Measure of Darkness (32 page)

R
andall Shane, doing his best to keep up—his long legs should easily be outrunning my own—seems to have come hard up against the limits of what his damaged body can deliver. We're barely out of the woods when he doubles over, clutching his left knee, and wobbles to a halt. Through a grimace of pain he says, “Torn ligaments. Sorry. I can walk but apparently I can't run.”

He reaches into a trouser pocket, retrieves the snub-nosed .38 Smith & Wesson and places it in my hands. “Fully loaded,” he cautions. “Concealed hammer, double-action. Pull the trigger all the way and it fires.”

I accept the weapon, feeling about as confident as a first-day medical student being dropped into the middle of brain surgery. That one time at the range I had managed to empty a five-shot cylinder without hitting the target.

“I may be the worst shot in Boston,” I warn him.

“Then consider yourself armed and dangerous. Go. I'll try and catch up.”

“The woman is crazy, you know.”

Shane shakes his head. “She's not afraid to die. That's
not the same thing as crazy. I'll be right along. Please, just go, do what you can.”

What the hell. Maybe this is the day I get to be a hero, or to help one out. I slip the little snubby in my waistband and bolt across the wide concrete runway, following the skinny gazelle with the crazy, wonderful light in her eyes.

Probably no more than a few hundred yards, but it feels like miles. Not because the running is hard—I have adrenaline to spare—but because it's so exposed. I feel like a big fly on a windowpane, waiting for the swatter to splat me. But if there's anybody watching, they give no sign, no shouts or sirens, and I reach the hangar wall unimpeded.

Pausing for just a moment to catch my breath, aware of the heat radiating from the corrugated steel. Kathy Mancero, poised at the far end of the hangar, beckons me forward. Eyes still so intense I can barely meet her gaze.

“You've got the gun?”

I reach to my waist, prepared to hand it over.

“No, no, keep it. I'd be afraid of hitting Joey. Just cover me.”

Great. I'm hoping Shane gets here fast. I'm keenly aware that without the necessary skill, and the willingness to use it, a handgun isn't much more than a prop. I make a silent vow to sign up for more firing-range lessons, as many as it takes. Hoping that it won't be too little, too late.

From inside the hangar we hear the creak and moan of the huge doors lifting, steel on steel, bucking and grinding. A noise that will surely cover our footsteps as we edge along and find the outside corner of the massive building.

“Inside,” Kathy whispers, her breath strangely cool as it brushes my ear.

Before I quite understand, she ducks into the shadows just inside the hangar.

There's nothing for me to do but follow. My heart slams like a two-year-old in full tantrum. I'm aware of a mass of cooler air, the chill of shadows hushed within the hangar. Crouching, I attempt to make myself small as the jet passes into the interior, the end of the wing only yards away, being smoothly pulled by the little tractor. My eyes gradually adjust—the interior illumination does little to pierce the vast dimness of the hangar—and realize, with great relief, that I haven't been spotted because there's nobody to see me, or, for that matter, Kathy, who continues to slip along against the wall, finding cover as she goes. There are no security guards, no ground crew or mechanics, no one but the gleaming jet and the man on the tractor, whose back is toward us.

When the jet is fully inside the hangar, the man on the tractor climbs off and removes his noise-muffling headgear, revealing a wool cap pulled down to his ears.

Him. The guy from the closet. The home invader who put a gun to my head.

Kathy recognizes him, as well. She slips back to me, close enough to grip my arm and whisper in my ear. “That's Kidder. Joey can't be far away.”

She seems exhilarated by the thought, almost giddy with purpose. I'm about to suggest that maybe we should make a plan, coordinate our efforts, but my eager companion has already moved on.

I slip behind a waist-high chest of mechanic tools and peek around the corner. This Kidder dude has his back to us. He seems to be talking to himself, shaking his head, as if in an argument with himself. Then I spot the slim
microphone wand extending from beneath the wool cap and realize he's equipped with a Bluetooth headset. He's talking to someone, taking orders or arguing, or both. Whatever, he seems frustrated, not in complete control, and that gives me a little more confidence. Maybe we can pull this off, after all. Assuming the boy is nearby—though I've seen no sign of him yet.

