Jericho's Fall, page 29
Beck shook her head. “I want to go back. I can’t leave them.”
“You don’t have a choice.”
“Please.”
It had to happen. One woman to another. Maxine reached up to lay a reassuring hand on Beck’s shoulder. And Beck, at the same instant, braced her hands against the jamb, bent her knees, and kicked backward as hard as she could. The librarian cried out in surprise and tumbled. Beck was ready for this, too. Her fingers were curled around the three buttons set inside the door. As soon as she was sure Maxine was on her back, she pressed the buttons.
The gate came thundering down.
The killer was trapped behind it.
Beck ran up the stairs, waiting for the gunshot.
Maxine bellowed, demanding to be released, warning Rebecca that she would never make it on her own, but she never fired. Beck slipped into the garage, slammed the door behind her, and cycled the lock.
(ii)
She was back in the garage. No light of any kind, not from below, not from outside, and Maxine had the flashlight. Beck hated darkness but had no choice. She ran across the concrete floor, bumping into one crate after another, before finally finding her way to a door. She shoved. Nothing happened.
Still locked.
She tried the next, and it gave. She stepped out into the night air and did her sums.
First: Max was trapped but Beck did not know for how long. The night had already been full of surprises, and Maxine had been responsible for a number of them. The assassin was, by all accounts, good at her job. At best, Jericho’s little trap would only slow her down.
Second: There was a sniper out there. If the sniper spotted her, she was finished. Still, he had fired from the north side of the house, and the garage was to the southeast, so there was a fair chance that Stone Heights itself would protect her.
Third: She knew where she had to go. The key was in the question Jericho kept asking her, repeating his demand so that she would sense its importance, but at the same time the listeners would not. He had asked her why Audrey left the family business, and each successive iteration of the question had embedded more and more mention of her husband. As though she had left because of her husband. Her husband had been Ted Gould. Now Beck understood the research. He had been planning all along for the moment when he would have to tell-without-telling. But Rebecca knew, because Jericho had printed the information from the Internet.
Gould just happened to be the name of the nation’s leading maker of well pumps. Pamela said her father had changed the well pump. One of the documents from Jericho’s folder explained how to get a pump out of the well. She had it in her jacket now.
From the architectural plans, she knew that the well was located in the ravine to the southeast of the house. She had to cross the lawn. With the brush cut back fifty yards on every side, she would be a sitting duck. But she had no choice. She took a breath, looked around into the starry night, and, giving a prayer of thanks that the power outage had killed the floodlights, ran for the woods.
(iii)
She made it to the well; but getting there was the easy part.
Now she had to get the pump out.
The well was simply a hole in the ground, less than a foot in diameter, drilled as far down as necessary to reach the water. The pump was attached to the end of a heavy-duty hose, and the hose was lowered into the well. Above ground, all that was visible was the wellhead, a metal cylinder protruding just a few inches above the ground.
Stooping, she tried to pull off the top with her hands, but she had no leverage; besides, the metal was freezing. The fallen branches she tested as levers all broke. Finally, she was able to pry it off by shoving a flat rock beneath the edge and hammering it with another.
With the top aside, she peered in. She had no flashlight, but she remembered the schematics. The hose took a sharp turn, entering the house through a pipe set a few inches beneath ground level. She slid her hand in and grasped the hose. The rubber was freezing.
She began to pull.
The first couple of tugs were easy. The next couple were not too bad. After that, all of a sudden, the work was backbreaking. Beck had apparently just drawn out the slack. Removing the hose was another matter.
She tested several methods before deciding that the most efficient was to brace herself, one foot against the wellhead, the other flat on the frozen earth, and tug, hand over hand.
Rebecca tugged, and breathed, and tugged, and breathed. Little by little, the hose was coiling on the ground. It was so heavy that half the time it tugged back, and she lost part of what she had removed. She rested, and then, with a great moan, went back to work. She had mittens in the pocket of her jacket, but they were wool, not meant for manual labor. They did little to protect her from the chill of the hose, and very soon began to unravel. Her hands were chapping, and after fifteen minutes or so, she could no longer feel her fingers. But she kept on tugging. She had no choice. Sooner or later, the sniper would come, or the commandos would come, or Max would get loose. She had to get her hands on Jericho’s secrets before anybody else did. She needed to protect her daughter. She kept tugging for Nina’s sake, and sometimes to show her mother that she could do it. She kept tugging because she could not get back the wasted years. Jericho was right. She was ambitious, so ambitious there were indeed days when she could scarcely bear to look at herself in the mirror. She had to have whatever was at the end of the hose. So she kept tugging. She thought of all the jerks she had dated, and the jerk she had married, and tugged harder. This one for her ex-husband, this one for Jericho, this one for Sean, this one for Pete Mundy, this one for the wide receiver whose nose she broke freshman year.
Rebecca rested a bit, and tried to figure out how much she had pulled out of the well. The hose was coiled everywhere. Her palms were sore. Her fingers were swelling. Her shoulders ached. The books said the hose for a well could easily run five hundred feet, sometimes more, depending on where the water was.
Five hundred feet was nearly a tenth of a mile. She wondered how much a tenth of a mile of hose weighed.
