but if he just grabbed a boat and left they would still be here, still be a threat to anybody, everybody who knew him as Sam Bass.
Maybe there was a way to draw them along, make sure they would see him go away in a boat, would know it was him and know beyond doubt he was running away. Then they would either try to steal a boat and chase him or leave by the Hatteras ferry. He could go a ways up the back of the island and then hide in the marsh grasses. If they managed to get a more powerful boat going and got too close he could always beach the outboard and run for it. There was no way they were going to catch him on foot. He knew of a small old outboard boat at a dock he could take without much trouble. It would not need a key. It had only a pull starter.
A wind was picking up outside, the strong light on a pole in the yard of a home across the street two doors down spraying through the trees and creating crazily cavorting shadows.
He saw a movement off to the left across the street. A shadow out of place. There. A lumbering figure. How could they have found him so fast? He scanned along the street, and there was the other one to the right by a tree, pointing at the side of the cottage, at the bike, and both of them moving up through the shadows faster now.
He spotted the lump of the tool box in the corner, bent down and felt over it, picked up a big pipe wrench, and moved quickly to the back of the house. He eased the back door open and spent five seconds scanning all around. There were only about fifteen feet of cleared area between the cottage and an expanse of low brush and grass with a few scattered trees. He went out the doorway low and fast, making for the brush.
Standing under a tree forty feet away Donny instantly froze and leveled the big auto two-handed, his right on the grip and his left palm already firmly under the butt, not seeing the gun really in the darkness but knowing where he was aiming, the wind making the shadows dance, and pumped off five fast rounds at the furtive low shadow racing across the uneven dirt patch and into the brush, the Sig making hardly much noise louder than the wind rustling the leaves, the wind masking both sound and motion and confusing the shadows, but he heard a slug hit something. Maybe the big thigh bone. He listened intently and scanned the brush but saw nothing.
He walked over to where the shadow had entered the brush and used the end of the silencer to lift a branch out of the way. He got out the red-filtered flashlight with his left hand, made sure the beam was set narrow, and played it over the ground. There was a big red pipe wrench in the sand with a smear on it from his slug. No blood anywhere that he could see.
Behind him, near the side of the cottage, Davis said quietly, “Donny.”
“Over here,” Donny said. “He bolted. He’s gone. He’s not armed.”
Davis and Winston walked up and Winston rumbled, “Well, you had your shot, jarhead, and you missed him.”
In his irritating falsetto, Donny said, “It’s too dark back here and he was fast. I hit a pipe wrench he was carrying.”
Winston snorted.
“All right,” Davis said. “He’ll try to get off the island now, I think. Let’s get back to the car fast.”
Davis drove the Blazer not much over the limit the short distance to the village fringe, then he floored it. He slewed to a stop on the gravel area by the shelter at the air strip. There was nobody in sight. The wind sock was standing out in what was now a heavy gusting breeze. “Winston,” he said. “Take the MP5 and get in the shelter. Take the big Maglite. Keep a watch on all the planes. Nobody besides our man is likely to come along. I don’t think they’re supposed to use this strip after dark. Anything happens, use the pay phone to call me.”
Winston grunted and got out. He went around to raise the back glass and get the five-cell and the submachine gun, keeping it wrapped in the blanket. He closed the glass and Davis had the Blazer moving away fast. Winston stuck his cigar in his mouth and walked up the steps and across to the far side of the night-blackened shelter. He used the flashlight, filtered by his fingers, to insert a clip into the MP5 and then rested it on the bench close beside him, covered by a single flap of the blanket. It was a little bulky with the fat silencer on the end of it, but it was not heavy so you could handle it fast and it hit damned hard where you aimed it. It was possible to lay the small-headed Maglite alongside it to light up a target, holding both it and the gun, but Winston had found that cumbersome and preferred to rely on his excellent night vision.
There were plenty of stars and a sliver of moon. The dunes and the planes were silhouetted against the dark sky already, after only a few minutes of acclimation. The auto was back in its belt holster, the silencer in his zippered jacket pocket. He leaned back against a post watching the planes and waiting to get his full night vision, which he usually acquired within twenty minutes. A few cars were moving north out on the main road but their lights were not a problem.
Davis was driving fast back toward the village. He said to Donny, “Keep an eye out for that Jeep. He might chance going for it now. He’s running. I can feel it.”
Davis killed the lights and parked by the end of Teach’s Lane, which was dark except for a yard light about ninety feet beyond the Bass place and on the same side of the street. He kept the engine idling. A Jeep was parked there, the cottage dark, lights from another cottage showing out behind it through a grove of trees. A white Toyota Camry went by slowly, but the couple in it did not seem to pay them undue notice.
Donny said, “You told us he drives an old Wrangler so that’s his Jeep, right? You want me to rig it?”
Davis was silent for thirty seconds. Thinking. Looking all around. The Jeep had the right plate. “All right. First check out the house. Then do it. I’ll keep watch out here.”
