Alexa crawled to Bond’s position on her belly, just as the first gas tank erupted, engulfing the vessel in flames. The second tank exploded seconds later. The boat became an inferno, black smoke choking the air in the channel, blowing into the tree line across the water. Bond dropped to the ground and roared his laughter into the skies.
“I hit him,” Bond said.
“Solid?”
“Good enough to have him thinking about it. We need to move while we have a smoke-screen cover.”
Bond laughed again and Alexa joined him.
“Even if it wasn’t a killing shot, the more angry he is, the more likely it is he’ll make another mistake.”
Even badly wounded, Alexa imagined Leland Ticholet would still be an extremely dangerous adversary.
They rushed to Manseur, who had managed to stand to lean against a tree, blood dripping from his mouth and jaw. With Bond at his side, Manseur’s good arm over his friend’s shoulder to support himself, Manseur managed to walk toward the cabin. Bond carried his 30-06 in his left hand, his right holding Manseur’s belt to keep the injured man balanced.
Alexa carried her shotgun, gripping the stock, finger beside the trigger guard. Manseur’s shotgun remained propped against the tree he’d been beside when he’d been shot.
“What’ll we do now, Agent Keen?” Bond asked. “Burn the cabin?”
“I’m thinking,” Alexa answered. And she was.
89
Leland Ticholet worked his way back toward the cabin. He wasn’t frightened, but he was losing a lot of blood. He wasn’t thinking about the fact that he needed medical attention. With his boat gone, all Leland could think about was punishing the people responsible.
He couldn’t let the cops take the other boat and get away. He had to make sure they didn’t get to it.
He was sure he had killed the short cop. He was sure of it because he’d shot him in the head twice. The other cop with the rifle and the woman cop with the shotgun were all that stood between him and returning to life as usual. If they hadn’t come here, everything would have been fine.
He was feeling a little dizzy, and he knew he had to stop the bleeding. He removed his boxer shorts and twisted them into a tight rope. Using his teeth and his good hand, he tied a knot in the end and slipped the loop up his arm above the wound. By turning a stick he’d picked up, he tightened the tourniquet until the blood flow slowed. He pinned the stick between his arm and his side so could pick up the rifle. He slipped five of the large bullets between his teeth and walked slowly toward the cabin, totally focused.
90
Alexa and Bond agreed that they couldn’t wait for Leland to make the next move. They didn’t really know much about Leland and what drove him. Bond said Leland thought more like an animal that could only plan in the short term, and react to situations as they came, than a person. Alexa thought he was very possibly clinically insane, which as long as he was alone out here and unthreatened wasn’t a big deal. He lacked social skills, might even be marginally retarded. Whatever the reality was, he was no ordinary criminal, and Alexa and Bond knew they couldn’t trust him to do what most people would in similar circumstances.
Leland might or might not know other cops were coming and that his time was running out. Neither of them believed he would cut and run. Unless he was so seriously wounded that he was lying in the brush dying, Leland would try to resolve the immediate problem. He’d come for them or wait in hiding for them to move into his field of fire. Either way, Alexa didn’t think he would wait long, given his wound.
Alexa stayed with Manseur, watching Larry Bond as he started his wide circle around the rear of the cabin. She was twenty feet from the edge of the dock, kneeling beside Manseur, who slumped, eyes closed, with his back against a tree. Bond moved silently, a man who hunted deer by stalking them, and his camouflage helped him melt into the foliage. One second he was there, the next gone.
Alexa turned her radio up until it squealed and backed off until it was quiet. She wouldn’t call Bond, but he would be able to call her when he found Leland, or got to Kennedy.
She hoped Leland was dead, but despite Bond’s confidence in his shot, she couldn’t relax. Leland was a large and powerful man, and he had Kennedy’s rifle. If he was drawing a bead on her at that moment, she wouldn’t ever know it. Given the speed of a. 270 round, you’d never hear the shot that got you.
Alexa thought about Kennedy, who was likely dead, the young deputy lying lifeless on the dock, the dead kidnapper in the cabin, and the shot-up briefcase full of bonds. The missing diary pages also entered her thoughts, and she wondered if they were in the cabin. Hearing a twig snap, she pivoted to see Leland Ticholet, stark naked except for the ballistic vest. He stood not ten feet away, aiming Kennedy’s rifle at her head. She froze. Leland’s wild eyes were burning like coals. Silver shells with black heads and yellow plastic points radiated from his mouth like talons. Alexa could see his finger in the guard as he squeezed the trigger once, and then again. She read the sudden slacking of his facial muscles when nothing happened, and she realized that there was no shell in the chamber.
Howling, Leland threw the weapon at her like a spear, then darted past her, zigzagging through the brush. She raised the Mossberg and fired twice.
“Alexa!” Bond’s voice called out from the radio’s speaker.
Fingers trembling, she keyed her radio. “Larry. I’m okay.”
“You get him?”
“I tried. He ran off. How’s Kennedy?”
“Alive. Leland hit him good in the head, but he’s got a strong pulse. I’m coming back now. Wait for me.”
“Okay,” she said.
Alexa looked at Manseur, whose eyes were open now. He had drawn his Glock and was aiming in the direction Leland had run. Leland had to be stopped.
“Wait for Kennedy,” she told Manseur. He nodded, squeezing his eyes shut when the pain hit him. Reloading as she walked, Alexa took off after her quarry.
91
The detective with the rifle passed by where he was lying in the brush, and had moved into the foliage before Leland saw him, and by then it was too late to shoot him. Leland moved as soon as he could do so without the rifleman hearing him. He’d gone around through the cover behind the cabin, sneaking up easily on the woman cop. Surprisingly, the man he’d shot in the head was very much alive, but hurt bad enough not to be a threat.
Leland had moved in close to them and had aimed at the woman before she knew he was there. He’d deliberately stepped on the dry branch so she would turn and see it coming. Surprised, she hadn’t immediately raised her shotgun, and he had her nailed. He pulled the trigger, and nothing. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t worked the bolt, but what with being hit, he’d forgotten all about it. And he had left the pistol he’d gotten off the cop behind. Now he was unarmed, and running like a wild animal.
He was halfway to the point where he would have to swim to get away when he ran right past something that stopped him. A pump-gun was propped against a tree. He grabbed it up. Resting the butt on his leg, he pushed back the slide. A spent shell popped out. Putting the stock between his feet to hold it, he pulled the slide forward, feeding a shell into the chamber. He knelt and aimed at the sound of the cop coming, right toward him. In his mind he saw exactly how her severed head would hit the ground before her corpse collapsed beside it.
92
Shotgun primed and at the ready, Alexa moved swiftly toward the point. She was almost to the tree where Manseur had been wounded, when sensing-rather than seeing-Leland, she stopped abruptly and dropped to her knees. Leland’s shotgun exploded, and she saw the bright blast from the muzzle. She felt the windblast as the buckshot passed inches from her scalp.