Murder on the Horizon

by M. L. Rowland

  With both hands, she grabbed the line attached to her lower eyelid.

  Her body was shaking uncontrollably. She closed her eyes, opened her mouth, inhaled, and froze.

  She had heard something.

  She held her breath and listened.

  Footsteps were returning up the tunnel. They crunched to a stop in front of her.

  A flashlight swept her face.

  “Holy mother of—” a male voice whispered.

  Gracie opened her eyes. Saw nothing, but red. Blinked.

  Boojum stood before her.

  “Boojum . . .” Gracie gasped. “Bombs. They’re . . .” She stopped again. “You already know,” she said. “You’re one of them.”

  Without a word, Boojum slung his assault rifle over his shoulder, moved around to Gracie’s side, and slid an arm around her waist. “Lean against me,” he said in a soft voice.

  Puzzled, thankful, Gracie sank against his warm body. Knees buckling, she let him take most of her weight.

  He slid a tactical knife from a keep on his belt and flicked it open. Then he studied the hooks attached to her mouth and the tender skin below her eye. “Okay,” he said in a voice so gentle, so comforting, Gracie’s eyes blurred with fresh tears. “I’m going to leave the hooks where they are, but I’m going to cut the lines. You’ll need to stand up again. Can you do that?”

  Somehow, Gracie straightened her legs, putting a hand out to the wall for support.

  Boojum let go of her waist, took ahold of Gracie’s own hand and placed it on the line attached to the corner of her mouth. “Hold it here.”

  She wrapped her fingers around the filament.

  Pulling the line taut with his hand, Boojum laid the edge of the blade against it.

  The sharp steel cut the filament like a warm knife through butter.

  “One more,” he said. Taking Gracie’s hand again, he placed it on the line attached to the lower eye lid.

  With his face so close to Gracie’s, she could feel his warm breath, smelling faintly of clove, he pinched the end of the hook. Sliced through the filament.

  Gracie was free.

  Her knees gave way and she sagged to the ground.

  Boojum knelt beside her. “Can you feel the barb on your eye at all?”

  Gracie blinked once. Blinked again. “No.”

  “Good. Come on. We need to get you out of here.” Putting his hands beneath Gracie’s armpits, he hauled her back to her feet. “All hell’s about to break loose.”

  “Wh . . . what?”

  “The place is surrounded by law enforcement. Probably with enough firepower to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge.”

  “Wh . . . what?” Gracie said again. “I don’t . . .”

  “The cavalry’s outside,” Boojum said, taking her elbow and edging her up the tunnel. “If there’s shooting, we don’t want you caught in the cross fire.”

  With the back of her wrist, Gracie wiped the blood out of her eye so she could look into Boojum’s face. “You’re not . . . with them?”

  “With them? Yes. One of them? No.”

  “You’re . . .” She dredged around for the acronym. Couldn’t focus. Watched inside her mind as her own hand reached out, fingers spread, then closed around it. “ARA.”

  Boojum stopped, his grip on her elbow tightening. “How d’you know about that?”

  “I was one of the searchers who found . . . parts. Out in the desert. There was a tattoo . . .”

  Boojum bowed his head, leaned against the tunnel wall.

  “You knew them,” Gracie said. “Those people.”

  “My sister.” A whisper. “And her husband.”

  “I’m so sorry.” With a sickening jolt, she remembered the torsos in the freezer in the room next to the tunnel entrance.

  “Someone killed them both,” Boojum was saying. “Possibly one of the older boys—Jordan. I don’t have my proof yet.” He pushed off the wall, his grip retightening on Gracie’s elbow. “Let’s get you—”

  Twin bangs exploded in the tunnel.

  Gracie yelled and dropped to her knees, hands over her ears.

  Boojum grunted, turned, lifted his rifle with one hand, and fired three shots in quick succession. Poppoppop!

  Then he sagged against the wall, sliding down the cement block until he was sitting on the ground.

