The Devil's Punchbowl

by Greg Iles

  The engine is louder now, intermittent but getting closer.

  Wedging both hands behind Linda’s distended neck, she pulls on the twisted bar that Linda somehow managed to bend into a hook. It takes more strength than Caitlin expected to open the loop. Almost

  Linda pitches forward onto her face, the chain rattling behind her.

  Caitlin feels once more for a pulse. Nothing. Now the engine is a smooth rumble. How far is that sound traveling over the flat ground? A half mile? A mile?

  With a silent prayer, she looks down at Linda’s body, then gets to her knees and hauls Linda onto her shoulder. It takes most of her strength to bear the dead weight, but this is not enough. She has to get to a standing position. Breathing hard, she redoubles her effort and drives herself to her feet.

  Holding the body in a fireman’s carry, she turns until Linda’s feet are pointing toward the unbarred window and drives one of Linda’s heels through the brittle plastic pane. A chorus of coughs enters the stall. Then something heavy slams against the wall. The Bully Kuttas are leaping for the window.

  Filled with shame and horror, Caitlin presses Linda’s lower legs together and shoves them through the window. Any worry about how she would push more of the body through the small space vanishes, for the moment the legs clear the frame, Linda’s weight is yanked from Caitlin’s arms and shoulders as though by a threshing machine.

  The sounds that follow send a bolt of primal terror through her. After one paralyzed second, she breaks for the storeroom. The whole building is rattling from the force of the dogs trying to drag Linda’s corpse through the window. Caitlin feels her stomach trying to come up, but she forces down the bile and runs to the storeroom window.

  No sound, she thinks, like a child playing hide-and-seek. I can’t make a single sound .

  Standing on tiptoe, she pokes her head far enough through the window to make sure no dog waits below. The engine is much louder than before. The far wall of the building sounds as if a construction crew is demolishing it.

  First, she tries to put her feet through the window frame, but she can’t manage it. She’ll have to go through headfirst, then roll and sprint for the fence. She checks the dark yard again, then wriggles through the window and falls facefirst onto the ground.

  Bounding to her feet, she runs for the fence without looking to either side. If I look back, I’m dead, she thinks. Halfway to the fence, she hears a cough, then a sound like galloping hooves. Even as her brain calculates how far the dog must run, she’s leaping for the top of the eight-foot fence.

  Her fingers lock into the heavy wire, and she whips her thighs and ankles up beneath her, spread-eagling them like an Olympic gymnast as a Bully Kutta slams into the fence below her rump. She’s already climbing as the dog falls, and by the time he leaps again, her hands are on the top bar and she’s flinging her legs over.

  Another dog has joined the first. They leap for her again and again, their frenzied hacking like the rage of mute wolves. Panting hard, Caitlin feels a dizzy moment of triumph, then drops to the far side of the fence and sprints into the trees. She hears no engine, no dogs—nothing but the dull thump of her feet on the sandy soil. If the engine was Quinn’s, she knows, those dogs will be set loose on her trail in moments. And if they are

  CHAPTER

  60

  “Penn?” Major McDavitt says in my headset.

  “Yeah?” I jerk out of the nauseated doze into which four hours in a free-floating roller coaster have submerged me. Leaning forward and looking at the FLIR screen, I see that we’re flying along what looks like a one-lane road.

  “We’re getting into a fuel situation. We’re into the reserve. My GPS is set to the airport, and we’re already going to be cutting it close. We need to get back and refuel.”

  “Kelly?” I say. “You seen anything?”

  “SOS, man. Sorry. We need the air cav for this job. A fleet of these bitches.”

  “I’m willing to keep going,” says McDavitt, “but we’ve got to be honest with ourselves. Without more specific intel, these are really long odds.”

  I rub my eyes hard and try to see the larger picture, but exhaustion and airsickness are taking their toll. The only thing I can hold clearly in my mind is an image of Caitlin standing on her porch with her arms folded, the night we had our last talk. Remembering this, I try to imagine telling Annie that Caitlin was kidnapped and won’t ever be coming back.

