Dr. O (30 page)

As soon as the package was sailing through the air, Donna braced to fire. Already a bullet from Ovierto pinged into the bulkhead beside her. Someone aboard the ship, in a white woolen sweater, perhaps the Captain, fired a blistering shot from a portal alongside Donna. The bullet slammed into Ovierto, knocking him down. Donna's own shot caught Ovierto's prostrate form in the left arm. Ovierto fired again, killing the man in the white sweater. He then scurried behind the crate, grabbing up the package hurled to him by Donna Thorpe.

"Eat it, you bastard," Donna said to herself, pre-paring to detonate the plastique Ovierto was holding, but she saw that Robyn was too close. The blast would kill her.

The hesitation was long enough for Ovierto to discover that he had been duped. He howled and threw the package back at Thorpe. It sailed out over the bow and exploded when she fired. At the same instant he stood and kicked out at the crate, sending it over the side; the thing grazed Robyn and almost sent her down.

Thorpe fired again, striking Ovierto in the chest, but it was obvious he was wearing a bulletproof vest. He ran for the lock master's office, shouting for the man to drop the level of the water as fast as possible.

Thorpe drew a bead on him, trying to hit him in the back of the head. She must have come within a hair's breath, and he ducked to the ground as the ship began to descend below ground level.

"That man's a killer, a mass murderer!" Donna shouted to the men on the ship. Get me across! Get me across!"

"We are without power! We can use no engines in the locks," said one man.

"We send a rope over!" suggested one man.

"It's no good. We are going down. Any rope we let out will just be extended and extended. You can't make it."

"The hell I can't! Get the rope out."

"It's madness!"

She lifted her .38 to the man's eyes. "Do it, now!"

As soon as the rope was secured, Donna started across, hand over hand. As she moved closer to the edge, she watched Robyn, who was pulling herself up over the edge. "Be careful!" she shouted to her. "He's wearing a vest!"

She saw Robyn pull herself up and roll onto the concrete floor. The ship's masts were now descending behind Donna, farther and farther away, and the rope she was climbing had gone taut. It was thick and as hard as stone, cutting her hands as she worked her weight along, her arms straining, her muscles threatening to give out.

Robyn disappeared ahead of her. Donna called to her to wait, but she pushed on, going for the madman. If she could only catch up, they could ensnare the bastard between them and riddle his head with bullets. The thought kept her going, straining against the odds. Behind her she heard the cheers of the men aboard the Carpathia, their dead captain at their feet.

"I'm going to get that bastard or die trying," she swore to herself once again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Robyn Muro was shaky, but now she gripped the gun and held it steady, searching the black, empty spaces of a surreal landscape filled with strange objects, from ventilator shafts that formed giant circles to storage and electrical containers, pulleys, and levers. Inside the administrator's office, the lock master's throat had been slashed where he sat behind the controls. Doing just what Ovierto requested, following his every instruction to the letter, hadn't saved the man from a horrible fate. The body count at the seaway locks was now up to four, counting the man on the ship. Robyn thought for a moment about Riley, wondering if he had family back in D.C., but she had to keep her attention on the silence all around her. Somewhere in the maze of the buildings here lurked the worst killer she had ever faced.

Ovierto was thorough and cunning. He had thought of everything. He had seen blueprints of this place and knew it inside and out. She, on the other hand, didn't know where she was in relation to the outside, nor where to start.

He had cut the lines to the lights. He must be hiding here somewhere. She then heard a door, a large, industrial door, whining with a gust of air as it closed. She raced through a myriad of pipes and conduits and noise and steam. She slammed into the wall beside the door. The fact that she'd made it alive to this point meant the bastard was on the outside again. She slowly opened the whining door, knowing it could be a trap that could ensnare her as quickly as a hammer blow.

She had last seen Donna two-thirds of the way across the rope she was taking over the chasm of the locks. But now, as she came through the door with great caution, she saw Donna again, on her feet, coming towards the back of the building, right at her, and between them there was Ovierto. Donna opened fire at the same instant that Robyn did, Robyn realizing too late, as bullets rained around her, that they were both backdrops for a mirrored, holographic image of Ovierto. Robyn caught one in the shoulder and fell to the concrete, cutting her chin as she did so.

The image remained between them, but Robyn could see through the image to where Donna was slumped to her knees.

"It's not him!" she screamed as Donna looked up at her, blood rushing up over her lips.

Donna was hit. Hit badly by one of Robyn's bullets. Robyn rushed to Donna and took her in her arms.

"Careful, he's still nearby," she croaked, making Robyn search the darkness all around them when she saw a van back from the parking lot and screech away.

"Don't let him get away," said Donna, coughing.

"I can't leave you."

"Get him!"

"You're parents, Donna... we have them safe."

"Bury me alongside them..."

"Donna!"

"... in an unmarked grave... if Ovierto gets away..."

Donna slumped over, her eyes rolling back in her head. Robyn felt the life lift away from her. "Oh, God, oh, Donna, Donna!"

She watched the van in the distance disappearing towards the Robert Moses Dam. She looked around, placed Donna gently down and rushed back to where the lock master's body remained in his chair. There she searched a wall of keys for a vehicle key, finding them numbered. She rushed out to the workman's yard, running into the guard who had tried to stop Donna Thorpe on the other side. He had driven under the bridge below the seaway to get here.

"Whoever that guy is, he's trapped now," said the guard. "There's no way out from that end. It's an island and the dam, and that's it."

"The dam goes across to Canada, though."

"Yeah, but he couldn't... wouldn't attempt to..."

