Sweepers (36 page)

When he surfaced again, he was alone on one side of the -I i rock, blinded by the spotlight and gasping for breath. The helicopter, hovering just upstream of him, was invisible in the spray, but the downdraft felt like an arctic blast, turning his facial muscles to cold rubber. He peeled off the face of the rock and slipped down river, backward now, spinning as he hit another whirlpool. Then he saw the bag, with the dog at one end, clamping on with his teeth, going with him about twenty feet away. Something slapped the water near his head, and he looked up. A helmeted figure was leaning out of the helicopter, with one foot out on the skid, the other inside, a wire cable in his hand. He was trying to steer a life ring closer to Train.

Train had to decide whether to take the ring or to drag it over to the bag. He wanted to direct the helo over to the bag, but the guy would never understand. So take the ring, get up there, explain what he thought was in the bag, and then go back for the dog and the bag. He grabbed the ring as it swung by his head, thrust his fight shoulder into it and then his neck. But it was too small. He could not get it around his chest, and he was suddenly exhausted by the effort of even trying.

He pulled his right arm out of the ring and looked helplessly up at the blazing light and the silhouette of the man on the skid. This pilot is good, he thought idly, really good. He was keeping the helo right on top as they drifted down the current. Except that it looked like they were approaching something, some dark mass downstream, and he thought he could feel the current tugging at his hips and legs, getting more turbulent.

The life ring popped out of the water and zipped up to ward the bottom of the helo, where the figure on the skid did something. Then it was coming back down, slapping the water practically on top of Train’s head.

This time, it wasn’t a ring, but a Navy-style sling collar. Recalling his Marine training, and with his last reserves of strength, Train went underwater and came back up through the collar sling, both hands and head through the sling, then gripped the attachment point where the sling was mated to the cable. He was hoisted immediately upward, his feet smacking something hard in the water, another rock. As he approached the underside of the helo, he Saw the U.S. PARK POLICE painted on the belly of the aircraft. Then he was dangling next to the hatchway on the helo. He looked down and saw the bag and the dog clearly for the first time since going in the water.

Good boy, Gutter. The dog had a death grip, literally, on the end of the bag, which looked like a headless porpoise in the water. But it was still buoyant.

Then he was being hauled roughly into the cabin of the helo, the rescue wireman yelling something at him from behind the face shield of his helmet.

Train tried to answer, but his face was frozen and his lips didn’t work.

He grabbed the front of the guy’s flight suit as he felt the helo begin to lift.

“Someone in the bag!” he yelled, trying desperately to make himself heard over the noise of the helicopters engines and rotors.

“What?” the rescue man shouted back at him.

“Someone in the bag! Someone in the bag! Get the god damned bag!”

The crewman gave him a thumbs-up to signal that he understood, then pulled his lip Mike closer to his mouth to tell the pilots. Train sank down on the deck of the cabin and tried to get control of his breathing.

The helo stopped rising fifty feet above the river, the big spotlight fixed on the bag and the dog, the aircraft spinning around to stay just downstream of the bag. Too far to drop, he thought. Yeah, like you could really do anything. Have to. Have to get back down there, get a hook on that bag. Let them lift the bag.

stay in the water with the dog; then they could come for him. My God, Karen was in that body bag, he just knew it. The crewman was shaking his shoulder and bending. down.

“No way to get the bag! No exposure suit! You sure someone’s in that thing? Alive?”

“Yeah,” Train shouted back. “Put me back in. It’s a body bag. it’s got straps. Send down a hook. Get the bag, then come back for me and the dog.”

“No way, man. You can’t go back down there!” the guy yelled.

“You’re done.”

Train looked back out of the hatch. The helo was back over the bag, maybe thirty feet above it, the spotlight drifting back and forth across the bag. Gutter was still clamped on, but his eyes were closed. The water looked black. But at least there were no rapids. The guy saw him looking, figured it out, and started to reach for him. But Train was already moving, swinging out of the cabin a nd onto the skids, the downwash whipping his sodden clothes.

