Storm Surge (15 page)

***

Worth
struggled to his feet, his face on fire where the pellets had peppered him. He
felt a trickle of blood running down his cheek and reached up to feel the
wound. There was a tiny lump beneath the skin of his left temple. A gash on his
cheek also bled profusely. He swore under his breath. “One, three.” he broadcasted.

“One.”

“They were in
the marina office.
Trying to use the radio.
One of
them had a shotgun. I’m hit, but not badly. Bitch…” he stopped. He didn’t
really feel like telling Blake he’d been shot by a woman. “I’m just grazed,” he
finished. He saw a black shape lying at the edge of the walkway. He stepped out
into the deluge, picked it up, and retreated back inside. “One of them had
Two’s weapon. I’ve got it back.”

“Three,” Blake
said, “How many targets down? And where did they get a shotgun?”

“One wounded.
I’m pretty sure. And I don’t know where they got the weapon. But it looks like
all they have is birdshot or something like that. I got grazed, but that’s
all.”

“Where are the
targets now, Three?” Blake’s voice sounded weary.

“Unknown,”
Worth said. “They ran away. I’ll find them.”

“Negative.
Fall back to the rally point.”

A
pause.
“Say
again?”

“Fall back to
the rally point, Three. We’re scattered all over the damn island. We need to
concentrate our forces.”

Worth’s face
contorted in a snarl of frustration. His quarry was wounded and practically
unarmed. More than anything he wanted to find the bitch
who’d
shot him in the face and make her pay for it. But orders were orders.

“Three,
acknowledge,” Blake snapped.

“Acknowledged,”
Worth said through clenched teeth.

“And disable
that radio.”

“Roger.”

“Six,” Blake
said.
“Report.”

There was no
answer. Then a single click as someone keyed his microphone.

“Six,” Blake
said, his voice dropping unnecessarily to a whisper, “Are you in contact?”

One
click.
Yes.

“How
many?”

One
click.

“Armed?”

Two clicks.
No.

There was no
sound except the howling of the wind and the roaring of falling rain. Then:
“Take him alive. Bring him to the rally point,” Blake said. “Let’s see what he
knows.”

One
click.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Bohler
stumbled along the beach, trying to
keep his footing in the incredible wind that threatened to knock him over. It
seemed impossible that such a wind could exist on Earth. The rain could no
longer be said to be falling; it was being driven horizontally into him,
stinging in its force like a multitude of needles. The wind bellowed and
shrieked among the twisted and gnarled branches of the trees behind the dunes
along the shoreline. Suddenly, over the sound of the wind, he could hear the
unmistakable rattle of gunfire. He instinctively reached for the sidearm that
usually hung at his waist. His hand closed on nothing. “Damn it,” he muttered.
He felt suddenly naked. There was a blinding flash and for an instant, a pillar
of white fire bridged ocean to sky several hundred yards offshore.
The thunderclap that followed immediately after stunned and
deafened
Bohler
.
He fell to his knees, his
hands over his ears.
I’ve got to get out of this
, he thought.
I’ve
got to get under shelter
. Ahead, at the edge of the trees, he spotted a
large wooden deck with steps leading down to the beach. A railed walkway
extended behind it and disappeared behind the dunes. There would be a house at
the other end. Someplace out of the wind and rain that seemed as if they were
trying to scour the flesh from his bones. He got up and started to run. When he
reached the stairway, he had to grab on with all his might and use the strength
of his arms as well as the power of his legs to pull himself up to the deck
against the push of the wind. When he got there, he could see the house, a
sprawling white modernistic structure that looked as if it belonged in the Hollywood
Hills rather than a North Carolina beach.
Bohler
vaguely remembered that the place was owned by a past-his-prime action movie
star.
Well
, he thought grimly,
hope he doesn’t mind me dropping in
.
He struggled along the walkway, occasionally grabbing the rail to steady
himself. He got to the end of the walkway where another stairway dropped down
into a perfectly manicured yard. A small tool shed off to one side was rocking
back and forth,
raising
up off its concrete slab
foundation in the stronger gusts, then falling back down with a thump. There
was the tinkling of glass as a window broke, then the wind was inside,
rampaging through the tiny structure.
Bohler
watched
in fascination as the roof peeled up and off with a groan of rending wood,
tumbling to the ground before coming apart. “Shit,”
Bohler
said. He turned towards the house.

There was a
man standing a few feet away, holding an automatic weapon trained on him. He
was dressed head to foot in camouflage fatigues, and a
camo
mask obscured his face from view.
Bohler
halted,
stunned by the sudden apparition. The man gestured with the gun.
Bohler
slowly put his hands up. The man advanced, the gun
never wavering.

“Come on,” he
said. There was something wrong with his voice. “We’re going to take a walk.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

There had once
been a line of palmetto trees standing along the part of the seawall between
the path to the beach and the clubhouse. They were all gone now save one, and
that one stood stripped of its leaves and most of its bark, bare and
wind-carved to a sharp spike at its top, like a giant pencil stuck point-up in
the sand. They stumbled past the line of ragged stumps and under the covered
entranceway. It offered meager protection against the sidelong rain. They stood
for a moment, all three of them staring at the big, ornately decorated double
doors of the clubhouse.

“Shit,” Glory
said. “How are we supposed to get in?” The doors looked like the gates of a
fortress.

Mercer walked
over beside the entrance. Flanking the door on either side
were
a pair of pineapples molded of concrete. Each one stood about a foot high. He
bent down and tried to heft one with his good arm.

