Black Swan (36 page)

    I knelt down, gripped the door jamb and extended my hand. Anika wrapped her arms around me and pulled backwards as Fey reached up and grabbed my forearm, allowing me to grab his. He wedged his foot into a chink in the old stone foundation and stepped up as I pulled his arm, and aided by Anika's weight, yanked him through the door and into the hotel, where we all landed in a heap.

    I shoved him off me and stood up, helping Anika, and then Fey do the same. We were in a room that served as a broad hallway, leading to the front lobby, or into the bar area. I shut the door to the lobby, then herded the Feys into the bar, shutting that door as well.

    "What about the others?" shouted Fey.

    "We have to keep the wind pressure out of the hotel. If they can make it to the hallway, they can make it here," I shouted back.

    To help prove my point, the building was shaken by another big gust, following which came the sound of the restaurant roof tearing apart and scattering to either side of the hotel and through shattering glass upstairs.

    "You said it was good for another hundred years," said Fey.

    "Can't be right all the time," I said, pushing them ahead of me through the bar and toward the front door. When we got there, I told them to stay at the rear of the lobby away from the windows. I opened the front door, which the wind nearly wrenched off its hinges, and jumped down behind the bushes that lined the front of the hotel. I kept my back to the shingled siding and inched along, searching the ground for my backpack, which I found at the corner, just where Anika said it would be.

    The Mercedes was also where I'd left it. A big tree limb lay in front of the car, but there was room to drive around to reach the street. I squirmed under the chassis and saw that the clip-on cable was still in place. But not surprisingly, the keys weren't in the ignition. I popped the hood and dropped my pack on the seat so I could dig out two more cables, these lighter and more flexible. It had been a long time since I'd looked in the engine compartment of a Mercedes, and longer still since I'd hotwired one. There were surely modern safeguards against such a thing that would be tough to ferret out even under the best of circumstances.

    I snapped off the cover of what I thought was the engine control unit, a device that electronically managed both ignition and fuel supply. I found what I hoped was the line that fed power to the unit, and traced it back to a fuse block under the dashboard. There I switched the line to a feed that saw current without needing the key turned in the ignition

and prayed for an appropriate amperage. Then I went back to the engine and ran another cable directly from the battery to the starter and turned over the engine.

    It caught.

    My astonishment was quickly interrupted by a blast of wind that tried to wrench the raised hood off the car. I slammed it shut, grabbed my backpack and went back to get Anika and Fey.

    They both wore rain jackets, and Fey handed me one of my own. Anika had a fanny pack around her waist and held a soft cat carrier. Eloise looked through the web mesh with unrestrained terror. I put Fey in the front passenger seat, telling him to keep his head down, and had Anika lie down in the back. I sat in the driver's seat and shifted into reverse so I could back up and make room to maneuver around the limb. I was spinning the wheel and about to throw it into drive when a fist came through the window and snapped across my cheek, the pulverized glass raining into the car and biting into my cheek.

    Before I could make sense of what just happened, the fist turned into a vice that grabbed me by the throat. It wasn't lack of air, it was the imminent possibility that my larynx would be crushed that motivated me.

    I shoved the floor shifter into drive, then pulled the .38 out of my backpack and shot the guy in the elbow. The hand released its grip and I stuck the accelerator to the floor, glancing out the smashed window just in time to catch the sight of Jock, bent over, his arm held close to his body, his face still the impassive mask it had always been. His good hand was pulling a big, black gun out of a holster on his belt.

    I drove around the big limb, crunching over several smaller branches, and turned right onto the street. I heard the pop-pop of a semi-automatic and saw little holes open up in the windshield. I yelled at the Feys to keep their heads

down and tried to steer the station wagon with my eyes barely clearing the dashboard.

    After passing the yacht club and gas station, I followed the road around a corner and down into a slight dip. When I got there, the dip was full of seawater blown in from a breach in the shore line of the West Harbor.

    My cursing alerted the Feys, who sat up and looked at the whitecaps racing before the northerly wind.

    "Can we make it?" asked Fey.

    "I don't think so. The car will stall and we'll be stuck in the churn. The current is probably a lot worse than it looks."

    "What're we going to do?" said Anika.

    I didn't know, but before I could admit it, a pickup truck came around the corner and stopped behind the Mercedes, essentially pinning us in place. It was a big truck, modified to achieve unnaturally high road clearance, so when I looked in the rearview mirror, all I saw were headlights and a shimmering grill. I rolled down the left rear window and told Anika to push open the door while staying flat on the rear seat. I got out of the car and dropped to my knees behind the rear door, using the open window as a gun rest. I looked up at the driver of the truck, but saw nothing behind the glaring headlights.

    "Don't shoot, you dumb shit," yelled Anderson Track. "I'm here to help you."

A
nika and Fey climbed into the cab and I pulled the Mercedes off the road. After once again unhooking the cable from the solenoid, I heaved myself up and into the truck bed, now using the raised tailgate to support the .38. There was little likelihood the sheet metal would stop a bullet from one of the mercenary's high-powered weapons, but it was better than nothing.

    Track had hurriedly told me he'd seen us drive by and knew from previous storms that the road was probably cut off by the bay water.