She raced for the light truck with the number corresponding to the key, jumped in and sped out of the lot, streaking the road with rubber. She pushed it to the floor. Ovierto had a plan of escape, that was certain, and it involved the dam. Had anyone ever attempted crossing the border via the dam? It fit with his grandiose notion of himself. As far as she was concerned, it was a grand place for the bastard to die.

Ahead, in the distance, the dam was lit only by the glow of the orange sodium-vapor lights of the empty parking lot. She saw only the van that Ovierto had used, pulled up just outside the main door. An alarm was blaring nonstop, like a hungry child. She saw a dead guard the other side of the broken glass.

The dam was officially closed to the public. It had come down to her alone against the most awful evil she had ever known.

"For Donna and for Joe," she told herself as she stepped through the broken glass, searching for a way to the dam itself. The place hummed with electricity and there were lights on one floor where the control room was in full operation. Several men were milling about three walls of dials and lights. Huge- faced clocks, set for each time zone, stared down at them. There was a glass partition for the viewing public to watch these men at what appeared to be very boring work. They seemed oblivious to the alarm downstairs or the fact the building had been penetrated by Ovierto and the cop who would destroy him. Apparently alarms went off here frequently.

She searched for and located a floor map. Above her was the observation tower and the only public access to viewing the dam proper. She had no idea how Ovierto intended to get out onto the dam in the dark and make his way across to Canada, but she now knew how she would do it. She'd have to go up to the top floor, four up. Perhaps from above, if she could locate him, she could draw a bead on him and bring him down.

She first found a door that took her into the control room of the dam; the men there were immediately upset by her presence.

"Just call the Canadian authorities. Tell them you have a man on the dam, armed and very dangerous, trying to escape police here to enter their country! Do it, now!"

She knew the Mounties. They would be real pissed off to learn about anyone's trying to use the dam in such a fashion, and they wouldn't hesitate to use their side arms. But she hoped to get him first. She started away.

"Wait, where are you going?"

"After him!"

The man let her go, trailing behind her up to the observation tower. He unlocked the doors that took her out on a walkway above the dam. She could see the lights of Cornwall on the other side of the seaway, here wide and unencumbered by islands such as that which had made the locks here possible. "I don't see anyone down there."

The spine of the dam here was flat and wide and as long as an airstrip, and every object on its surface looked momentarily like Ovierto, but was not. "Where is he?" she cried as she stared down at the row of giant turbines that kept the enormous generators rolling, sending up a noise from the water like thunder. She imagined how at peace she would be to see Ovierto's body descend into one of those turbines to be chewed to pieces. She realized just how much hate the man had created in her. She realized now how Donna Thorpe had felt for years, how she could use Joe and anyone else she could to get at this creep.

"Try the glasses," said the man beside her, placing a quarter into the viewer. It magnified everything, but for some time she could not see anyone on the dam, only a huge, silent derrick.

"Man's a fool to try to get across that if he doesn't know what he's doing," said the dam expert.

"This man is quite mad. He's a murderer."

She located him in the glasses. "There, there he is."

She stepped away from the viewer and prepared to aim her .38 when she heard the rush of wind preceding a helicopter that suddenly moved in as if from nowhere. "Is that a police chopper?" she asked.

"I can't tell," was the response. "Don't see any markings."

"No, no! It's coming in for Ovierto. Damn, damn! He arranged for a thorough escape, timed to the moment. Damn!"

"Could be a Canadian chopper."

"No, too fast." She aimed once more at the speck that was Ovierto. She concentrated as if she were back on the firing range in Chicago. She fired a single shot as the man beside her watched through the viewer.

"Damn, you hit him!" the man shouted.

"Did he stay down?"

"So far, yes."

"Keep him in view."

"What're you going to do?"

The viewing machine rattled, signaling that time was spent on it. "Damn, need a quarter?" said the man, who searched his pockets, having long since lost his calm. He located one and the machine was put instantly back into operation. "Is he still down? Is he down?" she pleaded.

"No... no... leastways, I can't see him."

"Damnit! The man has nine lives."

There, he's about ten yards further along."

"Out of range. How can we get down there? What's the fastest way?"

"Follow me."

They hurried to a service door through which they located an elevator that would take them to the surface of the dam. The seconds seemed to stretch on for an eternity while the elevator dropped down and down, and she feared with each passing moment that the deadly O would make his escape.

The doors opened and she told the workman with the tense eyes and the hard hat that she'd take it from here alone.

"It's dangerous unless you know the route," he told her.

She pushed on anyway.

Behind her he continued to follow, saying that, "You'll waste valuable time if you don't follow me."

"The man I'm after will kill you at the blink of an eye," she shouted at him. "Do you want that?"

He stopped cold, gulped and said, "No, no... but you need my help."

"All right, but the moment I say down, drop!"

"Good enough."

He led her around the intricate metal and stone maze of the working dam over which they stood. This was no place for visitors, she realized when she had to leap across an open air vent at the bottom of which churned the waters below the dam. The noise of the turbines here was deafening, and they had to use hand signals to communicate. All the while the workman was watching her step, Robyn Muro was watching for Ovierto.

She saw the helicopter hovering above the very center of the dam. It had lowered a rope ladder, and it was a hundred yards from her, perhaps more.

Gunshots rang out, sending Robyn to the concrete floor of the dam. The gravelly surface was rough against her cheek. At the same instant she heard the workman scream and saw that he'd lost his footing, going over the side, into one of the enormous, gaping turbines. She crawled to where she saw him go over and found him hanging by both hands there.