  A dark, wet flower blossomed on his left shoulder.

  Ears ringing, Gracie crawled over to him. “Boojum!”

  “Goddammit,” he said between clenched teeth.

  Gracie peeled back the orange shirt, exposing a neat hole in the hollow beneath the collarbone, above the armpit.

  She looked down the tunnel. In the blue cast of the string lights, she could see someone lying sprawled on the ground, a dark pool spreading around the head.

  Gracie staggered to her feet and stumbled over.

  It was Jordan.

  She dropped to her knees and felt for a pulse on the boy’s neck.

  Waited.

  Nothing.

  Repositioned her fingers.

  Still nothing.

  Gracie bowed her head, tamping down the feelings that threatened to push up to the surface, to weaken, and paralyze.

  Her head snapped up.

  From outside, at the end of the tunnel, came a voice over a bullhorn. An announcement. Unintelligible, but the intent clear. You are surrounded. Drop your weapons. Down on the ground. Hands behind your heads.

  Men yelled. A woman screamed.

  Then a smattering of automatic gunfire.

  Return fire.

  The voice over the bullhorn again.

  Silence.

  More sporadic gunfire.

  Then, inside the tunnel, a scraping sound.

  Gracie pushed herself to her feet and turned to run.

  A groan floated up behind her.

  She looked over her shoulder.

  A dark figure, hunched over, a hand pressed to his side, limped up the tunnel.

  Winston.

  She must have made a sound, for the big man looked up and saw her. “Gracie. Come help me. I’m hurt. Help me. I never would have hurt you. I wanted to marry you. I love you.”

  Gracie turned and ran up the tunnel to where Boojum sat. “It’s Winston,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  Boojum tried to push himself up from the ground, but fell back with a grunt. “Little bastard got me in the leg, too.”

  “We have to go,” Gracie urged. She draped his arm around her shoulder and, pushing up with her legs, hauled him up to his feet.

  Together they limped around the corner, up the tunnel to the bunker door.

  Gracie put her hand on the knob. “Locked!”

  From back down the tunnel came a hoarse cry of anguish.

  “Do you know the combination?” Gracie asked.

  “No.”

  Gracie leaned Boojum against the wall, ran back down the tunnel, around the corner, ducking beneath the fishhooks, to where Winston sat on the ground, cradling Jordan’s head on his knee.

  “I need the combination to the door,” Gracie gasped.

  Head bowed, Winston gave no sign that he had heard her.

  “The tunnel door is locked,” she said. “I need the combination.”

  Still no response.

  Footsteps entered the tunnel from the creek.

  Gracie reached behind her back, unsnapped the holster, and drew out Allen’s revolver. Holding it with her right hand, cupping it with the left, she placed the barrel against the side of Winston’s head above his ear. “I need the combination,” she said. “Now.”

  Without looking up, Winston said in a voice devoid of emotion, “Four, twenty, eighty-nine.”

  With the revolver still in her hand and repeating four, twenty, eighty-
nine to herself over and over, Gracie ran back up the tunnel to where Boojum waited, slumped against the wall.

  “Four, twenty, eighty-nine,” she said.

  Boojum snorted. “I should have guessed.”

  Gracie stood to one side so the rope lights would illuminate the dial.

  “April 20, 1889. Hitler’s birthday.”

  One hand on the handle, Gracie punched in the numbers.

  Still locked.

  She cried out in frustration.

  A shout back down the tunnel. Gunfire. The sound of feet running.

  Gracie took in a deep breath. Punched in the numbers, more slowly. “Four. Two. Zero. Eight. Nine.”

  Held her breath.

  Turned the handle.

  Pulled the door open.

  She and Boojum fell through into the bunker. The door slammed behind them.

  Leaving lights blazing and a trail of bright red blood in their wake, Gracie and Boojum stumbled through the Inner Sanctum and into the weapons and ammunition room.

  Boojum let go of Gracie. “You go. Get out of here.”

