Presidential Deal (19 page)

Chapter 31

“You telling me that
nobody’s
flying to Nassau?”

“You’re welcome to try elsewhere,” the Bahamas-Air clerk said. She tilted her head, made a shrugging motion that made Driscoll think of his own. “Though I don’t think ’tis going to happen.” She was a black woman, with the accent of an islander. “It’s the weather, you know?”

A group of people were seated in a waiting area nearby, most of them watching a blaring TV program where several analysts debated why no one had yet come forward to claim responsibility for the First Lady’s disappearance.

Driscoll gestured past them toward a bank of windows that overlooked the runways outside. When he lifted his own arm, Ray Brisa’s rose along with it. The clerk must have noticed the set of cuffs that linked the two of them together, but she didn’t say anything.

“Look at it,” he said. “It’s clear as a bell out there.” It was a lovely evening, the thunderheads long gone, the sky so pristine that a sliver of moon and a single star were already visible.

“…may very well be that they’ve botched the job, that they’ve actually killed her,” the voice of one of the television pundits drifted over. This from a young guy with a British accent, a vest under his coat, a bow tie. His tone of voice suggested it was an intellectual problem. Driscoll stared at the television for a moment.

He’d glanced at a paper on the way into the airport. Charles Hollingsworth, the President’s opponent in the upcoming election, had called for an attack on Libya, on general principle alone. The senator seemed to think that America had gone soft, that some indiscriminate bullying was in order. The message was that the liberal President had brought this all upon himself. Pretty soon they’d have Charles Manson on, checking his opinion on the matter.

“Sure, it’s calm out
there
,” the Air Bahamas clerk was saying, her eyes already on the next person in line. “Down in the islands there’s a storm coming.”

“Listen,” Driscoll said patiently. “If you had to get to Nassau, what would you do?”

She looked at him impassively. “Nothing,” she said. “I’d stay right here.”

“…avoid jumping to any conclusions,” another TV pundit was saying. “We learned that lesson after the TWA disaster…” His counterpart, the guy in the vest, rolled his eyes, made a dismissive gesture. Tom Brokaw leaned in to separate the two. Driscoll was glad they hadn’t invited him on the show.

“Come on, man,” Brisa said, his expression—what you could make out for the bandages, that is—a pained one. “You heard what the lady said…”

“Shut up,” Driscoll said.

He started to reach into his pocket, then stopped when he realized he was pulling Ray Brisa’s hand along, too. He reached in his jacket with his other hand, found his “
SONNY CROCKETT—CHIEF OF DETECTIVES
” shield, flipped it open, let her take a look. The thing had been a joke, a going-away present from his peers on the squad, but they’d used an official-looking blank and Driscoll had found it handy more than once since his retirement.

“Where’s your pilot’s lounge?” he said, flipping the shield closed quickly, stowing it in his pocket.

“We can’t give out such information,” she protested.

“Do you know the penalties for obstructing an officer during the performance of his duties?” Driscoll said. “If you’re not a citizen, we…”

“Hey…” Brisa began, but that was all that came out before Driscoll ground his heel down atop the little bastard’s instep.

“…the limitations of this country’s power and the essential helplessness of the human condition,” another TV voice was saying, the phrasing clear even over Brisa’s groans. Driscoll glanced to see which set of teeth and hair had been so profound, but a Buick commercial had already begun to play. He thought of Janice Deal’s comments then. The world gone to hell in a handcart, and the Buicks were still rolling off the line. Was that what it had come to, then? Even disaster was a media opportunity.

“What’s the matter with him?” the clerk asked, bringing Driscoll back. She was staring at Brisa in concern.

Brisa was bent over the counter, still gasping. He probably would have been on the floor, rubbing his stomped foot, but Driscoll wasn’t about to give him the slack. “He needs medical attention,” Driscoll said brusquely.

“In the Bahamas?” she asked.

Driscoll leaned in toward her. “Point me in the right direction, now. Then you can go ahead and give all the rest of these people the bad news.”

She hesitated, glanced at the surly, ever-growing line behind the restraining ropes, then gave in. She tore a slip of paper from a pad, jotted something down. “That’s down C Concourse, now,” she said. “But you won’t get in without the proper clearance.”

“Thanks for the tip,” Driscoll said. He was already off, dragging the protesting Brisa after him.

***

“You think
you can haul me anywhere you want?” Brisa was saying. They were standing against the wall of the broad concourse, opposite the entrance to the Air Bahamas pilots’ lounge. “This is like kidnapping, man. You’re not even a cop anymore.”

