Stuart Woods Holly Barker Collection

by Stuart Woods

  “How many people have you taken out?” she asked.

  “Over twelve years, nine,” he replied. “FBI and police snipers don’t get shots as often as you would think. More often than not, it’s a hostage situation, and the suspect surrenders or shoots himself.” He took aim at something in the churchyard and made a minute adjustment to his gunsight. His weapon was mounted on a tripod, so that the barrel would not protrude from the steeple, making it visible to an opponent.

  “What do you shoot for?”

  “The head,” he replied. “In most of these situations, you’ve got a suspect who’s trying to kill cops or threatening to kill a hostage. You don’t want to gut-shoot him, because he might still be able to empty his weapon, and a chest shot won’t incapacitate him every time, either. What you want to see through your scope is an exploding head.”

  Holly gave a little shudder.

  “Position one, this is position three.”

  Holly picked up her handheld radio. She was position one, and position three was a soft-drink delivery truck on a corner of the square. “Three, this is one.”

  “We’ve got a couple of funeral-home limos approaching from the northwest.”

  “Those will contain family and friends,” Holly said. “Don’t bother watching them; look for any threat to them.”

  “Roger,” the cop said.

  Holly saw the two limos now, driving slowly. The hearse had already delivered the two coffins to the church, and now the two long, black cars parked next to the hearse near the front entrance. This was the first real opportunity for a shooter to get a shot at Marina.

  “Condition red,” a commander said over the radio. That meant maximum readiness.

  The sniper next to Holly swung his weapon slowly back and forth through his assigned target area, looking for a gun barrel or a vehicle that seemed suspect.

  Seven or eight people, Marina among them, got out of the two cars and walked slowly up the front walk and into the church. Forty or fifty other people were already inside, having arrived earlier.

  “Condition blue,” the commander said. That meant that the snipers could relax; the onus was now on the officers inside the church. Organ music wafted up into the steeple: Bach, Holly thought. The choir joined in.

  “That’s nice,” the sniper said, leaning back in his chair and taking out his earplugs. “I don’t often get a job that has musical accompaniment.”

  Holly removed her earplugs, too, to better hear the music. It was comforting, somehow, fulfilling the composer’s intention. The piece ended, and the priest began to chant something; the words were unintelligible up in the steeple, but Holly thought it sounded like Latin. Then he seemed to change to English, but she could still pick up only a word or two, here and there.

  “You’re up the coast at Orchid Beach?” the sniper asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “The wife and I have driven through there; seems like a nice spot.”

  “It is; it’s the way Florida should have turned out, but didn’t,” Holly said. “No high-rises on the beach, very green.”

  “Might be a good place to retire,” the agent said. “Fairly crime-free?”

  “I recommend it,” Holly replied. “It’s normally free of major crime, except lately; we’ve had a couple of killings.”

  “I heard.”

  The two chatted sporadically as they waited, then the music got louder, meaning the front doors of the church had opened.

  “Condition red,” the commander said over the radio.

  Soon a procession, led by the priest and two coffins, made its way from the church into the churchyard, toward two open graves, side by side.

  “I want a maximum effort now,” the commander said. “These people are at their most vulnerable.”

  Holly’s companion had shifted his position and brought his sights to bear on his assigned portion of the churchyard perimeter. Traffic had been stopped on all the streets leading into the square for the duration of the brief graveside service, and, somewhere in the distance, an occasional driver made his impatience known with his horn. Apart from that sound, the square had become extremely quiet, unusual for an urban area.

  Holly, having no assigned quadrant, swept as much of the area as she could see with her binoculars, looking for any kind of suspicious activity.

  The priest spoke for a minute or two in English, then reverted to Latin.

  “Position one, this is position five.” Harry.

  “Five, this is one.”

  “Nobody has seen a damned thing,” Harry said, “not a whit of threatening activity.”

  “He wants her, and this is his best chance,” Holly replied.

  “I hope to God he makes an attempt,” Harry said. “I want this to be over.”

  “Nobody more than I,” Holly replied. She was glad she was not standing, exposed, in the churchyard by the two coffins and the two open graves. Maybe five minutes to go, and they’d be clear; Marina would be back in the limo, headed home.

  The priest concluded his ceremony, and one or two people came forward and picked up handfuls of dirt to sprinkle as the coffins descended into their graves. But first, there was another small ceremony.

  Marina Santos, dressed in funereal black, stepped forward to the heads of the coffins, bearing two red roses. She kissed one coffin and placed a rose upon it.

  Holly watched with sadness through her binoculars.

  Then, as Marina kissed the second coffin, both caskets exploded.

  The shock wave set the bells in the steeple to ringing. Holly and the FBI sniper, knocked off their seats, writhed on the wooden floor, clutching their ears.

  51

  Then Holly was on her feet, running down the stairs, her radio pressed to one ear, but with her ears still ringing, she could hear nothing. “He’s in the square,” she said into the radio. “Trini’s in the square. Find him.”

  She reached the ground and ran into the churchyard, which looked like a war zone. Headstones for yards around had been toppled and thrown about; a good-sized tree had been knocked down. And there were bodies and parts of bodies everywhere. She saw a smoking torso that was what was left of Marina. Holly let her anger replace her revulsion.

