Middle Of Nowhere

C H A P T E R

63

"Gaynes says the signals have stopped moving," LaMoia reported.

"Then that was them," Boldt said, his attention fixed on the entrance to the street marked Sid Price. The Crown Vic was parked down a muddy lane, called Quail, from which they had an unobstructed view across Miller Bay Road. A big monster of a car had turned through the rain only a few minutes before, its taillights receding. LaMoia had guessed it was an Eldorado.

"Shit, Sarge," LaMoia complained. "He could lay in wait for you anywhere down there. We gotta rethink this."

"We're at least a half hour ahead of when he expects us," Boldt reminded. "That's in our favor. We need to move while it still means something."

"We may have the jump on him, but he's got the sniper's rifle. Our peashooters are good at ten to thirty feet, Sarge. He's dead on the money at two hundred yards."

"We had his sight recalibrated," Boldt informed the man, who knew so little of the investigation to this point. "He wanted a hundred and fifty yards. Manny Wong gave him seventy-five."

"No shit? And you're counting on that? What are you smoking? If he's tried the thing out on a range— which you can bet your ass he has—then everything's back on target. I wouldn't put a hell of a lot of faith in this guy missing, Sarge. I'd be thinking about shooting him first. That usually has the more desired effect."

"His first shot will miss," Boldt said confidently. "You have to hit him before he throws that second shot."

"Me and who else?" LaMoia complained. "I got me a peashooter here. I got to know where he is if I'm to be useful. And I won't know until after that first shot."

Boldt cupped his penlight so the light barely shone down onto his open notebook, but it was enough to see by. He had sketched in the information provided by Dispatch and analyzed by Patrick Mulwright, head of Special Ops, who volunteered to help out. Intelligence, a division where Boldt had been lieutenant for a year, provided high-resolution military satellite images of Miller Bay. Within fifteen minutes of Boldt's request, Mulwright had come back to him with three likely sniper points: rooftops; either of two high-tension electric towers that strung four hundred thousand volts suspended across Miller Bay; and a marina, directly across the water.

Boldt and LaMoia ruled out the nearby rooftops. Shooting a cop from the roof of a neighborhood house left too great a possibility of witnesses.

"It's one of the two towers," LaMoia said confidently.

"Across the water," Boldt added. "It gives him the distance for the scope, and the water gives a natural break to slow down or prevent any pursuit on our part. He escapes while we're attempting to catch up."

"And what," LaMoia asked skeptically, "he goes on foot from there?"

"Osbourne confirmed he'd been over here at least twice. He could have anything planned. He could have friends on the reservation. He could have left a car or a bike for himself."

LaMoia agreed. "That tower over there makes sense."

"So you take the car," Boldt said. "I'm on foot." He had rearranged the vest to sit beneath his sport coat, his weapon at the ready.

"The advantage of the towers," LaMoia said, pointing out through the windshield, "is that he can see over the houses. He can see us if he's looking." Boldt quit the flashlight. "Not that he's up there yet. But he could be any minute now."

"He can see you coming," Boldt warned. "And if he does, he'll take out Daffy. If he can't get me, he'll take her."

"Now you're getting the point," LaMoia fired back. "And he wants you coming alone. He'll want to see a car drive up with one person inside. If there's backup, he'll see it."

"But I've still got that half hour."

Faint light from cars passing out on the main road cast enough light for LaMoia to trace a finger across Boldt's notepad. Boldt could now clearly understand the man's awkward speech patterns caused by his wired jaw. "You drop me over here. Right now. Believing he'll be facing this direction, I come up from behind. You drive back and park someplace with no view of either tower. You give me a good ten minutes because you're right: I'm a little slow. You can't scout it, Sarge, as much as you want to. He could see you. Even now, he could see you, and that blows it for Matthews. Who knows what he has planned for her? Maybe the car's rigged. Maybe the first bullet is meant for her if he smells a double-cross. At the appointed time, you drive in and see what you see. If my phone worked, I could call you, but it doesn't, so we do this blind." He added, "You hear a couple guys throwing shots, you'll know I'm onto something."

