Dr. O

by Robert W. Walker

  Ovierto was thorough and cunning. He had thought of everything. He had seen blueprints of this place and knew it inside and out. She, on the other hand, didn't know where she was in relation to the outside, nor where to start.

  He had cut the lines to the lights. He must be hiding here somewhere. She then heard a door, a large, industrial door, whining with a gust of air as it closed. She raced through a myriad of pipes and conduits and noise and steam. She slammed into the wall beside the door. The fact that she'd made it alive to this point meant the bastard was on the outside again. She slowly opened the whining door, knowing it could be a trap that could ensnare her as quickly as a hammer blow.

  She had last seen Donna two-thirds of the way across the rope she was taking over the chasm of the locks. But now, as she came through the door with great caution, she saw Donna again, on her feet, coming towards the back of the building, right at her, and between them there was Ovierto. Donna opened fire at the same instant that Robyn did, Robyn realizing too late, as bullets rained around her, that they were both backdrops for a mirrored, holographic image of Ovierto. Robyn caught one in the shoulder and fell to the concrete, cutting her chin as she did so.

  The image remained between them, but Robyn could see through the image to where Donna was slumped to her knees.

  "It's not him!" she screamed as Donna looked up at her, blood rushing up over her lips.

  Donna was hit. Hit badly by one of Robyn's bullets. Robyn rushed to Donna and took her in her arms.

  "Careful, he's still nearby," she croaked, making Robyn search the darkness all around them when she saw a van back from the parking lot and screech away.

  "Don't let him get away," said Donna, coughing.

  "I can't leave you."

  "Get him!"

  "You're parents, Donna... we have them safe."

  "Bury me alongside them..."

  "Donna!"

  "... in an unmarked grave... if Ovierto gets away..."

  Donna slumped over, her eyes rolling back in her head. Robyn felt the life lift away from her. "Oh, God, oh, Donna, Donna!"

  She watched the van in the distance disappearing towards the Robert Moses Dam. She looked around, placed Donna gently down and rushed back to where the lock master's body remained in his chair. There she searched a wall of keys for a vehicle key, finding them numbered. She rushed out to the workman's yard, running into the guard who had tried to stop Donna Thorpe on the other side. He had driven under the bridge below the seaway to get here.

  "Whoever that guy is, he's trapped now," said the guard. "There's no way out from that end. It's an island and the dam, and that's it."

  "The dam goes across to Canada, though."

  "Yeah, but he couldn't... wouldn't attempt to..."

  She raced for the light truck with the number corresponding to the key, jumped in and sped out of the lot, streaking the road with rubber. She pushed it to the floor. Ovierto had a plan of escape, that was certain, and it involved the dam. Had anyone ever attempted crossing the border via the dam? It fit with his grandiose notion of himself. As far as she was concerned, it was a grand place for the bastard to die.

  Ahead, in the distance, the dam was lit only by the glow of the orange sodium-vapor lights of the empty parking lot. She saw only the van that Ovierto had used, pulled up just outside the main door. An alarm was blaring nonstop, like a hungry child. She saw a dead guard the other side of the broken glass.

  The dam was officially closed to the public. It had come down to her alone against the most awful evil she had ever known.

  "For Donna and for Joe," she told herself as she stepped through the broken glass, searching for a way to the dam itself. The place hummed with electricity and there were lights on one floor where the control room was in full operation. Several men were milling about three walls of dials and lights. Huge- faced clocks, set for each time zone, stared down at them. There was a glass partition for the viewing public to watch these men at what appeared to be very boring work. They seemed oblivious to the alarm downstairs or the fact the building had been penetrated by Ovierto and the cop who would destroy him. Apparently alarms went off here frequently.

  She searched for and located a floor map. Above her was the observation tower and the only public access to viewing the dam proper. She had no idea how Ovierto intended to get out onto the dam in the dark and make his way across to Canada, but she now knew how she would do it. She'd have to go up to the top floor, four up. Perhaps from above, if she could locate him, she could draw a bead on him and bring him down.

  She first found a door that took her into the control room of the dam; the men there were immediately upset by her presence.

  "Just call the Canadian authorities. Tell them you have a man on the dam, armed and very dangerous, trying to escape police here to enter their country! Do it, now!"

  She knew the Mounties. They would be real pissed off to learn about anyone's trying to use the dam in such a fashion, and they wouldn't hesitate to use their side arms. But she hoped to get him first. She started away.

  "Wait, where are you going?"

  "After him!"

  The man let her go, trailing behind her up to the observation tower. He unlocked the doors that took her out on a walkway above the dam. She could see the lights of Cornwall on the other side of the seaway, here wide and unencumbered by islands such as that which had made the locks here possible. "I don't see anyone down there."

  The spine of the dam here was flat and wide and as long as an airstrip, and every object on its surface looked momentarily like Ovierto, but was not. "Where is he?" she cried as she stared down at the row of giant turbines that kept the enormous generators rolling, sending up a noise from the water like thunder. She imagined how at peace she would be to see Ovierto's body descend into one of those turbines to be chewed to pieces. She realized just how much hate the man had created in her. She realized now how Donna Thorpe had felt for years, how she could use Joe and anyone else she could to get at this creep.