As Kidder turns in my direction I pull back behind the tool chest. Trusting the dimness to hide me. Not that Kidder has given any sign of awareness that he's under observation. He seems to be concentrating on his headset.

“What?”
he says, his voice echoing in the vast interior. “Repeat? Well, why didn't you say so?”

His posture tense and angry, he reaches up to thump on the tail section of the jet. A moment later a hatch opens and a stairway begins to unfold. I expect someone to descend—a pilot or possibly a flight attendant—but no one emerges. Apparently there's no one in the passenger compartment, or if there is they're not revealing themselves to Kidder, who stands below the stairway, shaking his head in frustration.

“Idiots,” he mutters. “Do I have to do everything myself?” Then, louder, into the headset, “Are you ready for the package or not? Okay, fine. Whatever you want. It's just us chickens out here, so have a little patience.”

The man with the wool cap and the deeply aggrieved attitude climbs back on the tractor and retreats into the gloom. The only sound in the vast hangar is the electric whine of the tractor motor, and the small hard wheels spinning along the concrete floor.

Part of me wants to leave the protection of the tool chest and run after him, waving the gun and demanding Joey, but my best instincts tell me that would be futile.
That would be giving up my best weapon: the element of surprise. Have patience, wait until you know where the boy is and that you can make him safe. So I remain in place, watching as the little tractor closes in on a white panel van parked deep in the shadows at the rear of the hangar.

Kathy, appearing out of nowhere with a suddenness that nearly stops my heart, hisses, “That's it. The same van that came to fetch Joey, there's no doubt.”

“We should wait,” I say. “Let him bring the boy to us. Then we get the jump.”

Adding, in my own mind, and let's hope Shane is here by then, he'll know what to do.

“Bring him to us,” Kathy repeats, as if mulling it over. “Okay, that makes sense.”

Kidder gets off the tractor, opens the rear door of the van, blocking our view. When he gets back on the tractor he has something with him. As he emerges from behind the van he's towing a little low-bed trailer, the kind they use to transport luggage. On the trailer is a crate, of the size that might be suitable for a medium-size dog.

The whine of the tractor begins to sound like a high-pitched scream, but still we wait. I'm keenly aware that we have to choose our moment, that our timing has to be perfect and that Kidder is quite possibly armed.

Kathy Mancero, with that oddly cool breath, whispers, “I've got this,” and slips away on all fours, crawling around the back of the tool chest.

I've got this?
What does that mean?

Before I have time to explore the thought, it happens. As Kidder swings the tractor around the wing of the aircraft, Kathy explodes from behind the tool chest, launching herself into the air, a missile aimed at a monster. As she collides with the muscled hardness of his body, her
arms tighten around his neck, pulling him off the seat with the forward momentum of her hundred pounds of bone and grief.

They land on the concrete, a tangle of limbs, Kidder spitting curses.

“Stop right there! I've got a gun!”

That's me, holding the .38 in both hands and trying to look like I know what I'm doing.

Kidder takes one look at me, grins like a lunatic and flips over so that Kathy's skinny body is between him and the gun.

“Take your shot, sweetheart!” he chortles.

Giggling. Like he thinks this is fun. But the crazed giggle abruptly stops as Kathy rips off his wool cap and grabs a fistful of clotted hair. The back of his head is one big scab. She slams his head down with all her might and his nose smacks into the concrete.

Kidder yelps, an animal howl of rage. He outweighs her by about a hundred pounds and in an instant she's bucked away by his vastly superior strength. She flies through the air for several yards and lands flat on her back with her left arm behind her, stunned or worse.

Measuring my distance carefully—deathly afraid he'll find a way to take the gun away from me—I shuffle closer, bellowing, “Hands in the air! I'll do it, I'll pull the trigger!”

Kidder, up on his knees, gives me a sly grin, like he'd been hoping it would come to this. “I know you,” he says. “My friend in the bedroom. Bet I made you wet your little pants.”

“Put your hands behind your head and lace your fingers together!” I demand, borrowing a familiar, if amalgamated, line from just about every cop show ever seen on TV.