“Wait,” Sharon
said. He ignored her. He bent at the knees, grimacing with the pain in his
wounded shoulder, and managed to get one up into the cradle of his right elbow.

“MAX!” Sharon
said. He rolled the pineapple awkwardly down to his hand, bending his knees as
he did so. When it reached his palm, he clumsily flipped it over and shoved it
at the door like a shot put. It smashed into the heavy wood with a massive thud
and a crack of splintering timber. The door held. Mercer stood watching it,
panting with exertion and frustration.

“You
done,
Max?” Sharon said.

He turned to
look at her. “You have a better plan?”

“As a matter
of fact, I do,” she said. “I know where there’s a key.”

“A key,” he
said slowly.

“Yeah.
A key.
The
kitchen manager keeps forgetting his. So he hides a spare out behind the back
door. He thinks no one knows about it, but everyone in the kitchen does. And
Sonny found out, which means pretty much the whole wait staff knows.”

“Okay,” Mercer
said. “And when were you planning to tell me this?”

“About the
time you started listening to me,” she snapped. “Now come on.”

In contrast to
the luxury of the front entranceway, the kitchen entrance was plain and
unadorned, a scarred metal door with peeling gray paint set in a wall of
white-painted cinder block. There was another stockade fence shielding the area
from the sight of the residents. The wind had been particularly, brutally
effective in its destruction here; half the fence slats were missing, and
several others were rattling, the nails pulled half loose. It wouldn’t be long
before they too became missiles borne on the hellish, angry wind. There was a
massive green Dumpster, at least twice the size of the one at the marina
office, a few feet from the door. One of the sliding metal doors on the side
had caught the wind and was vibrating so fast it sounded like the buzz of an
aircraft engine.

Sharon picked
her way over to the low brick stoop by the door. She bent down and fumbled for
a moment, then stood up. They moved towards the door as he fumbled the key into
the lock. It took the three of them to pull the door open against the pressure
of the gale. Even then they had to slip through, Sharon first,
then
Glory. Mercer went last, and the door slammed shut
behind him.

Despite the
late afternoon, it had been dark gray, almost as dark as night outside. Inside
the kitchen it was pitch black. Mercer tried to get his bearings. The abrupt
change from the raging of the tempest outside to the mere wailing and banging
they could hear from within the big kitchen was so shocking that the relative
quiet almost stunned him immobile. It was only a few seconds before he saw the
white light of a flashlight come on a few feet away. The beam wavered and
danced in the darkness, reflecting and gleaming on the shiny metal and tile
surfaces and glinting off the sharp edges that were everywhere to be found. The
light approached and he could make out Sharon’s face in the back-glow. She was
holding a white box in her left hand.

“Come on,” she
said. “I don’t know if we have anything in this first aid kit for bullet
wounds, but I’m pretty sure we at least have some antiseptic.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

The first aid
kit of a busy high quality restaurant is well equipped, fully stocked, and
rarely used. There is a stomach-turning variety of injuries that can be caused
by a hectic environment in close proximity to sharp blades, hot metal, and
scalding liquid. There is little time, however, to care for any but the truly
serious ones or the ones where visible blood and the terror of HIV infection
causes a supervisor to pull an employee off the line or the floor—and, of
course, off the clock, since no restaurant will pay someone during the time it
takes them to treat an injury. Time off the clock is a luxury few can afford.

Sharon had the
kit open on a table in the dining room. The room was dark except for the glow
of a half dozen candles normally meant to provide an intimate, romantic
atmosphere for diners. Sharon had them grouped in the center of the table, the
small glass chimneys of their silver holders left aside in her hurry to get
enough light to look at Max’s shoulder.

“There’s
tweezers in here,” she said, “but they’re little. For splinters and stuff like
that, I guess. I don’t think I can use them to get a bullet out.”

He looked
amused. “You think you could go digging around in me for a bullet?”

“I’d do what I
had to, Max.
Or whoever you are.”

“
Max’ll
do for now. But you don’t have to worry. The bullet
went through. All I need to do is stop the bleeding.”

“So get your
shirt off,” she said. “Let me look at it.”

He smiled
again.
“Yes, ma’am.”
But he grimaced with pain as he unbuttoned
the shirt and pulled it away from where the blood was already starting to
congeal. Sharon swallowed hard the sight of the blood that coated his left
shoulder and arm. “GLORY!” she called out.

“Coming,” the
girl called back. The kitchen door swung open and she came in, carefully
holding a pot between a pair of oven mitts.

“Careful,”
Sharon warned.

“Duh, mom,”
the girl responded, her face taut with concentration as she brought the pot
over. Steam rose from inside.

Max looked
surprised. “How’d you get hot water?” he said.

“The stove is
gas,” she said. She dipped a napkin in the water and began gently cleaning the
blood away. Max sat there, his face expressionless, making no sound as she
worked. The only sign of any discomfort was a light sheen of sweat that broke
on his forehead.

“Sorry,” she
muttered. “I know it hurts.”

“It’s okay.”
His voice was tight with strain.

“So,” Glory
said. “I guess Max isn’t really your name.”

“No,” he said.
His eyes went distant.

“So when are
you going to tell us?” Glory demanded. Sharon was going to tell her to stop
prying, but maybe the conversation would distract him. Plus, she was burning to
know as well.

“Tell you
what?” he said.

“Your
real name.”

He looked at
her. His face was still blank. It was starting to make Sharon nervous. Then he
seemed to come back from somewhere. “I don’t have one.”