The whine of the tractor begins to sound like a high-pitched scream, but still we wait. I’m keenly aware that we have to choose our moment, that our timing has to be perfect and that Kidder is quite possibly armed.
Kathy Mancero, with that oddly cool breath, whispers, “I’ve got this,” and slips away on all fours, crawling around the back of the tool chest.
Before I have time to explore the thought, it happens. As Kidder swings the tractor around the wing of the aircraft, Kathy explodes from behind the tool chest, launching herself into the air, a missile aimed at a monster. As she collides with the muscled hardness of his body, her arms tighten around his neck, pulling him off the seat with the forward momentum of her hundred pounds of bone and grief.
They land on the concrete, a tangle of limbs, Kidder spitting curses.
“Stop right there! I’ve got a gun!”
That’s me, holding the.38 in both hands and trying to look like I know what I’m doing.
Kidder takes one look at me, grins like a lunatic and flips over so that Kathy’s skinny body is between him and the gun.
“Take your shot, sweetheart!” he chortles.
Giggling. Like he thinks this is fun. But the crazed giggle abruptly stops as Kathy rips off his wool cap and grabs a fistful of clotted hair. The back of his head is one big scab. She slams his head down with all her might and his nose smacks into the concrete.
Kidder yelps, an animal howl of rage. He outweighs her by about a hundred pounds and in an instant she’s bucked away by his vastly superior strength. She flies through the air for several yards and lands flat on her back with her left arm behind her, stunned or worse.
Measuring my distance carefully-deathly afraid he’ll find a way to take the gun away from me-I shuffle closer, bellowing, “Hands in the air! I’ll do it, I’ll pull the trigger!”
Kidder, up on his knees, gives me a sly grin, like he’d been hoping it would come to this. “I know you,” he says. “My friend in the bedroom. Bet I made you wet your little pants.”
“Put your hands behind your head and lace your fingers together!” I demand, borrowing a familiar, if amalgamated, line from just about every cop show ever seen on TV.
“Anything you say,” he says, feigning agreement. His hands remain in front of him and his smile is taunting, daring me to fire.
“Uh,” says Kathy. “Uh.”
The poor woman has had the breath knocked out of her, at the very least. Her eyes are unfocused and her left arm looks wrong, as if maybe the landing jarred it out of its socket at the shoulder. Despite what has to be excruciating pain she smiles oddly and with her good arm she points upward. Something flits through the air high above us, something that emits a soft, sad cooing.
Mourning doves in the great steel rafters, under the curving roof of the hangar. When I glance back again Kidder has halved the distance between us. Still on his knees but much, much closer.
“Stop!” I scream, tightening my crouch, re-aiming the.38. “Not another inch!”
He grins and actually backs up a foot or so. “Have you ever fired that thing?” he asks conversationally. “It takes like a two-pound pull on the trigger. Harder than you might think. And the barrel is going to jump, that’s guaranteed. I’ve seen people miss from three feet away and we’re like, what, six whole feet?”
“Shut up.”
Kathy has managed to get to her feet, her bad arm dangling. Her eyes have started to clear and it looks to me like she’s going to be okay, assuming we can get her to a hospital in the very near future.
Her mouth starts to open, but before she can get a word out a deep male voice booms through the hangar.
“Kathy! Alice! I’ve got him! You did it!”
Keeping one eye on Kidder, I turn my stance slightly and find Shane, the big man himself. Panting from his efforts but with an immense grin on his face. He’s ripped open the dog crate and has a small boy in his arms, unconscious but clearly alive.
Joey.
Kathy cries out with joy, her whole face glistening with tears. She limps toward Shane and the boy, wounded but unvanquished. It’s a beautiful sight, and I’m close to tears myself. But I can’t quit now. The gun, even grasped in both hands, is starting to get heavy.
Kidder, humming to himself, shuffles closer, marching on his knees with his arms swinging, tick tock, like a child playing at soldier.
“No,” I say, finger squeezing. “No!”
Grinning, Kidder says, “You know what’s funny?”
“Shut up and grab the floor.”
Kidder looks like he’s going to comply, and then his eyes roll up and his body convulses and he grabs at his chest. It’s a convincing move, he sells it, and for just that one moment I almost believe he’s going into cardiac arrest. Until, a millisecond later, his right hand emerges from a fold in his orange overalls, holding a shiny pistol. Which swings not toward me, but toward Shane and Kathy and the unconscious boy.
“Screw it,” Kidder announces. “The little brat is coming with me.”
Several things happen all at once. I pull the trigger. The gun jumps in my hand like something alive, and a red splat emerges from the side of Kidder’s neck.
He grimaces, as if shrugging it off. He extends his arm and fires at Shane and the boy.
In the exploding confusion that follows, one thing remains clear in my mind: a vision of Kathy Mancero throwing herself at Kidder, cutting off his angle and taking a bullet in the center of her chest.
So fast I can’t react, can’t stop it, can’t change what happens.
Next thing, a flat, metallic snap coming from behind me. Another shooter heard from. And then Kidder is down with a round red hole in the center of his forehead and a death grin imprinted on his collapsing face, and Jack Delancey is racing up to say, “Sorry I’m late,” and taking the gun from my shaking hand and making me sit on my butt because he thinks I’m going to faint, which is ridiculous.
I do faint, but only for a moment. And when my vision clears Shane and Jack are crouching over Kathy. Two tough guys looking as tender as angels. Shane with the little boy in his arms, assuring her that Joey is okay, he’ll be fine as soon as he wakes up, and his mother is on the way, and she did it, she did a great good thing.
“You took the bullet, love,” he says, “so that he might live.”
The other thing I’m absolutely positive about: as the light faded from her eyes Kathy Mancero looked up at the cooing doves and smiled.
Chapter Sixty
Whatever moral complexities may have been exposed by recent unfortunate events, Taylor Gatling, Jr., remains a man of principle. He still empties his own spittoon, and that’s exactly what he’s doing one fine evening in August, a couple of months after that mess at the hangar, the one he was adroit enough to avoid. He tips the brass spittoon over the railing, hears the fine, satisfying flush of it galumphing into the river below and thinks not for the first time that he’s the luckiest man in the world. Not that he hasn’t made his own luck, not that he doesn’t deserve to enjoy all the wealth, all the toys, but still. One must make time to smell the roses. Or in this case a salty whiff of the white-capped sea. Best done alone, which is why he’s closed the boathouse to his little circle of handpicked members. Much as he enjoys the company of his card-playing cronies, he’s decided that for the rest of the month he’ll have the place to himself. Getting his thoughts in order, recharging his batteries, planning his next move. Because for sure he hasn’t given up on the business of keeping the country safe for right-thinking patriots like, well, himself and a few select others, worthy and vetted.
He’s smiling, content with his situation, his mission, as he returns to the relative darkness of the boathouse. The thing about being here alone, he doesn’t have to turn on any lights, he can enjoy the passing evening by looking
