Storm Surge (12 page)

The lantern
room was a glass cage, with thick storm panes reinforced by steel beams outside
and in. The room gave a commanding view of the island, from one end to the
other. Phillips could see over the tops of houses, all the way to the clubhouse
at the other end. He looked out at the sea. It was slate-gray, shot through
with white foam, pitching and rolling angrily as it was lashed by rain and
wind. The clouds were so low it seemed as if they might graze the roof directly
overhead. The wind blasted great gouts of rain against the heavy glass windows
of the lighthouse, but the panes, old as they were, had been made to take
worse. The original plan was for Phillips to set up his weapon outside on the
gallery that ran around the outside of the watch room below, but the tempest
outside rendered that option more than a little insane. He’d watch from the
safety of the lantern room, he resolved, and be ready to take the weapon
outside if there was anything at which to shoot.
Which, he
reflected, would be unlikely.
Approaching the island at this point, by
air or sea, would be truly crazy.

Phillips
looked back at the length of the island again. He frowned. He could see a
stretch of the main dirt road that ran down the windward side. There were
figures moving down there. He reached into one of the bags and pulled out a
pair of high-powered binoculars.

The shifting
veils of blowing rain cut visibility considerably, but he scanned back and
forth, focusing on the road. He swore under his breath as the rapidly moving
figures popped back into view from under a stand of overhanging trees. He
reached into the bag again and pulled out a microphone headset. He put it on
quickly, fired up the transmitter, and keyed his mike.

“Two, this is
Four, radio check.” There was no response from Barstow.

“Two, this is
Four, acknowledge.” Nothing,

“One,
Three
,” he broadcast. “This is Four. Somebody check on
Two
. I think we have a problem.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“Roger that,”
Blake sent back. “Three. What’s your status?”

“I’m at the
power station,” Worth transmitted.

“Wait one.
Four, what’s the problem?”

“Our guests
have decided to leave the party.
Under their own power.
And there seems to be someone with them. I can’t tell who it is, but I can’t
raise Two. And he’s not kitted out like
Two
.”

Blake
considered for a moment,
then
looked down at Montrose.
“What’s the status?”

They were
inside the Buchan home, in the upstairs room where the Senator kept an office.
Montrose was crouched on her haunches, staring intensely at the squat,
featureless black box of his safe. The safe was set into a niche in the wall behind
a bookshelf. The books that concealed it had been yanked out and tossed
carelessly on the floor.

“You sure
whatever you’re looking for
is
in there?” she said.
“Cause this thing’s
gonna
be a bitch to open.”

“It wasn’t in
his office in the Capitol,” Blake said, “or in his home in Georgetown. Or his
place back in Vermont.”

“
You been
breakin
’ into the office
of a U.S. fucking Senator? Jesus, what is this thing you’re after?”

“It’s a
package.
About the size of a photo album.
That’s all
you need to know. When you’ve acquired it, you’re not to open or examine the
contents, is that understood?”

“Yeah, yeah, I
get it.”

“I want to
make sure you do, Montrose,” Blake said.
“Because I’m going
to have to leave you alone with this thing for a little bit.
My orders
are,
that if any member of this team opens that package, or
examines the contents, I’m to terminate them.”

Montrose
turned slowly to look at him. “Say what?”

Blake didn’t
answer.

Montrose
shrugged,
her face hard.
“Yeah, sure.
Whatever.” She opened the case at her side and took out a pair of alligator
clips, trailed by long wires. “Now fuck off and let me work. I’m
gonna
need the generator.”

Blake keyed
his mike as he backed slowly out of the room, his eyes on Montrose. “Three.
Fall back to the objective. And
Four
, keep trying to
rise Two. He might be taking a leak or something.”

“Or something,
yes,” Phillips said.

***

They stood at
the ferry landing, staring foolishly at the empty water.

“How the hell
could they have left us?” Sharon said.

“They didn’t
know,” Mercer said.
“Or didn’t care.”

“What do we do
now?” Glory asked. Sharon noticed she was looking at Max as she said it. A
shiver of panic ran down her spine.

“Power’s out,”
Max said. “I’m betting the phone will be too.” He stood in thought for a
moment. “There’s a radio at the marina,” he said.
“Ship to
shore.
And a generator.
If we can get to that,
we can signal the mainland.”

“And
what then?”
Sharon
demanded.

“We’ll take it
from there,” he said. “Come on.” He unslung the machine gun and started off at
a walk. Glory looked at her mother,
then
fell in
behind him. She didn’t know what else to do.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

“Swimmer,
Co-pilot.”

Alvarez keyed
his intercom mike.
“Co-pilot, swimmer.”

Even over the
headsets, the words were almost drowned out by the roar of the helicopter’s
massive engine.

“Can’t
say I like this weather, Chief.”

The pilot
didn’t say anything. She was too busy trying to hold a steady course in the
devil wind that seemed determined to throw the big
HH
-60
Jayhawk helicopter across the sky before dashing it into the sea.

“Sorry,
Lieutenant,” Alvarez called back, “Next time we’ll try to do better. We’ll
arrange a SAR on a sunny day with low humidity.
Sir.”
Neither pilot answered. Alvarez shook his head. Like every non-com since the
armies of the Pharaohs, he despaired over the officers the powers that be kept
saddling him with.

