Greg Iles - The Devils Punchbowl

The ref looks at Mike’s handler. “Is your dog still game?”

“Hell, no,” the man mutters. “Sumbitch is good as dead. You call it. Collins can have the purse.”

At this concession, the crowd explodes into motion. Walt feels like he’s in an ant pile some kid stomped on. Wads of cash change hands as people make for the doors, and nearly everyone has a cell phone jammed against his ear.

“We go now!” Ming says, real fear in her eyes.

“No, we don'’t,” says Walt.

Engines roar to life outside, shaking the barn. Dirt and gravel hammer the walls as the vehicles flee.

“Yes, yes. Must go now!”

“Take it easy. After these yahoos clear out with their dogs, we’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“Helicopter coming!”

The barn is empty now, save for Walt and Ming and a pile of black fur in the pit. Mike’s handler has left him behind. Walt steps down into the pit, kneels beside the valiant bulldog. Thankfully, Mike is dead. Walt closes his eyes for a moment, thinking of soldiers he’d known who died just as uselessly as Mike did.

“You want go to jail?” Ming cries.

Walt isn’t worried about jail. He’s almost certain that the helicopter is being flown by Danny McDavitt. Still, if some gung-ho sheriff’s deputy were to show up on a random raid, Walt would either have to blow his cover to get out of it or spend the night in some parish shithole. With a heavy sigh he stands and climbs out of the pit, then takes Ming by the hand and leads her to the barn door.

“You crazy man?” Ming asks gravely.

Walt thinks of the howling crowd and the bleeding dogs and wonders how he wound up in the middle of nowhere while the real action went down somewhere else.

“Maybe so,” he says wearily.

The limousine waits outside like a long black hearse, its engine purring in the dark. When the driver jumps out and opens the rear door, Walt helps Ming in, then settles back into the leather seat beside her.

“Any sign of that chopper?” he asks.

“It moved off toward the river,” says the driver.

“Good.”

“Are we going back to the boat?”

Ming clenches his hand and puts her lips against his ear. “Hotel now. Make you forget dogs. Yes?”

Walt draws back and looks into her bottomless eyes. Back on the

Queen,

outside the Devil’s Punchbowl, they had seemed opaque, but now he feels he could lose himself in their depths.

He looks up and sees the driver watching them in his rearview mirror, smug judgment in his eyes.

“Eola Hotel,” Walt says. “And if you look back here again, I'’ll cut your right ear off.

Comprende?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then move out.”

CHAPTER

59

Caitlin stands alert on the tin roof of the kennel, her ears attuned to the slightest sound. For a few moments she thought she’d heard the distant drumbeat of a helicopter, but it faded so quickly that she decided it had been some resonant vibration of her feet on the tin. Even if a chopper was searching for her, it would be unable to spot her beneath the shed that shields the kennel from the sky.

It had taken half an hour, but she’d finally got two sacks of puppy chow onto the roof. The Bully Kuttas made no noise other than a sort of strangled cough, and she’d realized that this was what it sounded like when they tried to bark. But they’d followed her as remorselessly as sharks, and she wondered if Linda was right—that they were too smart to be distracted by a pile of puppy chow. Caitlin had searched the storeroom for other possible distractions but had found none. Nor drugs that might sedate the dogs. Quinn had removed everything that might help them to escape.

Very carefully, she carries a heavy sack of puppy chow to the hole above her prison room. She’s studied the Cyclone fence from the roof and decided that barefoot is the way to go at it. The Bully Kuttas are tall, and instinct tells her that a full-out sprint followed by a leap for the highest point she can reach—a leap with all four limbs grasping for holds—will offer the best chance of escape. Bare toes will surely fit into the openings in the fence better than the toes of

her shoes. It will probably hurt like hell, but compared to the jaws that will be pursuing her, such pain is meaningless.

Of course, this reasoning goes to hell when she considers Linda. The reality is, she will be dragging Linda across the open space at a snail’s pace, probably gagged to keep her from crying out in pain. As soon as she tries to boost Linda up, the fence wire will ring against the poles, and at least one dog will come to investigate the noise—if they’ve been distracted at all.

Caitlin wonders if she’ll have the courage to stay on the ground if the dogs come running and Linda is slow to climb. Will she risk being eaten alive to help someone who has little chance of making it over the top without her? Can she live with the memory of standing safe on the far side of the fence while four dogs tear a helpless woman to pieces?

Stop,

she tells herself, humping the second bag across the roof on her shoulder.

Cross that bridge when you come to it.

More than once she’s wondered whether, if she went over alone and ran nonstop from the time she cleared the fence, she might be able to bring back help before Quinn returned to do whatever Sands has ordered him to do. Linda could probably get onto the roof and hide there, and Caitlin could pull the tin back down into place before she made her break. Surely such a ruse would have some chance of working—not on Sands, of course, but maybe on Seamus Quinn.

Pausing beside the hole over her room, Caitlin considers bringing this up to Linda. Linda would agree, of course. She doesn’'t want to risk the dogs anyway. Offering her the choice is the same as copping out on trying to save her.

“You don'’t even know if you can get the chain off her,” Caitlin mutters. “Quit borrowing trouble.”

Being careful of the tin’s sharp edges, Caitlin drops the first sack down the hole in the roof. It hits with a solid thud. She looks at it a moment, then lifts the second bag and drops it onto the first. From the ground below, the four white dogs watch with ardent curiosity.

“Bye-bye, suckers,” she says with a wave.

Then she flattens her palms on both sides of the hole, lets herself down, and drops to the floor.

“Linda?” she says, tearing open one of the bags. “You got those bars off yet?”

No answer.

“Linda? Talk to me.”

Caitlin leans close against the plywood wall. She hears nothing. This time she shouts Linda’s name, but there’s no reply, and suddenly she realizes she didn't really expect one. Screaming irrationally, Caitlin climbs to the windowsill and lifts herself onto the roof again. The dogs are making barking motions, and she hears their hacking coughs, but she ignores them and runs to the hole over the storeroom.

Dropping through it, she cries out when her bruised feet hit the cement, but she doesn’'t slow down. She runs to the door and tests it by pulling on the handle. She’s done this already and thought it too strong, but now adrenaline has electrified her muscles. Taking two steps back, she throws her shoulder against the door. It moves in the frame, but the impact tells her it will take many more such blows to make headway.

Looking around desperately, her eyes fall on the medicine cabinet. She hadn'’t noticed before, but the cabinet is resting on casters. Without even thinking, she heaves the heavy cabinet away from the wall and places it perpendicular to the door, about eight feet away. Then she braces her shoulder against the cabinet and drives it against the door with all the power in her legs.