From somewhere beyond the fire and the curtain of rain, Ilkovic’s laughter rumbled toward him. “Photographer, did you honestly think I’d let you get away with something so obvious? Do you think I’m that stupid?”
Where is he? Coltrane thought desperately.
The car’s metal hissed as rain poured through the flames.
“Did you think this would end so easily?” Ilkovic shouted. “You have no idea how many ways I can prolong this! By the time I’m finished, you’re going to beg me to kill you!”
Coltrane concentrated to hear where the shouts were coming from. Ilkovic seemed to be moving from the area behind the burning car to somewhere on the right.
The car’s metal hissed more loudly, the rain subduing the flames.
“I tried to reach you on your walkie-talkie! Have you switched it off?”
Coltrane felt it pressing against his stomach.
“Turn it back on, photographer! So we don’t have to shout at each other!”
But I’m not the one who’s shouting, Coltrane thought. What’s he up to? Is he trying to distract me?
Except for the impact of the rain, the rush of the stream behind him, and the diminishing hiss of the car as the flames lessened, Coltrane heard nothing. Ilkovic’s last shout had come from the right. Is he trying to trick me into thinking he’s headed in that direction? Now that he quit shouting, is he going to reverse direction and come at me from the left?
The flames were completely out. Smoke from the gutted car contributed to the deepening dusk. The stench of gasoline, melted plastic, and scorched metal flared Coltrane’s nostrils.
Which direction will he use? Coltrane repeated to himself. Right or left? Fear made him feel so helpless that he could understand why an animal, caught in the glare of swiftly approaching headlights, didn’t flee from the tire that crushed it.
Which way? he demanded. He aimed quickly to the left and then the right. I can’t just wait here until he makes his move!
Choosing what he hoped was the least likely direction in which Ilkovic would expect him to go, Coltrane squirmed from the gully and headed straight ahead toward the cover of the burned-out car. Toward the camouflage of its smoke. The closer he got, the more he felt the lingering heat from the extinguished fire. The smoke had been dispersed somewhat by the rain, but not enough to stop irritating his nostrils. As he entered it, he tried to keep his face down and breathe shallowly.
Throughout, the walkie-talkie continued to gouge at his stomach. Stopping near the gutted car, he unbuttoned his shirt, pulled out the walkie-talkie, and switched it on. A faint crackle told him that the battering it had received hadn’t damaged it. He pressed the transmit button. “Ilkovic, let’s end this face-to-face. Let’s do it now!”
He released the transmit button, set the walkie-talkie near the gutted car, and backed away.
“Photographer.” Ilkovic’s guttural voice crackled from the walkie-talkie. “You keep forgetting to say ‘Over.’”
Coltrane continued to crawl away.
“You want me to break your body with my fists? Is that the punishment you think you deserve? Your lack of imagination disappoints me. I have so many more inventive methods in mind.”
Coltrane was far enough that he could no longer see the walkie-talkie. In the gathering gloom, the static-ridden voice was almost ghostly.
At once, it fell silent.
Coltrane slithered into a depression filled with water. The ground had been so seared by the brush fire that it had formed a nonabsorbent shell. The rain was filling it. Immersing himself in the greasy pool, he allowed only his arms and head to be exposed. Resting the shotgun on a rock, he aimed toward where he had left the walkie-talkie.
Static crackled.
Ilkovic can use that sound to figure out where I’m hiding. That’s why he wanted me to keep the walkie-talkie on.
Coltrane eased his right index finger into the shotgun’s trigger guard.
Static crackled.
He must be pressing the transmit button on and off, creating noise without giving his own position away by speaking.
Coltrane braced his finger against the shotgun’s trigger. From the force of the rain, the smoke had now completely dispersed. But the burned-out car remained obscured, the storm darkening, the wind intensifying. As the pool in which Coltrane lay deepened, he ignored the pressure of the rising water and focused his attention on where he had set the walkie-talkie near the gutted car. Every murky detail appeared magnified. Soon Ilkovic’s shadowy figure would creep into view and—
Static crackled.
That’s it, Ilkovic. Keep listening for that sound. Get closer. Surprise me where you think I’m hiding next to the car.
