Storm Surge (13 page)

“I hope you’re
right,”
McMurphy
said. “This guy is dangerous.”

The helicopter
hit an updraft, shooting straight up into the sky as if shot from a catapult.

“That guy,”
the Chief said grimly, “is the least of my worries right now, sir.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

Phillips was
so intent on his task that the sounds of the wind and rain outside had faded to
the edges of his consciousness. He assembled the weapon quickly with the ease
of intensive practice. When he was done, the rifle was a good six feet from
stock to flash suppressor, even longer than the American Barrett. It was of
Hungarian manufacture, its makers having given it the somewhat melodramatic
name of “Destroyer.” It more than lived up to its name.

Phillips
stepped back. He studied the rifle with a critical eye,
then
nodded with satisfaction. He picked up his binoculars, went to the window, and
began scanning the sky and the sea around the island.

***

“Okay,” Blake
said to himself, staring down at Barstow’s corpse. “Now we might have a
problem.”

Blake had seen
his share of blade wounds, especially in Africa. This one, however, was
particularly gruesome; Barstow’s head was literally split in two down to the
center. Blood and brains littered the floor around him.

“Four.” he
said into his mike.
“One.”

“One,
Four
,” the acknowledgment came back.

“Two’s left
the party.”

There was
pause.
“Permanently?”

“Guess he
didn’t care for the menu. Something he ate must have disagreed with him. And
our other party guests have left.”

Another
pause.
“We have
another uninvited guest.”

“Affirmative.”

“One,
three.”
Worth’s
voice came over. “What’s going on?”

“Three, this
is One. You see any sign of anyone on the road?”

“Negative.”

“Fall back to
the staging area.”

“So,” Phillips
said, an edge of sarcasm in his voice, “We now have a problem?”

“Yeah,” Blake
said. “We have a problem.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

The door to
the
dockmaster’s
office was locked. Mercer didn’t
hesitate. He pulled a knee up to his chest, turned sideways, pivoted on his
down foot, and smashed the door open with the heel of his boot.

“You don’t
have a key?” Sharon said. She stood a few feet away, hunched against the
blowing rain, her arm protectively around Glory.

“Not yet,”
Mercer said. “Maybe if Max works here another year or so, they’ll trust him
with the key.”

“You always
refer to yourself in the third person?” Glory said.

Mercer’s head
snapped around so fast Glory flinched slightly. Sharon’s arm tightened around
her. “Max isn’t here right now,” he said. He entered through the splintered
door.

Inside, the
place was gloomy, with only the gray light from outside coming through the
windows. Mercer flicked the light switch anyway by reflex,
then
grimaced with embarrassment. He went behind the counter where Max Chase had
once dispensed cold drinks, six-packs of beer, and bags of ice. The radio sat
there, the best money could buy, sleek, black and useless without juice. Max
went through another door into the storage room behind. He heard Sharon and her
daughter talking in low tones in the outer room. He figured he knew what they
were discussing. He didn’t give a damn.
At least for the
moment.
He’d learned that one secret to survival was
knowing
just how far to think ahead. Too far, and you were paralyzed by the multitude
of branching alternatives. Not far
enough,
and you got
nasty surprises. Right now, he was thinking just far enough ahead to get the
generator running. He grabbed up the gas can that sat by the door.

The generator
was just outside the back door, in a tiny area enclosed by a gated palisade
fence. The area also held the marina’s dumpsters, reeking with discarded food
and fish waste from the last few residents who’d brought their catches back
from a day on the sound. One of Max’s jobs had been cleaning the catches. God
forbid the residents got blood on their hands.
Even fish
blood.
Max didn’t mind blood. It was one thing he shared with Mercer.

Mercer
unscrewed the generator’s gas cap and topped off the tank, the odor of gasoline
adding a sharp overtone to the stench. He primed the motor by pumping a small
plastic bulb on the side to get the fuel flowing,
then
flicked the on switch. The generator coughed once,
then
the motor strangled and caught. It came alive with a full throated roar.

And every
light in the marina, both the office lights and the lights around the docks,
came on at once.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

“What the…”
Phillips said. He had seen the sudden flare of light from his perch high above.
He keyed his mike.
“One, Four.
We’ve got lights on at
the marina.”

“Four, One,”
Blake’s voice came back. “Say again.”

“Someone’s lit
up the marina like a bloody Christmas tree,” Phillips snapped.

“Four, Three,”
Worth said. “Not possible. The power’s down.”

“Well, I
suppose it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that the marina has the same
sort of backup generator as every other building on this island,” Phillips
said.

“Damn it,”
Worth said.

“Four,” Blake
said. “Can you take them out?”

“I could shoot
every bulb out, one by one,” Phillips said, “But we have another problem.”

***

“Pilot,
co-pilot.”

“I see it,”
the pilot said.

“What?”
Bohler
said.

“We got
lights,” the pilot said.
“Dead ahead.”

“Swimmer,
pilot.”

“On
it, ma’am.”
He
moved towards the door.

“Wait one,”
the pilot said, “We may be able to land. I’m going to orbit the area of the
lights. We’ll get the survivors’ attention and hope they follow us to the
clubhouse area. If we’ve got a stable surface, we’ll lower the Chief down to
check the surface
If
it checks out, we’ll land for the
pickup.”