Driscoll stared at him mildly. “Let’s get something straight, you little prick,” he said. “I got a use for you.”

“Which is what?”

“You’re my eyewitness, okay? You don’t like it, you want me to take you downtown, hand you over to the Feds, you just say the word.”

Brisa stared back, trying for a bad-ass look, but even he must have realized how pathetic he appeared. He turned away, working the foot Driscoll had stomped. “I’m hurting, man. This isn’t, like, humane.”

“Humane?” Driscoll repeated. “That’s something that applies to humans, isn’t it?”

“Fuck you,” Brisa muttered, but it wasn’t really an insult.

“I’m doing you a favor, Ray. Try to keep that in mind.”

Brisa scoffed, but he didn’t say anything more. After a moment, he turned back to Driscoll. “Why don’t you go knock on the door?” he said. “You wait much longer, all the guys’ll be gone, man.”

Driscoll nodded. It was true that they’d already seen two pilots hustle out, wheeled suitcases in tow, heading back the way he and Brisa had come: one tall black man in his forties—uniform immaculate, shoes gleaming—who moved with the snap and precision of a military officer; then a younger Latino guy with his pilot’s cap under his arm—he’d had an Errol Flynn look about him, a broad smile on his face, was jabbering into a portable phone as he walked.

“So what are we doing here, man? Couldn’t we at least sit down somewhere?”

“That’d only happen if we went to Plan B,” Driscoll said.

“Yeah?” Brisa said, cocking his good eye at him. “So what’s Plan A?”

“For you to shut your face,” Driscoll said. He nodded across the concourse, where the door to the pilots’ lounge had opened once again. Driscoll lifted their common hand, used his thumb and forefinger to fire an imaginary round at the pilot who emerged.

This one was a short, overweight man in his fifties, his coat slung over his shoulder, part of his shirttail hanging out in back. The network of exploded veins on his broad face was vivid, even at their vantage point. “Now
there’s
a fucking loser,” Brisa said.

“Yeah,” Driscoll said. He pushed himself off the wall, jerking Brisa along after him. “But he’s
our
loser, Ray.”

They were hurrying down the concourse then, Driscoll sidestepping a porter rolling an old woman in a wheelchair, hustling after the pilot, who was moving quickly toward the terminal, his bright nose cocked up as if he’d caught the scent of whiskey somewhere.

“Yo, Billy,” Driscoll called.

The pilot turned, saw who it was. He groaned and closed his eyes as Driscoll approached. “Good to see you back at work, Billy.”

The pilot cut a glance about them. “Keep your voice down, Driscoll. And stop calling me Billy.”

Driscoll shrugged, took the coat off the pilot’s shoulder, inspected the name tag clipped over the breast pocket, where a whitish stain and a cigarette burn formed an accidental kind of crest. Driscoll glanced up, clapped him on the shoulder.

“Captain Michael Cudahy, is it, then?” He gave the pilot a smile. “Well, Captain Cudahy, what do you say we go have us a little chat.”

***

The three of them
sat at a table in one of the brightly lit restaurants in the main terminal, Driscoll and Ray on one side, Cudahy on the other. Cudahy toyed with an unlit cigarette, scanning the room carefully as a waitress refilled their coffees. She glanced at the handcuffs, but the look on her face suggested she’d seen a hundred men chained together that week.

When the waitress left, Brisa turned to Driscoll. “You think I’m getting on a plane with this guy behind the wheel?”

“It’s not a wheel,” Cudahy said.

“I think you’ll do whatever I say to do,” Driscoll said.

“He doesn’t even have a real
name
,” Brisa said, his voice rising.

“Can you shut him up?” Cudahy said.

“Sure,” Driscoll said. He put his free hand on Brisa’s injured shoulder and squeezed. Brisa’s face went pale. “Try to keep your voice down, Ray.”

Driscoll turned back to Cudahy. “So you can appreciate my problem, right, Billy?”

“I appreciate all kinds of things,” Cudahy said. “That don’t mean I can help you.”

Driscoll nodded. “How much weight you moving in from the islands these days, Billy?”

Cudahy stiffened. “All that’s over with. A long time ago.”

Driscoll shrugged. “I know that, Billy. Besides, I’m just a private citizen looking for a little help.” He turned to Brisa. “I ever tell you about Captain Billy here? He was a star in his day. The man practically opened up the Colombian pipeline, him and a bunch of other airline employees.”