“Hook!” he yelled. “Gimme a hook”And then he slid off onto the skid, holding on to the cold, wet aluminum for a second before dropping into the freezing water. -He cringed as he hit, instinctively trying to pull his legs up under him, waiting for the shock of hitting a rock, but thankfully, it was deep water, but god damned cold. It felt like fire this time, painful, every inch of his skin immersed in the icy-hot grasp of the current.

Go. Swim. Move. The helo was coming lower, but there was no hook. He used a hard breaststroke to get over to the bag, then grabbed a strap.

The . lower end of the bag submerged, bobbing beneath the black surface.

He worked his way around to the end where the dog was hanging on and yelled some encouragement to him. He patted the lumpy shape in the bag, thanking God that body bags were waterproof. He thought he felt the lump move again, but there was a steel hook dropping close to the water alongside the bag. Train grabbed it, felt the wallop of a static shock discharging through his elbow into the water, and then the hook was yanked out of his hand as the helo lifted for some reason. Train swore, but then the hook was back as the crewman once again swung out on the skids, now only fifteen feet above the river, and worked the rescue hoist. Train dragged the hook back along the bag and tried to snap the hook onto a strap, but his hands weren’t working. He stared at the dog’s face, its eyes shut, its teeth gleaming white against the glistening black rubber. His own brain numbed by the cold, he tried to figure out what to do next. Then the hook was yanked again and he refocused, and with a huge effort, he pushed the moused hook over the heavy strap. He raised his right hand and gestured to lift. He was tempted to hold on to the bag as the wire tightened, but he didn’t know how strong the cable was or whether he even could hold on. But the dog could. Train grinned lopsidedly as he saw that Gutter, eyes slitted open now, wasn’t going to let go of that god damned bag for anything.

And then he was alone in the river as the helo pilot maneuvered to keep the aircraft stable against the sudden weight on one side. The spotlight moved sideways, and Train relaxed, not so cold now, letting the current just carry him, no longer having to struggle quite so hard. He looked out across the water and realized he was way out in the middle of the river, the black banks on either side’ several hundred feet away. The helo was stationary over the river as they worked the lift, and his view became clearer as he sailed downstream. He watched the bag, now dangling lengthwise, with the unlikely shape of the big dog holding on with its teeth near the hook, lift up to the cabin hatch and then disappear into the cabin. The helo moved even farther away and up as the crewman and the pilot worked to redistribute the load inside, which was when Train felt something, a deep, rumbling vibration behind hi.-n. He made a lazy turn in the water, frustratingly slowly, his coldnumbed senses resisting his efforts to bring them back to life, and looked downstream.

So,-nething wrong with the. river. A near horizon, a line of darkness visible against a curtain of silver spray that seemed to span the main channel, a line that was maybe four hundred yards away, and W preaching.

He tried to think. Why was there a line in the water? He couldn’t understand it. And then he did.

Then the helo was coming back, its roaring rotor noise and blazing spotlight coming in fast, the cable already back down in the water, with the horse collar skipping wildly across the water like a game fish on the hook. The pilot flared the aircraft out right overhead, perfectly positioned, the collar actually batting Train in the head a couple of times before he sluggishly reached for it. But he didn’t put it on.

What was that damned line? He’d just figured it out and now he’d forgotten. He turned around in the water again, looking downstream for the black line. A moment ago, he’d had it, knew what the line was all about. But he couldn’t think, all this god damned noise, that bright fight; he couldn’t see it, but he could feel something in the water, a different feel, a drumming against his hips and legs that seemed to be in perfect sync with the drumming of his helicopter, his own personal helicopter. Not cold anymore, really. This water’s not so bad; it’s just so-what? So wet, that’s what it was, wet, yeah. He laughed, but no sound came out, not with all that damned noise above him. He still held on to the collar. Collar. The drumming feeling was now beginning to overcome the helo noise, and the water was moving faster. He could feel it, a swiftness and a strengthening grip, an embrace as it hurried, hurried-where? Toward the falls.

Yeah, that was it.

The falls. That black line. The collar jerked in his hands.

