by Jon Land
The key that had opened his irons was useless, though not so the ring it was attached to. It took all the Ferryman’s strength to bend the ring open at the slight gap where the key had been squeezed through. He kept bending until the ring was the shape of a rounded “L”; this would be thin enough to squeeze into the hatch lock to apply pressure to the pins. But he still needed something to pop the tumblers.
Nothing he could see in the cage held the answer. Something he couldn’t see then …
The escapees from MAX-SEC were screaming now as his cage descended toward them; it was at the halfway point now. The distant bursts of gunfire convinced Kimberlain that this entire island complex must be located below underground. He could picture some invading force trying to blast its way in past whatever security Leeds had left on the surface.
He looked up and focused on the hook holding the steel cable that was lowering him from the ceiling. It was held to the cage by a long cotter pin jammed flush through a tailored slot. The cotter pin would make the perfect second tool. Pull it all the way out, of course, and he would run the risk of sending the cage plummeting. If he could break it off, however, he would have the implement he needed.
Standing on his toes, he was just able to reach the cotter pin. He bent it toward him, then back away. Toward him, then back away … It didn’t seem like it was giving at all, but suddenly …
Snap… .
Just like that, a two-inch fragment of the cotter pin broke off in his hand. Kimberlain took the key ring from his mouth and probed it up through the hatch. The lock itself was on the outside, meaning he would have to work blind. No matter. He had picked plenty of locks in the dark, albeit without the desperate time constraints confronting him now.
The Ferryman squeezed his other hand through the bars and felt about the lock with the broken-off cotter pin. It slid in easily just ahead of the bent key ring. Feeling the perspiration dripping into his eyes as he gazed upward, Kimberlain located the tumblers with the curled section and applied the sideways pressure necessary to prepare them for his work with the cotter pin. His hands were sweaty, and the angle made the job especially difficult.
Below him, some of the inmates had climbed on other’s shoulders, and they were almost able to reach the cage. Explosions sounded from above and shook some of them back to the floor. The cage wobbled. Kimberlain’s hands trembled slightly, and his fingers tightened.
Click …
The first of the lock’s four tumblers fell into place. Kimberlain moved on to the second, fighting against the impulse to rush and risk the cotter pin bending in the lock. He felt the second tumbler give.
Click …
Beneath him, inmates were scratching at the cage’s bottom. Kimberlain stamped their fingers with his feet. One managed to grab hold of the cage’s side and hang from it, trying to pull himself up, and Kimberlain kicked him in the face through the bars. The man fell to the floor.
The move broke the Ferryman’s concentration and pushed the cotter pin off the third tumbler. He found it again quickly and wasted no time in sliding the pin home.
Click …
As Kimberlain eased the cotter pin to the final tumbler, he stole a glance downward. The cage bottom was brushing the outstretched fingers of the tallest MAX-SEC escapees. He could recognize several of them now, the monstrous Ranford Dobbs and the hulking Jeffrey Culang most prominent among their figures. Leeds was using Kimberlain to feed their madness. But he could get out of this. Damnit, he would get out of this!
Click …
Hands were probing through the bars toward him, when the fourth tumbler gave. Kimberlain pushed the hatch open. He got a firm hold on the bars above and barely managed to kick free of the fingers grabbing at his ankles. At last he pushed himself upward through the hatch.
The screams of the escapees grew enraged now. An object of insane desire was slipping from their grasp. Those who had lived with killing for so long and been denied it since incarceration had to confront the fact that they would have to wait still longer to kill again.
Their wails sounded inhuman, as Kimberlain began to scale the cable toward the ceiling. Just to the right of the ceiling bracket was some sort of ventilation shaft covered by a grate.
A potential route out.
Beneath him, mad furious hands had tugged the cage all the way to the floor and some of the inmates were climbing atop it. A few jumped to swipe at him and narrowly missed. He was halfway to the ceiling, when the cable began to swing wildly from side to side. A gaze down showed a half dozen inmates shaking it, determined to tear his grip away.
Kimberlain climbed faster. His head start was sufficient to reach the ceiling with room to spare. Once he got there, though, there was still the matter of getting the ventilation shaft open and pushing himself into it.
The closest MAX-SEC inmate was fifteen feet below him when the Ferryman reached out to his right and grabbed the steel grate covering the shaft. He pulled hard. When the grate refused to give, Kimberlain hammered it with his fist along both sides to loosen it. This time it wobbled when he pulled, and on the next yank it came free.
Its weight almost tore Kimberlain’s balance from him and sent him plummeting. As it was, he was able to hold fast to both the coil and the grate. Beneath him, meanwhile, the closest inmate was only a yard away. Kimberlain took aim with the cover and dropped it directly on him. Impact stripped the inmate’s grip from the cable and he tumbled downward, taking the four men directly beneath him along for the ride. Kimberlain swung himself into the ventilation shaft, which possessed enough of a sill to give him a foothold. With pursuit coming yet again from below, he leaned outward and jimmied the cable. The ascending inmates may have thought he was merely trying to shake them off, but his true goal was to unhook the cable. It came free, and Kimberlain let it drop downward toward a white sea of writhing, screaming inmates.
