by Chris Knopf
We reached the foundation wall at the back of the hotel where the restaurant had been attached as an addition years before. I used a crate to get up high enough to stick my head between the floor joists where I could examine the sill and crawl space under the restaurant. The storm noises were dampened somewhat by the structure overhead, but plenty loud enough, and when another big gust hit, I had the flashlight trained directly on the sill plate, a single two-by-eight plank of wood that served as the interface between the stone foundation and the floor members.
I saw what I needed to see.
"Looks okay so far," I said to Jock. "Let's head up to the attic."
He followed me up the three flights of stairs and hung close to me as I crawled out over the joists to the inside of the eave, the tight V formed where the roof, the exterior wall and ceiling for the second floor all came together. I watched as the wind massaged the hotel and I lightly ran my hand over the old framing material like a faith healer working the county fair.
"Christ, it's noisy," Jock yelled, demonstrating his point.
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"We're pretty close to the action up here," I yelled back. "Let's go back down."
He waited until we were on the second floor to ask my professional opinion.
"We're fine," I said. "The place is built like a bunker."
"I been in bunkers," he said. "This is no bunker."
"Okay, pick a better metaphor. I'm not going to fight you over it."
He snorted.
Nothing much had changed when we got back to the dim and shadowy restaurant. Del Rey sat with Hammon and 't Hooft, though apart, her eyelids half-closed, but her chin held high, her cocktail loose in a limp right hand. A thick strand of hair had escaped from the pile on top of her head and lay like a yellow comma against her nose. The way 't Hooft looked at her, I imagined him wanting to reach over and flick the strand off her face. I almost did it myself.
"What's the verdict, Doc?" she asked when she saw me approach.
"The Swan's good for another hundred years," I said. "Don't worry about the noise. It sounds a lot worse than it is. How come I'm not drinking?"
Anika went to replenish my glass. I was left with Christian Fey, who looked unsure of what to do with himself, whether he should be sitting uneasily or leaping up from the table to run off on some more productive pursuit. I sat down next to him.
He leaned back and looked at me, as if slightly affronted by my presence. But then he said, "I haven't adequately thanked you for securing the safety of my wayward son."
"You don't have to thank me," I said. "I do things for my own reasons."
"Thank you anyway."
I realized it was one of the few times I'd been alone with Fey without Anika there as a buffer.
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"You don't think Axel sabotaged 5.0," I said to him.
He shook his head.
"The thought is absurd. Axel has done his share of destructive hacking, I know to my eternal sorrow, but it's all child's play compared to what afflicts 5.0. You can't imagine the diabolical wizardry of such a thing. I'm desperate for them to let me examine it."
"Then why does everyone else think he did?" I asked. "Isn't that why Hammon's here?"
"Hammon's a fool."
"But he knows your son," I said.
Fey leaned forward in his chair and put his hand on my knee, about the last thing I'd expect him to do. I fought the urge to pull away. His look was hard and cold.
"No one knows my children," he said in a voice I could barely hear over the battering wind.
Anika brought my drink and two glasses of wine on a small tray over to the table. After she'd handed out the drinks and sat down, I asked Fey, "Why didn't you leave the Swan with me and Anika? Did you know they were waiting for us?"
"I couldn't decide what to bring and what to leave," he said. "You were right to go on without me."
"Best laid plans," said Anika with a little shrug.
There was another lull outside. Everyone in the room looked toward the walls of the restaurant. I shifted my chair away from the table, took Anika by the hand, and pulled her toward the door into the hotel. A moment later a savage gust exploded against the back of the hotel, blasting through the big windows and glass doors that overlooked the docks. Wind, rain, tree limbs and table settings suddenly filled the air. The table where Hammon and company sat next to the windows launched toward the ceiling, propelled by the
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wind and the bucking floor. Del Rey, standing behind the service bar, screamed and covered her face. I saw most of this through a blizzard of water and debris as I pulled Anika by the wrist toward the back wall.
Before we reached the door, a deafening screech came from above as the roof of the restaurant lifted off the walls and blew up into the back of the hotel. I shoved Anika through the door and followed her, banging hard against the jamb as the floor fell out from under me. I looked back into the chaos and saw Hammon and Pierre pinned against the east wall. 't Hooft had a grip on the sleeve of Hammon's light jacket. The wall waved like a sail in the wind. Del Rey screamed again, and everyone looked across to the opposite wall where she clung to the top of the service bar. 't Hooft let go of Hammon and started to work his way over the disintegrating floor. Hammon reached out and yelled at him to stop, but without looking back, 't Hooft shot him a middle finger and pressed ahead. I saw no sign of Jock, and had no more time to look, busy as I was trying to get Christian Fey up out of the hole that was once the crawl space under the restaurant.