“Land?”
Bohler
said.
“In this?”

“Beats trying
to hover in it,” Alvarez said. “And with luck, we’ll be airborne again in a few
seconds.”

“Pilot, flight
mech
,” said the hoist operator. “You sure it’s them?”

“Flight
mech
,” said the pilot, “who the hell else would be on that
island?”

*** 

“One, four,”
Phillips said. “We have a helicopter, inbound.
Appears to be
U.S. Coast Guard.”

Phillips
assumed that Blake had suffered a rare loss of composure and that’s why he
hadn’t closed his mike when he said, “Fuck. Me.”

“I need
orders, One,” Phillips said. “He’s closing.”

There was a
moment’s hesitation,
then
Blake came back. “Take it
down.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Mercer ran
back out into the outer office. Glory was standing by the door, her hand still
on the bank of light switches. She looked shocked.

“What the hell
did you just do?” Mercer barked.

“I…I didn’t
know which switch was the right one,” the girl stammered.

“So you lit
the place up and showed those assholes exactly where we are?”

“I…I…” Glory’s
lower lip trembled.

“Jesus!”

“Stop yelling
at her!” Sharon snapped.

“Turn them
off!”

Glory flipped
the switches and plunged them back into darkness.

***

“What the…”
the co-pilot said as the lights went out.

“Get the
searchlight on,” the pilot ordered. A brilliant beam of light lanced down from
the nose of the helicopter and began scanning ahead.

“What
happened?”
McMurphy
demanded.

“Marina lights
went out,” the co-pilot said.

“Coming up on
feet dry,” the pilot announced. They were almost over the beach.

***

“Four,
One.”

“I’m a bit
busy at the moment, One,” Phillips grunted. He was outside, on the metal
catwalk that ran around the circumference of the building, outside the watch
room. A similar catwalk was above his head, outside of the lamp room. The wind
was like nothing he had ever experienced before. It was no longer gusting
erratically, but now blasted at him steadily, driving the rain into him like bullets.
It felt less like wind and more as if gravity were suddenly pushing sideways at
three times its normal intensity. It was all he could do to hang on with one
hand and hold the massive rifle with the other. He had never tried to shoot in
wind like this, and he was doubtful for a moment as to whether he could. He
worked his way around the circle a bit to get the brick wall of the lighthouse
between himself and the wind. That made things a little better. Plus, he’d be
shooting downwind, which made his calculations that much easier. He wrestled
the Destroyer up onto the rail and looked towards the helicopter. It was
approaching the shore, lights on. He recognized the lines of the aircraft from
dozens of fields of battle. The Coast Guard’s Jayhawk was a seagoing
modification of the old familiar Army Blackhawk.

“I know you,
you old sod,” he whispered. And he knew how to bring it down. Phillips put his
eye to the telescopic sight and took aim.

***

“Pilot,
co-pilot.”

“Co-pilot…”

“Ma’am, I
think there’s someone on the lighthouse.”

Instinctively,
the pilot slowed the chopper and turned it towards where the old lighthouse
jutted up from one end of the island.

***

Phillips saw
the helicopter pulling up,
then
turning to face him.
He couldn’t have asked for a better shot.

“Thank you,”
he whispered, and squeezed the trigger.

***

The 12.7 mm
Russian-made projectile tore through the unarmored skin of the aircraft as if
it was passing through paper, smashing into the transmission housing just below
the rotor. The impact blasted the exquisitely engineered gears and linkages
into scrap metal. In moments, the massive forces driving the enormous twin
rotor blades above began tearing the engine apart. The rotor itself, severed
from its controls, began to oscillate wildly.

***

“Son of a…”
the pilot said. Those were her last words. Phillips' second bullet blew the
windscreen in front of her apart and pulverized her against the seat. The
co-pilot was too stunned to move for a moment. The helicopter slewed
sickeningly and dropped nose first towards the water below. The co-pilot
grabbed his controls and began trying to bring the suddenly berserk beast under
control. The stick refused to respond. He was still frantically trying to get
the chopper level when they hit the shallow water fifty feet offshore.

***

In the rear
compartment,
Bohler
felt the impact shudder through
the entire body of the helicopter. The aircraft seemed to stagger in its
tracks. The hoist operator, who’d unbuckled himself to help the swimmer get
ready, went to his knees. The chopper went abruptly sideways and he went out
the door without
so
much as a scream. There was
another impact, and a scream from the co-pilot, followed by string of curses.
Bohler
looked at Alvarez, who was hanging on grimly to his
own seat, his eyes fixed on the empty space where the hoist man had been.
Alvarez turned to look at
Bohler
and
McMurphy
.

“Brace
yourselves
,” he said with an eerie calm. “We’re going in.”
Then there was a shattering impact and the sound of rending metal. It was the
last thing
Bohler
heard.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

“One,
Four
,” Phillips sent.

“One.”

“Target is
down.”

“Acknowledged.”

“Don’t believe
there’ll be much cleaning up to do, but I’ll head down.”

For a long
moment there was nothing, just the static on the air and the wailing of the
wind. Then: “Four. Hold position.
Six, One.”