“Glass all over this Goddamned cockpit and one of us got a little nick from it.”
The helicopter throbbed off into the darkness, its blinking lights competing with the stars in the blackness. Then all was quiet. Frank could hear Maggie breathing next to him in the darkness. He squeezed her hand and she squeezed back.
“I’m all right,” she whispered.
“Hell of a way to cool off,” whispered Frank.
“The great Nanticoke bridge attack,” she said.
“By the police or by the mosquitoes?” Frank tried to joke.
A motor boat rumbled in the black river to their left. “Marine police. He’s coming up the river by his radar,” Cheeks said up on the bridge.
“Smart. He’s keeping his lights off,” said Billy.
The radio spoke, “You on the bridge. We heard you have a problem.”
“You got that right. Get the church.”
“Stand by, Billy,” said the radio.
The night was illuminated by the tracers and the flame that came out of the motor boat as a crewman raked the far side of the bridge and the church ruin with a large deck machine gun. Frank pulled Maggie lower into the water, his arm around her shoulders, trying to protect her. Bits of concrete popped into the water around them as the bullets ripped into the old bridge sending color filled sparks spinning high into the air. The bullets hit into the stone, skittered off the surface of the bridge roadway, and impacted on the window glass of one of the cars with a shattering of glass dancing in the air. The machine gun was then silent, the tracer light died and the noise stopped echoing against the tree lines up and down the river. Frank smelled the sickening odor of exploded ammunition. A small fire had been started at the barricade and the flag pole on the church had a race of fire climbing toward the flag.
Frank turned to Maggie, his face contorted. “I can’t believe that they did that. This isn’t a war.” The voices above them on the bridge began again.
“That’ll end this quick, I betcha,” said Cheeks.
“They sure put some lead in there,” said Billy.
The motor boat engine rumbled out in the blackness of the river.
The radio spoke. “We’re getting ready to rush them.”
Just then a huge explosion from under the river surface on the opposite side of the bridge sent a geyser of water fifty feet into the air. Frank and Maggie felt the pressure of the blast. The splash and rain from the explosion came down all over the bridge and the persons up above. Maggie covered her face and lay down on her side in the water, her face barely above the surface. Frank bent over her, pushed her legs forward and made her sit up, to get her head and neck above the water.
“I’m sorry, Maggie,” he whispered.
She looked at him, the river water streaking across her cheek. “I didn’t think it would be like this.”
“You’re going to get out of this,” whispered Frank.
He sat down in the water beside her. She sobbed a couple of times and then was silent again. The radio spoke again. “Getting a little violent in there.”
“Yeah. You boys better do your thing,” said Billy.
Maggie looked at Frank. He could just make out her features a few inches from his own face. “The water put out the fire on the flag.” she whispered, her body shaking.
The machine gun began again. Frank held Maggie close, cradling her head with his arms, keeping both their heads close to the water, with their faces just high enough to breathe. Chips of concrete dropped around them again. The sparks flew up from the bridge as the machine gun fired tracer after tracer into the barricade.
Then the helicopter reappeared, a new searchlight blazing at the far shore. Frank could see a group of five figures with rifles moving slowly up the far shore towards the barricade. He saw a muzzle flash from under the bridge. The helicopter light went out, glass falling again.
The radio spoke. “They got us again. That’s all for us. We’re out of here.”
Maggie pulled Frank’s arm. He looked at the shoreline where she was pointing. The five figures there were moving up the side of the bridge, and in a few moments had reached the barricade. Flashlights moved their beams of light all over the old church walls and the structure of the bridge. One of the figures jumped on top of the logs and waved.
“That’s got them,” said Billy from the bridge darkness above.
The figures moved forward, their guns pointed ahead of them as they stepped around the stopped cars.
“Good to see you boys,” said the chief’s voice in the darkness.
“Billy, whoever it was they got away.”
The marine police officer added,” I don’t think there was too many of them. Might just have been one guy. “
“Why do you think that?” asked Billy.
“Well, there wasn’t time for more than one of them to get out of there. A guy in a scuba suit could have done the whole thing. It hurts your people’s pride, but that’s the way I see it,” said the marine policeman.
“Jake Terment ain’t going to stand for this. He’ll want us to do something about it,” said Cheeks.
The logs were being moved away. The chief called to the drivers to come get their cars. Frank heard him call a wrecker from River Sunday to haul away the automobile that had burned.
Porch lights blinked on at the Pond house.
“One of you better get up there and tell Mrs. Pond that it’s all over.” Out on the river there were several flashlights. Dark figures were paddling small rubber rafts back towards the motor boat. On the forward deck a crewman was lashing the cover back on the machine gun.
Frank and Maggie kept low in the water. None of the police bothered to search Frank’s side of the river. After about a half hour, the police left. Finally the motor boat turned away in a slow curve and headed out the river. When Frank no longer heard its churning, he motioned to Maggie. They looked at each other, their faces green, then yellow, then red from the glare of the innocent stoplight from the bridge above.
“Are you all right?” asked Frank.