The shock of surprise was total. From behind, powerful hands grabbed him, yanking him from the pool. Coltrane was so overwhelmed that his finger jerked on the shotgun’s trigger, discharging the weapon, spewing a blast of buckshot harmlessly into the storm. The hands, which had grabbed his shoulders, released him for the fraction of an instant Ilkovic needed to reach under Coltrane’s armpits and across his chest, the hands grasping each other, muscular arms squeezing against Coltrane’s rib cage.
Coltrane’s feet were off the ground. He struggled to breathe. The fierce noise of the shot had battered his eardrums. A terrible ringing in them added to his confusion, but he was still able to hear Ilkovic’s labored grunting as he squeezed harder against Coltrane’s chest.
“Is that what you had in mind, photographer?” Ilkovic murmured against Coltrane’s right ear, his breath so close that Coltrane felt it on his skin.
Coltrane fought for air. His vision became gray, spots of red dancing.
“This is only the start,” Ilkovic murmured intimately against Coltrane’s neck. “I’ll take you close to death a hundred times before you finally bore me.”
Grunting harder, he increased the pressure against Coltrane’s ribs.
I’m going to pass out, Coltrane thought in dismay. He had kept his grip on the shotgun, but the weapon was useless unless he worked the pump to eject the used shell and chamber a fresh one. He tried. He didn’t have the leverage. His arms no longer had the strength. Even if he did manage to pump a fresh shell into the firing chamber, he wouldn’t be able to aim at Ilkovic behind him.
Dropping the shotgun, Coltrane gripped his hands over Ilkovic’s and strained to pry them free, but Ilkovic’s thick fingers were like steel bands welded together. Coltrane couldn’t budge them. More red dots swirled in his vision as Ilkovic’s relentless arms tightened.
No! Coltrane jerked his head back as hard as he could, hoping that the rear of his skull would strike Ilkovic’s face with enough force to stun him and make him loosen his grip. But Coltrane was the one who was stunned. Instead of striking flesh and bone, his skull hit something metallic that had two round surfaces, its sharp edges gouging his scalp. He moaned in pain. A mask? His panicked thoughts weren’t able to identify the object. As his strength drained, he kicked his heels behind him toward Ilkovic’s legs, but they hit a slippery rubber rain slicker that Ilkovic was wearing, the impact absorbed.
McCoy’s revolver. Frenzied, Coltrane drew it from beneath his belt. Feeling the mud that covered it, hoping that it wouldn’t be jammed, that it wouldn’t backfire, he raised it, aimed it over his left shoulder, and felt it fly from his awkward grasp as Ilkovic released his left hand and yanked the weapon away, throwing it into the mud. Throughout, Ilkovic’s right arm was so powerful that he continued to maintain his suffocating grip on Coltrane’s chest.
But not completely. For an instant, while Ilkovic’s left hand was occupied with the revolver, the pressure lessened just enough for Coltrane to manage a gasp of air. It was one of the most purifying sensations he had ever known, erasing the spots in his vision, clearing his thoughts enough for him to remember he had another weapon. As Ilkovic’s left arm snapped back into position around Coltrane’s chest, Coltrane lowered his left hand, fumbled in his jeans pocket, took out McCoy’s knife, us
ed his weakening right hand to open the blade, and mustered his remaining energy to stab the backs of Ilkovic’s interlocked hands again and again. The blade slashed and tore and shredded. Hot liquid spewed over Coltrane’s plunging fist.
Ilkovic screamed. Releasing his grip, he stumbled back, wailing. Coltrane dropped to the mud. Landing on his knees, he gasped to fill his lungs. His crushed ribs didn’t want to respond. He couldn’t inhale fast enough to replenish his strength.
Howling, Ilkovic grasped his mangled hands and cursed. At last, Coltrane was able to see him. But the top of Ilkovic’s face was covered not with a mask, but with a device that resembled the eyes of a giant insect. Night-vision goggles. Ilkovic had been using them to track Coltrane in the gathering gloom. With the hood of his camouflage rain slicker pulled up over his head and with the huge twin lenses of the goggles projecting from beneath the hood’s drooping folds, Ilkovic looked monstrous. Furious, he charged.