“Anything you say,” he says, feigning agreement. His hands remain in front of him and his smile is taunting, daring me to fire.

“Uh,” says Kathy. “Uh.”

The poor woman has had the breath knocked out of her, at the very least. Her eyes are unfocused and her left arm looks wrong, as if maybe the landing jarred it out of its socket at the shoulder. Despite what has to be excruciating pain she smiles oddly and with her good arm she points upward. Something flits through the air high above us, something that emits a soft, sad cooing.

Mourning doves in the great steel rafters, under the curving roof of the hangar. When I glance back again Kidder has halved the distance between us. Still on his knees but much, much closer.

“Stop!” I scream, tightening my crouch, re-aiming the .38. “Not another inch!”

He grins and actually backs up a foot or so. “Have you ever fired that thing?” he asks conversationally. “It takes like a two-pound pull on the trigger. Harder than you might think. And the barrel is going to jump, that's guaranteed. I've seen people miss from three feet away and we're like, what, six whole feet?”

“Shut up.”

Kathy has managed to get to her feet, her bad arm dangling. Her eyes have started to clear and it looks to me like she's going to be okay, assuming we can get her to a hospital in the very near future.

Her mouth starts to open, but before she can get a word out a deep male voice booms through the hangar.

“Kathy! Alice! I've got him! You did it!”

Keeping one eye on Kidder, I turn my stance slightly and find Shane, the big man himself. Panting from his efforts but with an immense grin on his face. He's ripped
open the dog crate and has a small boy in his arms, unconscious but clearly alive.

Joey.

Kathy cries out with joy, her whole face glistening with tears. She limps toward Shane and the boy, wounded but unvanquished. It's a beautiful sight, and I'm close to tears myself. But I can't quit now. The gun, even grasped in both hands, is starting to get heavy.

Kidder, humming to himself, shuffles closer, marching on his knees with his arms swinging, tick tock, like a child playing at soldier.

“No,” I say, finger squeezing. “No!”

Grinning, Kidder says, “You know what's funny?”

“Shut up and grab the floor.”

Kidder looks like he's going to comply, and then his eyes roll up and his body convulses and he grabs at his chest. It's a convincing move, he sells it, and for just that one moment I almost believe he's going into cardiac arrest. Until, a millisecond later, his right hand emerges from a fold in his orange overalls, holding a shiny pistol. Which swings not toward me, but toward Shane and Kathy and the unconscious boy.

“Screw it,” Kidder announces. “The little brat is coming with me.”

Several things happen all at once. I pull the trigger. The gun jumps in my hand like something alive, and a red splat emerges from the side of Kidder's neck.

He grimaces, as if shrugging it off. He extends his arm and fires at Shane and the boy.

In the exploding confusion that follows, one thing remains clear in my mind: a vision of Kathy Mancero throwing herself at Kidder, cutting off his angle and taking a bullet in the center of her chest.

So fast I can't react, can't stop it, can't change what happens.

Next thing, a flat, metallic snap coming from behind me. Another shooter heard from. And then Kidder is down with a round red hole in the center of his forehead and a death grin imprinted on his collapsing face, and Jack Delancey is racing up to say, “Sorry I'm late,” and taking the gun from my shaking hand and making me sit on my butt because he thinks I'm going to faint, which is ridiculous.

I do faint, but only for a moment. And when my vision clears Shane and Jack are crouching over Kathy. Two tough guys looking as tender as angels. Shane with the little boy in his arms, assuring her that Joey is okay, he'll be fine as soon as he wakes up, and his mother is on the way, and she did it, she did a great good thing.

“You took the bullet, love,” he says, “so that he might live.”

The other thing I'm absolutely positive about: as the light faded from her eyes Kathy Mancero looked up at the cooing doves and smiled.