I knelt down, gripped the door jamb and extended my hand. Anika wrapped her arms around me and pulled backwards as Fey reached up and grabbed my forearm, allowing me to grab his. He wedged his foot into a chink in the old stone foundation and stepped up as I pulled his arm, and aided by Anika's weight, yanked him through the door and into the hotel, where we all landed in a heap.
I shoved him off me and stood up, helping Anika, and then Fey do the same. We were in a room that served as a broad hallway, leading to the front lobby, or into the bar area. I shut the door to the lobby, then herded the Feys into the bar, shutting that door as well.
"What about the others?" shouted Fey.
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"We have to keep the wind pressure out of the hotel. If they can make it to the hallway, they can make it here," I shouted back.
To help prove my point, the building was shaken by another big gust, following which came the sound of the restaurant roof tearing apart and scattering to either side of the hotel and through shattering glass upstairs.
"You said it was good for another hundred years," said Fey.
"Can't be right all the time," I said, pushing them ahead of me through the bar and toward the front door. When we got there, I told them to stay at the rear of the lobby away from the windows. I opened the front door, which the wind nearly wrenched off its hinges, and jumped down behind the bushes that lined the front of the hotel. I kept my back to the shingled siding and inched along, searching the ground for my backpack, which I found at the corner, just where Anika said it would be.
The Mercedes was also where I'd left it. A big tree limb lay in front of the car, but there was room to drive around to reach the street. I squirmed under the chassis and saw that the clip-on cable was still in place. But not surprisingly, the keys weren't in the ignition. I popped the hood and dropped my pack on the seat so I could dig out two more cables, these lighter and more flexible. It had been a long time since I'd looked in the engine compartment of a Mercedes, and longer still since I'd hotwired one. There were surely modern safeguards against such a thing that would be tough to ferret out even under the best of circumstances.
I snapped off the cover of what I thought was the engine control unit, a device that electronically managed both ignition and fuel supply. I found what I hoped was the line that fed power to the unit, and traced it back to a fuse block under the dashboard. There I switched the line to a feed that saw current wi
thout needing the key turned in the ignition
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and prayed for an appropriate amperage. Then I went back to the engine and ran another cable directly from the battery to the starter and turned over the engine.
It caught.
My astonishment was quickly interrupted by a blast of wind that tried to wrench the raised hood off the car. I slammed it shut, grabbed my backpack and went back to get Anika and Fey.
They both wore rain jackets, and Fey handed me one of my own. Anika had a fanny pack around her waist and held a soft cat carrier. Eloise looked through the web mesh with unrestrained terror. I put Fey in the front passenger seat, telling him to keep his head down, and had Anika lie down in the back. I sat in the driver's seat and shifted into reverse so I could back up and make room to maneuver around the limb. I was spinning the wheel and about to throw it into drive when a fist came through the window and snapped across my cheek, the pulverized glass raining into the car and biting into my cheek.
Before I could make sense of what just happened, the fist turned into a vice that grabbed me by the throat. It wasn't lack of air, it was the imminent possibility that my larynx would be crushed that motivated me.
I shoved the floor shifter into drive, then pulled the .38 out of my backpack and shot the guy in the elbow. The hand released its grip and I stuck the accelerator to the floor, glancing out the smashed window just in time to catch the sight of Jock, bent over, his arm held close to his body, his face still the impassive mask it had always been. His good hand was pulling a big, black gun out of a holster on his belt.
I drove around the big limb, crunching over several smaller branches, and turned right onto the street. I heard the pop-pop of a semi-automatic and saw little holes open up in the windshield. I yelled at the Feys to keep their heads
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down and tried to steer the station wagon with my eyes barely clearing the dashboard.
After passing the yacht club and gas station, I followed the road around a corner and down into a slight dip. When I got there, the dip was full of seawater blown in from a breach in the shore line of the West Harbor.
My cursing alerted the Feys, who sat up and looked at the whitecaps racing before the northerly wind.
"Can we make it?" asked Fey.
"I don't think so. The car will stall and we'll be stuck in the churn. The current is probably a lot worse than it looks."
"What're we going to do?" said Anika.
I didn't know, but before I could admit it, a pickup truck came around the corner and stopped behind the Mercedes, essentially pinning us in place. It was a big truck, modified to achieve unnaturally high road clearance, so when I looked in the rearview mirror, all I saw were headlights and a shimmering grill. I rolled down the left rear window and told Anika to push open the door while staying flat on the rear seat. I got out of the car and dropped to my knees behind the rear door, using the open window as a gun rest. I looked up at the driver of the truck, but saw nothing behind the glaring headlights.
