Another said, 'I heard them go over and saw the splash!'
A third said, 'Me, too, Major.'
Vollard said, 'Nobody could survive that, no matter how strong a swimmer they are. They've both drowned.'
Somebody swore and said, 'Of all the rotten luck! Three of our best, dead… '
Vollard shrugged, resuming command. 'Hazards of war. Forget it. Their shares go into the common pot to be divided up among you men. All it means is that your shares got bigger.'
That cheered up the others. Vollard said, 'We've tarried here long enough. Let's move out.'
They went away, rounding the corner of the building and going landward along the pier. The riverward end was empty of all but Jack. He slumped down, sitting on the planks with his legs stretched out, back propped up against the container box.
The wire binding his wrists was a problem. It was tied tight and had cut deep. His wrists were bleeding, but the blood wasn't enough for him to work his hand free of the wires. The splice resisted his efforts to undo it. There was no way he could get a grip on it.
He jammed the end of the splice into a thin, slitted gap in a flange of the metal container box. He started working it back and forth, hoping to weaken the resistance of the wires enough to break them. It was hard work, a devil of a job.
While he was doing it, he became distantly aware of the sound of engines starting up, motors chugging away. He redoubled his efforts. He became discouraged; it seemed he was making no headway at all.
Suddenly he felt a flash of heat stab into his hands near the base of the splice. The metal was weakening, giving way. He worked it back and forth some more and it came apart, strands of wire falling away from his hands.
His hands felt like they were in another country. Jack dropped to his knees, head sinking down until his forehead touched the planks. Water pooled there; it was cool and refreshing.
He straightened up, shaking his head, trying to clear it. He worked the last of the strands off his wrists. The flesh was scored, banded, and cut, blood-slick. There was a lot of blood, and for a moment he was afraid he'd cut a vein or artery or something. That would be all he needed.
There was no blood flow, no gushing, so he guessed he was intact after all. He wrestled himself back up to his feet, hanging on to the container for support.
His hands tingled, sensation returning to them. After a moment, the pain became so great that it wrung tears from his eyes. He blinked them away. All he wanted was to get enough feeling back in his hands so he could work Arno's gun properly and shoot some people.
He couldn't wait forever, though. The clock was ticking. He slumped against the short end of the building with his shoulder, leaning on it for support as he moved forward, step by step, toward the downriver side of the pier.
Something large and whalelike lumbered away from the pier, into the mainstream of the river. It was the barge, dirty gray clouds of exhaust spewing from the stacks, resisting the efforts of wind and rain to break them apart. As soon as they were dispersed, new ones spewed from the smokestacks to take their place. The barge was on its way.
Jack glanced landward. At the far end of the pier, two red dots that were taillights winked for an instant and vanished, as the last SUV in a three-vehicle column turned right and drove away, eastbound on River Road.
Vollard's mercenary force was gone, moved out, leaving the pier deserted.
Jack pointed himself landward and stumbled forward. The opposite end seemed impossibly distant. Memory came to him of some of the forced marches he'd been on in the Army. What you did was put one foot in front of the other and keep on going until you got where you were going. It was as good a system as any.
At the ends of his arms, his hands throbbed like a pair of twin beating hearts. After a while, he found he could open and close them. It was agony, but at least they were working. He kept on doing it; it gave him something to occupy himself with while he slogged through wind and rain.
By the time he neared the front gate, his hands worked well enough so that he could hold a gun in them. He came on toward the lighted guardhouse, ready to blast the first thing that moved.
It was empty, abandoned. The gates hung open, swinging free, senselessly bashing themselves against the fence each time the wind blew a fresh gust.
He went through the open gate, across a paved strip, nearly falling when he stepped off a curb that he hadn't seen. The gutters ran high with water, swirling over his feet and around his ankles.
River Road was deserted; he hadn't seen a car or truck pass along it in the time he'd made his way across the pier. Across the street, in the mouth of a side street that met River Road at right angles, stood a parked car.
Now its lights flashed on, pinning him in its headlights. Throwing up his left arm to shield his eyes against the glare, Jack dropped into a combat crouch, leveling his gun.
An amplified voice came blaring across the street from the car's roof-mounted loudspeaker:
Jack didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Hostiles or friendlies? If the two Bourbon Street cops had wanted to, they could have shot him down like a dog before he could have reacted. On that evidence, they were friendly. Jack stuck the gun in the top of his pants and moved toward them.
Dooley and Buttrick got out of the car, meeting him halfway. Jack staggered and they grabbed him, holding him upright. Dooley said, 'Whoo-whee, what happened to you?'
Jack replied with a question of his own: 'What're you doing here?'
Dooley said, 'You and Pete have been kicking up such a fuss that we figured we'd tag along and see what happened, just for the fun of it. We tailed you here from Belle Reve Street. You been gone so long inside there, we was starting to get worried.'
Buttrick said, 'Hey, where's Pete?'
'Dead,' Jack said. 'They killed him.'
Dooley's face took on the aspect of a mournful basset hound. 'That's a shame, a damned shame.'
Buttrick said, 'You look half kilt yourself, Jack.'
Jack said, 'This is important. I've got to contact CTU. The police radio in your car… '
Dooley shook his head. 'Ain't no good in this kind of weather, Jack; the storm's got the reception breaking up all to pieces. Can't get through to headquarters or nothing.'
'You've got to get me to a phone, it's a matter of life and death… '
Buttrick said, 'We got us a couple of satellite phones in the car.'
Jack started. 'What? You do?'
'Sure 'nuff We found that out last time in Katrina. Radio wasn't no good, cell phones didn't work worth a good damn, but satellite phones worked just fine throughout,' Buttrick said.
Jack was having trouble processing it. 'You've got satellite phones? With you?'
Dooley said, 'Right here in the car. You want to use it?'
'Hell, yes!'
Dooley said, 'Like I said, Jack: we're your boys!'
22. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 2 A.M. AND 3 A.M. CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME
Not even the wind and rain of the rising storm could hide the lights strung along the Mississippi River Bridge as the suicide barge plowed downstream toward it. The river was choppy, slowing the barge's forward progress.
The Harbor Patrol launches fired machine-gun rounds with tracers across its bow, to no avail.
In the deckhouse, Ahmed and Rashid were in near-transports of ecstasy as the bridge loomed in their view, its lights glimmering hazily, a string of pearls seen through a gauzy veil.