“You have to
go out,” the saying went. “You don’t have to come back.” At one time, it had
been the unofficial Coast Guard motto. Back in the days of the dinosaurs, when
Alvarez had been a raw recruit at the training center at Cape May, New Jersey,
he had made the mistake of raising his hand when a Company Commander had
recited that mantra. The CC had stared at him stonily, then asked ‘yes, Seaman
Recruit?” in a deceptively mild voice that would have warned off a saner young
man. But Alvarez had been young and dumb and full of come at the time, so he
forged ahead. “Sir,” he said, “if we don’t come back, doesn’t that mean the
people we went after don’t come back either?”
The reaction to
that one still brought a smile to Alvarez’ face.
The CC had come down on
him like a ton of bricks, of course, just as Alvarez would if any young
smart-ass pulled that shit on him. But in this modern age, the thinking had
come around a bit closer to Alvarez’ jibe. Now they talked about “risk vs.
reward matrices” and held hastily called meetings with the station CO, the
aircraft commanders, and the flight crew to hash out the question of whether
the chance of rescue outweighed the danger to multi-million dollar aircraft and
even more valuable trained crew. In the end, though, the result was almost
always the same. They went out.

A particularly
savage gust of wind slammed the chopper sideways. Alvarez’ helmeted head
rebounded off the steel wall of the cabin. He shook his head to clear the
ringing in his ears,
then
keyed his intercom again to
check it.
“Pilot, swimmer.
Everyone
okay up there?”

The answer
came back through gritted teeth.
“Swimmer, pilot.
We’re fine.
You?”

Alvarez
glanced over at the hoist operator, a wiry kid from Kansas with the improbable
last name of
Formyduval
. The kid raised a single
thumb in affirmation. Alvarez looked to the rear of the chopper at their
passengers. The sheriff’s deputy was looking a little green, but the FBI guy’s
face was impassive.

“Pilot,
swimmer.
All okay
back here.”

*** 

The interior
was about the size of a minivan, and it smelled of metal and machine oil.
Bohler
hung on to the bench seat with a grip so tight that
he imagined his aching fingers leaving dents in the metal. He took deep
breaths, trying to keep his stomach in its accustomed place. He felt the
chopper drop sickeningly out from under him, leaving him in midair for a split
second before all 15,000 pounds of machine slammed back upwards and met him on
the drop. The impact felt harsh enough to crack his spine. He groaned out loud,
but the sound was lost in a crack of thunder that overrode even the unholy din
of the helicopter’s engines. He glanced over at
McMurphy
.
The FBI man’s face was set, but from where he sat,
Bohler
could see the rivulets of sweat running down his neck. He felt a little
reassured that somebody else was feeling at least as tense as he was.

McMurphy
hadn’t wanted him along, and for a
brief moment,
Bohler
had considered letting
himself
be barred. He’d never cared much for helicopters,
even on clear days. The prospect of going aloft in the teeth of this gale made
his knees tremble. But the evacuation of the island had been his
responsibility, and he felt the failure to get everyone off personally. It was
irrational, he knew; the idiot ferry captain was the one who had taken off
without all of his people on board, and part of the blame had to be laid at
Coyne’s feet for the cockeyed plan in the first place. But in the end, seeing
everyone off safe was
Bohler’s
job, and he was going
to see it finished. In the end it had been the diminutive curly-haired female
pilot who had made the final call. She had walked up to where
Bohler
and
McMurphy
were standing
there bickering and snapped, “both of you shut up and get on board.” They had
stopped and looked at her, startled. She stared back at them with a ‘what are
you
lookin
’ at’ expression. “Do everything Chief
Alvarez tells you,”
she
went on, “Or I’ve authorized
him to throw you to the damn sharks.” They had looked into the open door of the
chopper. A dark-skinned, grinning man with a crew cut was sitting in the door,
his feet hanging out. He was holding out a pair of crash helmets.

Bohler
was glad for the helmet as another
lurch slammed his head around. He fumbled for the button of the intercom.
“Ah…swimmer,” he said, trying to emulate the protocol they crew used to
identify themselves over the circuit. He stopped. He realized he had no
official designation. He saw the Chief grin. “Lawman, swimmer,” he chuckled. He
saw the kid over by the hoist purse his lips in disapproval.
Bohler
felt a flash of irritation.

“What’s the
plan?
When we get there.”

“We do a
circuit of the island,” the Chief said. “See what we can see. Hopefully,
they’ll see us. We’ll head for the open space down near the clubhouse. We’ll
land if we can. If there’s too much water, or if the ground’s too soft, we’ll hover
and I’ll take the basket down.”

“How do I get
down there?”
McMurphy
spoke up.

“Sorry, sir,”
Alvarez said.
“Can’t do it.”

“I need to get
down there and take that subject into custody. I’m going to have to insist.”

The pilot
spoke up.
“Swimmer, pilot.
Problem,
chief?”

“Pilot,
swimmer.
No ma’am.
Just explaining to Mr.
McMurphy
here that he
ain’t
in our chain of command.”

“If he gives
you any trouble, Chief...” she trailed off.

“Yes ma’am,”
Alvarez answered. “I’ll throw him out.”

“Very funny,”
McMurphy
said.

“She
ain’t
joking, sir,” the young Guardsman on the hoist piped
up. He grinned. “Hell, people fall out of these things
alla
time. We’d just write it off as an accident.”
Bohler
stared at him, appalled. The kid winked.

“You can
arrest him or whatever when we get him on board,” Alvarez said. “Only one who
goes down is me, though.”

“What if he’s
armed?”

“He doesn’t
get in the basket. Once I explain that to him, I’m thinking he’ll see reason.”

“People get
real reasonable once they find out you’re about to leave ‘
em
behind,” the hoist operator said.