"Don't shoot, you dumb shit," yelled Anderson Track. "I'm here to help you."
chapter
24
Anika and Fey climbed into the cab and I pulled the Mercedes off the road. After once again unhooking the cable from the solenoid, I heaved myself up and into the truck bed, now using the raised tailgate to support the .38. There was little likelihood the sheet metal would stop a bullet from one of the mercenary's high-powered weapons, but it was better than nothing.
Track had hurriedly told me he'd seen us drive by and knew from previous storms that the road was probably cut off by the bay water.
"I could ford Long Island Sound in this baby," he said, slapping the dashboard.
He was as good as his word, plunging headlong into the stream, the engine roaring under low gear, a pair of wakes streaming out behind the rear wheels. Moments later, we were across and headed up the hill. I trained the gun on the bend in the road, the possibility of hitting anything rapidly receding. Right before I lost sight of the racing bay water, I thought I saw some movement on the opposite side of the breach, but it was hard to tell in the stormy darkness.
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I fell back down in the bed of the truck and looked up at the sky. There was nothing to see, but I didn't care. I just needed a moment when I wasn't filled with dread, to feel what it was like to be merely anxious and unnerved.
Track stopped at a stop sign and slid open the rear window.
"Where to?" he asked.
"The state barracks," I told him. I wanted to check on Kinuei and be closer to potential communications and firepower. Though attacks on both Poole and Kinuei had been surreptitious, the attackers going unidentified, I couldn't ignore the possibility that Hammon would risk an all-out frontal assault on the police station, given his desperation and loosening hold on logic and reason.
As we drove around the ferry harbor I could see by my little flashlight that Buchanan's boat was still tied to the dock where I'd left it. It was a relief that someone else hadn't boosted it. Giving the boat back to Buchanan was central to the defense I imagined putting together in the event I got caught.
The harbor was a mass of whitecaps and waves were dashing against the breakwater, sending spumes ten feet into the air. Track took us past the ferry office and up the short hill to the barracks. I slumped deeper into the bed and tried to keep the salt spray out of my face.
When we reached the barracks I jumped out of the truck and stuck my head in the door, telling Kinuei not to shoot me. I walked to the holding cell and into the bright beam of his Maglite.
"How're you doing?" I asked.
"Better now. The coast guard's bringing out a tech to open this thing up," he said, moving the light away from my face. He held the Glock against his thigh with his other hand. "Who's with you?"
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I told him, then asked how the coasties could get there in the storm.
"They got a bigger boat."
I went and retrieved Anika, Eloise and Fey, and asked Track if he wanted to hang with us through the rest of the storm. He shook his head.
"I gotta go check on my house," he said. "And get some sleep."
I tried to thank him for what he did, but like Two Trees, he wouldn't let me.
"I still want all of you off my island," he said, before driving off into the night.
Inside the barracks, we made ourselves as comfortable as we could. Those of us not in a cell took half-hour watches, alert for any sign of approach. Kinuei shared his provisions and questioned us on what happened. The Feys let me do the talking, so I told him with as much detail as I could, including the shot to Jock's elbow.
"You held out on me," said Kinuei.
"You asked me for your guns," I said. "Not all guns."
For whatever reason, he didn't press me on that, though I had a feeling it was a discussion more deferred than abandoned.
After the debriefing we sat silently, kept watch and listened to the storm slowly abate. Kinuei said it was predicted to move out of the area by daybreak, which it did, as if all natural forces were choreographed to achieve a total change in conditions.
And then just to complete the transition, a two hundred foot coast guard cutter sailed into the mouth of the harbor and up to the breakwater below the barracks. Fey and I went outside and offered to grab lines, but they waved us
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off. With slow precision, the ship eased up against the pilings, which the crew lassoed with massive, braided ropes. A gangplank was deployed and a round civilian in a baseball cap and chartreuse slicker got off accompanied by two enlisted men wearing dark blue uniforms, orange life jackets and sidearms. One carried a little red generator, the other a gas can.
An officer stood at the railing and watched the procession.
"How is it out there?" I asked him.
"Routine, sir," he said.
I followed the three men into t
he barracks and watched with the Feys while the civilian opened a little hatch on the electronic combination lock, and jacked in a PC on which he tapped for less than a minute before the door snapped open. Kinuei thanked him as he walked out of the cell and the man nodded without looking up from the computer screen. Before he shut down the laptop he popped out a flash drive and handed it to Kinuei without comment. I wondered if he had vocal chords. Throughout all this the young coasties stood at near attention, wordlessly, allowing themselves only the briefest sidelong glances at Anika, who did the same.