Coltrane dove to the side a moment before Ilkovic’s heavy-soled shoe would have collided with his groin. Rolling through the mud, Coltrane tried to keep the knife’s blade away from his own body, the weapon suddenly feeling puny against the massive force raging toward him. Coltrane’s photographs had shown how imposingly solid Ilkovic looked. But in person, he exuded a raw power that was awesome.
As Ilkovic kicked again, Coltrane scrambled to avoid the blow, feeling the rush of Ilkovic’s shoe barely miss him. He almost tripped over the shotgun, grabbed it, spun, and found Ilkovic straightening from where he had picked up McCoy’s revolver.
Coltrane aimed the shotgun and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.
“You didn’t pump a shell into the chamber, photographer.” Ilkovic aimed toward Coltrane’s left shoulder.
Helpless, Coltrane watched him pull the trigger.
But the revolver was jammed with mud.
Instead of firing, it blew apart.
Ilkovic stood as if paralyzed, staring through his grotesque goggles at his explosion-mangled hand. Mouth stretched open in a silent wail, he looked dumbfounded.
Coltrane moved as deliberately as if he had been adjusting the focus and shutter speed of a camera prior to taking a photograph. He racked a shell into the chamber, checked that the shotgun’s barrel wasn’t clogged, aimed, and blew Ilkovic’s head off.
SEVEN
1
A CHAOS OF EMOTIONS THREATENED TO TEAR C OLTRANE APART : relief, horror, triumph, dismay, victory, revulsion. Sinking to his knees, staring down in shock toward the headless torso that had been Ilkovic, he had a terrible sense that the corpse was actually that of his father. But this time, his father hadn’t blown his brains out—Coltrane had done it for him.
“Thank God,” he murmured. Tears mixed with the rain on his cheeks. “Thank God.”
Immediately, fear reinvaded him. He had to get help for McCoy. But with McCoy’s car destroyed, there wasn’t any way to drive back to the Pacific Coast Highway. He would have to do it on foot. Ten miles away along a mud-slogged road. It would take hours. McCoy would bleed to death by then.
Despite his exhaustion, Coltrane struggled to his feet, but no sooner did he start to run toward the storm-obscured hills than he lurched to a halt, a sudden thought seizing him. There was a way to drive for help. He had forgotten there was another vehicle—Ilkovic’s. If he could find where . . .
Coltrane stared toward the headless corpse. Something rose in his throat as he took one hesitant step after another. Stooping, afraid that Ilkovic’s mangled hands would thrust up and clutch his throat, Coltrane trembled and pulled up Ilkovic’s rain slicker. He had been convinced that the worst was over, that there couldn’t be anything more horrifying than what he had just endured, but now he realized how wrong he had been. Touching Ilkovic’s warm corpse, fumbling in his pants pockets, feeling his spongy flesh beneath his wet garment, Coltrane became so light-headed, his mind reeling, that he feared he was going to pass out. His quivering fingers brushed against a set of keys. He tightened his grip and pulled his hand free, squeezing the keys rigidly in his palm lest he lose them as he slumped onto his hips, fighting not to throw up.
Slowly, he wiped his mouth and straightened. Find the car, he urged himself. Where would Ilkovic have left it? Coltrane had heard McCoy drive into the valley—but he hadn’t heard Ilkovic’s car. Did that mean Ilkovic had left it on the ridge above the valley? The trajectory of his bullets had indicated that at the start he was shooting from up there. Had he abandoned his vehicle and come down on foot?
Go! Coltrane inwardly shouted. You have to get help for McCoy!
Running through the dark rain, doing his best to follow the road, he felt the muddy ground angle upward, his lungs heaving, his legs straining. The effort of his ordeal had so drained him that he wavered as he reached the top. Where would Ilkovic have left the car? Not on the ridge, not where Coltrane could have seen it from below. Farther beyond the ridge. Near the road. Ilkovic wouldn’t have wanted to get too far from his escape route.
