He was out of practice. He’d known it, and now he was bitching himself out for the lack. After leaving the Army, Louis had jumped through all the dull civilian hoops to get his private and commercial licenses. He’d been diligent about maintaining them, too. But making daytime hops between airports just to rack up the required hours hadn’t been enough to keep his edge. Flying in this visibility was just the kick in the balls to remind him.
At least the Bell was up to date. Louis had filed a Special V flight plan with Anacortes before taking off, only to cancel the clearance when he was away from the control tower’s airspace. Once he saw that ATC had stopped following his flight path, he changed course and kept the craft at an easy three thousand feet over the San Juans.
He hoped he wouldn’t have to regret that sneaky move. Nobody watching meant nobody coming to his rescue if things turned to dog shit.
Before long he was relying solely on the instruments to guide him. The rain and wind were coming almost straight on. Looking out the windscreen was like staring into a shower nozzle.
On approach to Briar Bay, the island might not have existed at all. Black on black obscured by a downpour. He slowed as the GPS indicated he was close. Still he saw nothing. Only when he was within a few hundred feet did he see a glimmer that revealed itself to be a large building, heavily lit from within. Shit. The thing looked like a giant spiky crown. So out of place in the storm it might as well be a hallucination.
The island’s helipad was on the western side, Hargreaves had said. Closest to him. He slowed the Bell’s approach to hover two hundred feet above the waves and off what little he could make out of the shoreline. He’d been warned that the pad was a work in progress—no ILS, no pilot-controlled beacon. Not even an illuminated letter H.
Louis switched on the helo’s landing and search lights and gave the stick an ounce of pressure.
He started at the midpoint of the island and traced its coast north-northeast, toward the shining building. It followed that any landing pad would be near the island’s main structures. Waves rolled past under the beams of his lights. Swells going south, choppy as fuck. At least he wasn’t coming in by boat. That would have made for a long damn day.
The dock appeared in the beams first, with a seaplane moored on its interior side. Then Louis caught a glitter of white in his peripheral. Almost directly inland at his nine. He pivoted the Bell to shine the lights in that direction. There were the perimeter lights. Crap, a bunch of ground crew standing with flashlights wouldn’t do much worse. Plus, the idiots had put the pad too close to the trees.
He grimaced and brought the Bell in. Slowly. He hoped the land was solid after all this rain. He could just see the skids getting stuck in the fucking mud—
BANG
The Bell shuddered as if shaken by a giant’s fist. Louis’s head whipped around toward the noise even as the helo yawed suddenly right and his body lurched with it. The tail rotor. He’d hit something. A high-frequency hum like a tuning fork wedged in his skull made his teeth rattle. Fuck the helo was going sideways and up. He pushed at the stick, trying to even her out, but shit he’d lost it somehow maybe the rotor was broken and shit shit shit the massive blazing glass building was RIGHT THERE RIGHT
SEVENTY-TWO
When it happened, it happened fast.
The pitch of the helicopter’s roar changed, heightened, shrieked.
Nearly every person in the frost-white pavilion looked up, toward the banshee wail. All but one.
Shaw had the advantage of knowing he had repositioned the helipad lights. He realized almost instantly what was about to happen, even if it hadn’t been what he’d intended. He’d hoped that the helo’s rotors might strike a tree branch or one of the flagpole’s guy wires. Enough damage to keep it from taking off again, eliminating Hargreaves’s escape route if he were lucky. Somehow, with the storm, his small trick had taken a bad turn.
He dove for the floor.
The Bell hit one sharp spire of the pavilion, impaling itself. Its whirling rotors sliced through another spire an instant before the falling aircraft shattered the ceiling entirely. Shaw felt the impact in his bones. Every pane in the pavilion splintered.
