you, Miz Street, I will.”
“An exclusive.” She restated the words with an air of suspicion. “You’ll talk to our station only?”
“I’ll go you one better,” I returned. “I’ll talk to you and you alone. It will be your story. No strings attached. Deal?”
I could hear the combination of excitement and mild disbelief in her voice when she replied, “Are you serious, Gant?”
“You ever see the TV show Bewitched?” I asked.
“Sure, but what’s that got to do with anything?” she asked.
I twisted in my seat and turned my face to her. When I was certain she could see me, I splayed out my left hand and placed the index and middle fingers on either side of my nose, pointing in toward my eyes, then said, “Witches honor.”
“Here we are,” the pilot’s voice came over the headset.
I turned my eyes back forward and then immediately gripped the edges of my seat as the aircraft rolled up on its side without warning. We hooked around in a steep, semicircular turn before the pilot brought us back upright. With a smooth hover, we began settling earthward with the nose tilted slightly up.
While I struggled to force my stomach back into its proper place, I shot a glance over at the pilot and noticed for the first time that as years went he was wearing better than a decade more than I was.
“Vietnam?” I uttered the single word query as I felt the skids bump against pavement once again.
“One ninety-second AHC” was all he said.
The aircraft had come briefly to rest on a small, private parking lot for one of the riverboat casinos that occupied dock space in front of Laclede’s Landing. The lot itself was an asphalt plateau situated between Second and Third Streets, ringed by a tall, chain link fence, and under normal circumstances, manned by a security guard at a glassed-in booth. Because of its location along the tiered rise, it actually looked down into the front of the building where Porter was holed up.
The large, paved section of the short city block was almost completely devoid of any vehicles, having been cleared earlier by the authorities. In fact, the only cars up here were a few police cruisers parked at strategic points and a single, official-looking sedan.
Behind us on the next block was an enormous electrical sub-station that serviced a large portion of the city. Flanking the building on the left was another portion of the substation, and on the right was an open lot that butted against Biddle Street. A second vacant warehouse sat behind the one before us with aging railroad tracks in between.
Upon initial inspection, there didn’t really seem to be any place for Porter to go where he wouldn’t be spotted immediately-even if he was able to get past the local perimeter. I found a small amount of solace in that fact considering that I had left Felicity essentially alone.
I was just pulling the headset off and handing it back to the pilot when my door swung open. The roar of the helicopter’s engine, which had leapt in volume the moment my ears were uncovered, now vaulted up the scale even farther. I turned quickly, somewhat startled.
“MISTER GANT?!” A voice managed to make its way to me from the parka-wearing young woman who was holding the door wide.
I nodded at her, fiddled about with the release in my lap until the belt came free, then pulled myself out of the seat and through the opening. Ben was already climbing out of the back and levering the door shut when I set foot on the pavement.
I turned back and gave the pilot a quick nod as I shut the front door and felt it latch. The three of us then hunched over beneath the rotor wash and scurried away toward the dark sedan several yards to the south.
I heard the repetitious thump growing behind me as the collective once again tilted the rotating blades and applied lift to the aircraft. The whine of the engine rose, and the helicopter hovered upward.
“I’m Agent Kavanaugh with the hostage negotiation team,” the young woman told us as we came to the rear of the four-door vehicle, carefully modulating her voice against the sound of the aircraft. She quickly popped the lid on the trunk and after reaching in, withdrew a Kevlar flak vest. “Before we go down to the street, Mister Gant, you need to put this on.”
“What for?” I asked. My voice was starting to go hoarse from all the yelling. “Eldon Porter doesn’t use a gun.”
“Standard operating procedure, sir,” she returned.
“I don’t need it.”
She started to respond then paused as the helicopter rose past us and nosed off into the night sky, taking with it the brunt of the noise. As it faded into the background, she dropped her volume several notches and spoke. “Mister Gant, let me explain this briefly. Number one: you are a civilian, and from this moment on, you are my responsibility. Number two: the simple fact is we have no way to know for certain what he has with him in the way of weapons. Number three: as long as you are on the scene, you go by our rules. And, finally, number four: we don’t have time for this. So put the damn vest on now!”
“Fine.” I gave my reluctant agreement and started shrugging off my coat. “Give it to me.”
I had been subject to wearing one of these before, and I’d hated every minute of it. Granted, it had been right at the end of a muggy Saint Louis summer. The temperature had been hovering around ninety even though it was the middle of the night. And, on top of that, I’d been plagued with an aggravating itch that the vest had rendered unreachable for the duration.
Still, even discounting all of those factors, body armor had been one of the most uncomfortable things I’d ever worn.
I slipped into the vest and in the process realized just exactly how sore I was. My body creaked like an old, wooden sailing ship, and I suspected I had bruises forming on top of bruises. I grimaced and forced my torso into the armor then wrestled with the Velcro straps. I wriggled about inside the somewhat bulky protective garment as I smoothed them down. Agent Kavanaugh inspected the closures, taking a moment to rip several of them open and pull them tighter.
“I was thinking I might like to breathe,” I declared with a sarcastic bite as she tightened the last one.
“I was thinking I might like you to walk away alive,” she retorted without looking up. “You’re no good to us dead.”
“Thanks for the compassion,” I scoffed.
She didn’t miss a beat with her own acerbic reply. “You’re welcome.”
Ben handed me my coat, and I struggled to pull it back on over the vest.
Agent Kavanaugh was already climbing into the driver’s seat of the sedan when she called to us. “Come on!”
We followed suit; Ben took the front passenger seat while I jumped into the back. I was still pulling my door shut when Kavanaugh spun the tires against the slushy pavement and expertly whipped the vehicle around in a tight half-donut.
I rocked inward and felt the door partially latch then sat up and looked forward. I happened to catch a quick glimpse of Ben’s injured right hand as he twisted to look back at me. He was holding it balled up in a tight fist and cradled against his chest. Even in the dark, I could tell it was covered in blood, and when I looked up at his face, I saw immediately that he was mutely coping with severe pain.
“You really need to have that hand checked out, Ben,” I told him. “It doesn’t look very good.”
“What? You a doctor all of a sudden?” he retorted.
“Ben…”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll get it taken care of when this is over.”
We rocked to the side as Agent Kavanaugh whipped the vehicle out of the lot at a sharp right angle, sped forward, and then made another ninety degree turn to the right. She accelerated down the hill, only to quickly apply the brakes, fishtail the sedan through another right hand turn, and bring it skidding to a halt diagonal to the curb.
“Well, that was fun,” Ben quipped as he turned back to the front and reached across with his left hand to