  “No!” Gracie said. “You’re hurt. I’m not—”

  “I’m slowing you down.” With his head, he indicated the mini–MASH unit in the next room. “I can hole up in there.” He limped over to the shelves lining the wall and picked up a hand grenade. “No one will get past me. Get the hell out of here.”

  Gracie left Boojum, running once again past the mini–MASH unit, showers and beds and freezers, through the kitchen and living area, up the ramp, through the garage to the door to the meeting room.

  A muffled explosion below shook the entire building, rattling the windows. Dust sifted down from the ceiling.

  Gracie threw open the door, flipped on the light, and ran across the meeting room. With a hand on the knob of the door leading out into the yard, she stopped, falling against the wall.

  What the hell am I doing?

  Running outside at a hundred pumped-up-on-adrenaline-and-testosterone law enforcement guys wearing tactical armor and holding weapons with itchy hair-trigger fingers. They had no idea who she was. That she wasn’t one of them. She was dressed in orange and camouflage, just like everyone else.

  And you have a gun in your hand, you massively harebrained IDIOT!

  Gunfire sounded again from somewhere nearby. Above her head.

  Someone was shooting from the second floor.

  She looked up, eyes searching the ceiling as if with X-ray vision she could see who was up there.

  Grandpop Martin, she guessed. The Edwards patriarch.

  As if to confirm her supposition, she heard the low rumble of a man’s voice.

  Then another voice, one that made her heart stop.

  Higher, younger, pleading.

  Baxter.

  CHAPTER

  33

  GRACIE’S eyes darted around the meeting room, stopping at a door near the garage wall.

  She sprinted over and pulled the door open.

  A ramp led up to the second floor.

  Easing the door closed behind her and feeling her way in the darkness with a hand on the wall, Gracie tiptoed up the ramp to a landing, around the corner, and up to a door at the top.

  Standing off to one side, she found the knob, turned it and pushed the door open a crack. She peered out into the darkened room.

  From the glare of spotlights outside flooding in through the single window off to the left, she could just make out that the room was long and narrow, running the length of the building. Piled high down the center were boxes of ammunition, enough for an entire army for a year.

  Barely visible in the shadows to the right of the open window, Martin sat in his wheelchair holding a high-powered rifle, the barrel resting on the sill.

  On his lap sat Baxter.

  Martin’s left arm encircled the boy, a revolver in the hand.

  Open boxes of ammunition lay next to the wheelchair, large-caliber cartridges scattered across the floor.

  “I swear, Grandpop,” Baxter was saying in a voice quivering with tears. “It wasn’t me.”

  “Shut your sniveling mouth, you goddamned little traitor,” Martin growled. Without aiming, he fired off a half-dozen rounds of the rifle.

  The spotlight went out, plunging the room into full darkness.

  “I got a kid up here!” Martin screamed out the window. “You goddam pig cops! Pull back, you sissy cowards! Or I’ll shoot the boy! He means nothing to me. I swear to God, I’ll shoot him!”

  “Goddam sissy cowards,” Martin muttered. “They won’t shoot now. Afraid of hitting you.”

  Gracie’s breath came in quick whispers through her nose. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that Martin meant what he said, that he would kill his own grandson.

  Something caught her eye.

  A glowing red dot slid along the boxes of ammunition behind Martin.

  A laser sight.

  A sniper outside looking for his shot.

  Surely, Gracie thought, even a trained sniper wouldn’t risk shooting into a darkened room with a child right there.

  She thought for a moment. Reaching in from the doorway, she slid a hand up the wall. Couldn’t find what she was looking for.

  She edged into the room, hand brushing the wall until she felt a light switch.

  But if she simply turned on the lights, Martin could and would see to shoot . . . Baxter first, then her.

  Gracie knelt down on the floor. Feet lifted, eyes trained on Martin at the window, revolver in hand, she crawled into the room. A shadow among shadows, every movement slow, calculated, stealthy. If she made a sound, any sound, she was dead meat. Literally.

