by Neil Mcmahon
“Stop right there!” one bellowed.
“That’s my son,” Monks shouted, and kept coming.
“I don’t give a fuck! Turn around and get out of here.”
“Wait a minute, you saying you know this kid?” the other one said. He yanked his handcuffs from his belt and started toward Monks. “Get down, asshole. On your face, hands behind you-”
“I’m FBI and that man’s a doctor!” a hard voice broke in, yelling up at them from below. “Stand back and let him work.”
It was Pietowski, striding toward the shed with a pistol raised in one hand and his FBI badge in the other. He was flanked by two men who looked like undercover agents, dressed like Monks in funky outfits, but also brandishing guns.
The cops on the roof hesitated, looking at each other. Monks pushed past them and dropped to his knees beside Glenn. His fingers smeared the greasy blackface makeup as he checked for vital signs. Glenn was breathing, and the pulse in his carotid artery was faint but steady. There were no obvious wounds. Monks turned him carefully onto his back.
Glenn’s half-closed eyes opened a little wider in recognition or surprise. He tried to say something, but only blood came from his mouth, bubbling between his lips.
“Hush,” Monks said. “Don’t try to talk.”
He could hear Pietowski behind him, up on the roof now. “This situation’s under control,” Pietowski told the two policemen. “You men can get on down and help your buddies.”
“If this guy’s really a doctor, he should be taking care of cops, not this maggot,” one muttered.
“With all due respect, officer, you don’t know zip minus shit about it,” Pietowski said harshly. “There’s still shooters out there. Go find them.”
Monks’s fingers located an entry wound in Glenn’s chest, below the sternum and a couple of inches to the right. His mouth bleeding almost certainly meant that the bullet had punctured that lung, but the lung hadn’t yet collapsed, and there were no indications that his heart or spine had been hit. Monks’s hands kept searching over the rest of Glenn’s body. He had heard the motorcycle cop fire at least three shots. But there seemed to be no other wounds. Probably, the first round had knocked Glenn spinning away and down, and the others had missed.
He eased the stocking cap off Glenn’s head, dreading what he’d find. But both of Glenn’s ears, minus the earring, looked just fine.
“How is he?” Pietowski asked.
“Lucky.”
“Paramedics are on their way. We’ll get him on a chopper.”
Monks kept his hands on Glenn, reading his instant-by-instant condition through them, automatically making small adjustments-keeping his nostrils clear, loosening his clothing. With good prompt care, Glenn was going to make it.
A team of two paramedics arrived within minutes, carrying a backboard. Monks helped them ease Glenn onto it, and watched them closely as they strapped him down and lowered him to another team, waiting on the ground with a gurney. They seemed competent, but he intended to go with them to the hospital, and he started to follow them off the roof.
Pietowski caught his arm. “There’s people lying on the ground who need you here,” he said, pointing at the havoc below.
The crowd was thinning at the marina by now, most of it surging up into town. Monks didn’t hear any more gunfire, but there was still plenty of panic. Cars were ramming each other, driving over curbs, through yards, into buildings. The metallic crunch of collisions pierced the air, and shards of splintering glass from windshields and storefronts sprayed out here and there, glittering in the sunlight. Thousands more were fleeing on foot, swarming like locusts along the highway, through the shops and restaurants, up the streets and into the clusters of condos on the hills. Police helicopters hovered close overhead, megaphones bellowing warnings, but it looked like nothing short of napalm could stop the frenzy. At least a dozen people had fallen and were lying motionless or struggling feebly. A couple of them were wearing police uniforms. Monks remembered that he had heard the words over the police bullhorn: There are snipers in the crowd.
The paramedics with Glenn had reached a Life Flight helicopter and were loading him on.
“Don’t worry, we’re not going to let anything happen to him,” Pietowski said.
Monks nodded, but he knew the bitter truth behind that concern. Glenn was a big prize, the only one the FBI had apprehended so far in connection with the Calamity Jane murders. He was also the best hope they had of tracking down Freeboot.