  "Try the glasses," said the man beside her, placing a quarter into the viewer. It magnified everything, but for some time she could not see anyone on the dam, only a huge, silent derrick.

  "Man's a fool to try to get across that if he doesn't know what he's doing," said the dam expert.

  "This man is quite mad. He's a murderer."

  She located him in the glasses. "There, there he is."

  She stepped away from the viewer and prepared to aim her .38 when she heard the rush of wind preceding a helicopter that suddenly moved in as if from nowhere. "Is that a police chopper?" she asked.

  "I can't tell," was the response. "Don't see any markings."

  "No, no! It's coming in for Ovierto. Damn, damn! He arranged for a thorough escape, timed to the moment. Damn!"

  "Could be a Canadian chopper."

  "No, too fast." She aimed once more at the speck that was Ovierto. She concentrated as if she were back on the firing range in Chicago. She fired a single shot as the man beside her watched through the viewer.

  "Damn, you hit him!" the man shouted.

  "Did he stay down?"

  "So far, yes."

  "Keep him in view."

  "What're you going to do?"

  The viewing machine rattled, signaling that time was spent on it. "Damn, need a quarter?" said the man, who searched his pockets, having long since lost his calm. He located one and the machine was put instantly back into operation. "Is he still down? Is he down?" she pleaded.

  "No... no... leastways, I can't see him."

  "Damnit! The man has nine lives."

  There, he's about ten yards further along."

  "Out of range. How can we get down there? What's the fastest way?"

  "Follow me."

  They hurried to a service door through which they located an elevator that would take them to the surface of the dam. The seconds seemed to stretch on for an eternity while the elevator dropped down and down, and she feared with each passing moment tha
t the deadly O would make his escape.

  The doors opened and she told the workman with the tense eyes and the hard hat that she'd take it from here alone.

  "It's dangerous unless you know the route," he told her.

  She pushed on anyway.

  Behind her he continued to follow, saying that, "You'll waste valuable time if you don't follow me."

  "The man I'm after will kill you at the blink of an eye," she shouted at him. "Do you want that?"

  He stopped cold, gulped and said, "No, no... but you need my help."

  "All right, but the moment I say down, drop!"

  "Good enough."

  He led her around the intricate metal and stone maze of the working dam over which they stood. This was no place for visitors, she realized when she had to leap across an open air vent at the bottom of which churned the waters below the dam. The noise of the turbines here was deafening, and they had to use hand signals to communicate. All the while the workman was watching her step, Robyn Muro was watching for Ovierto.

  She saw the helicopter hovering above the very center of the dam. It had lowered a rope ladder, and it was a hundred yards from her, perhaps more.

  Gunshots rang out, sending Robyn to the concrete floor of the dam. The gravelly surface was rough against her cheek. At the same instant she heard the workman scream and saw that he'd lost his footing, going over the side, into one of the enormous, gaping turbines. She crawled to where she saw him go over and found him hanging by both hands there.

  She reached down, holding firm to him, but she wasn't strong enough to pull him up. He swung a leg over the edge and they toppled together, panting.

  Robyn looked to see the helicopter lifting upward, Ovierto holding tightly to the rope ladder below, making his way up and up toward the bubble of the machine.

  "He's getting away!" she shouted, rushing headlong toward the chopper.

  "Be careful!" the man behind her cautioned.

  She got into a position on the opposite side of a massive pillar, the chopper and Ovierto clearly in view, but the distance between them increasing with each second. She aimed for Ovierto, whose form was spinning in the wind. Her shot missed. The helicopter was moving off now at a rapid rate. She aimed for the chopper's blade, specifically the rotor at the base of the blades where she knew that there were any number of moving parts the destruction of which could cause it to go down. She fired successive shots at the rotor and watched one after another ping off the blade shaft. She emptied what was left of her bullets into the shaft.

  But the helicopter kept moving off, and her last few rounds hadn't a chance of hitting the mark. She slumped into a heap, all her emotions flooding in on her as she watched the blood-thirsty maniac pull himself into the cab, the chopper way out over the St. Lawrence now, going due west. She buried her head in her hands.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  "Get me the hell out of here!" a bleeding Ovierto shouted to the pilot of the aircraft. He'd been hit in the arm by Thorpe and in the leg by Robyn Muro's bullet. His ingenious hologram was meant to catch the two of them in a crossfire, to end the careers of both Thorpe and Muro, whom he had recently begun to learn more about. He had no way of knowing for certain, but from appearances, Donna Thorpe was killed due to his last sleight-of-hand, but Muro had survived.

  It had taken him some time, during the race from the locks to here, to figure out just how Muro had gotten there, that she had been in the crate all along, somehow surviving the cold. The two women had deceived him and he had deceived them.

  One day he would live to see Muro killed, but not like Thorpe. With Muro he'd take his time. Abduct her... give it a few days, maybe a week or more to watch her die slowly. He'd think of something fitting to repay the pain she had inflicted on him.