Donny reached over the seat and grabbed his leather bag and was getting out when Davis said, “Wait.”
“What?”
“Can you set it so you can get it back off fast if you have to?”
“No problem.”
“Okay, do it that way, then. Make it quick.”
“Give me ten minutes from right now.” He was wearing thin rubber gloves. He went away like one of the shadows. Davis never spotted him near the cottage or the Jeep. He was back in eight and a half minutes. He got in the backseat and said, “Easy. It’s small to keep the noise and flash down, but it will turn that metal dash into shrapnel. Hell, just the concussion ought to take his head off. For a while most people will figure it’s only somebody’s propane tank or maybe a transformer. No sign of anybody in the cottage. The back door was unlocked, can you believe that? I don’t feel him anywhere close, you know? I don’t think he’s holed up near here.”
“No. I think he’s running,” Davis said as he backed the Blazer around and got moving.
Davis was quiet for half a minute, intently watching the road ahead and to the sides and then he said, “What is it?”
“Good old C-4. Sky-hi. You can’t beat it for this work.”
Davis checked his watch. He wanted to catch that last Hatteras ferry now, if at all possible. There was still well enough time. He drove toward the harbor. He had both front windows down and Donny had both rear windows down, the auto ready in his hand, re
sting on the seat beside him. They were both scanning.
Sam was running full-out in the wind, across the sand through an expanse of waist-high marsh grass thinking I’ll fly low over the village at full power. Keep all the lights off. Head west. They’ll have to know it’s me. That will draw them away.
Winston was standing in the shelter with his hands on his hips, staring intently into the shadows outside, chewing lightly on the end of the unlit cigar. The chilling wind had picked up even more, blowing at his back, carrying sprinkles of sand with it, moving the bushes and rippling the grasses, making it harder to spot any wrong movement out there.
But it was like deer hunting. You could walk real careful through the woods with a cold wind in your face and the dry leaves and the brush noisy thinking, I’ll never see or hear one but then all of a sudden there’s a movement or a sound not like all the others and there she is and you whip the Winchester up and blow her fuckin’ heart out with a hundred-seventy-grain soft nose.
Better than twenty minutes with a seventy-five-dollar whore.
More cars went by north on the main road.
Keeping low, Sam unhooked all three tie-down chains and gentled them down onto the pavement. He opened the cabin door slowly and climbed in, easing the door closed. Took out the yoke gust lock. Slipped the key into the ignition. He gave it two shots of primer, let off the hand brake and clamped the foot brakes and said, “Come on, old girl.” He pulled on the master switch and keyed the starter. Before the prop had completed one revolution the engine stuttered alive and he immediately gave it throttle and let off on the brakes, heading for the midway entry onto the strip, all of the lights off.
Winston grabbed up the MP5 and lumbered for the near end of the strip. The plane was taxiing away fast, not a good shot from where he was, the other planes in the way, and at first he thought it was going to take off in the other direction, but then as he made it out onto the strip the plane swung around into the wind down at the far end and the motor revved up. It was aimed right at him. He used his left hand to cover his left eye tightly, waiting, squinting through his right eye, and there it was, the bright light coming on in the wing. Then two seconds later another bright light right beside it. You smart fuck, he thought. Spotted me right off and you figure to kill my night vision. We’ll see who’s smart.
You smart son of a bitch, Sam thought, watching the big man caught defiantly like a bear in his lights at the other end of the strip, carrying what looked like a submachine gun in his right hand and holding his left hand over that eye, the wind blowing his hair around wildly from behind him, striding heavily over to the side of the strip now and going down onto his left knee in the sand. You’re saving the night vision in that eye, Sam thought. And you’re left-handed.
Sam was keeping his own right eye shut to preserve his own night vision in all the glare of both his big landing and taxi beams. He kept the throttle fire-walled and pulled it up off of the pavement as soon as it was ready to fly, immediately then dousing the lights and opening his right eye. Now he would be only a fleeting shadow against the dark sky.
As soon as the lights died Winston opened his left eye and shouldered the MP5. His first burst missed just ahead of the big cross-shaped speeding shadow but then he was getting good hits all over the belly of it, he knew, rapping out quick little bursts as it banked up away from him, the engine and prop loud, aiming then right at the nose, leading it a little, and hearing with satisfaction the engine right away begin to miss and chatter bad just as his ammo ran out.
He grasped the MP5 with his right hand and drew out the auto and emptied it, firing fast but each shot aimed and deliberate as the shadow went away, banking right and then leveling out but real shaky at maybe a hundred feet, going out over the ocean, that engine sounding good and sick.
He waded through tall grass up onto a windy dune to watch, breathing hard, the empty MP5 in his right hand and the empty auto hot but unnoticed down against the side of his left leg.
Sam fought to control the Cessna. One cylinder was trashed, he knew, and the resultant violent vibration from the juddering engine was threatening to tear the wings off, so he pulled back on the power, just trying to maintain altitude. He had only maybe a hundred feet. His right hip burned and felt warmly wet. The left wing kept trying to hike up, something wrong with the aileron, then he felt a spang in the yoke and the aileron control became all but nonexistent, so he got on the rudder trying to keep the wings level. If he could just ease back to the right maybe he could put it down on the beach.
