Breaking Point (40 page)

Gene wrapped a dish towel around the wound, cinched it tight. Peter growling, “What the hell happened to
three
?”

“Sorry. C'mon.” He stood, offered a hand. Peter hopped up onto his good leg, an arm over Gene's shoulders.

“Do we know what happened?”

“I think this silver-haired guy Tomzak was telling us about? Calendar? I think he brought down one of the air tankers.”

Peter thought about it. “Explains the flood. Son of a bitch.”

They trudged out into the street.

*   *   *

Peter and Gene found Beth a few minutes later, on her pipe crutch, a length of rebar stabbed through her right thigh. Peter muttered, “Thank God I drew the scissors.”

They got her seated on an upside-down white plastic pail that had washed out into the street. Gene confirmed that the belt around her thigh had lessened the bleeding.

Peter spotted an overturned Honda, its hood detached and lying on the sidewalk. “Hey. We could rig a … There's a word for it. Thing to drag behind us, like a gurney without wheels.”

Beth said, “Peter? Lakshmi. She's…” Tears spilled out onto her cheeks.

Standing behind her, Peter wrapped his arms around her shoulders. Beth leaned her head back against his stomach and sobbed.

*   *   *

Hector Villareal slapped Jack Goodspeed softly on the cheek. “Hey. You in there?”

Jack's eyes fluttered open. “What … Where are we?”

“In Montana. I think one of the firefighting jets must have crashed. Here.” He helped Jack sit up.

Jack moaned, “No, man. They
all
crashed.”

“For real? Holy mother of God.”

Jack felt the goose egg on the back of his head, winced. “You okay?”

“Burns.” Hector held up his left hand; it was lobster red. “Reuben's dead.”

“Ah, God.”

“And, Jack? Where's our fuselage?”

*   *   *

Ray Calabrese tried to hug Kiki but the hug turned into his keeling over, Kiki and Tommy helping the big man to sit on the pavement in the middle of the wet street.

Tommy dug through his pockets for his ever-present penlight, then remembered he'd lost it during the crash. The first crash, a thousand years ago. He stared into Ray's eyes.

“I ain't seeing any concussion. But I'm betting you lost a hell of a lot of blood. That accounts for the dizziness.”

Ray spoke through clenched teeth. “Dis sucks.”

“I hear you. It was the pulse weapon. Calendar brought down all four of the tankers. The police are … I don't know. Drowned or busy. We gotta find him.”

“I'll get him,” Ray said.

Kiki said, “No way. Not in your condition.”

Ray's eyes seethed with anger but he also came close to passing out.

A man with a bulging, leather shoulder pack approached from the Sikorsky that had just landed. “Excuse me? What the hell happened here?”

Kiki said, “It's a long story.”

“Okay. Um, is there a Tomzak here?”

The three friends glanced at one another. Tommy raised his hand. “Yeah?”

“I'm assigned to the Emergency Response Unit at Spokane International Airport. I'm supposed to give you this.”

He slid his pack off his shoulder and opened it. Tommy reached in and pulled out an NTSB comm unit.

“Some woman named, um, Tanaka, called my boss.”

*   *   *

As more survivors arrived at city hall and the police station, Kiki and Tommy helped Ray Calabrese to his feet, escorted him back into the police station and down onto the swamped floor, his back against the wall.

Kiki adjusted her voice wand and said, “We got them. We love you.”

In her ear, Susan Tanaka said, “I assume it's bad.”

Kiki shook water off her boot and looked out at the town's former library, which was completely engulfed in engine-fuel-fed flames. “It's Old Testament bad. The EMP weapon is for real. This assassin just crashed four water-filled air tankers into the town!”

Susan said, “Oh, Lord! Okay, the Montana National Guard is en route. Good luck.”

Tommy sat on the floor next to Ray, both their backs against the wall. “Damn. This thing went way south.”

Ray actually laughed a little, which hurt his cheek. “Here,” he said, unsnapping his holster and drawing his Glock semiauto. He handed it butt-first to Tommy.

“You expect me to carry a gun?”

Ray snorted. “Not you. Her.” He nodded to Kiki. “Go.”