“Yes,” said Maggie, forcing a grin.” I think it’s time we got the hell out of here ourselves.”
They were on the far side of the fallen trees when Maggie grabbed Frank’s arm.
“Look,” she said.
There was a flickering light in the blackness ahead of them.
“Your flashlight. You must have left it on where you were swimming.”
“I didn’t have a flashlight,” she answered, slowly. “My God, Frank, that’s the farmhouse. It’s on fire. One of those flares the helicopter dropped must have drifted into that old dried out roof.”
Chapter 18
“We’ve got to get our research materials,” Frank said as he scrambled up the embankment. Maggie was close behind. When they got to the edge of the site field they could see the house better. Great flames roared behind several of the upstairs windows. In back of the building was a smaller fire.
“Your car is burning too,” said Frank.
Maggie was crying and screaming at the same time. “The notes. The equipment. All our work.”
He stopped her from running into the house. “It’s not safe. Keep back.”
Frank saw someone running around the house toward him. He was too far away for Frank to see his face or to do more than guess that it was a man by his heavy build.
“Hey you, mister. What are you doing there?” he called. The man stopped, turned and ran back around the house and out of sight. He resembled Spyder in his bent over running position.
Sparks were dropping from edges of the roof and were carrying into the trees. Burning leaves were floating in the air around Frank and Maggie. A fire siren began to wail in the distance.
“River Sunday,” said Frank. “Somebody saw the fire.”
He reached the truck and pulled open the small steel door.
“Get in,” he yelled to Maggie. She jumped past Frank into the cockpit and fell across the canvas seat. She pulled hersel
f to the other side of the cab. Frank followed her on to the seat. He turned the key and pressed the starter. The truck churned to life and Frank put the vehicle into reverse. He looked out the side as the truck lurched backward.
“Are you all right, Maggie?” he said over his bare shoulder.
“I’m all right.”
They were still naked from the river. “We need clothes,” said Frank. “There’s some of my stuff on the floor in front of you.”
She reached down and absently pulled on Frank’s jean shorts and tee shirt. Her eyes full of fear, she gazed at the flames, the reflection of the fire fierce on the windshield in front of her. He stopped the truck. “I’m going to leave it here down at the end of the site near the river. It’ll be out of the way of any fire trucks.”
They watched as Maggie’s government sedan exploded, roaring up in flames and then as quickly subsiding as the gasoline was used up. She was shaking as she watched it.
“My car had everything in it, all my records from other jobs, my tools.”
Frank pulled on a pair of work shorts. Then he reached over and hugged her tightly. She was trembling. “I could have been sleeping in that house, Frank.”
“You’re safe. It’s all right.”
“Who was that man, Frank? Why did he do this?”
“It looked like Spyder. He could have killed you.”
“Why the house? They had us out of here in the morning. It would all be over.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” said Frank.
Realization came across her face. “That’s right. The records. The bell.”
He looked at her, her face lit up by the flames in the distance. She held his hand. “We’re targets too.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Promise me you won’t let this site be lost, you won’t let Jake win.”
“I promise,” he said.
Just then a fire truck pulled off the highway and into the lane, its siren adding to the anxiety. It was followed by a long tanker truck and then by a small rescue vehicle. As the firemen began to lay out their hose, one of the men noticed Frank and Maggie walking toward them, a portable radio in his hand.
“You over there,” the fireman called. “Anybody in the house?”
“No,” said Frank. “We’re all out.”
“You folks hurt?”
“We’re OK,” said Frank.
“There’s a car burning out back,” the radio crackled. The fireman motioned to a team who then went over to the car with one of the hoses.
The fireman continued. “You folks got any idea how it started?”
“I saw a man running away when I came up here.”
“You weren’t in the house, Mister?”
“No, we were at the beach. There was trouble at the bridge.”
“Yeah. I heard. So you guys came up here and found it burning and some guy running away.”
“Yessir,” said Frank. The fireman looked at him, smiled, and walked away.
“What did they say?” asked another fireman standing by the pumper truck.
“They don’t know. It’s probably electrical. These old houses have a lot of bad wires. They weren’t in the house so maybe they left something electrical turned on inside, something that shorted out.”
“That’s the shipwreck site over there, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Jake Terment’s problem child.”
The firemen turned back to their work. Cars filled with teenagers, families, various local people, were beginning to arrive on the road outside the farm. They parked on both sides of the road. People were walking in the middle of the road toward the burning farmhouse. Frank watched the arrivals for a few minutes.
“It’s like a carnival for these people,” said Frank “They don’t belong here.”
“Happens at all these fires, Mister,” said the fireman as he pulled at the folded hose on the back of the truck. “Sometimes we try to stop them if it is a big fire. Most of them are our cousins and families anyway just coming to see us work.”
Frank and Maggie stood watching as the spectators began to gather.
“I bet this will be seen for miles,” said an excited teenage girl standing next to Maggie.
“It’s my home,” said Maggie.
The teenager looked at her, her face almost angry that Maggie had challenged her.
