Even Steven (50 page)

Her mind screamed it so loud that for a moment she thought yet again that she'd announced her position. Her one bullet! She finally had it! She'd pay a million dollars for four more, but one would give her the chance she needed.

She felt the beat of the rotor blades in her chest now as Eagle One closed in on her.

Suddenly, she was surrounded by daylight; bathed in the blinding white light of the million-candlepower searchlight mounted on the helicopter's chin. Shadows circled and danced around her as the beam cut the night, making her feel strangely disoriented. She looked down to keep from falling over, and as she did, she saw among the shadows of the branches and the leaf buds and the snowflakes, a pair of shoes, and they stood not a yard away from her.

A gasp escaped her throat and the feet moved, taking five quick steps backward.

Sarah jumped to her feet and brought her weapon up. At this range, she couldn't miss. The muscles of her forearms tightened, and in the crazy light, she saw the hammer rock back.

"Jesus, Sarah, no! It's me!"

Realization came instantly. "Gardner!"

"I heard-" His eyes changed. And his jaw dropped as he focused on something behind her. He brought his shotgun to his shoulder. "Look out!"

Instinctively, Sarah dove to the right as the night erupted in gunfire. Both men fired and both men fell, the twelve-gauge spinning off into another stand of trees. Just from the way he dropped, Sarah knew that Gardner had been hit.

"Gard! Oh, no, Gard!"

Still on her hands and knees, she scrambled over to where her friend lay, a crimson stain spreading quickly across his chest. "Gard, you're hit. Is it bad? Does it hurt real bad?"

Gardner just lay there. His eyes were open, and he was alive, but his expression seemed empty, confused.

"That's okay," she cooed. "You'll be okay. I'll make sure. You'll see." A wracking cough seemed to bring him back to alertness, but the pain it caused seemed terrible. "Oh, God, that hurts," he moaned. He hawked up some bloody sputum and struggled to raise his head. Sarah helped him, and he forced a smile.

Then the smile transformed to a look of horror as he focused past her again. His mouth tried to form words, but Sarah didn't need them. Letting his head drop against the soft ground, she spun on one knee, her weapon extended to the full reach of her arm.

Ahead of her, in the whirling shadows of the searchlight, a huge man with flaming red hair struggled to his feet. The whole left side of his down coat looked as if it had been through a shredder, and as he raised himself to his full height, he sagged to the side of his wounds. A pistol dangled from the fingers of his good hand. "Drop your weapon!" Sarah yelled. But the man appeared not to hear. He took a step closer. "Freeze! And drop that weapon. Now!" Another step.

"Don't make me shoot you!"

Two more steps. Only ten yards separated them now. "Goddammit, stop!" The man raised his weapon. "Shit!" Sarah pulled the trigger. And nothing happened. The snub nose just clicked.

The big man smiled at her, revealing a mouthful of slick red teeth. It looked as if it took an enormous effort for him to bring his big pistol up to a shooting position.

Sarah pulled again, and again the hammer landed on an empty chamber. When she'd loaded her one bullet, she'd obviously not put it in position.

The man's hand moved faster now. So fast in the whirling shadows that Sarah couldn't even see it. She was going to die. Right here in the woods she loved so much, some asshole was going to blow a hole right through her.

Bullshit. This time when the hammer fell, it launched a bullet right through the bridge of her attackers nose.

Five seconds later, she was back on the radio. She had a life to save.

Pain knotted every muscle in Bobby's body as he jolted against even more rocks.

"Steven!" he cried in to the night, and from somewhere, he heard a choking cry. "Steven!"

The water here was much shallower than it had been in the channel. The boy had a chance, he thought, so long as the current didn't throw him out in the middle again. He had to be here. He had to be.

Bobby howled in agony as the currents and boulders battered his useless left leg, but he never heard any of it. He was face-first in the water now, his hands scraping mercilessly along the bottom.

"Steven!"