The nearest of the fallen bodies was the Highway Patrolman who had shot Glenn. Several angry-looking cops were hovering around, and another team of paramedics had arrived, but Monks was quite sure even from a distance that he was dead. The crash had dumped him in an ugly sprawl, with one jackbooted leg still tangled in the handlebars of his bike.
“Stand aside,” Pietowski said again, flashing his badge. “This man’s a doctor.” The cops and paramedics moved back.
Monks knelt beside the man who had tried to kill his son. He had been shot twice. He might have survived the round to the helmet, but the second one, just below its rim, was lethal. Monks knew that that was a preferred target of SWAT-team and military snipers-through the spinal cord into the medulla oblongata.
Then he recognized the thick-featured face, and his rage turned to shock.
“This isn’t a cop,” he said to Pietowski. “He’s one of Freeboot’s men. Hammerhead-the one who had that jade pendant.”
Monks was still crouched there, trying to grasp this new insanity, when one of the FBI undercover agents stepped away from the group, pressing his hand against his ear, listening.
Then he yelled, “They spotted a guy with a limp, up on the highway!”
Agents and cops took off running, the younger men at a sprint. Monks and Pietowski followed, lumbering and panting. Other uniformed men with raised weapons were running on Highway 1.
“He’s getting into that RV!” someone yelled.
Monks saw the vehicle, a huge white box on wheels, almost the size of a bus. There was no way that it was going anywhere in this jam. Anybody inside it was trapped.
“Attention! Inside the RV!” the megaphone on the sheriff’s truck bellowed. “Come out with your hands up!”
Dozens of cops, Coast Guard, and SWAT-teamers ringed the RV, taking cover behind parked cars.
“Everybody stay the hell back,” Pietowski yelled. “That thing could be rigged to explode.” He looked pleased but wary. There was still plenty of risk, and the possibility of a drawn-out siege.
Monks started to hear a bizarre sound that seemed to be coming from inside the RV-a screaming whine like a dozen chain saws being revved. The others heard it, too. Talk stopped and the megaphone went silent.
Then the RV did explode, the entire barn-door-sized back panel bursting free with a gut-wrenching kuh-whump, spinning through the air like a giant tin can lid showering shrapnel. A cloud of thick smoke billowed out with it, sending the nearest cops spinning away and clawing at their faces.
In the midst of that, several MX-type dirt bikes came flying out of the RV’s rear section. The gas-masked, helmeted riders hit the pavement, submachine guns slung across their chests, spraying full automatic bursts that hammered into the parked cars and buildings. The bikes tore through the smoke, splitting off in different directions. Cops fired back furiously, and one bike went into a skid, sliding into a curb and throwing the rider hard against a car.
Monks saw that another of the riders, incredibly, had bare feet.
“That’s Freeboot!” he screamed. “The barefoot one!” He ran forward into the acrid reek of the gas, covering his nose and mouth with his sleeve, pointing with his other hand. Through burning eyes, he saw the barefoot rider jerk suddenly, in the convulsive spasm of a man hit by a bullet. But he recovered, popping the bike up in a wheelstand and skidding around in a half-circle. Front wheel still raised, he tore back through the heart of the smoke cloud and appeared again a few seconds later, weaving and leaping like the other
s through the jammed traffic. Helicopters thundered overhead in pursuit.
Pietowski watched them go, his face taut with controlled rage.
“He looked like he got hit,” Monks said.
Pietowski nodded grimly. “That makes me feel a little better.”
They walked to where the fallen rider lay, surrounded by glowering cops, red-eyed from gas. The body was crumpled and motionless against the car it had struck. The torso looked padded, and Monks realized that the rider was wearing body armor. Probably all of them had been, along with bullet-resistant helmets. But blood was seeping from under the jaw-a lucky shot for the cop that had fired it, the end of luck for the rider. Monks knelt to feel for a pulse, but he already knew, again, that life was gone.
“He’s dead,” Monks said, standing. “You can move him.”
“Let’s see who we got,” Pietowski said.