  A car screeched to a halt at the curb, and Harry Crisp and a uniformed police captain came running toward her.

  “He’s in the square, Harry!” she said. “We’ve got to find him!” She was barely in control of her fury.

  “Take it easy, Holly,” Harry said.

  “It was a radio-controlled detonation,” the captain said. “He could be anywhere.”

  “He was watching,” Holly said. “He waited until she kissed her mother’s coffin, then he blew it. I’m telling you, we can still get him.”

  The captain began barking orders into his radio.

  Holly looked around: She counted at least eight dead bodies, and there were another dozen or fifteen badly injured people.

  Sirens were screaming in all directions now; ambulances arrived, so did police cars, marked and unmarked.

  Holly began running; all she wanted was a shot at Trini. She ran down one side of the square, looking into shop windows, some of them blown out, and at second-story windows and into parked cars. A commercial van was parked just ahead of her. She yanked open the driver’s door and stuck her gun out. “Freeze, police!”

  A startled uniformed cop stared back at her.

  “Sorry,” she said, and slammed the door. She continued down the street, turned a corner, and kept going. She didn’t stop until she had covered the whole square.

  Harry was waiting for her. “He’s gone,” he said. “We won’t get him today.”

  “Shit, Harry, we blew it,” Holly said, “and I got a lot of people killed.”

  “It isn’t your fault, Holly, it’s Trini’s fault.”

  “Bust the Pellegrinos, Harry, do it now.”

  “That would not be a good move, Holly. There’s more going on than you know about.”

&nb
sp; “Oh, I believe that,” Holly said. “I don’t know a goddamned thing!” She was fuming.

  “Holly, I think you ought to move out of Grant’s house,” Harry said. “You’ve been there too long, and I’m afraid Trini or one of his people will find you. Is there somewhere else you can go? To Ham’s, maybe?”

  Holly shook her head. “No, Ham has a girlfriend living there, and there’s only one bedroom.” Then she remembered something. “There is someplace else, though.”

  “Where?”

  “I’ll let you know,” Holly said.

  Holly drove back to Orchid Beach, the scene in the churchyard playing back in her head, over and over. She kept seeing Marina’s image through the high-powered binoculars, and then Marina didn’t exist anymore.

  She drove into the driveway and was met by her own officer.

  “Everything all right, Chief?” he asked.

  “No,” Holly said. “Nothing’s all right.” She left him standing there and went into the house. Grant was on the phone, but he ended his conversation and hung up.

  “I heard,” he said. “It’s been all over the TV. I’m sorry, Holly.”

  “Me too,” she said, starting upstairs.

  “Do you want a drink?”

  “I have to get out of here, Grant.”

  He followed her up the stairs and came into the bedroom, where she was stuffing her things into her bag. “You shouldn’t go home, Holly.”

  “I’m not going home.”

  “Are you going to Ham’s?”

  She started back down the stairs. “No.”

  He followed her across the living room. “Then where are you going?”

  “I’m not going to tell you,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I want to stay alive. I’m not going to tell anybody. Come on, Daisy,” she said to the dog. They both got into her car, and she started the engine. “You can reach me on my cellphone.” She reversed out of the driveway and drove down the street, leaving Grant standing there.

  She made sure she wasn’t followed, turning down small streets and watching her mirror, then she got back onto A1A and headed for safety.

  Ed Shine was waiting for her in his car at the entrance to Blood Orchid, and when he spotted her car, he waved for her to follow him. They drove around the golf course to a small road near the airport, where Ed turned in. Finally, he stopped before a cottage under some trees and got out.

  “Here we are,” he said. “I’m glad you called; I’ve been worried about you since our talk.”

  “Thank you for taking such good care of me, Ed,” she said, giving him a kiss on the cheek.

  “I’m glad to help,” he said, leading her into the house. “Here we are—living room, dining room, kitchen, and the bedrooms are back here—two of them, take your pick.”

  Holly chose one and dumped her bag on the bed. “It’s lovely, Ed.”

  “I had them redone first thing. You can stay as long as you want. You’ll hear airplanes taking off and landing now and then—the airfield is right behind the house—but there isn’t much traffic, just prospective buyers coming and going, so it shouldn’t bother you too much. Would you like a drink?”

  “Yes, I would,” Holly said, following him into the living room.

  He opened a cabinet to reveal a well-stocked bar with sink and ice machine. “Bourbon?”

  “That would be lovely; I need it.”

  He poured her a drink and himself a scotch, and they sat down.

  “Now tell me,” he said, “what’s happened?”

  Holly took a sip of her drink and poured out everything, describing the scene in the churchyard as vividly as she dared without beginning to cry.

  “Nine dead, twenty-six wounded, five of them in critical condition,” she said.

  “Good God!” Ed said, holding her hand.

  “And it’s all my fault; it was my big idea to trap Trini Rodriguez, using Marina for bait, since she refused to be protected anyway.”

  “Then it would have happened anyway, whether you’d had your idea or not, Holly. Stop blaming yourself; you did everything you could.”