He rolled for the nearest plant trough. An eight-foot wedge of glass hit the floor behind him, bursting into shards. The helo came down hard, sideways, right in the center of the huge room. It crushed the laboratory table and GPC machine even as its rotors tore into the pavilion floor with a piercing squeal, instantly launching the fuselage across the room nose-first. A panicked bird thrashing itself to death in a glass cage. Shaw heard the first scream. Or at least the first that had carried over the throes of the Bell.
The helicopter’s tail struck the wall, sending a new explosion of glass and jagged metal. Shaw was already moving, crawling along the edge of the room. Rohner’s team was closest. Castelli saw him, stood from his kneeling position. The broken glass wall next to the man shattered, almost an afterthought to the round that blew out the front of Castelli’s chest.
Sniper. Shaw hit the floor again as another shot cracked the glass above him.
The best cover in the room was the newly dead helicopter. He jumped up and sprinted for it.
Two more shots, a handgun. From inside the pavilion at eight o’clock. Aimed at him? He didn’t pause, ducking under the twisted tail of the helo and behind its fuselage, into a reek of fuel and torched electrics.
He stumbled over something. A leg. The rest of the body was tucked under the fuselage. He recognized the bit of windbreaker just north of the appendage. The luckless Vic.
Shaw looked above the wrecked shell of the aircraft and saw Hargreaves and Tucker far across the room, behind the broken halves of one of the troughs. Pistols turning in his direction.
He fired a short burst from the KRISS, but the two men had already ducked back. A shot cracked from Shaw’s left, on the other side of the helicopter. From behind the spilled soil and plants of the cracked trough, Hargreaves and Tucker returned fire at the new threat.
Crouching low, Shaw moved to the helo’s crushed canopy. Louis lay inside the cockpit, buckled into his seat, headset askew on curly hair sodden with blood. The pilot’s right eye was half closed. A wink to those still living.
Morton had been huddled near the pavilion’s entrance. There. By the trough on the other side. Maybe too panicked to realize that with half the walls in the pavilion destroyed, he could flee in almost any direction. The lab table and the gallon jug of accelerant along with it had been squashed almost flat. The remnants of the chemistry equipment lay among the larger debris of the demolished walls and ceiling.
Shaw realized he was still clutching the remote trigger. The dead-man’s switch. Would it still work? Or had the packets been torn apart?
He tossed the trigger away and ran for Morton.
Shaw hadn’t been lying to the others about the white phosphorous. Professor Mills had given him a three-pound bag of the powdered element along with the fake polymer sample. Shaw had Tucker and his tactics at Westlake Center to thank for the idea.
White phosphorous made for one hell of a good smoke screen.
The center of the room erupted into huge billows of gray. If the room had been intact, the clouds would have engulfed the entire space within seconds. But the wind pouring in through the pavilion’s shattered walls caught the smoke and pushed it toward Shaw and Morton.
The chemist cringed away from him.
“I’m on your side,” Shaw said, as loudly as he dared. “Karla sent me. Come on.” Morton’s eyes widened, and he nodded frantically.
Shaw hauled Morton up and shoved him out through the destroyed wall, into the night. The man moved. Too slowly. Shaw grabbed him by the arm and forced him into a run.
More shots, behind them. Shaw kept moving. Morton had the pace now and sprinted ahead, terror lending him wings.
SEVENTY-THREE
This whole thing is a clusterfuck, thought Riley. He was still stunned from the helicopter’s crash. He�
�d heard the bird’s straining engine, realized something was funky a moment before he saw the Bell rise up over the buildings, already tilted sideways and slipping fast.
The next two minutes had been the craziest show he’d ever seen. The helicopter came down and tore the shit out of the building and probably half the dudes dumb enough to be inside it. Then the Gunfight at the Glass Corral had started, muzzle flashes hot in the sudden dim after most of the lights had been smashed.
Now smoke. A lot of smoke. Riley figured the Bell chopper was burning and taking what was left of the pavilion with it.
“We got cops. Police boats. Coming up on the dock,” Taskine said in his ear. Riley could tell from the stuttering beat of Task’s words that his partner was moving fast.