The Ferryman slid back into the ventilation shaft and studied what lay before him. The darkness turned to utter black just a few yards ahead, but those few yards showed him the shaft was steep but mountable. He began to climb with hands pressed against either wall for stability.
The shaft finished two hundred feet later with another grate, which Kimberlain effortlessly knocked out with a single thrust of his shoulder. Night air rushed in, along with a sound like a constant thunderclap rolling his way. The entire island seemed to be shaking around him. Fighting to steady himself, he climbed out of the shaft and found himself just below ground level in a rectangular basement with only part of a ceiling. No, the ceiling was retractable, as if, as if …
Kimberlain swung right and saw marks scorched into the floor. Then he turned left and smiled at what was waiting there for him.
Hedda glimpsed the shapes of Finn and the other fallen Caretakers as she descended the last bit of the devil’s claw adjacent to the airstrip. The position of their bodies revealed the angle of fire, and her eyes flashed between the pair of twin concrete towers on either end of the field a hundred yards from her. If the rest of them were going to escape once the explosion was triggered, she had to disable those towers.
Hedda held her ground. Before her she could see the smoldering ruins of the town. Flames sprouted from several buildings, and other structures had collapsed, evidence of The Caretakers’ failed resistance. Together they might have been able to defeat a small army. But against heavy weapons rigged with thermal heat sensors …
Hedda stopped and touched her vest. Packed inside were a dozen flares meant to light the runway for the Beech 1900 when the time was right. She pulled one out and moved to the edge of the airfield. In her mind she could picture the big guns locking on to her, alerted by their sensors. Then she lit the flare, waited a few seconds, and hurled it to the right.
Instantly the big guns began to chew up the tarmac. Hedda dashed forward. She was more than halfway to the first tower when the right-hand gun locked on her and traced her steps. Asphalt was sprayed in her wake. She reached the left-hand gun before it had even pi
cked her up. Steadying her shoulders against its hard surface, she pulled a hand grenade from her ammo vest and yanked out the pin. She hurled it and covered up as best she could, stealing enough of a glance to see it was right on target. A shower of asphalt followed the blast.
One down and one to go.
Hedda pulled another flare from beneath her vest and threw it back toward the town. The second gun rotated in its tower and blew apart the remains of a building. Hedda lobbed the grenade as the gun’s turret swung back toward her. It hit before the bullets came, and the entire gun assembly was blown out into the air.
“Airfield secured,” Hedda said into the pen-size mike. “Fagin, do you copy?”
“Roger. We’re on our way down. All explosives set. Estimate eight minutes to airfield.”
“Chalmers?”
“We’re coming … in.”
The other seven surviving Caretakers reached the strip just as Hedda finished laying her remaining flares out along the runway. The Beech 1900 began its descent immediately. It touched down and sped to the end of the strip, coming to a halt with only ten yards to spare. Bloom spun it around so it was ready for takeoff. The side door opened, and Chalmers lowered the ladder. Hedda watched him climb down it gingerly and approach The Caretakers. He was holding his speaker.
“Get on board!” Hedda heard him order the other seven Caretakers, his eyes indicating she should stay as she was.
Chalmers met her at the edge of the airfield and gazed at the detonator in her hand.
“Let me,” he said, and she handed it over.
Chalmers placed his hand over a button with a red light flashing next to it and looked back at Hedda.
“Finish it,” she told him.
Chalmers pressed the button.
Directly behind him, the runway exploded in a blast of concrete and stone. He and Hedda had made it to the ground when the Beech 1900 erupted into an orange blanket of flames. Chunks of the strip continued to rain down on them, but Chalmers rose up to his knees amid it.
“No!” he moaned. “They’re dead… . All dead! …”
Genuine sadness laced his voice, and Hedda understood what had transpired. The runway had been mined with explosives rigged to a universal detonator, so that any transmitted signal would trigger them. The ultimate defense, with one exception:
The explosives the now dead Caretakers had set had been detonated as well. A rumbling shook the ground. Above them the hillsides were tumbling in upon themselves to form a rolling mound of dirt, rubble, and promised death.
The helicopter was a Bell Jet Ranger, black and sleek like a bird of prey. Kimberlain figured Leeds must have fled the island in a twin that had, judging by the marks on the landing pad, been right next to it. The chopper started easily after one minute of prep time. Without any further warm up he lifted off the pad; the first bits of dirt and rock were flying over the edge. The machine fought him briefly and then jumped forward.
What he saw froze him. A massive avalanche was occurring on the island. What had been hillsides seemed to be melting before his eyes and rushing down toward a complex of shattered, flaming buildings. Whoever Andrew Harrison Leeds had left behind here would soon be entombed. But not him, not this time.
Kimberlain had just banked right toward the sea when he saw the two figures charging his way with the mountain of rubble chasing them.
He had no idea who the man and woman were, only that they might have been part of the raid that helped save his life. He pushed the chopper into a quick drop for one of the last level patches he could see. The machine wavered uneasily and he beckoned the approaching figures toward him. He threw open the Bell’s right-hand door and watched the woman help the man up before climbing in herself.
