Final Disposition (32 page)

      “The gun is duct-taped to the passenger seat, along with one of the extra darts … … I’ve got the other two in my jacket pocket with the needle caps on tight … and the photo and extra set of prints on your ‘Jeremiah Carter’ are in here … along with a set of yours and Allesandra’s x-rays, and those glass fragments I pulled out of your head,” the supervising pathologist confirmed, holding up three nine-by-twelve sealed manila envelopes.

      “And both of you have your police radios set to the short-range channel twenty-two, so you can contact me if things start going to shit again?”

      Sutta and Marcini both held up their pack set radios.

      “Okay, we’re looking at a twelve mile trip, which shouldn’t take us more than twenty-five to thirty minutes, depending on the weather — which, according to the weather man, is going to be getting worse for at least a couple more hours until it starts to clear up — so let’s take it slow and easy, and try real hard to stay together.  If — for any reason — we do get separated by more than a quarter of a mile, and we can’t contact each other on channel twenty-two, immediately switch back to channel sixteen.  But don’t forget that channel sixteen is monitored by the OMARR-Nine dispatchers.  We don’t necessarily want them knowing what we’re doing.”

      “If we have to go there, we’ll be brief and to the point,” Sutta promised.

      “Okay, then I’ll check in with you every ten minutes or so until — oh, wait,” he said as he reached into his jacket pocket, brought out a sealed plastic bag, and started to hand it to Marcini, “you almost forgot your diamonds.”

      “Those aren’t mine,” she said, holding her hands up backing away from the bag.

      “Really?”

      “I’ve never seen them before this afternoon, and I don’t want that bitch ever showing up at my apartment again to get them back, either.”

      “Okay, I’ll hold on to them … just one more piece of the evidentiary puzzle,” Cellars said with a shrug as he slid the bag back into the pocket of his field jacket.  “Good luck, both of you … and, for god’s sake, don’t let her get loose again.”

CHAPTER 23

      They’d been traveling for almost thirty minutes, according to Cellars’ j-Connector clock, churning through the deep drifts of snow that covered the road and threatened to obscure their windshields at any moment at a steady speed of almost twenty-five miles per hour … and were within a mile or two of the South Gate entrance to the remote Ralph R. Wehinger Army Training Center, when Cellars saw the brake lights on the hearse — that was about ten yards up ahead — flash twice.

      He quickly grabbed the small police radio out of his jacket pocket.

      “This is Colin,” he spoke into the mike, “what’s going on up there?”

      “Thought I saw something move off to the left side of the road,” Sutta came back almost immediately.

      “What did it look like?” Cellars demanded as he quickly rolled down his side window, ignoring the swirling and fragile snowflake clusters that immediately flew into the SUV’s cab as he squinted out through the three-dimensional flurry of falling snow, trying to see something … anything.

      “I don’t know,” Sutta replied, “just a flash of movement — nothing distinct.  You want to stop and check things out before we go any farther?”

      “No, let’s keep on going,” Cellars said.  “I don’t want to — SHIT!”

      He saw the flash of dark shadowy movement out of the corner of his left eye, instinctively hit the accelerator, felt the heavy vehicle lunge forward and then start to slide sideways as the deep-treaded tires quickly lost their grip on the road … and then was flung sideways — smacking his head against the open window frame — by the impact of something very solid striking the left rear panel of the SUV and shoving its back tires off the road to the right.

      Functioning on pure instinct now, Cellars was vaguely aware that the hearse up ahead had also been shoved over to the right side of the road … but his frontal lobes were already processing the visual data of the dark shadowy figure that had suddenly been spot-lighted by the SUV’s leftward-sweeping headlights and sending out action signals to the appropriate muscle groups.

      Cellars was only aware that he was extending the 40-caliber Sig Sauer pistol out the open side window of the SUV with both hands and squeezing the trigger when the first of three erupting fireballs flared out his night vision and warned him — to no particular purpose — of the high-pitched and concussive explosions that would follow a few milliseconds later and blow out his auditory circuits.

      
You forgot the ear plugs again!

