The Room of White Fire
Page 26
Gradually, in that wrenching and frozen silence, I heard the distinct but distant chop of a helicopter. From the edge of the canopy I watched it descend from the western sky. Easy to identify because I’d seen it before—Briggs Spencer’s bright copper Sikorsky 434 coming at some speed toward us. I got my binoculars, stepped outside the palapa, and watched it approach. It wasn’t long before I could make out the rough outline of Briggs Spencer in the pilot’s seat, aviator sunglasses on, headphones clamped over his bushy gray hair. Next to him, the unmistakable dome of Joe Bodart’s shaven head. And behind them, in one of the backseats, a third man, obscured by sunglasses and a ball cap.
An arc of bitter regret jumped through me: the hour of time I had tried to steal was now cut in half. I’d bet everything on that hour. Bet that I could control dangerous men. DeMaris and Tice had taken the bait but Spencer and Bodart had smelled out the truth. Who would pay the price?
Spencer continued flying toward us, then banked away and lowered the chopper a quarter mile beyond the pond. Through the binoculars I watched the helo settle to the ground. Bodart and the Backseat Man climbed out. Another quarter mile to the south, dust rose in a faint cloud. A black SUV came into view, picking its way deliberately along the narrow road, heading toward the idling helo.
With my guts in an angry knot, I pieced it together: Dick was made by DeMaris, who called Spencer, who scooped up Bodart in the Sikorsky and headed here. Bodart hadn’t fallen for my trick at all. He and his men had never set sail across the desert. He had let DeMaris take that risky bet, but DeMaris had made it pay. I raised the glasses again to confirm: two of Bodart’s Harbor Palms Motel men in the SUV.
Spencer took the copper Sikorsky up fast, climbing back north. The machine was bright and somehow privileged in the sky, like something flown by gods or conquerors. It came straight toward us.
“Spencer,” said Paige. “What is he doing?”
“Get under the tables, all of you. Take the computers and camera. Now!”
The Hickman security men scrambled off the patio and dropped into shooting stances on the embankment, pistols out but pointed down. I stood just under the palapa canopy, between the incoming helicopter and the tables. Through the growing noise of the rotor blades I could hear the ruckus behind me, table legs rasping on concrete.
Suddenly Clay ran past me and down the embankment toward the water, cursing. Paige ran after him. Spencer was half across the pond by then, lowering then hovering for a good look at them. I remembered the gun port and the pistol. Paige screamed, her words scattered in the rotor storm. The pond water whipped and Clay waded in to his knees, shaking one fist and yelling into the sharp clatter of the blades. Through the slop of whitecaps and rising mist Paige tried to pull him to shore. Through the glasses I saw Spencer with one hand on the stick, looking down at them with what looked like amusement. Then at me.
Like a cat losing interest in its mouse, he sidled the chopper my way, closer to the palapa, rotors whapping sharply, palapa fronds shivering as Clay’s distant words blew across the water. Paige pulling, Clay not budging. Blade wind in my face and eyes, Spencer studying me, rising and lowering, forward then back. Suddenly the Sikorsky roared and rose, belly to my face, a suck of rotor wind as it reared up and backed away. Then leveled, and swooped down on Clay and Paige.
Chaos next, and the free fall of my heart.
44
Wesley and Lindsey slid down the embankment, leaning back for balance, sidestepping until they hit shore, then crashed into the water. The Hickman bodyguards followed them to the shoreline and raised their weapons. Slap of rotors on water, sunlight bouncing off the copper finish.
The helo lowered over Clay and Paige like a huge steel hen settling on her eggs. I saw the barrel of Spencer’s coyote-killing pistol appear through the gun port and swivel down. Astonished at what he was about to do, I knelt and raised my pistol. Spencer’s gun boomed. Clay and Paige both fell into the choppy water. I cut loose four rounds and heard the rapid cracks of the guns to my left. Bullets hit the Sikorsky in dull metallic thunks, hardly audible. Sparks jumped and the little craft shuddered. Then another blast from Spencer’s gun.