A deputy knelt and eased the helmet off, revealing soft auburn hair and a thin, almost pretty face. He stepped back in shock.
“Jesus,” he said, “it’s a woman.”
“Shrinkwrap,” Monks said. This time, he felt neither anger nor pity, and by now, not even surprise.
Pietowski nodded. “Nice catch, gentlemen,” he said to the cops. “She was a kingpin.”
Highway 1 looked like a mile-long junkyard, crammed with vehicles too impacted to move. The remnants of the crowd were still spiderwebbing out in the distance, over the headlands to the north, across the crescent beach south, and up into the coastal hills to the east. At least another thousand still lined the streets, many huddled on the ground or crouched behind shelter, and there were new casualties from the motorcyclists’ gunfire, explosion, and general mayhem.
“I’d better get to helping,” Monks told Pietowski, and walked out into the chaos, scanning the injured, doing triage in his head as he decided where to start.
40
Thirty hours later, Monks walked into Queen of the Valley Hospital in Napa to see Glenn. Most of the serious casualties from Bodega Bay had been taken either to Santa Rosa Memorial or to Bayview, in Marin County. But the FBI wanted their star witness separated from the pack, and the Queen was known for its top-notch trauma center. He was under full-time guard by teams of two armed agents, in case Freeboot’s maquis came looking for him to silence him.
Glenn wasn’t yet strong enough for serious interrogation. So far, the impatient agents had been limited to a few brief sessions. But he was able to talk a little, and, knowing now that Freeboot had set him up to be killed, was cooperating fully. He had already given them valuable information, including details on hideouts and communication systems, and a description of what Freeboot looked like now.
And he had tacitly admitted hacking the computer information on the “Fortune 500” list.
Via Pietowski, Monks had arranged to get a few minutes alone with Glenn. The agents on guard were expecting him. He identified himself to them, stepped into the room, and closed the door. He glanced approvingly at the medical arrangements-EKG monitor, saline IV with antibiotics, nasal oxygen tubes. It was just the kind of setup he would have used.
Glenn was sitting up in the adjustable bed. He looked uncomfortable and scared, but intact. The severed ear had been another of Freeboot’s mental tortures. He had demanded Glenn’s earring and Glenn had handed it over, without any idea of what it would be used for. Whose ear it was that Monks had found might never be known.
“You getting enough pain meds?” Monks asked.
Glenn nodded, and pointed to the call button on the bed arm. “They come right away.” With the strain of the injured lung, his voice was a husky whisper.
“I’ll keep this short, Glenn,” Monks said. “I need to know the truth about some things. Just between you and me. No one else will ever know.” He pulled a chair up to the bedside and leaned close, watching Glenn’s face intently.
“Did you know that Freeboot and the maquis were committing the Calamity Jane murders?” Monks said. “That that’s what they were doing with the names and addresses you provided?”
Glenn shook his head emphatically.
“No way, man. He told me we were putting together information on enemies of the people. I never dreamed anybody was getting killed.”
Monks kept his face emotionless, but his fear took a sickening jump. Before Glenn had spoken, his eyes had flickered away just a tiny bit-the look of the same boy that Monks had raised, a very smart, accomplished liar, who was undoubtedly aware that the issue was going to be crucial in his sentencing.
Monks steeled himself for the next, almost worse, question. “Were you the one who attacked me and cut off my hair, that night in the camp?”
“That was Shrinkwrap. She wanted to get back at you for pissing her off.” This time, Glenn seemed disinterested, as if the issue wasn’t at all important. That had the ring of truth.
“Do you think she was in on setting you up?” Monks said, perhaps cruelly.
“I don’t know.” Glenn’s head rolled to the side, facing away.
“All right, I’ll let you rest.” Monks stood. “We’re there for you, your mom and me. You know that, son.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
Glenn’s voice was laced with unmistakable sarcasm. But at least he hadn’t brutalized and humiliated his father, and there was some relief in knowing that.
In the hospital’s lobby, Monks stopped at a pay-phone kiosk and called Glenn’s mother. She hadn’t yet been allowed to visit him, and Monks had promised to check in.