      Some entity in his brain, screaming … but Cellars ignored it, reacting instead to the next set of instructions from his frontal lobes that jammed his right boot against the SUV’s accelerator, sending the heavy vehicle churning and sliding back across the road and causing the powerful headlights to briefly highlight a second shadowy figure about ten yards up ahead from the first one.

      His night vision was still badly impaired, keeping him from centering the sights of the Beretta on the distant figure, so he point-shot — sending five more hollow-point rounds streaking across the cold night air in the shadowy figure’s general direction — and then slammed on the brakes.

      As the SUV slid to a stop on the left side of the road, Cellars flung himself out the door, lunged forward across the open field — his boots sinking into the deep snow drifts — and then fired four more rounds at the indistinct figure that now seemed to be staggering away before it suddenly imploded … into white nothingness.

      Stunned by the eardrum-piercing and blinding effects of the successive twelve gunshots, Cellars dropped to his knees, keeping the Sig Sauer extended out in his right hand in the general direction where he’d last seen the two figures — reflexively exchanging the now-empty magazine with a full one with his left hand — as he tried to blink away the glare-spots that seemed to be covering the better part of both of his retinas.

      He was aware that Sutta had stumbled out of the hearse and was staggering through the snow in his direction with the dart gun clutched in his hands.  But he remained on his knees — searching desperately for another flash of movement — until he finally sensed that he might be starting to recover his vision.

      Sutta was closer now — within a few feet — and seemed to be saying something that Cellars couldn’t hear over the severe ringing in his ears.

      “WHAT?” he demanded, forcing himself to take his blinking eyes off the target area and stare up at the visibly-shocked pathologist, who now had blood streaming from his left temple and down the left side of his face.

      “I said: what the hell were you shooting at?” Sutta repeated loudly and slowly enough that Cellars could distinguish the words.

      “Fucking shadows,” Cellars snarled.  “Two of them, out there somewhere.”  He pointed in the general direction with the Sig Sauer.

      “Did you hit them?”

      “I think so … don’t know for sure … have to go check.”

      
Check?  What about—?

      “Lisa, is she okay?” Cellars yelled at Sutta, who blinked in sudden realization and then began running back to the hearse.

      
And what about Allesandra?

      Cursing, Cellars staggered to his feet, pulled a small flashlight out of his jacket pocket, and then followed Sutta’s boot prints in the deep snow, arriving at the hearse just as Sutta pulled the back doors open.

      “Wait!” Cellars yelled as he lunged forward and knocked Sutta aside with his shoulder, sending the pathologist tumbling into the snow-covered ditch to the ground, and then whipping around to point-sight the Sig Sauer with his right hand as the flashlight in his left hand — now held tight under his right wrist — illuminated the hearse’s rear interior.

      He immediately saw that Allesandra was still strapped tightly to the wood-and-canvas stretcher that was still secured to the floor of the hearse … apparently still unconscious or dead … and that Lisa Marcini was sprawled unconscious across Allesandra’s taped torso with blood streaming from her nose and left eyebrow.

      “Was that really necessary?” Sutta demanded as he staggered to his feet and came up beside Cellars with the dart pistol extended out in both hands.

      “Apparently not,” Cellars conceded as he quickly swept the flashlight beam across the open field where he’d seen — and shot at — the two shadowy figures … saw nothing but falling clumps of snow … and then slid the Sig Sauer back into his shoulder holster and turned to Sutta, using the small flashlight to quickly examine the pathologist’s head wound.

      “You’ve got a nasty cut there, doc,” Cellars said, handing him the small flashlight.  “Why don’t you stay here a minute, keep an eye on everything.  I’ll be right back.”

      It took Cellars less than sixty seconds to re-enter the SUV through the left rear door — the back panel doors were now jammed shut by the crumpled mass of sheet metal that had once been a smoothly surfaced left-rear panel and integrated brake- and tail-light assembly — grab a First Aid Kit and a larger four-cell flashlight, and get back to Sutta.