“I got backed into that…”

“And that’s how I got you off so easy,” Driscoll said, turning aside to Brisa. “We used the captain’s testimony to put some big fish away, Ray.”

Cudahy leaned closer. “Nobody’s going to rent us a plane to fly to Nassau with that weather coming in. Forget it.”

“So we lie,” Driscoll said.

“There’s not an airport over there that’ll let us land,” Cudahy said.

“What are they going to do, shoot us down? They got a hurricane to worry about.”

“Now there’s another good reason to fly,” Cudahy said.

“Billy,” Driscoll said patiently, “I got great faith in you.”

“My ass,” Brisa said.

Driscoll nudged him in the ribs with his elbow. Brisa’s breath left him in a gasp.

“I gotta get to Nassau, Billy.”

Cudahy looked him over. “It’s not like you to beg.”

Driscoll tossed a wad of bills on the table. “I ain’t begging, goddammit.”

Cudahy gave him a pained look, dropping his napkin over the bills. He glanced around the room, then checked under the napkin, riffling the corner of the wad with his thumb. “You know what a plane rents for these days?” he asked.

Driscoll sighed. “They take credit cards, don’t they?”

Cudahy met Driscoll’s gaze, smiling for the first time. “You must really want to go to Nassau.”

“I’m going to take that as a yes,” Driscoll said. And then he was pulling Brisa to his feet.

Chapter 32

Deal moved down the dimly traced path, fighting the wind, the lashing foliage, hoping he was headed toward the docks and the house he’d seen when they were brought to the island. Not only was his visibility limited by the storm and the failing light, but the very topography itself seemed changed, as if the wind were remolding landmarks before his eyes.

He lurched forward in a slow crabwalk, pulling himself along through the storm from tree limb to root to shrub. Slow going, but the only way to keep himself from being toppled by the force of the wind, and it had the added advantage of keeping him out of the path of flying debris. Most of their prison roof had already torn loose, the great corrugated sheets soaring away in the gusts like tissue—seventy-pound sheets of tissue, each with a razor’s edge.

He pulled himself close to a sturdy pine, trying for a moment to shield his face from the full force of the wind. Limbs snapped, vague shapes flew past overhead, greenish lightning crackled everywhere, and the thunder was an unabated background roar.

He could have stayed huddled with Linda beneath the boughs of that great fallen tree, but they’d nearly died there once already. Maybe the two men they’d killed were the only ones who’d been out, of course. Maybe all the others were battened down inside that shoreside house, waiting for the storm to pass. But he knew only one way to find out.

He’d been trying to watch for more of Angel’s men as he moved along, but he couldn’t keep his head up for more than a few seconds at a time. The M-16 he’d taken from one of the dead guards was slung securely across his back, useless if he ran into anyone with a weapon at the ready, but he needed both his hands free to pull himself along. He would just have to hope that they wouldn’t be moving about in such weather, or that if they were, they’d be moving just as blindly, just as hamstrung, as he was.

He wiped his sleeve across his face, but the movement only squeegeed more water into his eyes. Still, he could hear the pounding of surf up ahead, and knew he couldn’t be far from the point where the path branched, one arm leading down to the docks, the other twisting along the waterfront toward the house. He was about to push himself on, toward a sodden clump of Brazilian pepper that thrashed Medusalike in the gusts, when he felt the hand on his shoulder.

He lurched away from the touch, already down on one knee and clutching for the rifle at his back,
No use, Deal, no use
…was swinging the rifle up to fire when he found himself staring at Linda Sheldon, her face frozen, her hands outstretched.

He dipped the barrel of the rifle, closed his eyes, let his breath out in a rush.

“Goddamnit, Linda,” he shouted. “Goddamnit!”

A squall of rain swept over them and he found himself trembling, as angry at himself as at her.

She caught his soaking shirt to help him up, guided the two of them, stumbling, into the shelter of the big pine. “I’m sorry,” she cried as they leaned there. “I couldn’t stay. Staring at those men…” She broke off then, shuddering at the memory.

“It’s all right,” he said. “You scared me, that’s all.”

He grasped a knob on the trunk of the pine with his free hand, wrapped his other arm about her shoulders, held her until her tremors began to calm.

“We better get moving while we’re still able,” he told her finally.