A lot.
She took a break and leaned against a tree. She tugged off her mittens and sucked on her fingers, trying to get some sensation back into them. She looked up at the house. She wished she were in there, except that it was a death trap. Pamela and Jericho, like Nina and Beck herself, had only one chance, and it lay hidden at the bottom of the well.
Back to work.
She looked at the hose laid out on the forest floor. The looped black shadow seemed to go on for miles, but was probably no more than a few hundred feet. Beck had read that usually a team of two or even three is sent when the hose needs to be pulled up. Unfortunately, her only choice was to be a team of one.
She tugged and rested, tugged and rested, reminded herself that Jericho had once loved her, and that she still owed him, no matter what Dr. Eisenstadt thought. She conjured Nina’s shining face, and the cynicism of a Jack Notting, who would get someone to kill a dog exactly like the one her daughter had been given. Tugging and resting, tugging and resting, Beck thought about Sean, and marveled at the enormity of the enmity that would so turn son against father. And she wondered whether, had Maggie Ainsley not come along to recruit him, Sean would have found some other excuse to play his dangerous game—
A massive explosion shook the forest.
Beck screamed. Animals that had been invisible ran in panic. Up on the hill behind her, the garage was in flames.
She forgot the hose for a moment, forgot the pump, forgot everything as she scrambled up the frozen verge, needing to know whose life had just been incinerated. At the top of the rise, she saw the garage ablaze and, in a panic, stumbled toward it, not away, until Pete Mundy brought her down in a flying tackle.
“Sorry I’m late,” he puffed, sitting beside her on the frozen ground.
(iv)
She hugged him for longer than was decent, and probably kissed him, but later could never remember the exact details.
“What are you doing here?” she managed at last.
“Got a call about suspicious traffic. It all seemed headed this way. You were supposed to get in touch if there were problems, but I hadn’t heard a word, so I took a chance.” He glanced over her shoulder. “What are you doing out here in the middle of the night?” He pointed at the snow. “You left footprints. Pretty easy to follow.”
In her relief, Beck actually giggled. “I was pulling up the well pump.”
“Fixing it?”
“Looking for something.”
He frowned. “Did you find what you were looking for?”
“Not yet.”
He considered this, then shrugged. “Whatever you say, honey.”
“What happened?” she asked as they moved toward the lawn.
“I think Mr. Ainsley had the garage booby-trapped.” He held out a restraining hand, and Beck drew back. “I saw somebody go in there. He must have heard the rumors in town about something being delivered.”
Her expression was grim. If the garage was booby-trapped, the electric eyes must have been connected to the explosive. Had Jericho not given her the code, she might have set off the bomb when she went in. Maybe he had known she was curious, and would find a way in sooner or later; maybe the booby trap was not armed at the time, and he had wanted her to see it and stay away. Whatever the reason, the code had worked. Beck had made it through the garage tonight without setting off the explosives; somebody else had not.
She remembered, shuddering, not only Jericho’s paranoia; but the life he had lived before they met. Maxine, too, had navigated the garage successfully, most likely through some combination of training and prudence. A wounded soul with a steady hand.
“I think the rumors were planted on purpose,” she said faintly. “I think he wanted someone to try to open his crates.”
“The man who went in was one of the strangers.”
“He could be the one who shot Pamela. I hope she’s still alive. She’s upstairs.”
Pete seemed to be sniffing the air, much as Dak had done a million years ago on Monday afternoon. “He wasn’t the only one out here. Somebody’s moving around.”
“An animal—”
“Too big for that.” He put a hand on her arm, propelling her forward. He held his gun ready but angled away from her. “We have to get help.”
“Pete, wait.”
“What’s the matter?” He was out of the woods, beckoning.
“There’s somebody else in the house. Trapped in the basement.”
“Who?”
“Miss Kelly.”
He closed the distance between them, face bewildered. “I’m sorry, Beck. Did you say the town librarian is locked in the basement?”
“It’s a long story. Look. The phones are out, the power’s out—you have a radio in your cruiser, right?”
“I have my pickup down the hill. There’s a radio in there, sure.”
“Then let’s hurry. Pamela and Jericho both need to get to the hospital.”
“Okay.” Again he was on the move. Beck realized that she was holding his hand. He looked at the garage. “I’m pretty sure they’ll see that fire from town, though. Not like the other one.”
Rebecca took her hand back. “What did you say?”
He was a few paces ahead of her, gun at the ready, eyes searching lawn and woods. “I said they’ll see the fire from town. They’ll send help.”
She shook her head. “No. You said not like the other one. What other one, Pete?”
“The van. It’s out front. Hard to miss.”
“How do you know if they saw it from town or not?” A terrible suspicion was starting to dawn. “How do you even know when it burned?”
“Anybody can see it burned.”
“Not in this darkness. Not without the floodlights.”
“I examined it with my flashlight, Beck. Come on. It’s the first thing a cop would see.”
“And did you see Audrey’s body?”
He dropped his eyes. “I wasn’t going to mention that. She’s kind of a mess.”
She relaxed. “Pete, I’m sorry.”
