Линкольн Чайлд - Crooked River

There was really only one way to do this.

He stood up and peeked through the door window. The guard’s back was turned, hunched over the magazine as he flipped a page.

He picked up a stick and whacked it against the guardhouse window.

The guard jumped like he’d been shot, stood up, and peered out the window. He could, of course, see nothing. The guard sat down again. Coldmoon knew exactly what he was thinking — a branch, blown by the wind. Not even worth checking out.

Coldmoon smacked the window again, even harder.

The guard got up again, went to the window, peered out, and then, looking uncertain, stepped outside.

Instantly, Coldmoon grabbed the man by the hair and pulled his head back, while at the same time yanking him behind the guardhouse, where he couldn’t be seen from the camera array, and cutting his throat. He skipped back as the body tumbled to the ground, neck jetting blood.

So much for not killing anybody.

Coldmoon waited a minute for the body to bleed out. Then he quickly removed the guard’s coat and hat, put them on, went back in the guardhouse, and opened the magazine, slouching down in the chair, all for the benefit of the cameras. He’d taken care to stay out of camera view as much as possible, but if someone had seen him, he’d rather know now than later. He remained for a few minutes, flipping pages; then he laid down the magazine and sauntered out of the guardhouse, playing idly with his fly, as if on his way to take a piss.

He slipped through the gate and walked along the inside wall, pausing in a dark angle. He felt shaken by what he’d done... what he’d had to do. He’d killed before — once — but it hadn’t been in cold blood...

He stomped hard on those feelings. Not now. Not until his partner was out.

He couldn’t be sure the cameras hadn’t picked him up, but in the driving rain the view would have been poor. In any case, nobody had come running, no alarms had gone off, and no lights had started flashing. After getting his heart rate under control, he crept farther along the inside wall, moving into an area that was darker still. The tower spotlights roamed about, but their movement was desultory and repetitive. Nobody expected an intruder to show up on a night like this. He pulled out his binocs to reconnoiter.

The main facility lay across a cracked and weed-infested apron of concrete, a solid two-story factory-like building with rows of small windows punched into a cinder-block façade. The windows looked new and there were other signs of renovations, especially evident in a freshly painted three-story building to one side. Past the gate, the road went straight on into the building, beneath a tall archway, also with a gate, into what looked like an interior courtyard. On either side of the courtyard, parking areas were visible.

Crouching, Coldmoon waited for the klieg lights to circle around on their route — and then he sprinted for the archway leading into the building.

Her mind swam back into consciousness and for a moment she braced herself instinctively, assuming the worst, hand tightening around a stiletto that wasn’t there. Then everything came flooding back: the roaring noise, being picked up and tumbled about like a rag doll... and then blackness.

All was eerily quiet except for a steady falling rain. Constance raised her head, annoyed to find she was almost completely covered in mud for a second time that evening, but the warm rain was already washing it off. She lay on the river embankment, giving herself a minute to recover. The docks and outbuildings had been torn to pieces, an unrecognizable shambles of splintered piers and roofless structures. Their boat lay overturned where the waterspout had thrown it, about a hundred yards downstream, half on the embankment and half in the water, its hull split.

But where was Perelman?

She struggled to sit up, body aching. It was so dark she could barely make out anything on the ground beyond the nearby gleam of her stiletto.

“Chief Perelman?” she called in a weak voice, and then louder: “ Perelman? ”

“Over here.”

The strained reply came from the blackness about twenty feet from her. She gingerly rose to her feet, wincing.

“Are you okay?” Perelman asked.

“I believe so. But are you?”

“I’m afraid not.”

She carefully felt her way toward his voice. A sudden flash of lightning illuminated him, sprawled on the muddy embankment. One leg was twisted beneath him in an ugly, unnatural way.

She knelt by his side. “Your leg?”

“Broken, as you can see. Can you... help me out of this mud?”

“Yes.” Constance put her arms under his and pulled him up the embankment and to a grassy area within a grove of trees.

“My poor boat,” he said.

Constance laid a hand on his forehead. It was clammy. He would be going into shock.

“Get my cell phone out of my pocket,” he said. “I’ve got to make a call.”

She reached in and took it out of his slicker pocket. It was smashed to pieces and dripping water. He fished a flashlight out of his other pocket and turned it on.

“Oh shit. What about your phone?”

“Gone.”

“Looks like we’re out of commission.”

“ You’re out of commission,” said Constance. “ I’m still in commission.”

“You?” He groaned. “What are you going to do now?”

Once again, in a swift movement Constance unsnapped his gun from the holster and slipped it out.

“What the hell do you plan to do with that?”

“It’s going to prove more useful than a stiletto.”

“You can’t go in there alone. It’s suicide. We need to get out of here and call in a massive raid. Which is what we should have done in the first place.”

Constance tucked the gun into her waistband, saying nothing.

“Constance, please listen to me. There’s no way you can do this without getting killed. You’ve got to get help. Call Pendergast’s boss at the FBI, what’s his name, Pickett.”

Constance tightened his slicker around him, making the chief as comfortable as possible. Then she stood up and stared at the lights of the facility rising above the trees. “We’ve been over this before, and there’s no more time. Pendergast is in that compound. If you call in a raid, they’ll kill him. I’m going in alone.”

“No.” A pause of disbelief. “No, no, that’s totally insane.”

“I’m sorry to leave you. I expect you’ll survive.”

“Constance, I beg you for your own sake not to go in there.”

Without giving any indication she’d heard him, she turned and slipped into the trees, heading for the complex. Perelman’s protests were quickly lost in the sound of wind and rain.

Wearing the rain slicker and hat of the guard he had killed — the coat unpleasantly sticky inside with blood, the outside washed clean by rain — Coldmoon observed the archway leading to the interior courtyard. The second checkpoint was manned by multiple guards and bristling with cameras. There was no way he could get through that.

There were other doors in the building’s long façade. He crossed an open area, walking calmly and deliberately, hoping that from a distance he looked unremarkable. He arrived at a walkway along the perimeter of the building. The doors in the façade were locked, with no handles on the outside, but as he reconnoitered, he saw a guard exit one of the doors near the far end of the building, then turn and walk away, his back to Coldmoon. He headed in that direction and paused in an area of darkness just short of the door, wondering if anyone else would come out. The lights from the tower roamed over the outer area and the wall but didn’t seem to stray along the façade itself.