“'Kay.” Tommy hoisted himself up, squeezed Ray's shoulder. “Hang tight, New York. We'll try to find Daria. She'll—”

They heard the report of a deep, distant gunshot.

Without moving his jaw, Ray said, “Dat's her.”

33

T
HE ASSOCIATED PRESS QUICKLY
picked up the
Post
's story on Andrew Malatesta and had it out on its wire service before 6:00
P.M.
mountain time.
The New York Times
had it next at 6:05. CNN and MSNBC picked it up next and quoted directly from the story carrying Amy Dreyfus's byline.

Amy's cell phone chirped. It was a producer for National Public Radio's
All Things Considered
.

HALCYON/DETWEILER HEADQUARTERS

Admiral Gaelen Parks of the Military Liaison Division shredded files in his fifth-floor office.

Two stories below him, in the Aircraft Division's inner offices, Liz Proctor's people used degaussing magnets to obliterate data on hard drives.

HALCYON/DETWEILER RESEARCH DIVISION, VIRGINIA

Barry Tichnor was packing his cheap, Naugahyde briefcase with the evidence that would back up Parks's and Proctor's involvement in the Infrastructure Subcommittee on Deferred Maintenance, as well as the field test of the Malatesta device.

TWIN PINES

Daria dropped her backpack at the front door of the thrift shop and realized she had the place to herself. She sprinted left, boot soles wet and squeaking; nothing she could do about that. The building had been a grocery store in another life and was one giant room, the far wall wired for refrigerated cases, a meat case at the western wall with glass fronts canted forty-five degrees off horizontal. Most of the room was filled with eight-foot-high metal shelves that ran the length of the room. The shelves were categorized by the items for sale there: women's clothes, men's clothes, children's clothes, baby clothing; home appliances, toys, lawn and garden equipment.

The front window had shattered when the belly of Hotel Juliet 114 exploded, releasing its deadly cargo. Daria dashed down an aisle nearest the front of the store and fell to her knees, hydroplaning on the water for the last six feet, spinning a little, as she heard Calendar descend the stairs. He might not have abandoned whatever rocket-propelled weapon he'd used against the four airplanes, she realized. The Brownings are massive handguns but she was underarmed for a firefight against rockets.

“You're in here!” Calendar's voice echoed off the cinder-block walls. “You were using the call sign Argent, that time in Amsterdam.”

She knelt behind a tall rack of used, nicked exercise equipment, ranging from free weights to complicated contraptions with wires and pulleys. “This isn't like you,” she yelled. “Killing Americans.”

“I killed as few as possible. There's a war on, Argent. Americans have forgotten what it means to sacrifice. That's what I like about you Israelis. You've lived in wartime for decades. You understand sacrifice.”

Daria holstered her weapons. She put her hands on the wet floor and lowered her head until her ear felt the water. She peered under her row of shelves, looking for his boots.

She didn't see them but saw a puddle of water ripple. She stood quickly, ignored the cold water that drizzled down the back of her tank top. She drew one of the Browning hand-cannons, guessed where he was, aimed at the rack of exercise gloves and sweatbands, and fired.

The entire rack, twenty-five feet long, wobbled under the impact. The bullet tore a gouge through the thin sheet metal, ripped through the next aisle over, and the next after that.

Calendar neither grunted nor dropped his weapon, so she assumed she hadn't hit him. She turned and ran full speed to the end of the aisle. She fell to her haunches and risked a quick glance around the end.

Calendar had had a fifty-fifty chance of guessing which end she'd run to and he'd guessed right. But he was aiming his HK .45 five and a half feet up. By the time he lowered his aim, Daria had scrambled back, rising to her feet. His .45 slug caromed off the floor, throwing up a dust storm of tile and plaster and the underlying wooden slats.

Good,
she thought.
No rockets.

She danced backward, gun aimed the way she'd come. Calendar never peeked around the corner.

“Who's paying you?” Calendar barked. “Why did you kill my men?”

Daria laughed. “You should not have tried to kill my friends.”

“Is that what this is about? You're fighting over friendship?” She couldn't tell where he was but he sounded incredulous. It bothered her that he knew where she was.

“Love and hate are the only acceptable reasons to kill.”

