Mercer started getting a bad feeling.
“And so she took off with the crystals aboard her Lockheed Electra with navigator Fred Noonan on the longest and most dangerous leg of her round-the-world journey, a publicity stunt so her husband and financier, George Putnam, could sell more newspapers.”
He groaned when the names and dates all came together in his mind. Few knew George Putnam, but every schoolchild knows the name of his famous wife.
“You know who I’m talking about?” It was more statement than question.
Mercer wasn’t sure whether he wanted to laugh or cry at the cruel irony of it all. “Amelia Earhart,” he said dejectedly. “She had the lion’s share of Sample 681 aboard her plane when she vanished.”
18
In the next moment, Mercer’s world went from bad to worse.
A piercing alarm blared from the radio. It was the nerve-jangling sound of the emergency response system, that annoying tone most people switched away from when listening to the radio or watching television. But in parts of the country where residents understood that nature had not yet been tamed, they heeded these signals as life-or-death alerts.
When the awful honking ended, a mechanical voice replaced it and started rattling off county names. They meant nothing to Mercer until Roni Butler suddenly tensed. Whatever was happening was happening here.
The voice then said, “It has been reported that Army Corps engineers have initiated an emergency release of water from the Wilbur Berry dam reservoir on the upper reaches of Blair Creek. Anyone who has not followed the evacuation order and lives in the Blair Creek watershed, the creek is estimated to crest a further five feet above its current level.”
Mercer didn’t need to hear the rest. “Let’s go!”
Naked fear made Roni suddenly look her age. Mercer took her hand and pulled her in his wake as he rushed for the front room. He wouldn’t have bothered with his coat, but the SUV keys were in its pocket. He tossed Roni her bright yellow rain slicker and slipped into his bomber. He opened the door and drew her outside. Water cascaded off the eaves but through it Mercer spotted the big bulbous-tired four-by-four with its Zodiac in tow approaching the house. It was the rescue team he’d seen earlier in town, and he was suddenly grateful for its presence. Doubtless the men were locals and knew the best way to avoid the impending catastrophe.
It was only after the truck came to a stop shy of the driveway entrance that an animal instinct struck Mercer. It dawned on him that the red strobe light affixed to the truck’s roof was off, and so were the banks of high-intensity lamps running the width of its grille. If they had come to rescue Roni Butler despite her protests, they would have arrived with horns blaring and lights flashing. They wouldn’t have crawled up the road in stealth mode.
The passenger threw open his door and jumped out into the rain. Mercer could see just his indistinct outline in the murky light, but he could tell by the way he moved that something was desperately wrong. He couldn’t be sure, but it appeared the man carried a pistol in his right hand.
Mercer didn’t wait for the driver to exit the tall pickup. He drew Roni back into her house and closed and locked the front door. He was pretty sure they hadn’t seen him. He rushed through to the kitchen and snatched the shotgun from where she’d left it.
“Rack it,” she said.
He looked at her questioningly.
“You think I greet people with a loaded shotgun?” Roni asked him. “The chamber’s empty.”
Mercer shook his head at the absurdity of it all and pumped a shell into the short-barreled Mossberg’s chamber. “Slugs or shot?”
“Double-ought buck.” She gave him a handful of extra shells she’d taken from a kitchen drawer.
“That’ll do. Stay down next to the stove.” It was an ancient beast of an appliance made out of much thicker steel than a modern range, and it offered her good protection.
He crossed back to the front window. He didn’t see the first guy, but the second was now out of the truck and crossing the lawn.
Mercer’s heart tripped inside his chest when he got a clear look at him, and an extra dose of adrenaline raced through his veins. It was him. The leader, the top dog, whom Mercer had first spied coming out of the mine chamber following Abe’s cold-blooded murder. He moved like a jungle cat, smooth, sure, deadly. He and his partner must have hijacked the rescue team’s vehicle.
Mercer brought the shotgun up to his shoulder but held his fire. Without a full choke, the range was just too far for the nine-pellet shell, so he lowered the weapon again, breathing slow and even, trying not to let his emotions cloud his tactical awareness.
“Who are they?” Roni asked in a rasping whisper.
“Killers.”
“No shit,” she snapped back. “Who? Why?”
“They’re after the mother lode of Sample 681, same as me. I just don’t know how they found you.”
Just then her phone rang. It was a wall phone with a long coiled cord, the kind Mercer hadn’t seen in years. She slid up just enough to knock the handset loose into her palm, and went back to cowering behind the stove with the phone clamped to her head.
Mercer heard her talking but paid no attention as he went from room to room checking for targets outside the simple clapboard house. The lawn was a quagmire as treacherous as the no-man’s-land between World War I trenches. He spotted one of the men watching the house from behind a tree.
“Mr. Mercer?” Roni called out. He was in her bedroom. Satisfied he had a few more minutes while the pair reconnoitered the house, he moved well back from the window so as not to give himself away and then tracked back to the kitchen.
“That was Sherman Smithson,” Roni said. “He called to warn me these guys were coming. They hit his house a few hours ago and left him tied up in a closet. They tortured my name out of him.”
Mercer expected they would have just killed him and been done with it. He wondered if their leniency had any meaning, then recalled the wounds in Abe’s chest and decided it didn’t.
The old woman continued, “He says he only escaped because his girlfriend got over her fear of the storm and drove out to West Branch to surprise him. He says he only saw the two of them and doesn’t know if there are more.”
Mercer’s opinion of Smithson went up a few notches. For an archivist, he seemed to have a pretty good grasp of what was important at a time like this.
“How far upstream is that dam mentioned on the radio?”
“About ten miles.”
Mercer estimated the time since the report and the speed of the oncoming deluge and knew they had to chance it. He held out his hand to take her back toward the front door. “We have to make a break for it, Roni, otherwise we’ll be trapped in here when the wall of water hits. Can you run?”
“Not as fast as I used to, but just you try and stop me.”
“Okay, I am going to open this door and step out onto the porch. One of them is behind a tree about to the right.”
“The one outside my bedroom?”
“Yes. As soon as I’m outside I want you to get up a good head of steam and start running for my SUV. The doors aren’t locked, so just jump in the backseat and stay down. I’m going to keep them pinned with the shotgun.”
She looked uncertain.
“We can do this, Roni. It’s not even twenty feet to my truck, and a shotgun blast will keep anyone’s head down long enough for us to make it.”
This time she nodded, tightening her mouth in a grim line of determination.
Mercer opened the door and was about to step out when the sound of gunfire exploded from his left. The second shooter was at the other side of the house, and had just been about to vault the railing to gain access to the porch. Mercer stepped back, switching the shotgun to his left hand, and swung its barrel blindly around the jam. He fired. The blast nearly ripped the weapon from his grasp, but he was able to use the recoil to seat the gun so his right hand was on the slide, ready to ram another three-inch shell into the chamber. He fired again, and chanced a look outside. The second shooter was gone. He could have taken a full blast to the chest and been lying in the grass dead, but most likely he had dropped back before the shotgun fired.