W
hatever moral complexities may have been exposed by recent unfortunate events, Taylor Gatling, Jr., remains a man of principle. He still empties his own spittoon, and that's exactly what he's doing one fine evening in August, a couple of months after that mess at the hangar, the one he was adroit enough to avoid. He tips the brass spittoon over the railing, hears the fine, satisfying flush of it galumphing into the river below and thinks not for the first time that he's the luckiest man in the world. Not that he hasn't made his own luck, not that he doesn't deserve to enjoy all the wealth, all the toys, but still. One must make time to smell the roses. Or in this case a salty whiff of the white-capped sea. Best done alone, which is why he's closed the boathouse to his little circle of handpicked members. Much as he enjoys the company of his card-playing cronies, he's decided that for the rest of the month he'll have the place to himself. Getting his thoughts in order, recharging his batteries, planning his next move. Because for sure he hasn't given up on the business of keeping the country safe for right-thinking patriots like, well, himself and a few select others, worthy and vetted.

He's smiling, content with his situation, his mission, as he returns to the relative darkness of the boathouse. The thing about being here alone, he doesn't have to turn on any lights, he can enjoy the passing evening by looking out at the harbor with eyes unpolluted by unnatural light.

He puts his spittoon in the appropriate place by the card table and is about to help himself to a little something at the bar when he jumps about a foot in the air.

“Where the hell did you come from!”

“Oh, sorry, our bad.”

Bart and Bert, better known as the B brothers, the fraternal twins who work on the domestic drone program. Couple of local woodchucks, like to put on their countrified Down East accents. Ayuh, bubba, flannel shirts and logger boots, the whole bit. Normally Gatling finds the brothers amusing company, but this is beyond the pale, walking into the boss's private club, his personal refuge, it just isn't done. He's about to say so, striking the right tone of executive aggrievement, when he recalls locking and bolting the door to the boathouse. Of course he did, so his pals, his posse, wouldn't be tempted to drop by, despite his admonition not to. Which means the brothers must have jimmied the lock somehow, and that means—

Gatling feels the tip of a blade against his sternum and looks down to see the glint of a deer-gutting knife. “Bart? What's going on?”

“Nothing to worry about, boss. By the way, it's Bert.”

“Fine. Bert. What's that your brother's got?”

The other brother has a bulky black velvet sack slung from his shoulder. It's not so dark that he can't see they're both smiling at his predicament, the damned ignorant woodchucks. Gatling has a small but distinct sense of what might have brought them here, and he's confident
he can work things to his advantage, given his powers of persuasion and his unlimited checkbook.

“Sorry about the interruption,” Bert says. “Me and Bart, we're here to give you notice.”

“Give me notice?”

“We got signed by another club, just like ballplayers,” Bart says proudly, speaking up for the first time. He shifts the sack on his shoulder, at ease with himself and whatever it is he's doing.

“Supposed to be a secret,” Bert confides. “But it can't hurt to tell a guy like you, with all your connections. The DIA, and they gave us a signing bonus, too.”

“Defense Intelligence? What unit?”

“One you never heard of, because it's like ultra-ultra secret and brand-new.”

“Oh, I seriously doubt that. Not that you've been offered jobs, no, no, that makes sense, a couple of talented boys like you, but I'll bet you dollars to donuts I know the unit.”

“He's betting us donuts, Bert.”

“Ayuh. We like donuts.”

The lightness of the exchange convinces Gatling that he can turn them, and he's deciding what, exactly, to offer the brothers when Bert bumps a chair into the back of his knees, forcing him to sit down.

“Sorry, Mr. Gatling, you're a cool guy and everything, but you messed up wicked, that's what they told us.”

Gatling's spit has dried up but he manages to ask, “How so?”

“We don't know exactly. Above our pay grade. But something Kidder did. Some files he sent to this certain web address at the Pentagon? Got a lot of very powerful folks all agitated. Decisions got made. And the result is, we got signed by the new unit.”

“Boys, I've got more money than God. You can have it all. Most of it.”

Bert grins. “Keep back just a tiny little for yourself, huh?”

His brother Bart unslings the sack from his shoulder, loosens the drawstring and removes a shotgun. Even in the dark Gatling recognizes the weapon and knows what it means. A little squirt of urine wets his underpants and he clenches, telling himself he's better than this, he won't soil himself.

“This is the exact same Purdey your dad used,” Bart says. “Kind of sad.”

“You really expect me to shoot myself?”

“No,” says Bart. “But we can make it look that way.”

They do.