There! Not five feet away, he caught a flash of baby blue as it shot past him, heading back out toward the center of the channel. It was him! That blue was the new pair of nightie-nights!

Bobby lunged at him, his hands missing the boy by inches. "Shit!" Bobby tumbled sideways in the water, scooting along the rocks, trying to get one last shot at grabbing the boy. The speeds were amazing. His arms weighed two hundred pounds apiece, and he felt his consciousness slipping. With the deadfall zooming in closer by the second, this was his last shot at saving the boy. And himself.

Bobby screamed to the night as he launched himself one final time at the boy, who was now floating on the surface of the water like a bobber, no longer struggling to save himself. Bobby came all the way out of the water, reaching out in desperation, looking like a frantic basketball player struggling to score a slam dunk on his belly.

Extended as he was, there was nothing to protect his face as he crashed back into the water, where more rocks awaited him under the surface.

But he had the boy. He didn't know at first if he'd snagged an arm or a leg, but he by God had a hold on him, and nothing on earth was going to pry him loose this time. He pulled Steven in close and hugged him tightly in both arms.

There was the deadfall! Only yards away now, Bobby spun himself in the water yet again, until he was on his side, protecting Steven from a direct impact with the fallen tree. He hit hard, the tangle of branches snagging him in a hundred places all along his back and butt and legs.

Oh, God, his leg! He shrieked as the bone ends scraped against each other, and his mouth filled with water. Now that they were no longer moving, the current was like a battering ram, pinning them both against the branches, which themselves had begun to sag under the weight of their onslaught.

Hanging on with one hand to the thickest part of the trunk he could find, Bobby hoisted Steven into the air with his other hand, the tiny, limp body making no move to fight him. By heaving himself up a little, he could get the boy high enough out of the water to wedge him into a kind of cradle that nature had formed in the twisted boughs of the grand old pine tree.

"Up you go," he grunted as the boy rolled out of his grasp. "And don't you dare die on me, you little shit." In his heart, though, he knew that it was already too late, whether from the cold or from a lungful of water. He harbored no hope that the boy would see another day.

Any more than he harbored hope that he would see another one himself.

His muscles were dead. Suddenly, nothing worked anymore. It was as if that final heave to raise Steven out of the water had spent his entire reserve of energy, leaving him just plain empty.

Bobby didn't feel anything anymore. The broken leg was numb, the bruised and torn flesh was numb. The best he could do-and it took an amazing effort-was to lift his right arm maybe three inches out of the raging water, just far enough to wedge a medium-size branch into his armpit. He hoped that it would be enough to keep his head out of the water when the oncoming unconsciousness finally overtook him.

As the darkness engulfed him, his thoughts turned to Susan. She was out there somewhere, too. He hoped that her next husband would be able to provide a better life for her than he had.

THE LIGHT OF heaven was blinding, just as all the New Age televange-lists had claimed on late-night television. Bobby tried to look away, it was so bright, but still it got brighter. And it was cold. Oh, so impossibly cold and windy.

And noisy. Heaven roared with an unspeakably loud growl; a thrumming noise that sounded every bit like a ...

Helicopter!

"... hear me?"

Was someone talking to him?

"Mr. Martin, can you hear me!"

Of course I can hear you, Bobby thought, but his mouth wouldn't work. As he forced his eyes open, he thought for sure that he could see the face of that FBI agent-what was his name? Oh, yes, Coates!-staring straight at him.

"I'm gonna need your help, Mr. Martin!" Coates shouted. "I need you to slip this collar over your head so we can both get the hell out of this water!"

Water! The river! This wasn't heaven at all. He was still in the freezing Catoctin River. He was still in hell.

"B-boy," Bobby managed to say. "B-boy."

"We got him! He's already in the chopper! And if you don't cooperate, sir, I'm getting back in there myself! You understand? In a couple of minutes, we're all dead!"