  That night, she went to bed trying to think of what else she might have done. She fell into a troubled sleep, having thought of nothing.

  52

  Holly holed up for two days in the guest cottage, watching TV and listening to the airplanes come and go two or three times a day, and talking with Grant, Ham, and her office on the phone. Daisy was her only company. She felt so paranoid by now that she would give no one her location, not even Ham, just her cellphone number.

  The cellphone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Holly, it’s Ginny. How are you?”

  “Alive,” Holly said.

  “I don’t know where you are, but it’s not good for you to be alone right now, not after all that’s happened.”

  “I’m staying here until they catch Rodriguez,” she said.

  “Why don’t you come flying with me? Nobody who’s looking for you would ever suspect that.”

  “I don’t know . . .”

  “Come on, Holly. Who’d be looking for you at the airport?”

  Holly had a thought. “Ginny, you know that long strip at the Palmetto Gardens property?”

  “You mean Blood Orchid?”

  “Yes. I’m not too far from there. Could you land and pick me up? Then I wouldn’t feel too exposed.”

  “Sure, glad to. When?”

  “Are you at the airport now?”

  “Yes.”

  “In an hour, say?”

  “Sure. Do you know if they have a CTAF?”

  “What’s that?”

  “A Common Traffic Advisory Frequency. Haven’t you been reading your flight instruction manual?”

  “I’m afraid not, and I don’t know about the CTAF. I do know there’s no tower, though. But there’s not much traffic—two or three flights a day.”

  “Okay, I can deal with that.”

  “See you in an hour. Can Daisy come?” Holly asked.

  “Sure.”

  Holly made herself a sandwich from the fully stocked refrigerator, put on some jeans, and drove around to the airstrip. She could have walked, it was so close. She parked in the ramp area and got out of the car, scanning the skies for Ginny’s little airplane. As she looked around, a business jet entered the traffic pattern and was soon on final approach. Holly moved her car to allow the aircraft plenty of parking room, and watched as it taxied to the ramp and killed its engines. The rear door opened, and two men got out. They were casually dressed, not in the uniforms that corporate pilots wore, and they stood, looking around, waiting for something. They saw Holly, and one of them called out to her in Spanish.

  She shook her head. “No hablo español,” she yelled back. They were maybe fifty yards away. Then a large van arrived, bearing the Blood Orchid logo, and backed up to the airplane. The two pilots began unloading boxes, quite heavy boxes, judging from their body language. The boxes kept coming, until Holly realized that there could not be any seats in the airplane, that it was being used for cargo.

  The men finished their work, and the van drove away. The two pilots began arguing about something, and one of them gestured toward Holly. Then one of them got back into the airplane, while another made a cellphone call, occasionally glancing at her.

  That was all right, she thought; he was calling the Blood Orchid office, reporting someone loitering on the airstrip. Then he finished the call, got aboard, closing the door behind him, and shortly, the airplane’s engines started and it taxied to the runway. The jet took off, headed north, and was soon out of sight.

  Then Holly heard the sound of a small airplane and spotted Ginny’s Piper Warrior at about a thousand feet, seemingly on a base leg for landing. The airplane turned final, landed, and taxied to the ramp. Ginny shut down the engine and got out.

  “You take the left seat,” she said.

  Holly put Daisy in the rear seat and climbed aboar
d and ran through the startup checklist with Ginny. Soon they were rolling down the runway for takeoff.

  “Let’s do some touch-and-goes,” Ginny said over her headset. “Just enter a left crosswind, then turn downwind and make a normal approach. The procedure is touch down, then apply full power and retract flaps, then take off again without stopping.”

  “Okay,” Holly replied, turning crosswind and climbing. She climbed to a thousand feet, turned downwind, and began running through the landing checklist. She turned base leg, then final, put in full flaps, and set the throttle for landing. When she touched down she applied full throttle, retracted the flaps, and watched the airspeed indicator climb toward sixty knots, her takeoff speed. As she pulled back on the yoke there was a loud noise, and the windshield exploded.

  “I’ve got the airplane,” Ginny shouted. She grabbed the controls and continued climbing “What happened?” Holly shouted over the newly increased noise.

  “I don’t know,” Ginny said. “Maybe we hit a bird. I’ll come back around and land.”

  Then, as they turned crosswind, Holly felt something jar the airplane, and a hole appeared in the Plexiglas window next to her head. “Get out of here!” she shouted at Ginny. “Somebody’s shooting at us!”

  53

  Ginny leveled off at a thousand feet and reduced power to cruise, then she moved her headset microphone close to her lips. “I’m going back to the Orchid Beach airport,” she said. The airplane was vibrating heavily.

  “No,” Holly replied. “We can’t go there; it’s not safe. That’s what whoever was shooting at us will think we’ll do. Is there someplace else nearby?”

  “There are half a dozen airports within a few minutes’ flight, but with all the vibration, I think the propeller must have been hit, and if that’s true, it could come off the airplane any time, and we’d be done for. Without the prop up front, the airplane’s balance would be so affected that we couldn’t fly; we’d be too tail-heavy.”