  But Martin’s attention was laser-beamed out the window. He fired off several more rounds of the rifle. “Come on!” he yelled. “Why don’t you shoot? The kid’s right here. Shoot the little son of a bitch! I want you to!” He sank back in the chair. “Goddam government sissy cowards.”

  Barely breathing, Gracie inched past the ammunition boxes, lifting each hand, each knee in turn, then placing it carefully, silently on the wooden floor.

  She crawled past the wheelchair, then turned and came up behind it.

  Taking in a deep, silent breath through her open mouth, she rose up onto one knee and pressed the end of the revolver against the back of Martin’s skull. “Move a muscle and you’re dead,” she said.

  Martin jerked, then froze.

  “Gracie,” Baxter whimpered.

  “Leave, Baxter. Now.”

  Without hesitation, the boy slid off his grandfather’s lap. Footsteps thudding on the wooden floor, he ran across the room, scrabbled around the far wall searching for the door, found it and disappeared.

  “Tip the rifle out the window,” Gracie said. The hand holding the revolver was shaking so badly, she gripped her wrist with the other hand, trying to hold it steady. “Then raise your right hand over your head.”

  Martin did as he was told. The rifle landed with a clattering thump on the ground outside. He lifted his hand.

  “Higher.”

  With a grunt, he raised it higher.

  “Now throw the handgun after it.”

  “Goddam, bitch!” Martin yelled without turning. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Throw it!” Gracie screamed.

  The weapon landed with a thud outside.

  Gracie’s finger closed around the trigger. She bored the barrel into Martin’s skull. “You twisted, hate-filled son of a bitch,” she growled, teeth clenched so tightly, her jaw ached. “Good people are dead because of you. Because of your hatred.”

  Martin’s head jerked.

  “Don’t move!” Gracie yelled. “I have all the reason in the world to kill you and not a single reason not to.”

  Silence.

  Gracie
pushed herself to her feet, staggered, regained her balance. “Do not move.” Then with the gun trained at the back of Martin’s head, she backed slowly across the room to the far wall, found the door standing open, then off to the right, the light switch.

  Moving her body as close to the door as she could while reaching out for the switch, she took in a deep breath and flipped on the light.

  Gracie dived for the door. Missed. Hit the doorjamb. Bounced off.

  Bangbang!

  She landed hard on her side, head downhill on the ramp. The revolver flew out of her hand, skittering out of sight somewhere below.

  “Gracie!” Baxter was on his knees beside her.

  “Go, Bax,” Gracie grunted. “Your grandpop . . .”

  “I think he’s dead. I think somebody outside shot him.”

  That’s okay then. Everything’s okay.

  The stairwell lights flared on.

  Gracie groaned.

  “What’s on your face?” Baxter asked. “And . . . your leg! Gracie! You’re bleeding bad!”

  Lifting her head, heavier than a piano, Gracie looked up the length of her body.

  Arterial blood, bright and red, spurted like a water fountain from a wound on her thigh.

  He had another gun, she thought. Should have thought of that. Stupid.

  Vaguely she knew she needed to stop the bleeding or something bad would happen. Oh, yeah. I’ll die.

  Curling her body, she brought her head up toward her knees, stretched out a hand, clamped it over the wound.

  Her body was growing cold. She was shivering. And her teeth were chattering again.

  Blood oozed out between her fingers.

  “Bax. My belt. S’already loose. Wrap it . . .”

  She lifted her head, but couldn’t hold it up. Banged it back down onto wood. Her body relaxed. Hand released.

  She felt Baxter struggle to pull her belt free from the pants loops. “Gracie,” he sobbed.

  “S’okay, Bax. Holster.”

  More pulling, fiddling, then with a final tug, the belt came loose.

  “Tie it around . . . leg,” she heard her own voice say. “Above . . . wound.”

  She opened her eyes and watched Baxter knot the belt around her upper leg. “Make it tight.”