The windshield was starred and cold air was spouting into his face. He had full rudder in and it wasn’t enough to control the bank and she slowly rose up into a steep right bank and then buffeted and stumbled in the air and fell. He saw the black sea coming up and tried to brace for it but the tremendous impact wrenched him sideways, throwing him against the belts, his head slamming into something numbly, and he lost his grip on the yoke. He felt a pang of regret that Whiskey Sierra was dying. She had served him well and faithfully, trying to keep flying until she just couldn’t any more.
There was only a loud sustained rushing sound in his head and he was cold. Cold. Water was coming in everywhere. He felt for the seat belt latch and fumbled with it in slow motion but it was tight and he finally managed to free it and then fell straight ahead and again hit his head on something. She’s upside down he thought idly. He was in almost total darkness, so he felt around, got a grip on the seat and felt up under it. There. His hand closed on the inflatable life jacket and he got it out and tried to pull it on right, telling himself to wait until he could get outside to yank the lanyard. There wasn’t much air space left in the cabin and he choked and tried to suck in a supply of air, his lungs already burning.
His door was jammed so he turned and kicked weakly at the window twice with his left foot until the latch gave and a sudden cold flood of water filled up the last of the air space. He tried to swim out the window but he was caught on something and he could feel himself rapidly getting dizzy and hopelessly disoriented, his lungs on fire.
Winston used the pay phone. Davis said, “Yes.”
“It’s done,” Winston said. “Pick me up.”
When Davis got there Winston had the MP5 wrapped in the blanket again as he walked up to the driver’s window. “He took off but I shot the fuck down. Climbed up on a dune and watched him go into the water a good ways out there.” He pointed back toward the ocean. “Did like a big cartwheel.”
“You sure it’s done?”
“I put most of a thirty-round magazine right into him and I’d bet even a few nines from my auto. The slugs must have punched right on through that aluminum, tearin’ up whatever on the way. A couple turned his engine into scrap. Even if I didn’t hit him solid I don’t know how he could’ve come out of that crash.”
Davis thought for a few seconds. “All right, we can get out of here clean. Put the MP5 away but keep the flashlight. Go pick up your casings. Donny, you help him. Try to get it all but make it fast.” He checked his watch. “We’ve got to go get that charge off of the Jeep and maybe we can catch that last ferry.”
Valerie said, “Josh, go put your sneakers on and get your light jacket. We have to make a quick run to the store. I forgot to get cornbread mix and you know how your Sam likes his biscuits and honey butter.”
“Yeah, me too,” Joshua said as he looked for his sneakers under the couch.
There was a knock at the front door. It was Mrs. Bradley. Valerie smiled and said, “Oh, of course, you’ve come for your check. Come on in. Could you keep an eye on Josh for just a few minutes? He’s already in his pajamas and I have to make a last-minute run to the store.”
Mrs. Bradley said, “Surely. Where’s your car, honey?”
“Fred hasn’t finished working on it yet. Sam’s on his bike, so I’ll just run over and use the Jeep. He keeps the key under the floor mat but I don’t know why he just doesn’t leave it in the ignition. Who’d want to steal it? Josh, you could
set the table while I’m gone, please?”
Josh said, “Can we light the candles and turn out all the other lights?”
“Sure,” Valerie said. “Mrs. Bradley, I’ll write your check as soon as I get back.” And she hurried out the door.
The silver Blazer was moving fast toward the village when they saw the bright orange flash and a second later heard the quick double detonation. Davis braked hard to a stop and glared back over his shoulder at Donny.
Donny held up his palms and said in his little-kid voice, “Hey, no way it went off by itself. I’m telling you. No way. Somebody tried to start it and it took the gas tank, too. I can’t help that.”
“Dammit,” Davis said, slamming a hand onto the wheel.
Then he took a deep breath and checked his watch, the Blazer sitting there in the dark road idling. He did a squealing U-turn and headed north. Fast. “All right,” he said. “We have fifteen minutes to make fourteen miles. Get all the hardware out of sight.”
When they got to the ferry docks the big white steel boat was nosed up to the pilings in the glare of the parking area pole lights, rumbling. There was a long double line of cars, the first of them being beckoned aboard by the ferry hands.
Winston said, “It looks like a hell of a lot more cars than the boat can hold.”
Davis said, “Donny, dig that ferry schedule brochure out of that envelope back there. Then get out and go over to that machine and get me a Coke. Count the cars.”
When Donny came back and got in he said, “We’re number twenty-nine. How many does the boat hold?”
Putting his finger on a line in the schedule brochure Davis said, “Thirty.”
14
THE OLD CLAW HAMMER THAT HANK HAD FOUND TO LIFT aside the lid so he could replenish the pot-bellied stove with good dry wood slipped and the lid clanged shut.