“For what? It’s been quite a night. I still want to hear why Miss Kelly is in the basement.”
“Let me just warn you. Before we let her out, you’d better put the cuffs on. She’s some kind of hired gun.”
“Always knew there was something odd about her.” Laconic and unperturbed, as always. “You know, Beck, maybe we shouldn’t use my radio. The sheriff hears all the radio calls, and, well, I don’t know which side he’s on.”
“Not ours,” said Beck, rubbing her arms. The cold was seeping in. The wind was spreading the fire toward the trees. Sooner or later, left unchecked, it would reach the house. She said, “Let’s carry them, then. Jericho and Pamela. We’ll put them in your truck.”
The deputy thought this over. “The house is the first place anybody will be looking.”
“Still—”
“One man died in the explosion. Another man is dead over by the van. But there’s somebody else. I saw him, and I kept my distance. He had a sniper rifle. He’s in the woods to the west. Or he was. But if we go around that way”—he pointed—“and stay in the east woods all the way to the front of the house, he won’t see us. If we try to get to the house across this lawn, with the sight lines he has? We’re sitting ducks.”
Rebecca saw his point. Jericho’s mad insistence on cutting back the brush and trees turned out to have disadvantages. But she could not bear the thought of abandoning Pamela and Jericho. “Please, Pete. We can’t just leave them.”
“We can send help—”
“Whoever’s out there will have come and gone. They’ll swoop down and take him. Maxine told me.”
“Who?”
“Miss Kelly—it’s her real name—she’s a killer—oh, shit—”
The tension of the endless night had become too much. The pain, the fear, the flight—Pamela’s wounded body. Beck nearly broke down. Pete held her, stroked her back, murmured all the things we murmur to comfort the sobbing. But she had already decided not to cry after all, and her eyes were dry as she said, firmly, “I’m not leaving without them, Pete.”
“I guess we can try,” he said at last. “But you do exactly what I say.”
CHAPTER 37
The Escape
(i)
They tramped through the woods to the east, keeping the bulk of Stone Heights itself between their position and the spot where Pete had seen the sniper. Frozen leaves crinkled under their feet. At first, Rebecca kept talking, explaining what had happened over the last frightening hours, but Pete kept telling her to keep her voice down and finally ordered her, roughly, to hush.
“Keep very still,” he commanded, and, except for a continued trembling, half fear and half chill, she did.
They were still in the east woods. The house was fifty yards away. They were looking at the living room, and, up above, the windows of the master suite, and, at the rear, the study. There were no lights, of course. Beck thought she detected movement upstairs, but it might have been her imagination. The lawn before them was where Pesky had taken his fall.
“This is the plan,” Pete murmured after a moment. “It works if there’s only one sniper. If there’s two, we’re cooked.”
She forced the words through gritted teeth. “I understand.”
“Good. Now we have to split up. You stay right here, Beck. I’m going to circle around to the front, then dash across the driveway. He’ll see me, and he’ll shoot at me, but I think he’ll be a minute adjusting, because he’s watching the house, and the south woods. His rifle is on a tripod. He’ll have to move it. That gives me an edge. As soon as you hear the gunshots, you run across this lawn, straight for the house. It’s only fifty yards. You’ll be exposed for maybe ten seconds. When you get to the house, you hug that wall and head around to the back. You go in that door. Got it?”
“What about you?”
“I’ll join you as soon as I can.”
“The sniper—”
“I have a gun, too, Beck. In the truck, I have a rifle and a shotgun. I can take care of myself.” He paused, letting this sink in. “Are you sure you won’t come with me? We can send help and sit tight—”
She shook her head. “The helicopter’s coming.”
“And so you’re going to risk your life saving a woman who hates you and a man who’s blackmailing the federal government?” But his tone was gentle. He put a hand on her face. “You’re a very strange person, Beck. Did anybody ever tell you that?”
“Pretty much everybody.”
“Your skin is cold.”
“You noticed.”
He kissed her, taking his time, leaned away, grinned. “Oh, man, when this is all over—”
They heard two quick gunshots.
Beck was on her feet, but Pete pulled her back down to the icy forest floor. “That wasn’t a rifle. That was a handgun. There’s somebody else out there. And unless I miss my guess—”
The flat snap of the sniper’s rifle, twice.
An answering gunshot.
“I think we’ve kind of got our distraction in place. We should go for the truck while they kill each other.”
“We stick to the plan,” said Beck.
(ii)
Rebecca was alone in the woods, hugging the ground as Pete had instructed. Exhaustion and fear bore down on her, and now loneliness besides. She did not understand what was happening. Dak had assured her that nobody could touch Jericho. Sure, lots of people were watching, including what Dak called a few “unofficial nations”—which Beck took to mean terrorist organizations, although, having had her confrontation with Jack Notting, she supposed that unofficial nations came in other forms, too. Dak had described a standoff: nobody dared kill Jericho, for fear of what he had hidden, and nobody dared kidnap him to make him talk, for fear that, given his age and illness, the interrogation itself would kill him. But now somebody had decided to act, notwithstanding the risk—and once the uneasy truce was broken, it was every unofficial nation for itself.