  “Let’s refuel and keep going,” I say. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but we all know what’s at stake.”

  Nobody says anything.

  “Am I being stupid? Is there no chance at all?”

  “Outside,” says McDavitt. “But if it were my wife, I’d keep looking.”

  “Carl?” I say.

  “Keep going. All night if we gotta. If I’d kept my damned eyes open, she wouldn’t ever have got took.”

  “Forget that. You don’t know that. Let’s head back to the airport and fill her up, Major.”

  McDavitt starts to bank the chopper, but Kelly says, “Hold up. I’ve got something on the road.”

  “What is it?”

  “Two legs, foot-mobile. Can you circle, Major?”

  McDavitt takes us into a slow revolution of the bright white human form on Kelly’s screen.

  “Looks female to me,” Kelly says. “We’re in Bumfuck, Egypt, too. Let’s set down and check it out.”

  McDavitt descends rapidly, then touches the cyclic and flares at the last moment. As we settle gently onto the road, he puts the throttle into flight idle to conserve fuel.

  “Where’d she go?” asks Carl. “Did she run?”

  “There,” says McDavitt, pointing left of the cockpit. “She’s running!”

  “I’ll get her,” says Kelly, opening the side door and leaping down to the pavement. I’m still trying to get my harness off when Kelly climbs back into the cockpit, shaking his head.

  “Who was it?” I ask.

  “A drunk. Black woman, about sixty-five. I offered her a ride, but she told me to get the hell off her driveway. She thought we were a UFO until I caught up to her.”

  Carl settles back in his seat, obviously demoralized.

  “Let’s take this bird back to the barn and gas up,” Kelly says. “Caitlin’s still out there somewhere.”

  I’m expecting the chopper to rise and tilt forward, but we don’t move. Then I see McDavitt holding his headset tight against his ear. “Ten-four,” he says in an angry voice. “On my way.”

  “Who was that?” Kelly asks.

  “The sheriff of Lusahatcha County. We just lost our helicopter.”

  “How come?” Carl asks, leaning forward again. “What does Billy Ray need with the chopper this time of night?”

  “It’s not that. The guy from that hunting camp saw the insignia on our fuselage and called the sheriff’s department, screaming bloody murder.”

  “Goddamn it,” Carl mutters.

  McDavitt turns in his seat and looks back at me with genuine regret. “I’m sorry, Penn. We can probably get another chopper, but this is the only FLIR unit between Baton Rouge and Jackson.”

  “It’s okay. It was a long shot anyway.”

  The JetRanger rises on a cushion of air, then reaches translational lift. The nose tilts forward and we head into the darkness. As I look to the horizon, battling airsickness once more, something Kelly said pings back into my mind. Let’s take this bird back to the barn. For the life of me, I don’t know why, but I keep hearing the phrase, even in my semicoma of nausea and depression.

  And suddenly I know why: The term bird doesn’t remind me of helicopters, but of a young man I never met in life. Ben Li. A computer genius who told Tim Jessup to “ask the birds” about his insurance policy. What I don’t understand is why, if Li had a cache of sensitive data, he didn’t use it to save his life when Sands and Quinn began to torture him. If I can answer that question, maybe I can find what no one else has been able to: something valuable enough—or dangerous enough—to purchase Caitlin’s freedom.

  CHAPTER

  61

  Caitlin has been walking so l
ong that her feet are numb. If she hadn’t had to kick so hard to get the roof open, she would still be running, running along the road until she reached a town. She could do ten miles if she had to. But the bruises in her heels are to the bone—she can hardly take the pressure of her own weight on the asphalt.

  Six times she’s seen the lambent glow of headlights in the sky, then raced into fields beside the road before the lights appeared. As the sound of the engines grew, a frantic compulsion to leap out of the field and flag down the driver would grow in her chest, but each time she fought the urge into submission. Over and over she hears the voice of Tom Cage telling the story of the poor girl who escaped from Morville Plantation and reached the sheriff’s office, only to be driven back into forced sexual slavery by squad car.