She heard him grunt and, a second later, the tall row of metal shelves wobbled badly as if from a terrific impact. The entire thing threatened to topple over onto her. Exercise equipment tumbled to the floor. Shirts and sweats and yoga mats fell on her head. A ten-pound dumbbell dinged off her knee and, as her leg gave out in pain, jump ropes entwined themselves around her ankles.

If she had been Calendar, she would have gone back to the hole she had first blown in the shelves, about halfway to either end, to peer through to catch a glimpse of the opponent. Down on one knee, Daria glanced around, located that bullet hole again and shot at the same place.

This time she definitely heard him stutter-step away. Again, she doubted she'd hit him.

She rose, left leg numb, and tried the same trick. She fired blindly into the metal shelf, hoping she could keep him moving, keep him on the defensive.

She heard a splash, thought maybe he'd fallen. It had come from her right; she limped to her left. The leg felt bad but only because the dumbbell had clipped the small, protruding bone on the outside of her knee. Nothing felt broken. Still, her mobility was a new problem.

“Is that a Browning?” He sounded farther away, but his voice echoed madly off the walls. “I've never used one.”

“Would you like to try one?”

“That's very collegial of you. Aren't they heavy?”

Daria sank to her good knee. “Only if you're weak.” She'd initially glanced under the shelf to find Calendar's boots. Now she set the Browning on the floor, muzzle facing the shelf, held it firmly, and fired. She turned it five degrees and fired again. Again. Again, like a lawn sprinkler, covering a prescribed arc. She heard clanging on the other side, sensed movement. She was keeping him on defense.

A new voice sounded, seemingly coming from the broken window. “You! Hey, stop!”

Daria recognized the voice: Kiki Duvall.

Calendar's .45 barked and a bullet pinged off the wall, over by Kiki. Daria heard a man spit out, “Shit!” Then new gunfire; someone shooting at Calendar.

Daria aimed the Browning at the rack of exercise equipment, three feet off the floor, and blasted another hole in it. The Browning was empty. Ambidextrous, she holstered the first weapon and drew the second simultaneously, firing off two more shots through the thin metal cabinet.

She recognized the next sound: a boot hitting a door, the door ricocheting off a brick wall. All coming from the back of the store. Calendar, she thought, knew the weakness of a crossfire position. He had retreated.

Daria stood, untangling herself from the jump ropes. “Kiki? Don't fire. Is me.”

Kiki and Tommy entered the thrift store, Tommy calling out, “
Dee!
You okay?”

She limped over to them. Kiki said, “I saw him. Silver-Hair! I think he—”

Daria scooped up her backpack. “He's gone. “ She drew her first gun, depressed the release. She shoved a new magazine into the handle before the first magazine hit the floor. Her almond eyes narrowed as she noted Kiki's Glock. The long-legged redhead with the funny-looking pigtails held it firmly in both hands, her boots shoulder-width apart, and she looked professional as hell. Daria had not realized Kiki had military training, but it appeared that she had. “Is that Ray's?”

“Yes. He's banged up and lost some blood but he's going to be fine. The police have their hands full with the fires and the floods. We're trying to stop Calendar.”

“You two?” Now it was Daria who sounded incredulous.

Tommy nodded. “Why not? Kiki's armed and I'm good-looking. You're limping?”

Daria flexed her knee and felt it twinge, but not much. “I'm fine.”

Kiki peered out through the broken window at the sodden, shattered storefronts. “This makes no sense. The man's an assassin. He must have specific targets. Why drown an entire town?”

Daria rooted through her backpack, mentally noting her weapons and supplies. “No, you understand him well. He would have a specific target. In this case: me.”

The other two glanced at each other. When Daria looked up, she seemed neither angry nor fearful. Just patient.

“Someone in this town killed his two men. Calendar is the psychopath, yes? But also the good solder. And officer. His men were killed in such a way that their bodies weren't just wounded, they were slaughtered. Plus, they were on a bloodletting mission on American soil, so none of his old contacts, his old cohorts, can do a thing to help. He wanted revenge and he didn't know upon whom. He punished Twin Pines.”

After a chilling beat, Tommy said, “That there's a pretty spooky world you live in.”