Coltrane slammed into the hood of the vehicle before he saw it. The startling impact shocked him backward, his knees, thighs, and lower abdomen in pain. But he didn’t have time to let his further injuries slow him down. His thoughts were totally on McCoy. Grabbing the driver’s door of what he now recognized was a dark van, he tugged, cursed when the door didn’t budge, fumbled to unlock it, and finally scrambled up behind the steering wheel. It took his shaking right hand three tries to fit the key into the ignition switch. Starting the van, putting it into gear, he warned himself to go slowly. Don’t get stuck in the mud. He put on the headlights and made a slow, gentle turn, praying as he felt the tires slip in the wet earth. But they gained traction, and he exhaled when the van completed its arc. Starting back through the hills toward the Pacific Coast Highway, he pawed at the levers on the steering wheel and found how to activate the windshield wipers. Throughout, he was conscious of a terrible odor, but with so many activities occupying his attention, it was only when he was on his way that the rank stench in the van fully struck him. It reminded him of rotten meat, and he suddenly knew, his soul frozen, that the rear of the van was where Ilkovic had butchered Daniel.
2
P OLICE RADIOS SQUAWKED . The headlights of numerous emergency vehicles pierced the night gloom of the valley, their crisscross pattern creating a sense of being in a maze. The storm had diminished to a drizzle, its din no longer muffling the drone of idling police cars. Although Coltrane had warned the state trooper whose cruiser he had nearly run off the highway that the stream would be too high and fast for an ambulance to get across, the officer had radioed for one, regardless. Now its white outline, haloed by the glare of headlights, stayed fifty yards behind McCoy’s gutted car, amid the other emergency vehicles, all of them trying to remain far enough away that they wouldn’t contaminate the crime scene.
On the opposite side of the stream, across which Coltrane had again made his way no matter the risk, a medevac helicopter hovered, its whirling rotors creating a high-pitched whine, its searchlights aimed toward the charred ruins of the western town. Those lights forced Coltrane to shield his eyes as he sat in a puddle among jumbled scorched timbers, cradling McCoy’s listless body where he had pulled it gently from its makeshift hiding place. McCoy’s body was cold; Coltrane wrapped his arms around him, desperate to warm him. “You’re going to be all right. They’re going to take care of you.”
McCoy made no response. His only motion was a slight rise and fall of his chest.
“Don’t die on me, McCoy. You’ve got help now. You’re going to be fine.”
The young state policeman, who had at first tried to keep Coltrane from entering the swollen stream and who had in the end followed him, waved to the helicopter, motioning for it to set down next to the ruins. The reflection of the chopper’s searchlights gleamed off the red cross on the side of the white fuselage.
Coltrane hugged McCoy, doing his best to transfer his body heat. The medevac attendants jumped out, stooped to avoid the
whirling rotors, and ran toward the ruins, mud splashing their white uniforms. In less than two minutes, while Coltrane described the gunshot, they rigged up an IV line and an oxygen mask. As much as Coltrane was eager for McCoy to be rushed to a hospital, he felt an odd sense of separation when the attendants eased McCoy onto a stretcher and hurried with him to the chopper. The noise of the rotors changed from a whine to a roar as the chopper lifted off. Coltrane stared upward, waiting until the chopper’s searchlights were extinguished and he could barely hear the receding whump-whump-whump before he turned to the state policeman, who told him yet again that there were many people with an awful lot of questions for him.
By then, the police had rigged safety lines across the swollen stream, allowing investigators to cross toward the ruins. The peripheral glare from their flashlights revealed their stark wet faces, their annoyance about their useless rain gear changing to bewilderment and then astonishment as Coltrane explained what had happened. A part of him warned that he ought to wait until he had the advice of an attorney, but he told himself that he didn’t have anything to hide. Requesting an attorney would only make it seem that he did have something to hide. If Coltrane’s original plan had worked and he had managed to ambush Ilkovic, that would have been another matter, he knew. But McCoy’s presence had changed everything. Coltrane couldn’t imagine any law-enforcement officer or district attorney wanting to arrest and prosecute someone who had risked his life defending a wounded FBI agent. So, their amazement growing, Coltrane walked them through it, showing them his disabled car and the tires that Ilkovic had shot out. He showed them where he had hidden McCoy among the charred timbers. He took them back to and across the stream, to where McCoy had been shot and where Ilkovic had later set off an incendiary device in McCoy’s car. All the while, the investigators were trying to preserve the crime scene, keeping a distance from the already-existing foot marks in the mud. As cameras flashed repeatedly, Coltrane couldn’t help thinking that everything was twisted around—he should be taking the photographs; he shouldn’t be the reason the photographs were being taken.
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