Boldt wouldn't give up. He didn't want to drive into the drop blind. Protecting Daphne meant knowing the layout. He wanted a first look. Pointing to his crude map, he said, "I could make for this tower now, after I drop you off, and at least provide cover if he spots you—"

"As if you could hit him at that distance."

"He doesn't know what I'm shooting," Boldt protested. "Providing there aren't any shots thrown, then there'd be plenty of time for me to still arrive by car. If Mulwright described this right, this closer tower is far enough above the drop site that it wouldn't really be in the direction he's facing."

LaMoia didn't like it, but he said, "Okay, so I agree. Is that what you want to hear?"

"That's what I wanted to hear," Boldt agreed.

* * *

Boldt dropped LaMoia on a dead-end lane on the opposite side of Miller Bay, about a half mile from the high-voltage tower and the flashing red light that topped it. He crossed back to the west side and parked the car well off Miller Bay Road where it could not be seen by passing traffic.

He crouched as he walked through the tall grasses and marsh plants, the high-voltage tower dominating his view. It rose a hundred feet or more on four interlaced steel legs, looking like an incomplete version of the Eiffel Tower, its four outreaching struts supporting six high-voltage lines, each the thickness of a man's forearm, that drooped lazily before rising again to the tower on the opposite shore. The sign hung on the chain link fence surrounding its base warned of the lethal electricity, punctuating its message with yellow lightning bolts. Boldt climbed over the fence and dropped to the other side, arching his back to look up and take in the enormity of the tower and the gray night sky that cried down its rain.

The metal was wet and slick, and just the thought of water and electricity turned his stomach as he made a strong jump to reach the first of the steel ladder rungs welded to the westernmost corner. He pulled himself up, slipped, dangled, and tried again, his rubber-soled shoes finally finding purchase. A moment later he started to climb.

The Eldorado had been parked on a muddy patch of grass facing the water, its dim interior light revealing what appeared to be a single figure on the passenger side of the car. It was too far for him to see if it was her, but he sensed it was. His chest knotted. His eyes stung. The car was perhaps a hundred yards south of the tower, the nearest home up a rise forty or fifty yards west. A concrete boat ramp led down to the water immediately in front of the Eldorado. The inlet was narrow at this point—no more than twenty or thirty yards across—shaped like a crooked finger, with Boldt at the knuckle as it gently pointed east.

He looked for LaMoia across the narrow body of water, but did not see him. He studied the opposing tower, silvery black in the night rain, knowing now how a person would ascend and looking there, on any of the rising legs, for a human silhouette or similar pattern that did not belong.

He felt Daphne in Flek's crosshairs, if for no other reason than the man would be using the rifle's scope to sight the opposing shore as he anticipated Boldt's arrival. He hoped that scope might also commit Flek to tunnel vision, focused so intently on the car and his hostage that he might fail to fully take in the surroundings.

Boldt climbed higher, and higher yet.

* * *

Ten minutes passed, the weather vacillating between a light drizzle and a moderate downpour. Boldt, chilled and soaking wet, imagined LaMoia and Flek as equally miserable. A half moon briefly appeared, turning the unseen, invisible night rain into a shimmering curtain of silver wire, extinguished a moment later by a low rushing cloud and more drizzle. Perched as he was, remaining quite still, Boldt finally discerned movement to the left of the opposing tower as LaMoia emerged from marshland and waited, stone still.

After several agonizing minutes, LaMoia moved again, keeping toward water's edge. He reached the base of the tower, hesitating only briefly before moving on, and thereby signaling his lieutenant that the tower was empty. He approached the boatyard on the opposite shore.