Paige grabbed Clay by his shirt and they trudged—waist-deep and in agonizing slow motion—toward shore. Suddenly Clay wheeled and raised his fist, brandishing it at Spencer as if he could reach him with it. Across that distance, across the years. Spencer fired again and a plume of water jumped between them. Paige cried out and latched on to Clay again, pulling. Rotors whapping and the security men shooting methodically. I pictured Spencer behind the smoked-black fuselage and fired twice more. Burt Short appeared near my side, unleashing two thunderous rounds from an assault shotgun he must have kept in his casita.
The helo skittered weirdly, still sparking. A round from Spencer smacked into the palapa pole behind me and I felt the chips hit my neck. The Sikorsky belched a puff of black smoke as it banked high and fast over the pond and accelerated away to the west. Clay and Paige, clutching each other, clambered closer to shore with Wesley, Lindsey, and the two security men closing in around them. Paige’s white blouse was a flag of watery blood and she moved with clumsy determination. Rex and Patricia waded out past the shoreline and helped pull Clay and Paige through the mud onto dry land. The muck had taken Patricia’s shoes. Beside me, Burt was reloading without looking at his weapon, his eyes trained on the chopper.
“Call 911, Burt. Now.”
The Sikorsky wove through the sky like a big smoking snake, carving wider and wider until the tail swung around in frantic counterbalance. A slow nosedive. Through the glasses I saw Spencer fighting to land the helo, both hands wrenching the stick, jamming himself back against the seat for leverage as the craft whirled around and around. He got it back under control. Black smoke billowed, but the Sikorsky was stable again as it descended. Half a mile beyond the pond Spencer coaxed the wounded machine to the ground. Where it exploded.
Through the binoculars I watched him flail from the cockpit, covered in flames. Dragging one leg, he thrashed his arms wildly against the fire, then threw himself to the ground and rolled downhill through the dry brush. But the fuel that had drenched him burned viciously, and with each roll the dampened flames jumped to life on him again. Spencer finally came to a stop at the bottom of the small hillock, fought to his feet, spread his arms and raised his face to the sky. Hair broiling and mouth agape, he crumpled into a heap of joyous fire.
The black SUV approached from the far south. I could make out Bodart at the wheel and Backseat Man now in the front passenger seat, and the two Harbor Palms company men in back. They seemed to be arguing. The SUV hunched to a stop on a small hillock, and through my binoculars I could see Bodart jump out with his own field glass. He looked toward the smoking helo in the distance, and Briggs Spencer, who lay unmoving in his bed of flames. Bodart snapped something to the other men and climbed back into the vehicle. Which lurched off toward Spencer. I gauged that, after getting there and seeing they could do nothing for Spencer, it would take them less than ten minutes to descend on us.
Twenty minutes, max, I thought. Maybe less.
—
I helped get Paige to the house. She was shot above her hip—a small entry wound in her back and a larger exit hole between her ribs and pelvis. Her skin was already shock-purple and the surrounding flesh swollen. Bleeding freely but not hemorrhaging.
I ordered Clay, Lindsey, and the Hickmans into the barn to edit and splice. Told the security men to go with them and be ready for Bodart and his company thugs. Gave Lindsey her twenty-minute deadline.
Wesley, Sequoia, and I got Paige onto the long leather sofa near the living room fireplace, used two rolls of gauze to stanch her bleeding. Lots of isopropyl. Propped up on her elbows, she watched dispassionately as a doctor would. Sweat rolled down her face and her hair was a tangle of pond water and mud. She kept asking to see Clay. We wrapped her in blankets while Burt got a fire
going, his pistol-grip shotgun propped against the fireplace rocks.
Heart thumping, ears ringing, but clearheaded—as on our door-to-door searches in Fallujah—I looked through a kitchen window to the pond and the hills and the narrow dirt road that would bring Team Bodart to us. No sign of them from this angle. So I scrambled to the front of the house, where I could see the long driveway that the sheriffs and fire department would use. I reloaded my .45, wondered who would arrive first—the deputies, fire and rescue, paramedics, or the Special Activities Division of the CIA.