  Before her feet became numb, Caitlin had found herself sobbing every few minutes. Nothing she did could block the memories rising out of the dark. The rape wasn’t the worst of it. The worst was Linda hanging from the Cyclone fence, her dress tucked as modestly around her legs as she could make it, a last attempt at dignity from a girl who’d had all dignity stripped away from her. Caitlin’s memory of heaving Linda’s legs out through the window is growing vague. The sight of a Bully Kutta hanging suspended from a dead knee seems beyond comprehension, something Caitlin dreamed in a fever. But it happened, she tells herself. I did that. It’s like those soccer players who survived that plane crash in the Andes. You do what you have to do .

  Sooner or later, I’ll come to a place that has a phone. If not, I’ll just keep on until I drop or the sun comes up.

  CHAPTER

  62

  Kelly, my father, and I are seated around my kitchen table with half-drunk cups of coffee in front of us, three pistols centered between them. Danny and Carl have taken the JetRanger back to Athens Point. Because of the guilt he feels about Caitlin’s kidnapping, Carl tried to remain behind, but the sheriff ordered him back, and that was that. The Ervin brothers are still outside, guarding us as they have almost from the beginning. Mom and Annie are sleeping in Annie’s bed upstairs. We’re on our third pot of coffee, and though everyone is exhausted, no one has made a move to a bedroom. I’ve been trying to wade through the Po file Lutjens sent me, but there’s so much raw data that I can’t really digest it. Ever since we were forced to abandon the helicopter search, a feeling of desperation has been growing in me. I want to do something—anything—to get Caitlin back.

  “You want me to give you a shot so you can sleep?” Dad asks. “Just put you out for a while?”

  “No. We don’t know how things might break tonight. I have to be ready for whatever happens.”

  “Okay.”

  “This is the toughest kind of situation to take,” Kelly says. “You have no control over events, and that’s hard to handle when you’re used to having it.”

  “I’m about ready to say to hell with Po, call Caitlin’s father, and break this story nationwide.”

  “Worst thing you could do. That’s the one thing that might force them to kill her. Po would be gone, and Hull would vanish like a puff of smoke.”

  “He’s right,” Dad says softly.

  “I know.”

  Kelly leans forward and forces me to look him in the eye. “Sands isn’t going to kill her, Penn.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Put yourself in his shoes. Sands took her because he felt he had no choice. I don’t know what Caitlin did, but somehow she made herself a threat to the Po sting. As for why I’m sure they won’t kill her—apart from everything we’ve discussed—it comes down to this: Sands was looking into my eyes when I made that promise Monday morning. He knows that if Caitlin dies, he dies. Maybe not today, but one day soon. He doesn’t want to look over his shoulder for the rest of his life.”

  “I think he’s lived that way since he was a kid. It’s a way of life for him.”

  “He won’t kill her.”

  Dad looks less certain. “Remember, Son, our greatest hopes and our worst fears are seldom realized.”

  “That’s a fine sentiment. But in this case my greatest hope and my worst fear are opposite sides of the same coin. It’s either/or. Caitlin’s alive or dead. She’s coming back or she’s not. And as things stand, we have no control over the outcome.”

  “She’s alive,” Dad says with conviction. “I know she is. I can feel it.”

  My father has never been the mystical type. “Feel it? Aren’t you the one who told me that when you die, you’re dead?”

  “I am. But sometimes I have a feeling about things. Things as they’re supposed to be.”

  “What’s your feeling now?” Kelly asks.

  Dad takes my hand and squeezes as hard as he can with his diminished strength. “Caitlin’s going to be part of this family for a long time. I know that. I refuse to accept any other possibility.”

  For a few seconds I actually believe him. Then Kelly sits erect, grabs his pistol, and jumps to his feet. “There’s somebody outside.”

  He’s right. Someone’s knocking softly on the front door. With Kelly in the lead, all three of us walk to the foyer. He motions us back, then, holding his pistol along his leg, leans against the wall beside the door and says, “Who’s there?”

  “Walt,” says a male voice. “Walt Garrity.”

  We all look at each other in surprise. Kelly reaches out and opens the door, aiming his gun through the crack. After a moment, he pulls Walt through the door and shuts it behind him.

