The Last Family

43

The streets around Laura’s house were alive with bluelighted cruisers and armed patrolmen on foot. There were roadblocks on the corners. Two K-9 units were beside each other, the dogs standing in the rear seats, anxious and showing their tongues. There was a darkly dressed, black-faced figure standing on the porch roof with an automatic weapon held across his chest. A police Hughes 500 made a low pass over the side street and turned its powerful beam down into Laura’s backyard, turning everything white as snow. The wind was picking up, and it was beginning to drizzle.

Thorne, dressed in a rubberized parka, stood in the yard talking to the police captain in charge of the forces that had descended on the neighborhood. He heard a loud beating of rotors and looked up to see a giant orange-and-white Coast Guard Sikorsky passing overhead. It was the signal to move.

Inside, Wolf was excited and barked every few seconds as another figure passed by the window. Reb entered the room in his slicker with the bird in the small traveling cage.

“Why don’t you leave Biscuit here?” Reid said.

“No,” Reb said.

Reid took a breath and exhaled. “This’ll be quite an adventure.”

“We aren’t shoving off, are we?” Reb said nervously. “Going out on the lake?”

“No, we’re staying docked,” Reid said.

“Good,” Reb said. He didn’t mind sitting at the dock, but being out on the water was scary for him. When he was going for a sail, he wore a life jacket from the time he got to the pier until he got back on dry land.

Erin said, “He’s terrified of drowning. You know he won’t take lessons because he’s afraid he’ll drown learning.” She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “Wears a life preserver in the pool.”

“Well,” Reb said. “People that drown always seem to be good swimmers. Sometimes they say how these great swimmers drowned. People who don’t get in the water don’t get drowned.”

“He’s friggin’ impossible,” she said, exasperated.

“He may have a point,” Reid said.

“Nothing is impossible,” Reb said. “So I won’t learn to swim or take my vest off, and I’ll be twice safer than you, Erin.”

She stuck her tongue out. “And that stupid bird.”

Laura came in with Wolf’s lead, and the dog started jumping and spinning. “Okay, Wolf. Just a minute. Erin, got your slicker?”

“In my bag.”

“Well, put it on.”

“We’re just waiting for the word,” Woody said. He had a radio in his hand, which was alive with confusing, coded, and unintelligible official chattering. Woody had an earpiece, which he hooked up to silence the radio, calming the room.

Laura was amazed that he could understand anything coming over the air. It sounded like a grand and official stew of voices to her. She was grateful this pandemonium hadn’t been a constant since the protection had started. To Laura this pitch of confusion was mind deadening. Her anxiety level over missing work, and being in limbo until Martin was dealt with, made it hard for her to stay cool on the outside, even for the children’s sake.

“Maybe we should leave Wolf at home,” Reid said. “And Biscuit.”

“I’ll stay with them, then,” Reb said, poking out his bottom lip.

“But Wolf’ll need to be walked,” Reid added.

“I’ll walk him if he needs to,” Reb said.

“Someone will,” Woody said. “Let’s not worry over the zoo.”

“I’d feel better if I had a gun,” Reid said.

Laura almost said that she did but remembered what Paul had said. Tell no one.

“You know how to use a gun?” Woody asked.

“I fired a few guns in my youth. I know what you guys are taught in your handgun training,” Reid said.

“You do?” Woody said.

“Sure, they go over it and over it until you get it right. They tell you that the bullet comes out the little front hole, so you should stand behind it when you pull the trigger.”

Woody stared at Reid with bored eyes.

Reb and Erin laughed. Woody didn’t.

“If you hear shooting, just do one thing we always tell civilians over and over,” he said.

“Stand behind us?”

“No, kiss the dirt and we’ll help you clean out your pants when it’s all over.”

The kids and Woody laughed. Reid didn’t.

Agent Alton Vance stepped inside from the porch. He was carrying a shotgun with a flashlight bracketed under the barrel. “Okay, people, we’re ready.” Thorne was standing behind him with his pistol in hand.

Wolf was wild-eyed and had to be pulled along as Reb led him toward the big orange-and-white Sikorsky helicopter where Thorne and Sean waited by the open door. There was a ring of heavily armed, flak-vested cops around the place, their backs to the helicopter. The craft was sitting in the park across from Tulane University, its rotors moving slowly enough so the individual blades were in evidence. The family climbed in through the large door and were buckled into the seats by crew members dressed in orange jumpsuits who were wearing handguns in nylon chest holsters.

Reb looked back out at the police cars with their blue lights echoing in the mirrors of wet pavement on St. Charles. “The rain won’t hurt it?” Reb yelled at the man with the white helmet who fastened him in. The bird inside the cage seemed to be trying to fly in several directions at once. The guardsman placed a jacket over the cage. “This chopper’d fly underwater, Hoss, but we plan to stay in the air,” he said.

“I hope so,” Erin said.

The blades picked up speed, and the volume of the engines grew to a roar.

“Where’s the parachutes?” Reb yelled. The man secured Wolf’s leash to a ring set in the wall beside Reb’s seat, and the dog skittered into a nervous half crouch, his head bowed. Thorne and Sean climbed in last, and the Sikorsky lifted off the ground, tilted, and rolled out to the north with its precious cargo. Reb looked down at the lines of stopped cars on St. Charles Avenue.

“Let’s see Mr. Fletcher follow us now,” Reid said, smiling.

Thorne nodded nervously as he dialed a number on his cell phone. “Okay, Paul, we’re in the air. Good hunting.”

As the Sikorsky traveled toward the lake, Paul’s jet was taking to the air through the rain. The sky closed in on the craft, enveloping it in cloud as it climbed.