Storm Surge (20 page)

A startled
look crossed Mercer’s face,
then
was gone. He pointed
in the direction of the ocean. “Run that way,” he said. “Try not to actually
run into the deep water.”
Bohler
turned to look.

The house was
set far back from the actual beach front. There was a long stretch of
well-tended grass before the line of dunes that shielded the lawn from the
ocean. The sea, however, had come up far enough to leak through the dunes; the
grass now stood under a couple of inches of salt water. Wavelets, an echo of
the ocean rollers that were clawing at the dunes, rippled in the shallow water.

“RUN!” Mercer
barked.
Bohler
could hear people clattering down the
stairs. He started running.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

When the
lights went out, Worth knew exactly what was happening. He had been sitting
next to Moon in the office, both of them turned away from the starburst light
of the plasma cutter. The sputter and hiss of the cutter suddenly ceased and
the rest of the lights went out. Worth groped for the flashlight by his leg.

“What the
fuck?” Montrose said.

“Somebody
killed the generator,” Worth said.

“Who?”

Worth
remembered a shadowy figure in the marina office.
“Our
friend.
The guy who killed Barstow.”

“What the hell
for?” Moon said.

Worth located
the flashlight, snapped it on. “I don’t think he likes us very much.” They
heard a crash from the other room, a grunt of effort, a shot. “Stay here,”
Worth told Montrose. He and Moon were up and through the doorway to the master
suite before the words were fully out of his mouth. Moon had snapped his
flashlight on as well, and the beams picked out Blake getting to his feet,
cursing.

“Where’s…”
Worth began, but Blake cut him off.

“Get after
him, damn it!”

“He’s out
there, Blake,” Worth said.

“Who?” he
glanced at Moon, who stood by impassively
, waiting
for
orders.

“The asshole
who
killed Barstow.”

“How do you
know?”

“Who else
would take out the generator?”

Blake
grimaced. “Okay,” he said. He strode back into the office, coming out after a
moment with the machine gun he’d left there. “Let’s go.” They made their way
out of the master suite and down the stairs: Blake in the lead; Worth behind
him; Moon, silent, cat-footed, bringing up the rear. As they reached the
bottom, Worth saw the open door. The beam of his flashlight showed a silver
curtain of rain. The wind was blowing it inside, great gouts of water sluicing
across the tile floor of the entranceway. They advanced slowly on the open
door, weapons at the ready. As they reached the door,
Worth’s
spotlight picked out a running figure, headed for the dunes.

“That’s
Barney,” Blake said, his voice tight.
“Worth.
Go after
him. Moon and I will take the generator. That’s where the asshole’s probably
waiting.”

Worth started
out after the fleeing man, who had disappeared into the rain. A sudden flash of
doubt made him draw up short. “Blake,” he said. Blake, already headed around
the side of the house, turned and looked back impatiently. “What?”

“Nothing,”
Worth said. It was nothing he could lay a finger on, just a vague unease.

“Kill that
fucking yokel,” Blake said. “I don’t care how.”

“Roger that,”
Worth said. He began running across the once-luxurious lawn, head down against
the wind. His feet sloshed in the turf that the storm was rapidly turning to
thick, oozing mud. He was two thirds of the way across the lawn, almost to the
dunes, when he spotted the flight suited figure struggling up the highest point
ahead. He raised his machine gun to fire.