“Fuck. I can’t see shit inside. Is Hargreaves still alive?”
“He was twenty seconds ago. I’m getting into position.”
“For what?”
“What do you think? These mothers get to the dock, they’re meat. I’ll take ’em like tin cans off a fence.”
Damn it. Riley didn’t mind Taskine shooting cops. But it would require time to get to their own boat and exfil the hell off this island. Maybe these two police boats were just the first to arrive. Could be planes watching from the sky or helicopters dropping SWAT teams next. Even the fucking National Guard.
“How many cops on the boats?” he said.
“At least a dozen jagoffs. Tac gear and rifles.”
“Keep them offshore. Make ’em scared to even look at the dock. Buy me ten minutes and I’ll put our boat in the water. You come on the run, we get the fuck out of here before they know you’ve left.”
Taskine was silent. Riley knew that his fearsome nature was at war with his logic.
“Yeah,” he said. “Go.”
Riley started to do just that. He was on his feet before he saw two figures hurrying from the smoke-shrouded pavilion. Visible in the weak light still shining through the pavilion’s former walls.
The geek. And Shaw.
No time for the scope. Riley knelt and aimed over the barrel. Shaw and the geek were almost under the shade screen of an outdoor patio between the pavilion and the north wing.
Got you. He grinned as he pulled the trigger.
SEVENTY-FOUR
Something ripped the machine gun from Shaw’s grip. The pain in his right hand was immediate and almost a blessing, as he barreled reflexively in that direction, slamming into Morton and sending them both tumbling over the slope. They skidded through the muddy earth and grass to the rock shore.
Sniper. Again.
But not the same one.
The shot that had killed Castelli had come from the beach. This new bastard was somewhere farther up the estate. Shaw grabbed Morton before the chemist stood up.
“Did Hargreaves tell you about more men on the island?” he rasped into Morton’s ear. “More shooters?”
“What?” Morton’s eyes were wide. Shaw wasn’t even sure the man realized that he was trying to pull himself from Shaw’s grip. His lizard brain said run, so his body tried to run.
Escape was a fine idea. Shaw had stashed his inflatable Zodiac at the far tip of the island. A mile’s fast run on the beach, so long as no one was trying to blow your head off.
The forest. In the cover of the trees, they could work their way toward the far end. But the forest was two hundred yards away, past the entire length of the north wing and the main house. And the sniper, wherever he was concealed.
Morton continued to twist in Shaw’s grasp. Shaw shook him. “Stay down, idiot. They’re shooting.” Morton sagged into the dirt.
The sniper, or maybe both of them, would be on the move. Looking for a line of fire. Now that Shaw and Morton were out of the pavilion and its thick smoke, they were wide open. If the enemy had night optics, even worse.
More pistol fire from back near the pavilion. Where the hell was Guerin? He was supposed to be offshore with the Feds. They should be storming Rohner’s fucking castle by now.
SEVENTY-FIVE
Sergeant Fajula brought the police launch straight into the dock. Coming ashore with all possible speed. Guerin braced for the sharp turn and sudden reverse of the props that would expertly touch the side of the launch to the dock. The FBI team shifted, impatient to surge ashore.
Maybe there was someone still alive after the helicopter crash. Though from what they’d seen, Guerin wasn’t optimistic. The sound alone had been like a monster howling in fury. With the pavilion’s lights destroyed, the brightest things on the island were the white clouds filling the crushed structure. The place must be on fire.
The tactical team assembled on the starboard side, causing the launch to heel. Kanellis clutched the handrail and made a face. “Observers. Shit. We should be in on this.”
“Apply for SWAT if you want to,” Guerin said. His time in the Marines had stripped any need to prove himself by being first through the door.
Kanellis seemed ready to retort when the right half of the boat’s windshield exploded and the rear window along with it. Fajula cried out a warning even as she swerved to starboard. Guerin and Kanellis both ducked.