She nodded, might even have said something in return, but he was already on the move. Half stumbling, half sliding through the mud, he made it to the screen of holly, caught hold of one of its lashing branches, then turned, waiting for her to join him. From there, the trail took a zigzagging plunge through thick undergrowth, carrying a deluge of rainwater downward.

He motioned for her to follow, then turned back, sitting himself down in the mud. He used his hands to shove himself off, and in moments he was sliding freely, skidding down the twists and turns of the rutted path as if it were some ride in a water theme park. A rock cracked his pelvis, his shoulder thudded off a jutting tree trunk, his injured hand raked over outcroppings of coral, but he was moving too quickly for any pain to register. Near the bottom of the slope, his heel dug into a crevasse hidden by the rushing water, and he went up and over, his arms outflung, leading the last several feet of his slide with his chin, face down in the muck.

He came groggily to his knees and turned as Linda came tumbling sideways toward him. He threw up his arms to catch her, then both of them were down and rolling again, until finally he felt his hips slam against something unyielding and they were stopped at last.

They lay there for a moment, breathless, and then Deal felt her stir atop him. He was about to struggle up himself when she flopped back down on him.

He was about to speak when she pointed at something. “They’re right out there,” she said.

She eased off his chest, and Deal rolled over onto his stomach. He raised his head carefully and peered through the undergrowth. They had come to rest on a narrow shelf that had kept them from tumbling all the way down to the shoreline. There were several larger pines clinging to the shelf, their big trunks breaking the force of the wind and affording them a view of below.

He could make out the spot where the trail emerged and split, one branch leading toward the pier where the Cigarette had docked, the other snaking along the battered shoreline to the house. Much of the narrow shingle of beach in between had already eaten away by the pounding surf.

Shutters blanked the windows of the house, which he saw now to be larger than what he’d remembered. It had been built partly into the hillside, partly raised on pilings that were sunk just above the waterline. It also had a nearly flat roof, its slight angle canting down toward the water, which helped it shed the wind. At the back of the structure a guard stood, his back pressed to the wooden siding, his shoulders hunched as if he were shielding himself from a blizzard. He was staring directly their way, but he was at least fifty feet away and the rain and the intervening brush hid them from sight.

The guard glanced off in the direction of the pier, and Deal followed his gaze. Wave after wave slammed into the pilings, sending surf and foam flying, some of the spray carrying as far as the shelf where they lay. Four more men in fatigues struggled about the pier, struggling to raise the Cigarette up on a set of davits that loomed against the dark sky like miniature white derricks. Raising a boat that size would be a tricky enough job under the calmest of circumstances, Deal thought. Now it seemed madness.

The tide had risen so high that the breakers were swamping the floorboards of the pier, and the men had tied themselves to pilings to keep from being swept away. They were working in pairs, at either end of the boat, using hand signals to communicate. The two at the prow of the boat had succeeded in bringing their end up, but the two working aft had not been as lucky. The rear of the boat dangled precariously, just above the reach of the waves, and there was much arm-waving going back and forth.

One of the men near the prow worked the forward davit controls, trying to hold that part of the boat steady, while the other struggled to secure a line that was fastened to a cleat on the Cigarette’s foredeck. The rocking of the boat had him teetering precariously at the edge of the planks. His partner leaned out from the controls and tried to steady him without being flung off himself.

One of the men near the stern pummeled his partner and pointed out at the swaying, sagging boat. The second man shook his head. His partner hit him again and the second man threw up his hands in a gesture of defeat. He turned toward the boat, moved to the edge of the pier, balanced himself with a wild circling of his arms, and then jumped. Like being made to walk the plank, Deal thought as the man tumbled into the open cockpit of the lurching boat.

The man pulled himself up and began inching himself toward the stern, toward the place where the davit cables were attached, when the rear cable suddenly snapped, and the stern lunged toward the water, tossing him out of the cockpit into the water. The snapped cable lashed across the pier deck with something—a cleat, a fractured piece of pulley—tangled in its end.

The man who’d been directing from the pier never had time to move. The heavy metal whipped into him, snapping his chin over his shoulder. He flew off the pier like a broken doll. With all the weight of the boat on the forward davit, some gear, some set of bearings, gave way, and the spindle drum began to freewheel backwards. The heavy manual crank, a four-foot length of steel used to lever up lighter loads, broke loose from its catch and spun wildly, striking the man at the automated davit controls squarely between the shoulder blades. He went over as if he’d been slugged with a crowbar.

