'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.
CHAPTER 82
'Get the fuck out of my way, you two-bit rent-a-cop, or I will fucking blow your tiny nuts off!'
David Brown, in full SWAT gear, and followed by his assistant and two other Customs officers, brandished his H amp;K submachine gun at the VA's lone security guard at the main entrance at ground level.
Before the guard could respond, a brilliant flash and bang rumbled from outside, then the lights went out.
'That just fucking ices the damn cake,' Brown said. 'And where the hell's our backup?'
'Still waiting for authorization!' Brown's assistant tried to explain that media coverage, the previous day's lawsuits, and the deluge of law enforcement complaints to the state's senators and congressional delegation had chilled the cooperation Brown had demanded. The Army was double-covering its ass, the FBI was rethinking its earlier, reluctant cooperation, and the Jackson Police Department was outright hostile to them.
'Well, you better fucking get your sorry act together or I'll shred your worthless ass when this is all over!'
Three more blasts rattled the windows around the security screening area in the VA's main entryway.
'Listen,' Brown said as the explosions echoed away. 'It's a fucking chopper. Those idiots are trying to break Talmadge out!' He turned and pointed the MPS at the security guard. 'Take us up there.'
The guard hesitated until Brown thumbed off the safety.*****
The first MP burst into Talmadge's room before Rex or I got our balance. The MP aimed his sidearm at us as a second MP lunged in. Suddenly, from the shadows behind the door the aluminum tubing of a crutch bottom arced out of the darkness and caught the first MP squarely on his nose, snapping his head back beneath a geyser of blood, showering dark and black in the dim light.
'Yeeeeeeeeee hah!' A rebel yell followed the blow, and I knew Talmadge had to be somewhere behind it.
The MP's finger closed on the trigger as he staggered back into his partner. The slug plowed into the apparatus behind the bed.
'Get back!' Rex yelled behind me as he rushed forward and loosed a long blast from the big bear spray container. The potent chemicals guaranteed to stop a bear in its tracks wrenched out two sustained screams from both men as they staggered back into the hallway. Talmadge propped himself on one crutch as he leaned against the door. Rex helped him shove the door shut, then jammed the wood-splitting wedge under it. I rushed him the hand sledge.
'By damn that Shanker boy is all right!' Talmadge yelled. 'Sum'bitch promised he'd get me outta here!'
Rex hammered the wedge tight beneath the door before the men outside threw their weight against it. Outside, new voices joined the urgent babble, one of which made me think of the old gin in Itta Bena.
'Okay, let's rock,' I told Talmadge. I leaned over and picked up his bony, huskthin frame and carried him over to the window.
'Can you stand?' I asked.
'Course I can. I can walk some too.'
'Cool.'
The old man was surprisingly capable, probably from mainlining adrenaline. I harnessed him in.
Across the room, Rex bent over the paint-thinner can and sloshed the contents under the door. The sharp solvent smell pricked at my nose as I held out a makeshift nylon web sling to Talmadge. 'Step into this.'
Rex hurried over to us, pulled a road flare from a cargo pocket, ignited it, and tossed it by the door.
A loud whoomp! filled the room with brilliant yellow light.
'That should make them back off,' Rex said as he helped me secure Talmadge. Moments later, the room's