Something hit
him in the back with a crushing impact, dead weight bearing him down to his
knees and then full length onto his face in the mud. He felt the pressure and
pain of knees digging down onto his spine, the full weight of a grown man
pressed down on the nerves with a deliberate cruelty. There was a hand suddenly
tangled in his hair, slamming his face down into the mud. He groped for the
trigger of his weapon, felt it torn away from his slack hand. The hand on his
head bore him down into the water and muck before his face. He couldn’t
breathe. He didn’t dare try. He attempted to rise, bucking like a bronco, but
the weight on his back was relentless, the hand at the back of his head
pressing his face, his mouth, his nose, down into the mud. He felt the blades
of grass grinding against his face. God, he needed to breathe. It was all he
could think about. But to take a breath of the mire in his face would be
suicide.
I’m drowning
, he thought, and the idea sent a desperate
galvanizing spasm through him. The effort he made to throw off the weight was
greater than anything he had ever imagined himself doing. But it was no good.
The weight on top of him bore him even more viciously down into the mud. He
began to pray, for the first time in years, knowing he’d probably used up all
his capital with the Almighty long
long
ago.
Please
God
, he begged silently,
No
. Please.
God.
Not like this.
Anything.
But.
This.
There was no answer.
The pressure in his lungs was insupportable. He opened his mouth and took a
deep breath. The shock of cold salt water and mud being sucked into his lungs
paralyzed him. He felt consciousness slipping away, a great roar coming up from
out of a deep dark place, until there was silence, and darkness, and a strange
feeling of warmth and peace. Then there was nothing at all.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

“Son of a
bitch,” Blake said, looking at the dead generator.
“Son of a
BITCH!”

Moon stood by
and said nothing. Blake crossed the utility shed to where the generator sat on
a raised platform, its sleek metal cover off and its complicated insides open
to view. He stood over it, fuming, playing the light over it. Moon came up to
stand beside him. “Spark plugs are gone,” he said.

“I can see
that,” Blake said through gritted teeth. “The question is, where’s this
Mercer?” He looked up from the generator, then to the open door of the shed. He
bolted for the door, his machine gun at the ready. Moon followed.

They found
Worth, face down on the lawn. His hands were still sunk into the grass and mud,
long furrows showing where he had clawed the ground in panic. Blake advanced
and grabbed a handful of hair. Worth’s face came free of the mud with a wet
sucking sound. Wet mud ran from his nose and open mouth.

“There,” Moon
croaked, his words nearly lost in the tempest. The word was followed
immediately by the flash and chatter of a long burst from his machine gun,
aimed at the dunes. Blake was in the middle of raising his own weapon when an
answering blast of gunfire came from the darkness.

“He’s got
Worth’s weapon!” Blake yelled to be heard over the wind. Moon said nothing,
just fired again. Blake snapped off his flashlight. “We’re exposed here! Fall
back!”

Moon still
didn’t answer, but walked backwards, firing before killing his own light. Blake
turned, ran a few steps, then turned back and fired blindly. He didn’t know
where his mysterious assailant was, exactly, but at least he could try to keep
the bastard’s head down. No answering shots came from the darkness as Moon
bolted past him, turned and squeezed off a burst to cover Blake’s retreat. They
worked their way back to the house like that, alternately firing and running
until they were back inside the door.

Upstairs,
Montrose could hear the shots and Blake’s voice raised, shouting commands. She
went to the shuttered windows and strained her ears trying to hear
better
. It sounded like fucking Iraq down there. She started
to turn from the window and stopped when she felt the barrel of a gun pressed
against the side of her throat. “Why are you here?” a deep voice said.

CHAPTER FIFTY

Bohler
squeezed off a last burst at the
house, then turned and ran hell-for-leather through the dunes, parallel to the
shoreline. The rising water clutched and pulled at his calves, swirling around
his legs. For a brief, insane moment he had the feeling that the water was glad
to see him again, glad to get another chance to embrace him. He could feel a
hysterical laugh trying to bubble out of his throat at the absurdity of the
thought. He shook his head to clear it. Keep going, he said. Mercer had said to
fire a few diversionary rounds, then pull out and meet him at the crossroads.

Mercer.
This had to be the man
McMurphy
was after. He had killed the worried man as calmly
as if he were slaughtering beef.
Bohler
though
of the leader, the man who had held his head beneath
the water, then laughed at and mocked him, and he felt a rage as black and
roiling as the night that covered him, so pit-black he knew in his heart he
could have killed the man. But there had been no rage in Mercer. He had
been…the only word
Bohler
could think of was
businesslike.
He felt a shiver that had nothing to do with the wind and his drenched
clothing.

Down the
beach
,
then inland
,
he thought.
I have to hit the beach road soon if I do that
. And then
he’d figure out what he needed to do about Mercer.