“Go!” she said before she had gotten the door all the way closed.
And the helicopter lurched upward with a jolt that carried it over the rolling mountain of earth soon to cover the entire island.
Chapter 31
THE FERRYMAN TURNED ON the chopper’s lights and soared out over the water.
Hedda swung toward him. “Who are—”
But Chalmers cut her off. “Kimberlain.”
Kimberlain looked his way long enough to see the cord dangling from his throat. He noticed the woman’s face had filled with shock.
“Kimberlain!” Hedda exclaimed, recalling August Pomeroy’s mention of the name. “But what—”
“Not now!” the Ferryman ordered, eyes on the gauges. “We’re going down.”
“What?”
“I didn’t have time to fill up the fuel tank.”
The power held just long enough for Kimberlain to settle the chopper into a drop. It smacked the water hard and sat there. Hedda helped Chalmers down and then followed him into the water. Kimberlain waited until they were both out before dropping out himself.
“How long a swim is it?” Kimberlain asked.
“Not very long at all,” Hedda said, and she pulled the long-distance homing beacon from her soaked vest.
The autopilot mechanism of one of the cigarette boats would respond to the beacon’s signal, just as long as the boat had stopped after The Caretakers had left it en route to the island.
Sure enough, four long minutes later, the boat coasted up alongside them. Kimberlain climbed in first and helped the other two up over the gunwale. Hedda moved immediately to the deck-mounted controls and took the wheel.
Kimberlain’s eyes rotated warily between the both of them. “Who are you?” the Ferryman asked Chalmers. “How do you know who I am?”
“We met once… . Don’t you … recognize … me?” Chalmers responded. His voice emerged even more broken and garbled than usual, thanks to the beating his speaker had taken in the water. “In Modesto … California … a long time ago. At … the beginning … The Ferryman’s … beginning.” Chalmers touched the cord running out of his throat. “The night you … did this to me.”
A chill moved up Kimberlain’s spine. “In the bar …”
Chalmers tried to nod. “You did it … with a chain… . You … remember.”
Kimberlain remembered all too well. The night he had killed the members of the motorcycle gang who had murdered his parents, he had come back for the leader and found him in the bar’s back room with another man. The man had drawn a pistol and begun firing. The bullets had poured into the biker leader when Kimberlain grabbed him as a shield. Then the Ferryman had stripped the chain from the corpse’s midsection and lashed it outward. The sharp-pronged edge tore into the gunman’s throat and came away coated with flesh. The man had gone down, gasping and gurgling, dead for sure.
Apparently not.
“But what were you doing there?” Kimberlain asked as the stiff sea breeze made him feel cold and clammy.
“Your parents’ … deaths were … arranged by … me.”
“What?”
“You were set … up. Everything was … set up.”
“Why?”
“A test.”
“You bastard!”
“You passed.”
Kimberlain tried to compose it all in his mind. The very existence of the Ferryman was a lie. He had not acted on his own back then, any more than he had in the years that followed as a Caretaker. He had simply done their bidding. They had programmed him, and Kimberlain had performed. What did they have to lose, after all? If he had been killed trying to avenge his parents, they lost nothing. If he succeeded, they would be in a position to provide the only means available to free him from the stockade. What choice had there been? They had killed his parents to make him what they needed him to be.
Kimberlain moved a step closer to Chalmers, suspended between thoughts and intentions. “Maybe I should finish the job I started back then.”
“Maybe. But … tonight finds … us on the same … side.”
“I’m not convinced of that yet.”
“But it’s the truth,” Hedda interjected. “I know who you are, too. I know you’re the last surviving member of the
original Caretakers.”
“Original?”
“I’m part of the new Caretakers, the last survivor… .”
Kimberlain looked at Chalmers. “Recruited by him, too, I suppose.”
Hedda nodded. “Under drastically different circumstances, though. I was in prison when he found me.”
“Renaissance,” the Ferryman realized.
Hedda jerked the wheel in surprise. Water lifted up over the gunwale and sprayed them all.
The term sent a shudder through Hedda. She exchanged glances with Chalmers, then spoke finally. “How much do you know?”
“Hundreds of convicted criminals, chosen for their capacity for violence, were taken from prisons and asylums to be reconditioned to serve in a twisted army run by the worst of them all. And you’re one of them.”
“What twisted army?” Hedda demanded. “Just who is the worst of them all?”
“Then there’s something you don’t know, isn’t there?”
Hedda’s eyes flashed between Chalmers and the night sea before them. “You know, don’t you? It’s what you wouldn’t tell me.”
“That and more,” Chalmers confirmed.
“Including Andrew Harrison Leeds?” Kimberlain challenged.
Chalmers’s face filled with confusion. “Who?”
“The man behind all of this.”
Chalmers shook his head. “The man behind … Renaissance … was Briarwood.”
“As in T. Howard Briarwood? The billionaire?”
“Yes.”
And in that instant, everything was clear to Kimberlain.
“Briarwood Industries,” Hedda muttered. “They owned the plastics factory that burned down.”
“What are you talking about?” the Ferryman asked her.
“A trail I followed from the time my own people tried to kill me… .”