  “What happened?” I asked. “You have any word on Caitlin?”

  Walt shakes his head dejectedly. “Nothing. I’m sorry, boys. I’m blown.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My end of this operation’s over.”

  “Let’s get back in the kitchen,” says Kelly. “You want some coffee, Walt?”

  “I wouldn’t turn it down. I got a long drive ahead of me.”

  In the kitchen Walt sits to my father’s right, and I sit opposite him while Kelly pours the coffee. Walt waves his hand over the cup to indicate he wants it black.

  “So what happened?” I ask.

  “They had the dogfight tonight, like I said. I went. Took a hooker with me for cover. I’ve had one with me every night. Started out with a white girl, local. Tipped her heavy and sent her home at the end of each night. But tonight I had a different one. Anyhow, when I got to the fight, it looked like Kelly was right. They were testing me. It was just a bunch of country boys fighting a couple of pit bulls. Had some hog dogs there too. Strictly low-rent. Still, everything was going all right. Then the fight broke up. Guess they got word somebody was flying the river in a chopper.”

  “That was us.”

  “I figured. After that, I told the hooker I wanted to go back to the hotel. I figured I had more chance learning something about Caitlin from her than from anyone else.”

  “And?”

  “You said the first hooker was white,” Kelly says. “Was this girl black?”

  “No. Chinese. They got quite a few Chinese girls on Sands’s boat, and I thought she might have some inside poop, because of the Po connection. Her English was pretty bad, but there was something different about this girl. She reminded me of a girl I knew in Japan, during the war.” Walt looks at my father. “Kaeko, remember? That girl in Kobe I told you about?”

  Dad nods.

  “This girl’s name was Ming .” Walt trails off.

  “So what happened in the room?” Kelly prompts.

  “I don’t know, exactly. I just wanted to talk to her, which was stupid, because of the language problem, but when we got in there, she took off her dress and started to get in the bed. I told her I just wanted to talk. And then then I started to talk. I told her about Kaeko, about my R and R in Japan, that stuff. She was listening, but she was taking off my jacket and shirt too. She got real quiet when she saw my derringer hanging around my neck, but then she smiled and took that off like it was no big deal. She pushed me down on the bed and started to get on top of me and that’s when it happened.”

  “What?” Dad asks.

  “She stood up straight and started talking in a different v
oice. She went from sounding like a Hong Kong streetwalker to Greer Garson in about half a second. Told me to go back home to Texas if I wanted to stay alive.”

  With a chill of foreboding, I get up and go to the counter, then shuffle through the pages in the FedEx package Lutjens sent.

  “She took my derringer,” Walt says. “She held it on me as she backed out of the room.”

  “What exactly did she say?” Kelly asks.

  “She said, ‘You’re a long way from home, old man. Go back to Texas, if you want to live.’”

  “Ming the Merciless,” Dad says softly.

  “Ming the Merciful,” Kelly corrects him.

  Walt watches curiously as I cross the room and hand him a five-by-seven photo of Jiao Po. Then he looks down, stares for a couple of seconds, and says, “That’s her. Son of a bitch. Who is she?”

  “Jonathan Sands’s girlfriend. The niece of Edward Po.”

  Walt’s head snaps up, his weathered cheeks flushed.

  “She was supposed to kill you,” Kelly says. “Or to set you up for it, anyway. But something made her stop at the last minute.”

  Walt blinks at Kelly.

  “I bet the hotel maid would have found you dead tomorrow morning, probably from an apparent heart attack. A little Viagra by the bed end of story.”

  “Why didn’t she do it?” I muse.

  Walt snorts and shakes his head. “Because she saw I was a broke-dick old bastard in way over his head. Damn, that’s hard to bear.”

  “Would you rather be dead?” Kelly asks.

  “Maybe,” Walt mutters. “What a way to finish up.” He looks over at my father, then me. “I haven’t helped you boys one damn bit. All I did was lose a bunch of your money. And I still don’t know how they copped to me.”

  “They could have followed you here yesterday,” I point out.