“Let's move him to the wagon,” the EMS tech said.
Sean's eyes filled with tears as she stood and watched her father being rushed down the hall. She knelt beside Winter and took his hand.
“Are you all right?” Winter asked her.
She shook her head slowly. “I'm not sure what all right is.”
“Let's get you out of here,” an EMS who had been wrapping Winter's leg said. Two men lifted him onto a stretcher and carried him out. Sean followed. As the crew took Winter from the house toward an ambulance, they passed by another. Inside, one technician was writing something down while another gave Sam Manelli CPR. Despite the chest-pumping charade, it was obvious there was no longer any reason to rush the gangster anywhere.
Chet stuck his head into the ambulance Winter and Sean had just entered. “Hey, Winter, the other guy's making a run for it. He fired on the helicopter. I doubt his armor is going to be very effective against the M- 60.”
“He in a black Suburban?”
“How'd you know that?”
“Lucky guess.”
“Hold up,” Chet told the ambulance crew. He had his phone to his ear, listening. “He's on River Road heading west,” Chet told Winter. “The units east of here are joining the pursuit. Okay, he's heading for the roadblock. Wait… he left River Road and he's heading up the levee.”
“He gets in the river, you'll lose him, Chet,” Winter said. “Tell them to stop him.”
“Okay, Bird One,” Chet said into the microphone. “You are authorized to use lethal force to stop that Suburban.”
Seconds later, the cloudbase in the western sky suddenly took on a muted orange tint. “That's all, folks,” Chet said.
106
Looking out over the tank farm, Lewis watched the fireball climb. Lewis knew how cops thought, how they acted. Figuring that all of the highway patrol prowlers available had chased after Tomeo, he pulled out from among the piles of garbage. Lewis had figured the authorities would have no idea of the exact size of the force they were opposing. In the pandemonium, while the cops were focused on Tomeo in the fleeing Suburban and the bloody meat they had left in and around the lodge, Lewis could have led a herd of elephants out onto River Road. It was possible that Tomeo had bailed out of the vehicle before it exploded. It didn't matter to Lewis because it wouldn't change anything. Tomeo was on his own.
Lewis kept the windows rolled up even though his nose was assaulted by the lingering stench of cigarettes, dog, and the old man's fetid body odor. He drove to River Road and aimed the Ford truck toward New Orleans before turning on the headlights. He hoped that the mattress and other trash didn't tumble out of the truck's bed and draw unwanted attention.
107
Sean had held Winter's hand from the time they got into the ambulance until they had wheeled him into the emergency room at Charity Hospital.
At the hospital Winter heard from one of Chet's deputies that the cutout had been ambushed by the chopper at the top of the levee. His armor hadn't been any help, especially considering that the Suburban's overlarge gasoline tanks had gone up, incinerating him after he had been riddled by most of the 7.62-mm rounds the M60 fired directly into his windshield from rock-throwing range.
The nurse gave Winter a shot of something that felt icy cold. He was unable to concentrate on anything at all-the crisp pain in his leg evolved into a dull pressure as the overlapping voices faded to whispers and trailed away. Winter was aware of the gentle lapping of water against the raft he found himself floating on-lying out in the warm sunshine, someplace far, far away…
Winter was alone in a corridor that seemed to stretch for miles in either direction. The door he had come through had vanished, Winter watched as a small speck grew into a person. As the figure drew closer, he could see that that it was a young man, seventeen or eighteen, wearing fatigues and a green beret.
Before he could clearly see the soldier's features, Winter knew the young man was familiar to him. Even the uniform didn't mask the cocky stride, the set of his friend's shoulders. Greg Nations was not merely younger than he had been when Winter first met him at Glynco-he was altogether different. Only the eyes were the same. The jaw was rounder, the nose wider, the cheeks fuller, and even the ears angled at nearly ninety degrees from his skull.
“Greg?” Winter said. “I thought you were dead. They told me you were dead.”
Greg skirted him and kept going.
“Greg!” Winter yelled. “Greg, wait! Where you going?” His heart was breaking. Grief and a sense of overwhelming loss filled him. “Don't go! Talk to me! Please!”
Winter caught up to him in a few strides. He grabbed Greg's shoulder and turned him so they were face-to- face.
The soldier was no longer Greg Nations. The soldier was now Lieutenant Commander Fletcher Reed, but where his eyes should have been, there was smooth skin, eyes crudely drawn on with a dark marker pen.
Winter woke with a start in a real hospital bed. Sean was curled up in a chair beside him, watching him.
“Bad dream,” he said.
“Do you feel like listening?” she asked him.
“Of course,” he said truthfully. He wanted to hear everything she had to tell him.
108
“I would have told you about Sam,” Sean began, “but from the time I was old enough to understand, my mother drummed into me that I should never tell anybody he was my father. It was my first and best-kept secret.”
Sean studied Winter's face for a reaction, but he just nodded and smiled weakly. “I can understand why you might keep a thing like that to yourself.”
“It was because my mother was afraid that Sam's enemies might kidnap me to hurt him. He had a lot of enemies always looking for an edge. My mother met Sam while she was at Newcomb studying painting. She was in a club one night and he saw her. He pursued her and she thought he was exciting. One thing led to another and she got pregnant. She told me that Sam was her first experience and she didn't take the necessary precautions.”
“Good thing she didn't,” Winter said.
“Sam wanted her to marry him, but she knew it was impossible. She was a free spirit and knew he would have smothered her, plus there was the danger angle. She ran away and lived with her aunt in Boston and had me. Sam showed up at their doorstep and my mother said that he picked me up and cried from joy.
“My mother refused to return to New Orleans, but she agreed to let him support us and to form a trust for me, which he gladly did. It's grown over the years and it allowed me to have a nice life, paid for my education, and supports me still. Because Sam loved me, my mother agreed to let him be involved in my life.
“Sam spent Christmas and my birthdays in Boston with us, and I used to spend summers here in New Orleans with my mother. Sam's men all thought she was his mistress. That way we could stay in his house or at the lodge, and except for having to use different last names and lie about where we lived, it was fine. Bertran Stern, his
