Perfect killer

CHAPTER 81

With Tyrone navigating by her side, Jasmine homed in on the Garmin GPS waypoints set the previous afternoon. I clung desperately to the makeshift rope netting with one hand and with the other kept the night-vision monocular trained ahead to keep us from snagging anything but air. Down on the right, the brightly lit parking lot of the Mississippi Highway Patrol headquarters sailed past. The VA loomed larger, dead ahead.

I pressed the transmit switch on my radio.

"Showtime," I said. "Rex, you ready with your lines?"

"Ready," he said.

"Tyrone?"

"Here."

"You might want to turn on the M21's scope and use it to scan the shadows." "It's all shadows, man," Tyrone replied.

"You got that right," I said.

I tucked the night-vision monocular in the calf-height cargo pocket of the coveralls and got ready with my side of the rope that suspended the metal grid beneath us. The VA hospital sat on the left now, and a row of high-voltage electrical pylons on the right. The University Medical Center dominated the view straight ahead.

The earth eased up toward us and passed underneath at a slower and slower pace until we had reached the electrical substation supplying the VA hospital. I whipped out the night-vision monocular, passed my hand through the carry loop, then trained it below on the thick wires slouching off toward the VA.

I keyed my radio. "Jasmine?"

"Here."

"Rotate to the left about one hundred and fifty degrees and hold your position." In moments, we were positioned directly above the wires. "Okay, down maybe twenty feet. Rex, you ready?"

"As ever."

"Okay, Rex, slip the knots and hold on."

I let the night-vision monocular swing from its carry loop as I leaned down and slipped the two knots holding the wire grid on my side.

From the peripheral horizon of my focused attention, I registered a siren and the flash of emergency lights. I grabbed both ropes in one hand and took a final look below through the night-vision scope. I let the scope drop and used that hand to key my radio.

"Down a bit more," I said.

Suddenly the darkness split apart with thunder that rocked my chest like a howitzer; that same instant, night became day as an electrical sunrise chased the darkness with an arcing blast of blue-white lightning.

Rex and I let go the ropes as Jasmine gunned the Bell 47's engine, accelerating us away from the substation, back the way we had come. There now were few lights in the hospital and none in the parking lot. Jasmine kept us low for the moment. As we passed east of the loading dock, I heard the emergency generator roar to life.

An instant later, sparks streamed downward off a piece of lit primer cord, then a second, a third, and three more afterward. Three almost evenly spaced blasts followed almost immediately. The final three had much longer fuses. Rex had suggested the halfsticks of dynamite as a diversion. As I looked back, flames leapt from a full garbage Dumpster.

Then Jasmine took us out over Woodrow Wilson Avenue, where we quickly spotted Darryl Talmadge's room. As Jasmine moved us in toward the roof, I unhooked my harness from the safety line securing me to the helicopter's tail, then snapped the carabiner to a bowline knot tied in the end of a piece of the half-inch climbing rope. Another bowline was tied about five feet higher than this and had a sling and a sack of gear carabinered there.

As Jasmine brought us in to the VA's roof, a blast rocked the far corner of the hospital, sending a small ball of fire rolling up maybe fifty feet. Then came the final two blasts. Those had been the long fuses.

As Jasmine moved us gently into position, something that looked like a flashlight flickered in the room next to Talmadge's.

"Light next door!" I said into my radio.

"Clocks ticking," Rex said.

Jasmine brought the helicopter down softly, keeping enough rotor lift to avoid crushing the roof. From a duffel roped to the skids, I grabbed the hand sledge cable-tied to a hank rope, then swung it through Darryl Talmadge's window. Rex and I rappelled down and entered after kicking away the remaining shards of glass.

Things were all wrong.

Talmadge was not in his bed.

Then, the door burst open.