      “I’d really like to close this wound up properly — no anesthetic, big stitches — but I’m a little short on time right now,” Cellars said as he quickly opened the kit, found a sterile gauze pack and a second package containing large adhesive Band-Aid™ with its own three-inch-square gauze pad, tore both the packages open, pressed the gauze pack against Sutta’s left temple to stop the bleeding for a few seconds … and then affixed the adhesive Band-Aid™ over the split-open wound.  “You’ll have to settle for the basics.”

      “What about
your
head?” Sutta asked.

      “I’m fine.  Big lump, no bleeding … just a lot of internal whining and complaining,” Cellars said with a shrug.

      “Whining and complaining?”

      “Complicated topic … we’ll have to discuss it someday over a nice bottle of wine, your treat.  I’m going to go broke trying to keep you cheerful with booze,” Cellars replied absentmindedly.  “How’s the rest of your head doing?”

      “Some serious throbbing, but no other cuts, as far as I can tell.  I get the impression you’ve done this before,” Sutta commented, wincing as he used the fingers of his left hand to cautiously check the adhesion of his bandage.

      “Yeah, probably have,” Cellars grunted as he quickly made another sweep of the open field across the road with the small flashlight, and then used it to check Sutta’s pupils.

      “Look, I’m fine,” Sutta grumbled.  “I don’t have a —”

      “Probably not a real good idea for a pathologist to start self-diagnosing,” Cellars said as he turned the flashlight off.  “It actually looks like you might have a mild concussion, if the fact that your right pupil is reacting a little slower to the light than your left means anything,” he added as he gently took the dart gun out of Sutta’s hands, set it down on the back floor of the hearse, and then handed him the small flashlight.  “Think you can check Lisa, patch her up, and still keep an eye on the bitch?”

      “Of course I can,” the pathologist growled.  “And what the hell are you going to be doing while I’m doing all the work around here?”

      Hoping that the feisty retort really did trump the glassy look in Sutta’s eyes, Cellars picked up the four-cell flashlight and pulled the Sig Sauer out of his shoulder holster.

      “Ideally, not much,” he said.  “I’m just going to look around, see if I managed to hit anything with all that shooting.”

*     *     *

      The falling snow made it difficult for Cellars to find the location where the first shadow had been standing, because the irregular pattern of the landed snowflake clumps made the surrounding landscape look pretty much the same as far as he could see with the flashlight beam.

      But the positioning of the hearse and SUV gave him a rough triangulating line that eventually led him to a roughly two-by-six-foot shallow depression … and then to a much deeper six-by-two-inch slot-like hole.  When Cellars cautiously brushed the foot of snow away from the deep-hole area, he discovered a thin green metal cylinder lying next to a pair of expanded 40-caliber hollow-point bullets and a small stone that looked a great deal like —

      Cellars fished into his jacket pocket and came up with the stone he’d found lying next to the Humvee.  He felt a chill run down his spine as he held the two stones under the flashlight beam, and saw that they were nearly identical in size, shape, and outer surface texture.

      — the one I found by the Humvee … right after I shot at the shadow that had been lunging for the door.

      Responding to some ingrained CSI protocol, Cellars reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a Sharpie™ marker, and wrote the number ‘1’ on the stone he’d found earlier … then the number ‘2’ on the one he’d just found … followed by the number ‘3’ and ‘4’ on the flat copper bases of the two bullets, and the number ‘5’ on the cylinder.

      Then ignoring his inner alarms that were starting to overcome the shrill buzzing in his ears, he stood up, checked his position relative to the hearse and SUV again, and then began walking in a direction that was roughly parallel to the road.

      Eleven steps later, the sweeping beam of his flashlight revealed a much wider and far more irregular shallow depression that suggested something very light had been thrashing around on the surface of the snow for a few moments before it suddenly disappeared into cold thin air.

      It only took a few seconds for Cellars to find a second much-deeper six-by-two-inch slot-like hole that led to the discovery of a second — and seemingly identical – thin green cylinder that he quickly marked with the number ‘6’ … but it took another two minutes to locate the third stone that had fallen into the snow at the far edge of the shallow depression and close to yet another pair of expanded 40-caliber hollow-points.