Джеффри Дивер - The Goodbye Man

Waiting, ready to pitch the rock toward the driver’s side windshield.

Going over the maneuvers in his mind.

But then — no car.

Another sixty seconds passed.

Then he heard, from uphill, the sound of a collision. Crunching metal, the car’s horn sounding. It blared for a moment, then went silent.

Shaw turned and, drawing yet another deep breath, he slogged up the hill.

When he broke from the woods this time, he saw in front of him the Ford, which had veered off the U-shaped curve from the second switchback to the third. It had slammed into a ten-foot-high rock face just off the shoulder. The front of the car was caved in and the airbags had deployed. The vehicle had been doing no more than forty or so; why had it crashed?

Inside the car was movement. The driver was looking calmly at John, who still sat in the backseat. He’d been tossed around and was groggy and stunned — probably more from Hugh’s earlier blow than the collision. He was slowly shaking his head.

Shaw had to get John out before the Select tried to kill him another way. He’d engage Hugh’s hitman, take him down and bind his feet. Then he’d help John hike into town. A long way but their only option.

Shaw sprinted toward the car, gripping one of the rocks tightly in his right hand.

He was still fifty feet away when the Select emptied the gasoline container throughout the interior of the vehicle. The Select looked out the window and happened to see Shaw. If he was surprised at Shaw’s presence he didn’t reveal it. He gave a faint smile, gave the two-armed farewell salute, then flicked a cigarette lighter, turning the interior of the car into an inferno.

Cars generally don’t blow up spectacularly in real life the way screenwriters and directors would have it.

There’s not enough air in the gas tank for explosive combustion. But when a fire starts elsewhere, fuel lines and gaskets melt and the aromatic and deadly liquid flows out to add to the conflagration. This happened now. A small field of orange flames flickered near the rear of the car, and soon not only was the interior engulfed but the outside too, flames boiling, black smoke spiraling skyward.

Colter Shaw tried once more to get close. He was driven back by searing heat and turbulent black smoke. The glimpses he caught of the occupants revealed that the thrashing had ceased.

Goddamn...

Eli had created the perfect weapon. The Selects were not “monks” at all. They were the Praetorian Guard, protectors to the death. They were a secular version of the fundamentalist suicide bomber. Convinced of a better life ahead, they didn’t care about escaping after they murdered, always the most challenging aspect of the crime.

Shaw understood now that Harvey Edwards had been a Select and that he’d engineered the shootout with the cops so he himself would die — to advance — after killing the journalist, Gary Yang.

Shaw realized too why he had been fast-tracked for the position himself: the fictional violent crimes he’d committed, his edgy attitude. Eli didn’t want to cure him of those demons. He wanted to exploit them.

Anyone whom the rabidly narcissistic Eli saw as a threat was at risk: heretical Companions within the Foundation, rival cult leaders, police and prosecutors, Shaw supposed. The deaths would be apparent accidents or murder-suicides — homicide investigators’ favorite death cases. Minimal investigation, some paperwork, and on to other matters.

He cocked his head. A noise could be heard over the flames.

Sirens in the distance, getting closer. He walked to a rocky ridge and looked down the mountain. Flashing lights. Police, a fire truck, an ambulance. The vehicles had TOWN OF SNOQUALMIE GAP painted on the sides.

How could they be here so quickly?

Then he realized the answer. Of course.

Shaw got under cover just in time. Easing down the switchbacks was the black Osiris Foundation van — maybe the same one that had transported Victoria and the others to the site where Adam had died.

The van parked about a hundred feet from the flaming wreck. Shaw climbed higher on the hill, where he had a good view of the road below and could still stay out of sight.

The emergency vehicles arrived. The law enforcers and the firemen and firewomen, six of them, exited. Not a soul made any effort to extinguish the burning car, though they ran lines and soaked the brush nearby. That was their only concern: a wildfire. Shaw knew that even if the rescue workers had gotten here before the flames killed the two men, they would have done nothing to save those inside.

This was made clear when Hugh and one of the other Selects climbed from the van and walked up to the sheriff and fire chief, handing out envelopes.

The white rectangles disappeared into pockets.

Shaw had no doubt that the vast majority of law enforcers in the state were upright — like Chad Johnson, at the Pierce County Public Safety Office. But in the space of just a few days he’d crossed paths with two sets of bad apples: Welles and the Hammond County protectors of the church, and here, in Snoqualmie Gap, a bunch of cops who were simply on the take.

These men and woman now lounged back, leaning against their vehicles and examining the roiling smoke and flames as the Ford burned to its chassis. The stench was unbearable — some of it from the rubber, some from the occupants.

Shaw began his hike to the camp. He couldn’t afford to be missed. He glanced back once and looked over the scene, so similar to the one where Adam had committed suicide, in that it was a crime the law enforcers had no interest in preventing, and about which they had no desire to find the truth.

There was one difference, however. Here, only one cop took a selfie with the burning car and the bodies inside. The rest were too busy making calls and telling jokes to go to the trouble to play paparazzi.

Shaw had taken care of his father’s commandment about finding an escape route.

For the moment he had no intention of escaping, though. He would stay as long as it took to find proof of Eli’s guilt.

But now that the battle lines were clear, he turned to satisfying his father’s second fundamental rule:

In unfamiliar and potentially hostile territory...

Never be without an escape route.

Never be without access to a weapon.

If he were found out in his hunt for incriminating evidence against Eli and Hugh, it would come to a fight. There was no doubt about that. And he wouldn’t simply be roughed up and told to leave. He’d be hunted down and killed.

So, a weapon.

A firearm would be ideal; it was a deterrent and, in his skilled hands, could wound, taking an enemy out of commission.

He supposed there were guns in the Assistance Unit but getting inside would be next to impossible. And any weapons would probably be locked away in a gun safe.

Though it seemed unlikely, the mysterious Building 14 might contain weapons.

He might steal a knife from the kitchen but bladed weapons were problematic. The only practical way for someone armed with a knife to stop an opponent was to kill him. Nonlethal stabbing or slashing didn’t traumatize the body sufficiently to debilitate; to do so, significant blood loss was required and that usually was a short step away from death.

Having just borrowed from indigenous culture in his chase to save John, he turned to the source again. In his father’s survival training, the children had made tools from wood and stone. They’d also made weapons.

Warrior tribes of the North American continent in the nineteenth century were skilled marksmen and bowmen but it was braver and more prestigious to “count coup” in battle: getting close enough to the enemy to strike them with hand or a ceremonial coup stick — it was like a whip. Often warriors didn’t even kill their enemy; they humiliated them with a simple, harmless touch. A warrior kept a record of his coup count all his life and indicated it in carvings and on clothing.