Boldt took his eye off the man long enough to sweep his surroundings—the rooftops, the main road, and some of the houses beyond. His next thought sent a shudder of panic through him: What if Flek was hiding in the trunk, waiting for Boldt to step up to the car? What if he didn't trust himself at two hundred yards, and wanted only a few feet instead? What if the person in the passenger seat was Flek himself and Daphne had been left in some situation where she would perish if not saved, and would not be saved unless Flek was successful?

His panic mounting, Boldt began to descend the tower's treacherous steel ladder. He wanted to get closer to that car.

The first reports of gunfire—a series of quick, dull pops—barely reached across the water, muted by the wind and falling rain. Boldt lifted his head and concentration away from the next descending ladder rung to see several more soft yellow flashes followed a moment later by the echo of the more slowly traveling report. The shots briefly illuminated the boatyard as a mosaic of geometric shapes, silhouettes of masts and daggerlike keels. Some of the shots had come from Boldt's left— LaMoia, he figured—the rest, quite a volley of shots, from high up on the deck of one of the dry-docked boats: Flek.

By the time Boldt had his weapon in hand, there was near total silence. He knew there was no point in making any attempt at cover shots, no point in revealing his position. He hurried down the ladder at a brisker pace.

To Boldt's right came the clunking, soft metallic sound of shots landing in the body of the car. Flek was shooting for Daphne. The shots had fallen low. The next shot took out the windshield of the Eldorado. Boldt hurried his descent, now taking two rungs at a time. He squeezed off three quick shots out over the water, hoping to distract Flek.

He saw the white of a muzzle flash and knew from the color that the barrel was now trained on him. He heard a shot whiz by, ripping its way through the falling rain. Flek's scope was giving him trouble.

Two more dull pops from the left. LaMoia had sneaked closer to his target.

Flek returned a volley of high-powered rifle shots at LaMoia, the bullets chewing into boats. And then all at once, the tiny figure of a man jumped from a boat and ran for water's edge, carelessly spraying a few bullets behind him in hopes of keeping LaMoia low. Flek splashed into the water, keeping his weapon held high, and walked the mud bottom, making straight for the opposite shore. The Eldorado.

Daphne.

The cornered animal, pressured by LaMoia's deadly proximity, had reacted and was heading to the nest to finish the job. Heading away, making his opponent's handguns even less effective.

Feeling the heat of LaMoia's firepower, Flek had fled to the cover of water, offering only the smallest of targets as he swam.

Boldt missed a rung and fell.

It happened so quickly: one moment descending; the next, free-falling. He dropped his gun, lunging to grab hold of absolutely anything he could, but hit the tower's cement pad on his left foot, twisting his ankle and buckling his knee. White pain blinded him. He forced himself to breathe in order to avoid passing out. He could see past his fallen gun, down to the water, Flek's arms sticking up and holding the rifle as he quickly negotiated the narrow passage, swimming and walking through the chest-deep water. Flek and that weapon would reach the shore within the minute. Boldt tried to stand, but cried out and fell with the pain—fell to within an arm's length of his handgun.

Across the narrow bay, LaMoia appeared at water's

edge. But Flek spun around and managed several shots in that direction, and Boldt saw LaMoia dive for cover.

No contest. Flek would reach the Eldorado—and Daphne—unchallenged. He intended for Daphne to pay for his brother's death.

Boldt again tried to stand. Again he fell, this time onto his back, writhing in pain.

He looked up into the sky, and there was the answer.

Boldt rolled. LaMoia crawled toward the water's edge. Boldt cupped his lips and shouted, "No, John! Get back!" knowing full well that LaMoia would make the swim in an effort to save Daphne. "Back! Back!" Boldt shouted, pleased to see his normally disobedient sergeant retreat toward the boatyard.