Put the damn collar on. Why? Hands don’t work. This water’s not so bad, not so cold. The rumbling was shaking him now, the air different, the spray cloud from the helo above him going somewhere else now, the spotlight more intense.

Put the collar on. You’re close. Really goddamned close.

Put the collar on. Might be interesting, see what happens.

Then amazingly, he felt his boots dragging on the bottom.

What the hell? Supposed to be deep out here in the middle.

His upper body was being clutched upright by the rushing current, and then he actually heard the throaty roar of falling water. Shocked finally into action, he thrust his head and arms through the collar just as he felt his feet banging up against the lip of the falls. He nearly popped out of the collar with the shock of lift. His shoulder sockets screamed with pain as the winch locked and the helo rose off the river.

Fold your arms, he remembered, now on the verge of passing out. Fold your arms under the collar. Then he felt his shoulder bang up against the edge of the skid and a strong, grappling arm was reaching under his sweater for his belt, and then he was sprawling across the cabin floor, sliding along the length of a slippery, wet bag and jointly into the arms of Karen Lawrence and a very excited Doberman. See, he tried to tell them as he passed out, that wasn’t so bad.

It was after eleven when the docs were finished with him and Mcnair was allowed into the hospital room. The Park Police helo had flown them both to the Bethesda Naval Medical Center up on Wisconsin Avenue after finding out they were Navy. Train had tried to talk to Karen before she was whisked off to another room in the ER, but he really hadn’t been operating all that well himself. Mcnair’s face was a surprisingly welcome sight.

“Well, G-man,” Mcnair said, pulling up a chair. “They say you’re going to live. Feet like talking?”

“Why do I think I’m gonna have to listen first?” Train replied carefully. The skin on his face felt rubbery. His voice was a hoarse croak. He could feel some vestiges of intense cold still lurking in the marrow of his long bones.

“What, you expect me to chew your ass?”

Yup.

“Consider it chewed. Actually, putting aside the fact that you invaded a crime scene and otherwise messed around with an ongoing police investigation, you did pretty good.

We should have left somebody there.”

Train shrugged, then regretted it immediately. His shoulders were very sore.

“The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question,” Train said, ling to make his lips work. “Where did that blessed come from?”

“Park Police. They own the river, and they have the helicopters and the crews who know how to do water rescue.

You two were lucky enough to have a Park Police helicopter already up and operating a possible drowning down at Little Falls dam.”

“Man, lucky is the word. I need to thank that guy. Is Karen okay? I forgot everything I learned about cold water out there tonight.”

“Well, not everything. Yeah, she’s gonna be okay. Not harmed physically.

Scared shitless, mentally. That was a bad ride she took.”

In a body bag. This guy is a serious whacko.”

Mcnair eased his notebook out of his pocket. “Speaking of whackos,” he said. “How many were there? Commander Lawrence says she thinks two, but she never saw them.”

“Two,” Train said. “I think. It was dark out there, but I’m pretty sure I saw two figures in that boat. They went upriver, by the way.”

“Actually, they went across the river.”

“Huh?”

“To the Maryland side, where they apparently hauled their little bitty boat up to the C&O canal and then shagged ass down the canal, locks and all, back toward Washington.

A Washington co’p car responded to an intrusion alarm at the Washington Canoe Club and got there in time to see a boat shooting out into the middle of the river under Key Bridge.”

“They follow ‘em?”

“Hell no. The D.C. harbor police boat was broke-dick at the pier. Busted like everything in the District is these days.

So whoever they were got clean-ass away. Commander Lawrence told us something interesting, though, about the initial grab.”

“Where did it happen?”

, Down at the barn, like you figured. But she said that she was going into one of the rooms in the barn, and this black glove appeared in front of her face and then a very intense, very bright purple-red flash.

Next thing she knew, she was trussed up in that bag. She thinks they took her upstairs to the haystack and carved out a burial chamber in the hay.

Anyway, about that light: Any ideas, G-man?”

Train sat back against the pillows for a moment and closed his eyes. “So she was there all the time.”

“Apparently. Now about that bright purple-red flash?”

Train hesitated. “That sounds like a retinal disrupter.”