***

“I tell you,
friend,” Montrose said, her voice shaking a little, “Times like this, I ask
myself the same question.”

She heard a
brief intake of breath, like a gasp of surprise. There was a click and her own
flashlight was shining full in her face. “You’re a woman,” the voice said.

“
Naw
,” Montrose said belligerently, “
ya
think?” There was no answer. “So, you got a problem with that?”

The light
snapped off. “You could say that,” the voice said. There was a clatter from
downstairs. She heard Blake’s voice calling up. “Montrose?”

The pressure
of the gun was gone, but she didn’t dare call out to them. She heard a brief
rustle in the darkness, then nothing. She tried to stay absolutely still,
listening as hard as she could to determine where the man was, or if he was
still there. She heard them coming up the stairs. She thought of calling out,
of warning them, but the thought of that gun somewhere in the dark, stopped
her.
Fuck ‘
em
, she thought.
I
ain’t
dyin
’ for those
assholes
.
When they came into the room, however,
flashlights
stabbing through the darkness, the man was
gone.

“Did you see
him?” Montrose said.

Blake shined
the light in her face.
“Who?”

“That
guy.
They guy
who…he was right here.”

“What? Here?
In this room?”

Montrose
nodded. “He had a gun on me, man. How could you not have seen him?”

“Moon,” Blake
said. “Backtrack. The bastard may still be in the house.” Moon hesitated a
moment, then headed out the door, his gun at the ready.

“Did he say
anything?”

“He asked why
I was…why we were here. Hey, where’s Worth?”

“Worth’s dead.
Mercer killed him.”

“Who’s
Mercer?”

“The
asshole that’s causing all this trouble.”
Blake played his light over the room, as if he expected
Mercer to be crouched in a corner, ready to spring. The circle of light came to
rest on the desk where Montrose had been sitting. “Montrose,” he said. “Where’s
your headset?”

“My…”

“Your
radio!
It was
right here, wasn’t it?”

Moon came back
into the room. “There’s a bedroom window open down the hall,” he said. “He’s
gone.”

“And unless I
miss my guess,” Blake said, “he’s got one of our radios.” He reached up and
touched the headset switch to engage his microphone. “Four,
One
,”
he said. He waited for the acknowledgment. “Communications have been
compromised,” he said. “Repeat, communications are compromised. Stay off the
air.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

“Acknowledged,”
Phillips said from his aerie. “But you’ll want to get under cover, and get your
heads down.” He watched with fascination at the writhing pillar of white out
over the ocean, illuminated by the strobe-light glare of the lightning. The
waterspout was a slender ribbon, gradually thickening with each flash. The
electrical discharges were almost constant now, and St. Elmo’s fire sputtered
and flared along the metal railing of the outside catwalk like capering demons.
Phillips knew he should get down, out of the lantern room and the huge glass
windows that the waterborne tornado would turn to flying shards if it came
ashore near him. But he couldn’t take his eyes off the thing. It undulated in
the middle like a belly dancer, moving slowly towards the opposite end of the
island. Then, as it made landfall, the spout seemed to disappear. The next
flash of lightning, however, showed it moving with sinuous menacing
determination up onto the beach, no longer white with foam but dark with the
sand and rock ripped into the sky by the updraft. It moved inexorably towards
the clubhouse. Phillips raised his binoculars for a closer look. The roof of
the clubhouse was rocking up and down, as if it were trying to tear itself
loose from the building below. Then the tornado came into the glasses’ field of
view. The next flash he saw caught a glimpse of lumber and metal flying through
the air. The building came apart as if a bomb had gone off inside. There was a
dull red flash as something flammable went up. A few seconds after, a dull
muffled boom reached him. Some sort of fuel tank, Phillips figured, ruptured by
the disintegration of the clubhouse and set off by the electricity that filled
the air. He considered breaking radio silence and letting Blake know that if
anyone was hiding out in the clubhouse, they were unlikely to be a threat
anytime soon. But if someone else might be on the line…he put the thought out
of his mind. He raised the binoculars again and scanned for more tornadoes.