    "I could ford Long Island Sound in this baby," he said, slapping the dashboard.

    He was as good as his word, plunging headlong into the stream, the engine roaring under low gear, a pair of wakes streaming out behind the rear wheels. Moments later, we were across and headed up the hill. I trained the gun on the bend in the road, the possibility of hitting anything rapidly receding. Right before I lost sight of the racing bay water, I thought I saw some movement on the opposite side of the breach, but it was hard to tell in the stormy darkness.

    I fell back down in the bed of the truck and looked up at the sky. There was nothing to see, but I didn't care. I just needed a moment when I wasn't filled with dread, to feel what it was like to be merely anxious and unnerved.

    Track stopped at a stop sign and slid open the rear window.

    "Where to?" he asked.

    "The state barracks," I told him. I wanted to check on Kinuei and be closer to potential communications and firepower. Though attacks on both Poole and Kinuei had been surreptitious, the attackers going unidentified, I couldn't ignore the possibility that Hammon would risk an all-out frontal assault on the police station, given his desperation and loosening hold on logic and reason.

    As we drove around the ferry harbor I could see by my little flashlight that Buchanan's boat was still tied to the dock where I'd left it. It was a relief that someone else hadn't boosted it. Giving the boat back to Buchanan was central to the defense I imagined putting together in the event I got caught.

    The harbor was a mass of whitecaps and waves were dashing against the breakwater, sending spumes ten feet into the air. Track took us past the ferry office and up the short hill to the barracks. I slumped deeper into the bed and tried to keep the salt spray out of my face.

    When we reached the barracks I jumped out of the truck and stuck my head in the door, telling Kinuei not to shoot me. I walked to the holding cell and into the bright beam of his Maglite.

    "How're you doing?" I asked.

    "Better now. The coast guard's bringing out a tech to open this thing up," he said, moving the light away from my face. He held the Glock against his thigh with his other hand. "Who's with you?"

    I told him, then asked how the coasties could get there in the storm.

    "They got a bigger boat."

    I went and retrieved Anika, Eloise and Fey, and asked Track if he wanted to hang with us through the rest of the storm. He shook his head.

    "I gotta go check on my house," he said. "And get some sleep."

    I tried to thank him for what he did, but like Two Trees, he wouldn't let me.

    "I still want all of you off my island," he said, before driving off into the night.

    Inside the barracks, we made ourselves as comfortable as we could. Those of us not in a cell took half-hour watches, alert for any sign of approach. Kinuei shared his provisions and questioned us on what happened. The Feys let me do the talking, so I told him with as much detail as I could, including the shot to Jock's elbow.

    "You held out on me," said Kinuei.

    "You asked me for
your
guns," I said. "Not
all
guns."

    For whatever reason, he didn't press me on that, though I had a feeling it was a discussion more deferred than abandoned.

A
fter the debriefing we sat silently, kept watch and listened to the storm slowly abate. Kinuei said it was predicted to move out of the area by daybreak, which it did, as if all natural forces were choreographed to achieve a total change in conditions.

    And then just to complete the transition, a two hundred foot coast guard cutter sailed into the mouth of the harbor and up to the breakwater below the barracks. Fey and I went outside and offered to grab lines, but they waved us

off. With slow precision, the ship eased up against the pilings, which the crew lassoed with massive, braided ropes. A gangplank was deployed and a round civilian in a baseball cap and chartreuse slicker got off accompanied by two enlisted men wearing dark blue uniforms, orange life jackets and sidearms. One carried a little red generator, the other a gas can.

    An officer stood at the railing and watched the procession.

    "How is it out there?" I asked him.

    "Routine, sir," he said.

    I followed the three men into the barracks and watched with the Feys while the civilian opened a little hatch on the electronic combination lock, and jacked in a PC on which he tapped for less than a minute before the door snapped open. Kinuei thanked him as he walked out of the cell and the man nodded without looking up from the computer screen. Before he shut down the laptop he popped out a flash drive and handed it to Kinuei without comment. I wondered if he had vocal chords. Throughout all this the young coasties stood at near attention, wordlessly, allowing themselves only the briefest sidelong glances at Anika, who did the same.

    After the rescue team left, Kinuei wasted little time hooking up the generator, turning on lights and radios, and firing up his desktop computer. Once everything checked out he sat back and sighed with satisfaction.

    "Civilization, baby," he said. "Can't live without it."

    "That's debatable," said Anika.

    Kinuei turned in his chair to look at her.

    "You ready to take a ride, Miss Fey?" he asked.

    "Back to the Swan?"

    "Yup."

    "I've got nowhere else to go," she said.

    "You could stay here," he said, "but I can't protect you if I'm somewhere else."

    "What's your plan?" I asked.

    "We go to the Swan. People could be injured. I have a responsibility to assess the situation."

    I rode shotgun, literally, carrying the Remington in my lap. Anika and Fey sat in back behind a metal grill. For the first time since arriving on the island I felt completely safe. I didn't know if it was the shotgun or the grill. Kinuei took a southerly route, avoiding the washed-out section of road. It took us past Gwyneth's place, which still stood, though the front yard was full of tree debris and a branch had smashed down through a section of fence.