Lou Boldt was no crack shot. He regularly visited the firing range and put in the time required of him to place four out of eight shots somewhere on the body. Given a brace on which to rest his hands, he could manage a head shot on a lighted target thirty feet away. But something the size of a forearm, in the dark, at a hundred feet . . . he wasn't convinced he could hit it once, much less accomplish the repeated hits he believed required of him. Nonetheless, he dragged himself to the base pod of the nearest leg and braced for the shot. He steadied his two-fisted grip, checked once over his shoulder at Flek, now only a matter of yards from shore, returned his rain-blurred vision down the barrel, stretching it long and dark to the bead that he aimed onto the glistening, silver, high-voltage cable well overhead. He had six shots available.

The first missed entirely, racing up into the night sky. Rain stung his eyes. He cleared his vision with the swipe of a hand, held his breath, took steady aim and squeezed. A blinding shower of sparks—he had nicked the line, or perhaps the insulated support binding it to the tower. His third shot missed. The fourth rained more sparks, this time like fireworks. The fifth severed the line. Boldt pulled his hands from the steel and rolled.

It fell like a dragon's neck spitting fire, a blinding, lightning arc as it grounded first to one of the tower's legs, and then, whistling and veering through the black sky and grounding to another, dancing like a fire hose that has broken loose. It fell directly for Boldt with alarming speed, several tons of high-voltage cable without a home, all the while spitting sparks into the rainlaced air. Boldt could smell the burning ozone as the dragon's head free-fell for him, curving away only at the last instant, and winding itself up again, lifting higher and higher, that static-charged roar chasing its every move.

It whispered and whipped through the wet air, suddenly like a broken rubber band, rebounding toward the distant tower across Miller Bay, taking its hissing sound and metal smell with it. The air became a flurry of white lightning and small explosions. It raised its head one final time—higher, higher, higher—stretching for the heavens, before turning and diving like a Kamikaze, the buzzing of electrically charged energy, rich and ripe and destined for the ultimate ground of all: water.

It struck Miller Bay with a small explosion, a huge, white, pulsing light ripping through the water in waves that reminded Boldt of dropping a pebble in a still pond.

Flek, no doubt, saw it approaching, this white apron of raw voltage. Saw it like a tsunami ripping through the water toward him. When it hit, it lighted his body unnaturally—a glowing white stick in a black pond. The weapon he held above his head exploded as its ammunition combusted. For a brief few seconds, Bryce Abbott Flek was his own fireworks display, culminated by the detonation of what sounded like a small bomb, which experts later said had probably been his head.

* * *

The houses north of Miller Bay were black and without power. Boldt dragged himself to the chain-link fence, a section of which had been melted by that tongue of fire, and crawled out and onto the wet ground, half-walking, falling, stumbling, rolling his way toward that Eldorado. LaMoia would later say that he looked like a man who'd spent weeks in the desert.

LaMoia came the long way around, over a mile of roadway, the last half of which he hitched a ride with a volunteer fireman; he wasn't going anywhere near that water, littered as it was with the carcasses of dead fish and the gruesome remains of one human being. De spite the time it took him to reach the Eldorado, LaMoia arrived to find Boldt still crawling, twenty yards out. He briefly kept the fireman at bay, helped the lieutenant to his feet, and together they approached the Eldorado, from which there was no movement, no sound.

"Please, God," Boldt whispered under his breath.

"Matthews?" a tight-jawed LaMoia called out, his crippled body attempting to support Boldt. The blind leading the blind.

"Daffy!" Boldt hollered.

The exploding windshield had rained cubes of tempered glass into the vehicle so that she seemed covered in huge, sparkling diamonds. For a moment the scene looked almost beautiful. But her body was slumped against the car door, perfectly still, her face scratched, her chin bleeding.

"She's bleeding!" Boldt chortled excitedly. "She's bleeding!" he said, gripping LaMoia's shoulder with enthusiastic force.

A heart had to be beating for a body to bleed. Homicide cops rarely saw bleeders.

"I believe she is!" LaMoia said, tears choking him as he leaned Boldt against the car and he and the fireman hurried to the passenger door to try for a pulse.