“I just talked to him,” Monks said. “He’s doing fine.”
“Fine?” Gail said shrilly. “He’s going to prison, isn’t he?”
Monks exhaled. “That’s going to depend on a lot of factors.”
Pietowski had assured Monks that if Glenn was what he seemed-a dope-ridden pawn under the brainwashing influence of Freeboot and Shrinkwrap and who hadn’t been part of any violent acts-a plea bargain with a minimum sentence could be reached.
But if it was proved that Glenn had known about the killings, that would be a very different order of business.
“He should have a lawyer with him every second,” Gail fumed.
“He needs to tell the FBI everything he knows, as fast as he can,” Monks said, trying to stay patient. “If they have to put up with a lawyer interfering, you can bet he’s going to prison. We’re talking killers out there.”
“I think you’re handling this horribly!”
“Why am I not surprised,” Monks said and hung up.
He walked on outside to the parking lot. The afternoon was clear and sunny. Queen of the Valley was a long, low modern building surrounded by greenery and trees, without the forbidding aspect of older, urban hospitals. But all hospitals had plenty of grief and guilt passing through their walls.
Monk was terrified that Glenn was guilty and would be punished-and almost as afraid that he would scheme his way out of it.
When Monks had left Bodega Bay, after hours of helping paramedics evacuate casualties, the town looked like it had been hit by an earthquake. Storefronts were shattered, shops and private homes savaged and looted by the fleeing mob. Police were still dealing with the tangle of abandoned vehicles. Most of the crowd had gotten away, catching rides in the cars that had managed to get out, or melting into the woods and nearby communities. Police eventually questioned hundreds of stragglers and detained dozens, but, owing to the identical T-shirts and caps, it was almost impossible to figure out who had done what.
It was clear that the riot had been carefully orchestrated. Glenn’s instructions had been to incite the crowd until the police intervened, then wipe off his blackface makeup and get back to the RV. But no one had said anything to him about shooting.
What happened next seemed to have been a series of double-crosses planned by Freeboot. Hammerhead, dressed as a Highway Patrolman, had inflamed the mob by shooting the speaker who was championing them. A sniper then killed him, enraging the cops, who had taken him for one of their own. More snipe
rs kept shooting at police, who returned fire into the crowd, and from there, it was unchecked mayhem. Police and media videos showed armed bikers and gangstas joining the attack. Six law enforcement officers had been killed and eleven wounded. The civilian toll was more than twice that. Many more people had been injured in other ways, some of them local residents-trampled, beaten, cut by flying glass, hit by the cars trying to escape. Three women had reported being raped, and there were probably more who hadn’t come forward.
Only one of the escaping dirt-bikers had been caught-Callus, the limper who had given the RV away. He was being held in isolation on twenty-four-hour suicide watch, refusing to say a word. Freeboot might be wounded or even dead, but his status as a daring Robin Hood figure had jumped explosively.
And his message of the ugly violence hovering close at hand had come through loud and clear.
Monks found his car, the same rental that he had driven to Bodega Bay. His Bronco was highly visible, and he wanted to stay underground just now. Besides the threat of Freeboot and his men still at large, Monks had been propelled into another media furor. This time, he had checked into a Napa motel under a phony ID that he sometimes used for investigation work.
He drove across the north edge of Napa, crossing Highway 29, once a charming little road through the grand old California wineries, now a major traffic artery. The motel was a mile or so south on a frontage road-big, modern, and anonymous, just what he wanted.
When he opened the door to his room, he caught the faint scent of perfume. Then he saw another suitcase on the extra bed, open beside his own.
Sara was curled up in an armchair, sipping wine, looking out the window over the expanse of greening vineyards to the west. She turned at the sound of his entry. They hadn’t seen each other since the night that Monks had abducted Mandrake. He’d invited her to join him here, and had left instructions at the desk to give her a key, but he hadn’t been sure that she would come.
“How did it go?” she said. Her eyes were soft with concern.