Bobby nodded. Or at least he thought he did. He managed to let go of the deadfall long enough for Russell to slip the collar over his head, from which point the agent had to manipulate Bobby's arms to bring them the rest of the way through. From there, Bobby just lay back silently while he was manipulated some more: a strap here and there. And then the darkness returned.

Samuel wouldn't let himself cry.

Now that the helicopters and the lights were gone, he was left there all alone in the dark, among the trees. His belly didn't hurt him so badly anymore. That was good. He was grateful for that.

But he was so, so cold. And thirsty. Maybe if all this snow had been rain, then he would have had something to drink, he thought. Or maybe he could catch enough snowflakes on his tongue to make a difference. He supposed that there were all sorts of solutions, if he were only smart enough to figure out what they were. That was the problem with being a stupid dummy: sometimes, you knew there was something you should be doing, but you just couldn't figure out what it was.

He wished that Jacob was with him now. He'd know what to do. He'd protect him from The Boss and from the other man with the gun. He'd protect him from the nosy nellies who ended up with Justin all over again. "I'm so sorry, Jacob," he tried to say, but his lips felt as if they had been rubbed raw, and his throat as if it had been packed with sand. No sound came out at all. "Please help me."

And then, there he was, staring right down on him, shining a light in his eyes. Samuel tried to squint and look away, but the muscles in his neck felt disconnected from the rest of his body. All he could do was stare.

But what a sight it was! Jacob was alive again, wearing a heavy green jacket with a fur collar around his neck. It looked warm. But the hat looked stupid-like something Smokey the Bear would wear. Samuel tried to laugh. Jacob always liked it when Samuel laughed at his jokes, but still, nothing worked. He had to laugh on the inside.

Jacob was shouting something at him and then he talked into a radio, but Samuel couldn't make out any of the words. He tried to lean in closer to listen, but it felt as if somebody were pulling him farther and farther away.

"You'll be okay, buddy ..."

That time he heard it, but the sound came without pictures. He slipped further away, smiling even wider. Jacob said he'd be okay. And he'd called him his buddy.

Bobby Martin awoke slowly, his steady movement toward consciousness driven by the terrible ache in his leg. He inadvertently flexed a toe, and a bolt of pain launched like a missile all the way up into his groin and beyond. The crystal-like clarity of the pain vaulted him over the wall of wakefulness in his mind and landed him squarely in the middle of reality.

He knew instantly where he was, and why he was here, and a knot of panic seized his insides. Yelling against the pain, he raised himself up to his elbows there on the medevac cot and took a swipe at the man whose back was turned to him, hoping to get his attention.

The man whirled around, startled, revealing the now familiar face of Special Agent Russell Coates.

"My wife!" Bobby yelled over the thunderous vibration of the rotors. "We have to go back for Susan!"

Russell smiled and put his hand on Bobby's shoulder, moving out of the way so he could see the patient on the other side of the narrow aisle. Susan lay under a huge pile of blankets, her eyes closed and her skin bearing a yellowish tinge in the blazing artificial light.

"Is she okay?" Bobby shouted.

"She'll be fine."

"But she was shot!"

"Medic says it looks like a ricochet." Russell pointed to a spot over his ear. "All three of you are hypothermic as hell, and your leg's going to need some mending, but it looks like you'll all be fine."

"What about Steven?" Bobby saw the look of confusion and rephrased the question. "What about the boy?"

Russell nodded toward Susan. "He's breathing fine and sleeping away on the other side of your wife. Everybody will be just fine."

Bobby felt as if he should have more questions, but for the life of him he couldn't think of any. Not until he saw yet another supine form on a cot that was actually under Susan's. "Who's that?"

Russell's features dimmed. "That there is Ranger Blackwell with the Park Service. He was shot." Bobby saw a trace of anger in the agent's eyes before he looked away.

Shot trying to save my sorry ass, Bobby didn't say. He strained to get a look at Blackwell's face, but a stab of pain stopped him. "Is he going to be okay?"