  His leg would be stiff for a month or more. He'd have a lingering limp, he decided when he cut the pants leg open with a knife and saw that the entrance of the wound had been in his kneecap, the bullet exiting just above the pit behind the knee. A limp would mark him, limit his disguises, and he hated the idea of being maimed by a woman.

  He silently cursed Robyn Muro and vowed to one day get more than even with her.

  She had continued to fire at him while he was dangling in the air like a fucking carnival target, and then she had opted for the chopper, scaring the hell out of the pilot who loped off at such a speed he almost sent Ovierto to the seaway below. But now he had his machine under control —or did he?

  The whirlybird began a drunken dance in the air. "What's happening? What's wrong?"

  "They must've put one in the rotor shaft, damaged the equilibrium between the blades, Dr. Samson."

  "Can you compensate for it?"

  "I... I don't think so, sir"

  "We're going down?"

  "Better buckle up, sir."

  "We're going down?"

  "Yes."

  Ovierto had to think fast. The pilot knew his intended destination, the location of his jet. If he should survive the crash, the pilot could talk.

  "You're absolutely sure there's no getting us to Long Sault Airport?"

  "None... not any chance."

  They were losing altitude and gyrating in lazy loops, still in the area of the dam, no doubt giving Robyn Muro great pleasure. He thought he saw her jumping up and down atop the dam, but no, just his imagination. It was too far to make her out, but she could see them spiraling down and down toward the trees, the pilot trying to soft-land the thing in the five-foot-high prairie grass banking the wide river.

  "At least get us closer to the goddamned Canadian side!" shouted a hurt, frustrated Dr. O, his leg bloody red now, the pain pumping from the wound.

  "I'll do what I can," said the pilot, trying desperately to control the uncontrollable. "We're going to hit... going to hit!"

  Just as the helicopter was coming down into a bay, Ovierto whipped out his bowie knife and reached across the pilot's throat, drawing a deep gash from side to side, turning his shout into a gurgling, sputtering sound like the one his machine was making. The impact of the machine against the water shook the entire bubble, and a tree branch crashed through the glass within inches of Ovierto's eyes. Water was filling the cab. He fought against his seat belt and the weight of the dead pilot over him. He saw the water rising up along the dash, sucking the machine down and down.

  "I won't die this way!" he cried out. "I won't die this way!"

  The water took him down with the helicopter, the fallen tree following at the end. Beneath the water he struggled to get free, a powerful current pushing him back and down. He cut the restraining belt that held the pilot and kicked madly out at the body, and this effort also sent him out the side and into the current that tumbled him over and over, sucking him like a toy into the maw of the mighty St. Lawrence.

  He wondered if he would die here like this, feeling a great weakness overtaking him.

  He fought the desire to simply give in to the power of the water.

  But then he remembered Pythagoras and Muro and he wanted to live....

  Robyn Muro and the single workman on the dam watched the helicopter spiral into the trees in the distance, and it caused a cheer in them that resounded off the dam. She and the workman made their way carefully back to the safety of the building, which was now abuzz with police who had infiltrated from the lot outside. She shouted that she was a police officer and she flashed her badge. She was still in her wet suit, and they had some difficulty believing her at first.

  "We've got to get to the Canadian side about two miles down. A very desperate criminal, a murderer... just went into the water in a downed helicopter."

  Some of them had watched as the "crazy" pilot had "deliberately" swung into those trees.

  "Get me over there, now!"

  Even with sirens blaring and going at top speed, it was a good hour up to the bridge, over and down two miles on the other side of the St. Lawrence. Robyn had the local police call ahead to the Canadians, giving them a location fix on the "suspec
t."

  Most of them were relaxed. No one could have survived such a crash, they said, but Robyn knew better; she knew that there was something almost superhuman about Ovierto. He would not readily go to his death, not even plunging toward it in a helicopter out of control. She tried to tell the others this, to convey the sense of evil about this man. She went into some detail about what he had done in Chicago, in Seattle, to Thorpe with her parents, and now this. She only stopped when she realized that the state policemen listening to her were beginning to wonder about her.

  She fell silent until they reached the wreckage where some raggedly dressed Canadian in overalls that were torn and dirty had tried to claim the salvage rights to the helicopter since it was on "his" land. He had hooked a tow truck pulley to the damned thing and was cranking it in with great care. The Mounties had simply stood back and watched him do so before they told him he could take not a single thing from the aircraft since it was evidence in a criminal case.

  This was what Robyn pushed past when she arrived, going directly for the cab, stepping out into the water up to her knees and peering inside the cab at the dead pilot whose throat was split like a melon, the blood washed away by the river, no sign of Ovierto.

  "There was a second man in the chopper! Did you see anyone climb from the water?" she shouted at the salvage man.

  "No, no... no one."

  "If you're lying—" She approached as if she would tear his heart out.

  "I saw no one! No one alive!"

  She grabbed him by the lapels of the oily jumpsuit he wore and shoved him into the side of a huge green tractor that appeared rusted solid. "Did you see another body, then! Did you? Did you?"

  The hefty man swung at her, hitting Robyn Muro in the ribs, to which she responded with a knee to his groin, sending him to his knees as the New York State police officers pulled her off. She felt completely alone, watching all of the local cops staring at her as if she were a monster.