Dark to Mortal Eyes (65 page)

“Looks like someone’s down there,” the pilot said.

On the headland, a lightkeeper’s house stood protected high above the surf, hosting a group of stick figures around a table on the lawn. To her credit, it appeared that the Professor had kept to her plan and led the troops to this spot. The point of origin. Here, in 1945, the canister had escaped, then come back to her on the beach below. Soon, a loop extending over five decades would come to its conclusion.

“Set her down there, and your job’ll be done.” Stahlherz pointed to the skirt of grass within the white fence. His ribs and arm were aflame. The bullet that had grazed his chest had drawn blood that now affixed his shirt to the wound. The dagger had left its talon beneath his skin.

“Good thing,” the pilot said. “We’re running on fumes as it is.”

In confirmation, the engine coughed and issued an obvious burp.

“I’d better set this bird down, and quickly!”

Turney’s heart thumped along with the beating of the rotors overhead. Below, the sea was angry. Steep rocks shot upward, grasping for the failing machine.

“What do we do?” he blurted. The thought of an ejection seat rambled through his head. Wouldn’t that be a pretty picture?

The pilot was intense. “Hold on and shut up!” Cursing in an unbroken stream, he skimmed beneath the beams of the lighthouse, fought an upsurge of air from the tide below, and rounded the crags toward the keeper’s house.

Sputt-sputt-whirr-whirr-whirr … sput!

With the rotors’ remaining motion, the pilot coaxed a last spurt from his machine and cleared the cliffs, twisted the tail around and over the fence, dropped, bounced once along the grass, then planted the skids. Turney saw him, in the same motion, thumb a switch marked Fuel Interrupt to ward off an explosion from residual gas.

The contraption’s momentum was too much. In his effort to vault the fence, the pilot had squeezed the final drops of fuel into the engine, and the resulting thrust was not to be denied. As the skids caught and the engine died, the weight of the machine continued forward, dipping the nose. Turney felt his seat lift. Felt his head strike the windshield as the helicopter smashed its bubble-eyed cockpit into the grass.

The man’s breath was cold against Josee’s ear. The gun was in his hand. He pressed her on into the thickening branches and plants. The ground was wet, sucking at their feet as the darkness collapsed in around them.

“Just leave me out here,” she bargained. “Go do what you have to do. I don’t even know your names or anything. I mean, what’s it gonna hurt to deal me a break?”

“Deeper.”

“These bushes, they’re all tangled. Can’t walk. It’s dark.”

“Fine. Right here then.” The revolver nosed into her.

The night broke open with a charge of bright lights and cops and bullhorns.

“Freeze right there! Hands up!”

Adrenaline fired through Josee’s limbs like lit gasoline. She dove to the ground. Skinned her nose in the dirt. Foliage crashed around her. Yells and gunshots. The ICV guy. His arm was shredded. He was writhing in the bushes beside her. Then she was up again. Running. Tripping. She fell, then arms reached for her. A voice cut through the chaos. Familiar. Cheerless. Deep.

“Josee, get up now. You’re okay. Up, onto your feet.”

“Chief Braddock?”

“Your favorite person.”

With the ground rising to meet them, Stahlherz withdrew the broken dagger and pressed back into his seat, gripping his straps. The windshield buckled and disintegrated in an eruption of grass and dirt and glass shards. Even as strips of skin opened on his forearms, he perceived a cold and precise pain along his forehead. The impact of a rotor spinning into the hard earth sent a shudder through the hull.

In death, the engine protested.
Screechhh!

Stahlherz felt the rotor’s torque as it tried to complete its circuit. The helicopter lurched down and twisted on the collapsed passenger-side skid. Then, in an earsplitting moment, the rotor snapped. In his peripheral vision, he watched it spin through the air, glance off a railing, and drop into the chasm between the cliffs.

Ka-snappp! Whirrp-whirrp-whirrp … Spulasssh …

Epinephrine heightened all his senses. The pain was distributed evenly now—through his ribs, his face and arms, his skull. He unbuckled himself, shook the debris from his hair. The sergeant was slumped in his seat, unconscious. Beside him, the pilot was lifeless, thrown forward into the mishmash of dials and gauges, his thigh impaled by the helicopter’s steering mechanism.

What had Stahlherz told the man earlier?
We’re both driven by our respective birds. If we let them, oh yes, they’ll swallow us whole
.

He shook his head at the irony of it all.