The fourth man, the one who’d been trying to loop the prow line around one of the pilings, hadn’t seen anything. When the boat dropped, it left him trying to hold ten tons in his bare hands. The few feet of slack in the rope disappeared, jerking him off his feet and against the thick piling, his hand pinned hopelessly in the thick tangles of rope. His screams were loud enough to carry above the howling of the wind and the pounding of the surf.

“Dear God,” Deal heard Linda gasp at his side.

The guard at the house had seen the catastrophe unfolding, and had dragged himself along the porch railing to hammer at the door of the place. How many inside there, Deal wondered? Would they all come streaming out? He glanced at the weapon slung across his back. Even if he could bring them down, would there be others nearby, lurking somewhere at their backs, ready to descend the instant they’d blown their cover?

He was still pondering when Linda clutched his arm. “What is
that
?” she cried above the thundering wind.

He swung his head about, following her gesture.

“Out there,” she shouted again, raising her hand to seaward.

He blinked against the needlelike rain and strained to see in the ever-dimming light. The same roiling ocean, the same dark backdrop of sky, the flashes of blue-green lightning that fed the endless thunder.

Finally he saw it: a thin, continuous band of white, dividing the horizon where sea met sky. In the few seconds that he watched, the band seemed to widen, to grow a pale fraction and then another…

…and understanding came upon him. Let biblical scholars debate the parting of the seas as much as they wanted, what Deal was looking at explained it all.

“That’s it,” he said, trying to get his leaden feet beneath him, trying to scramble up. “Christ almighty, that’s it!”

He reached down, caught her arm, pulled her up roughly. “Let’s go,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at the ever-widening, ever-advancing band of white. “Now!”

No men coming out of the house at the shoreline yet, but he couldn’t have cared if they were pouring out by the hundreds. He wouldn’t wait for them if he’d had a Gatling gun in place, or a howitzer, or a goddamned atomic bomb. He pushed Linda toward the muddy slope they’d tumbled down. Pushed her hard, and he didn’t care about that, either.

“Up the hill, now!”

“What is it?” she cried, stumbling ahead of him now.

“The storm surge,” he shouted as he ran after her. “That fucking wall of water I was talking about.”

She glanced out to sea as she staggered upward, and in the moment she was turned, he saw the flash of recognition—the same look that must have flashed over all the weary folks who’d been fool enough to follow Moses to the shore of that damnable sea, the impossible become real.

Now Linda Sheldon, too, had seen. She began to clamber upward without his urging, yanking herself up the slope through the underbrush, oblivious to the vines, the thorns, the whipping limbs. He was right behind her, boosting her when he could, gasping with exertion already.

He wasn’t sure how much time they had, but every step, every foot of elevation they gained gave them that much more of a chance. And hardly had he had that thought than she was going down, toppling sideways into a thick clump of brush. Rain splattered on his back like exploding gravel as he bent over her, wrestling her foot free from a tangled clutch of roots.

He slung one of her arms about his neck, clutched his other arm about her waist, and dragged her forward. They burst out of the underbrush then, and he realized that they’d crested the hill where they’d begun their mud slide just minutes before.

Progress, progress
, he thought, but he sensed they hadn’t climbed nearly high enough. He didn’t know if there was enough climbing to be done on this entire miserable island to save them.

A new roaring had sprung up somewhere behind them, an ominous low grinding sound that rode some level below the wind and the thunder in pitch. A roar and a scourge to cleanse the earth, he thought. To wipe all troubles clean.

He forced himself onward, holding fast to Linda’s hand, grasping the waistband of her skirt now to hold her up.
Step at a time, step at a time
, the voice inside him chanted as he ran, ignoring the burning in his lungs, the numbness in his legs. His strength would last only so long, but he told himself that every step might be the one that saved them.

The wind flung them from tree to tree and the stinging rain was also doing its part to shove them forward. He passed the tall pine where they’d rested earlier, might not have recognized it but for the knobby protrusion he’d used to hold himself against the wind. Most of the tree was down now, snapped at head height like a matchstick, its shattered trunk steaming in the last of the light, its branches splayed out in the underbrush.

Lightning, he thought. Another swipe they’d narrowly missed.

The grinding and the roaring at his back had grown, the ground shuddering, shifting beneath his feet like a funhouse floor. A strange luminosity washed their surroundings: some objects had been effaced in the gloom altogether; others, like the blasted stump, seemed to glow. As if even the light were being shoved forward, he thought, his mind growing bleary with exhaustion. The light also racing the wall of water at their backs, not wanting to be swallowed.