Fajula kicked the throttle to full. The Feds dove, one by one, into the open-air deck at the rear of the launch. Guerin heard the second shot hit, a firecracker snap as the round struck the boat’s hull on the port side. The FBI men kept flat in the shallow well of the rear deck, piled up like young turtles in a nest.
“Rifle,” Fajula yelled to him. Guerin nodded, though all the pilot’s attention was on driving her boat over the swells. He had to figure the rocking would at least make them a tougher target. Rain and spray from the bow wake came through the broken windscreen.
“I need to take us farther out,” she said. “Out of range. We can circle and try to beach once we find sand.”
Guerin wasn’t sure how Fajula would be able to tell sand from stone. The island was darker than ever. Even the pavilion was engulfed in gray.
Their informant, Morton, would have been in there. Shaw, too. Maybe they still were.
God save them, Guerin thought. Or at least make it quick.
SEVENTY-SIX
Shaw drew the Browning from under his coat. Gingerly. His right hand was numb. He’d have to shoot left. If it came to having to shoot at all, they were down to their last option.
He crawled sideways along the muddy slope for ten yards and up to the top to take a cautious glance. Only a handful of lights remained shining in the pavilion, most of them low and toward the entrance. Smoke billowed from every wound in its glass skin.
He looked to his right. Gauging what position he would choose, if it were him holding the rifle. The snipers must be Hargreaves’s backup for the big show. The beach here offered no vantage on the pavilion.
The roof. Had to be. On the north wing, with the guest rooms. High enough and relatively flat. Was the shooter still there? Still watching the pavilion? Or waiting for Shaw and Morton to reappear?
“We have to move,” Shaw said. He pointed to the path from the beach to the estate. “Inside will be safer. Run to the door at the end when I say. Ready?”
Morton nodded. Shaw said go. They sprinted for the north wing.
Shaw had a moment’s fear that the door would be locked. That the destruction of the pavilion had somehow activated the security measures. If he had to stop and pick the lock, they would be easy game. But the door swung outward at Morton’s first desperate pull on the handle. They rushed inside.
The dining area was dark apart from the green of the battery-powered exit signs and the red dots on the smoke detectors. Shaw walked silently through the room to the wing’s main corridor. Morton followed, almost tiptoeing.
Shaw listened. When he was as sure as he could be that they were alone, they moved down the long corridor to the exit, which would take them into the glass passageway that led to the western side of the main house.
He didn’t like the idea of taking the passageway. An enclosed space, tr
ansparent on both sides. Scarcely better than being outside. But scarcely better was still an improvement. They had to reach the forest to make it to Shaw’s inflatable boat. And they had to reach the main house to have a prayer of reaching the forest.
The thought of the inflatable Zodiac spurred another idea. It was a reasonable guess that the snipers were Hargreaves’s two hitters. The Viking with the beard and the snaky one with glasses. They hadn’t flown in on C.J.’s plane with the rest. They must have arrived another way. On a boat. A boat that would have to be beached somewhere on shore.
Their deal for the polymer had gone to shit. Hargreaves had lost the helicopter that was supposed to extract them. And if their backup plan was to fly away in the seaplane, they would quickly learn they had neither plane nor pilot. Leaving only the possibility of the snipers’ boat for Hargreaves and his remaining men to escape.
Their craft could be almost anywhere along two miles of shoreline. If the enemy was falling back, Shaw and Morton might accidentally cross paths with them. They would have to watch their every step.
Shaw said, “Let’s go,” and opened the door to the passageway. Morton followed him on the run. They reached the far end, and Shaw held up a hand for the chemist to keep quiet. He turned the knob on the gilded door to the house and gently tugged it open a crack.
Still dark within the manor. He slipped inside and made room for Morton to follow before closing the door just as softly.
They were in a stone-walled foyer, a smaller cousin to the one Shaw had seen when he’d talked with Sofia Rohner. He stepped silently to the opposite end. No sound and no light within the big house.
“Where are we going?” Morton whispered.
Island of Thieves Page 40