When sirens wailed, I had my answer. I looked down to the road, saw the county convoy, then pressed the gate opener. A moment later five vehicles, lights flashing and sirens shrieking, raced through the gate and up the drive.
Back under the palapa I glassed the two-track and watched as Bodart brought the black SUV to a stop on the far side of the pond. He threw open his door and stood on the running board for a better look at Spencer and his demolished helo. I waited for what action they would take for their old friend and ally Briggs Spencer. Deimos, god of terror. And what they would do with Clay and his video, so close to them now, but so well protected. I had an opinion on both questions and I was right.
Bodart cursed, swung back into the driver’s seat, and did a neat highway-patrol turn to reverse his direction. Put some gas into his getaway. The SUV bounced and skidded, the men inside rising and falling like crash test dummies. Brake lights, dust rising, tires swerving on the sandy, decomposed granite that would eventually lead them to the paved county road and the interstate.
—
In the barn Lindsey clicked the upload bar on the screen. She looked up at me with cool pride. Clay sat on a workbench between his mother and father, hunched in a barn blanket, pale and spent. His straight white hair plastered down over his forehead. Patricia held his hand. The security men stood watch at the windows.
“It’ll take half an hour to upload, a few more minutes for them to get it ready to post,” said Lindsey. “Is Dr. Hulet doing okay?”
“I think so. We got the bleeding slowed down. Paramedics coming up the drive right now.”
“What do we tell the cops?” asked Rex.
“Just the truth,” I said. “Spencer fired first. I’ll keep them out of here as long as I can. If the upload is finished before they get here, come to the house. Make noise and keep your hands up. If you hear them coming here before the upload is done, hide the laptop up in the hayloft and let it finish. The deputies will be touchy, so be cool.”
Clay caught me just outside. He worked a hand out through the blanket. Still shivering. I thought he was offering to shake hands, then saw his offer was something else.
“Thank you, Mr. Ford.”
“We’ll do it again sometime.”
Clay cracked a small smile.
From under the palapa I looked southwest through my binoculars to where Spencer had died. No smoke now. Just a distant black stain with a gutted helo in the middle, bits of shiny copper catching the sunlight. And a blackened form lying downhill of the crash. Crumpled and small. Reminded me of the tormented figures in Clay Hickman’s paintings. I thought of Dawn Spencer. Looked down at Paige’s blood on the patio concrete.
Time to face the music.
Back in the house I pushed Clay’s gifts under a couch cushion on my way to a window. Then watched the sheriff’s vehicles block the driveway and park so no one could get in or out. Three deputies, guns drawn, crouched low. Two more covered them from behind the open doors of a cruiser. Lights blipping, sirens off. I recognized the team leader, a deputy who had been a rookie patrolman when I first worked with him eight years ago. Antwan Sheffield.
I opened the door and waited. Then slowly stepped out, hands up. Felt the barrels turn my way. Neck hair rising, race of heart. Sheffield crabbed toward me with a two-handed grip on his gun, aiming at my chest.
“Sheff.”
“Don’t move, Ford.”
“There’s a shot woman on my living room couch.”
“You still don’t move.”
The next-nearest deputy took my coat collar and pushed me into the wall face-first. Cheeks and hands on old adobe brick. Through the open front door I could see through to Paige. The deputy frisked me high to low. Felt him pull the .45 free. Muttered something. He checked me all over again for a second gun, then yanked my arms off the wall one at a time. He pulled the restraints tight enough to hurt and keep me obedient.
Three other deputies clanked heavily past, guns out. Then the paramedics, who went straight to Paige and Burt. Burt started in telling them what to do.
Antwan holstered his weapon, took me by one arm, and pushed me inside. “What is this situation here, Ford?”
“A long story.”
“How many more guns we walking into?”
I nodded to the shotgun against the fireplace, told him about the two armed security men and the four innocents out in the barn.
“Anybody else hurt?” he asked.
I told him we had a dead man in the scrub brush half a mile away. And that he’d shot the woman.
“You saw him do it?”
“We all did.”
He gave me a hard look. “You sure brought some bad heat to this department, man.”
I shrugged, no bandwidth for any of that just now.