Chief Braddock commandeered the red Buick over a bridge as they climbed the road out of Florence. Fiddling with her eyebrow ring, Josee offered him a short glance. “Okay, I’ll say it. Thanks.”

“Thank your father. He called to warn me. I rushed over here to join with the local officers in keeping an eye on the Bank of the Dunes. From there, we followed you to the meeting point and crashed the party. Were the vials in the vault?”

She nodded. “Did Marsh tell you about them?”

“I knew they existed. I just wasn’t sure where.”

“You’re too late. You’ve gotta stop them. Those cars, they’re already—”

“Already what, girl? Don’t get yourself all worked up. You’re in capable hands. With the help of the local authorities, detectives are even now tailing those vehicles. Once they reach their destinations with those vials, we aim to round up the troops. Get as many as possible in one big sweep. Shut ICV down for good.”

Braddock shifted, watched the mirror. “Was there anything else in the box?”

“Hey, it’s not your deposit box. Why should you care?”

“Not trying to fight you, Josee. The other day we got off on the wrong foot, but I am here to help you.”

“And how do you plan on doing that?”

“By getting you safely back to Heceta Head. Isn’t that what you want? Isn’t that where you said Marsh and Kara are? Where Trudi Ubelhaar is?” Above Braddock’s rawhide cheeks his eyes narrowed. “Thing is, I want the same thing you do, Josee. I want fathers and children together, safe and warm in their beds at night, free from worry about what tomorrow may hold. I want this brought to an end.”

Josee held up an envelope. “There
was
something else. Addressed to you.”

Braddock snatched it from her hand. He pulled to the side of the road and smiled as he read the note inside. A note of thanks, Josee knew; she’d gone over it at the vault but didn’t understand the reasons behind it.

He found the photograph next. Yellowed. Curled.

“Father,” he said, filling the one word with admiration, questions, and anger.

He removed a set of wedding rings last. His Adam’s apple jumped.

“Chief, I’m lost. Why’d my grandfather put these in his deposit box?”

“He knew my parents,” Braddock said as he slipped the diamond-studded rings into his shirt pocket and pulled back onto the highway. “My mother died of influenza during the war while the men were off fighting. They returned to a world of changing parameters. These rings belonged to my parents. Unbelievable. I didn’t even know they were still around.”

“Worth a fortune, by the looks of them.”

Braddock nodded, almost as if the thought hadn’t occurred to him.

Josee watched the road whir by. Reflected in the sea, the moon was a lemon orb on blue-black fabric. In the distance, visible from bends in the coastal highway, Heceta Head Lighthouse was a stalwart guardian, offering light to all who would come.

“Almost there. Hope you’ve got a plan of action, Chief.”

Although his laughter boomed through the Buick, dark intentions filled his eyes.

With his legs, the ICV recruit gripped the reinforced case on the passenger-side floorboards of the Toyota pickup. Inside, Styrofoam mounts cradled the canister that Mr. Steele had provided. Once the accelerant was introduced, the poison would be unstoppable.

This was it. Finally. A year of prep and recon, and now the grand finale.

In his mind, Travis rehearsed the plan. They’d turn at Mapleton and head east on Highway 126. Within an hour, they’d skirt Eugene on Green Hill Road, cut into the north end along Barger Drive and head for River Avenue. They’d nose into the parking lot of a bingo hall—just two guys hoping for a
lucky streak … hilarious!—then cross over to the property of a city water treatment facility. Since 9/11 was now a memory, security measures had softened. Penetrating the property, that would be the fun part. By morning, the reports would start coming in.

Convulsions. Loss of control. Bodily functions gone berserk.

Victims by the hundreds, by the thousands.

The driver angled his rearview mirror. He said, “We’re being followed, Travis. That car’s been behind us since we left Florence.”

“This is the fastest way to Eugene. Could be coincidence.”

“Maybe I should try going the long way, through Triangle Lake.”

“No,” Travis said. “That’d put us at the target too late.”

“What if it’s the cops?”

“They can’t pull us over unless they have something to go on. Take it easy.”

The driver shifted into a lower gear, his eyes darting between his mirrors as he followed a bridge over the Siuslaw River. Ahead, the road was dark and wet, hemmed in by towering conifers. “That’s the problem. Got a warrant out on me. See, I skipped a court date last week.”

Travis exhaled. “You idiot!”

“There’s a corner up here and this narrow driveway. I’ve got an idea.” Braking the vehicle with two quick downshifts, the driver switched off his headlights and aimed toward the gap in a fence across the road.