“I wonder if anything will be saved,” Maggie said to Frank.
“You people are lucky to get out of there alive,” said the fireman. “This place was a real firetrap. I’m surprised it hasn’t gone up before, old as it is and nobody living here much anymore,” said one of the firemen. “Jake Terment offered us this place a few years ago to use in our practice. We were going to burn it down for training.”
Another fireman said, “One of the guys said it was burning in two places when he walked out in back. Both of them up in the roof. A car burning too.”
“Two places. That don’t sound like an electrical fire to me,” said the fireman. “Maybe somebody don’t like you folks.”
The building was engulfed in flames. There were two hoses playing water on the fire but the water was useless against the high flames.
“We just want to stop it from spreading, grassfires, the outbuildings, that’s about all you can do with a building like this,” said the fireman.
“You two must be exhausted,” said a voice from behind Frank and Maggie. Birdey Pond stood there. She reached out to comfort Maggie. Maggie moved toward her. The older woman put her arms around Maggie.
“I know. I know,” said Birdey, comforting Maggie. “We saw the shooting out at the bridge. Jake Terment telephoned me as furious as I’ve ever heard him. Threatening. He claimed it was one of my friends who was shooting at his tenant farmer.”
She paused, “No, I didn’t do it but I wish I’d thought of it.”
She looked at Frank. “Come over to my house at least for the rest of the night. You two need some rest.”
“I’m staying here,” Maggie said, sudden strength in her voice.
“This fire more of Jake’s work?” Birdey asked.
“We think it was set,” said Frank.
“Sorry,” Maggie sobbed. “I just see myself inside that house.”
A crash of the falling roof sent sparks high into the night air, red specks twisting and turning against the blackness, against the gray wisps of acrid smoke. A sigh of excitement rose from the spectators. They spotted the cat. The animal had been trapped in the farmhouse. It came out on a window ledge on the second floor. The flames were behind it, making the animal a blur of black against the rapid light and the red glare of the flames. The cat had only moments to escape. It sat calmly on the ledge, looking from side to side in a trance like manner as if looking for a mouse to chase rather than trying to keep its own self alive.
“Look, he’s going to jump,” screamed a woman in the crowd. Then, as the crowd let out another sigh, more like a communal scream, the cat, its black spots almost glowing against its orange fur, jumped directly towards the ground, the full two stories, legs spread apart as if to help it fly through the air. Then hitting the grassy ground, it bounced upward, mouth open in a hiss which had no sound. Finally the cat tore through the crowd toward the far hedge of honeysuckle and disappeared in the night.
Frank and Maggie turned toward the dig area, the flames behind them casting their shadows far ahead, the shadows dancing with the flames, the smell in the air sharp with smoke. The site had become a spectator bleacher. Its closeness to the road, its relative openness and the pits of the dig allowed the spectators to sit on the edges of the pits with their legs dangling over the sides. All this had made the scholarly dig site into an outdoor party peopled with laughing and carousing guests of all ages.
In the darkness there were many pinpoints of light where the spectators had flashlights. The beams randomly shot rays into the night or against the gray shroud of smoke rising over the house fire, the wall of smoke drifting away but still solid enough to bounce the
light back.
There were dozens of men, women, children of all ages, all of them white. Frank looked for any blacks but saw none. Some of the people had brought along folding chairs. The spectators could be heard complaining as their chairs sank sideways and spilled them into the wet soil. Others had brought beer and portable radios. There was the sound of rock songs mixed with country ballads all producing a heavy beat, not a melody just a beat like a huge drum. Children tied each other in the surveyors twine or played swords with the dig stakes. Several men and women had established contests comparing their performances at urinating on the skeletons.
Occasionally the farmhouse would flare up and the intense light would reflect from the upturned faces of the crowd. The faces were hundreds of small white ovals, dull orbs in the black, punctuated by the tiny lights from their flashlights.
“All gone. All we’ve worked for,” said Maggie.
Frank held her close as they walked across the site, not speaking to the people. One very old man, bare-chested, his white chest hair glistening with sweat, complained that Frank was blocking the man’s view of the fire. Frank and Maggie said nothing and kept moving on. The fire was dying, the dry wood almost used up and the flames tearing at a few remnants not yet incinerated. The excitement ebbing, some of the people were starting to move back to their cars.
A cardboard box of empty beer cans was perched on top of the pump which had been overturned. Maggie removed the box. Frank helped her turn the pump upright. In the dark, they could not see the probe pits. Frank felt some of the skeleton bones in the earth under his bare feet. He knew then that the skeletons had been tossed around in a ghoulish game by some of the spectators.
When they reached the gate to the property they could see the extent of the madness. There were cars parked in skewed attitudes along the road, some with headlights still turned on. Even as many of the persons were leaving, along the road there were more spectators approaching the farm. Mothers and fathers with their children looked anxiously for a place along the side of the road to park. Among those walking towards the fire, there was disappointment in their eyes that they were late. Children pulled at their parents’ hands, urging them forward.
Slave Graves (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 1) Page 25