He turned me around and cut the cuffs off just as the paramedics wheeled Paige past me on a gurney. She lay covered to her chin in a blue SD County blanket, an IV-drip kit taped fast to one arm. I looked at Sheffield, then followed the gurney toward the ambulance.
“Clay?” she asked.
“He’s okay.”
“Get him home, Roland.” She smiled weakly.
“I’ll see you soon, Paige.”
“Bullets hurt.”
“Best doctors in the world in San Diego.” I touched her hand as they glided her to the back of the truck. The gurney tucked into itself, and in she went.
Antwan had come up behind me. “It’s show-and-tell time.”
45
I sat up with Paige at Palomar Hospital that night. Her wound was painful but not life-threatening and she seemed serious about wearing the scar proudly. The drugs made her loopy and talkative. Then somewhere midsentence she’d close her eyes and sleep half an hour, then come to again.
“What about the video?”
“Posted and eleven thousand views, as of two hours ago.”
“It’s gonna really mess some people up.”
“I talked to Rex. The FBI wants to see Clay first thing tomorrow.”
“How is he? Clay?”
“Just fine. I told you.”
“He’s home from the war,” she said dreamily.
“He took the long way back,” I said.
“I was going to resign my position at Arcadia if Clay went home. Now I don’t have to. Since my boss tried to kill me.”
We watched the San Diego news. Details were sketchy, but early this afternoon a gunman in a helicopter shot and wounded a woman near a remote Fallbrook-area residence before the helicopter crashed and burst into flames. The gunman died at the scene but the unidentified woman has been hospitalized and is expected to recover. Next up, will the Chargers stay in San Diego or won’t they? It all comes down to money. Stay tuned. I thought: Just wait until they find out who the dead gunman is. A whole new round of stories.
“I’m so happy they expect me to recover.”
“I recommend it.”
“Was it foolish? What I did—trying to protect him?”
“Well, you got away with it, Paige. And you helped Clay get away with his life.”
“I’m glad they didn’t arrest you,” she said.
“They still might. They have a lot to sort out.”
She closed her eyes, a slight smile on her face. Then sleep. I watched her for a while,
thinking: Paige, I’ve been wondering about something. I bet you know what. We’ll talk, later. Tonight, sleep tight. I’m heading home soon. Stiff bourbon and a smoke. I hope you feel better in the morning.
Squeezed her hand gently, touched her cheek.
I sat for a long while, listening to the chorus of hospital sounds, the hums and beeps and bumps and the quiet talk from the ICU nurses’ station outside. The pad of Crocs across the floor.
I was truly weary. Burnt out but on edge. Too tired to think clearly. But one thought was clear: I knew exactly where all of this had left me in relation to certain dangerous and guilty men.
Bodart knew that I suspected him of the murder of John Vazquez. Knew that I could drop his name to the Mendocino detectives any time. They could get him or his “short, stocky” partner on something as small as a fingerprint left in the Vazquez home. And Bodart also knew that I was a witness to his armed raid on an Oceanside motel room. If that wasn’t enough, I could identify him as one of four men who left the corpse of Briggs Spencer smoldering in the hillside scrub near Fallbrook. Such facts if known would land him in court, possibly in prison, and certainly cast his agency in the public light they so loathed. I thought of Laura and Michael. I wanted someone to pay for John Vazquez.
Then there were DeMaris and Tice, who had conspired with Spencer to sedate Clay Hickman with powerful drugs to keep him silent. Three years of that at Arcadia, an exclusive wellness community for treatment of mental and emotional disorders, at twenty-five grand a month. With testimony from Paige Hulet and myself, any prosecutor I’ve ever met could prove that charge.
So what exactly was I, Roland Ford, in their eyes?
A threat. A serious one. The one person who knew what they had done, from White Fire to Arcadia to Mendocino to Rancho de los Robles.
Sitting there in the ICU with Paige, I tried to see me differently in their eyes. Maybe I had it wrong. Exaggerating my own importance. A small man with big ideas. But I couldn’t figure it another way. Not with men like Bodart and DeMaris. Tunnel vision, on a mission. I was their biggest problem. And I believed they would try to make me go away. Quickly.