Wellspring (Paskagankee, Book 3) (30 page)

“We
would work in a town or federal agency for a while, then quit, or resign, or
just disappear when everyone else started getting older and we became concerned
they might take notice of the fact that we weren’t. We would lay low, then turn
up elsewhere with new identities and start the whole process over again. It wasn’t
all that hard, especially years ago.”

“A
hundred and fifty years of waiting,” Healy said, as if he just couldn’t believe
it.

“Yeah,”
Cooper/Amos Krupp grunted. “It’s been fucking forever. So let’s get this over
with.”

Ferriss/Wesley
turned his glare on his brother. “I’ve been waiting just as long as you have,”
he said, pointing an accusing finger. “Now that the moment we’ve waited for is
here, I ain’t going to rush things. We’ll do what we’re here to do, don’t worry
about that, but there’s no goddamned hurry. We have this nice, private room, no
one’s going to bother us, so we can just take as much time as we damn well
please.”

Cooper/Amos
looked like he was going to argue, but he didn’t. He clamped his jaw shut, his
perpetually angry look still firmly in place. Mike could see his teeth grinding
from all the way across the table.

He took
note of the man’s expression as his concern at being held at gunpoint began
morphing into outright alarm. He didn’t like the turn the conversation had
taken, or what it seemed the two time-traveling FBI men were about to do. He
needed to keep the men talking. He quickly said, “So when you saw the reports
of a secret underground room being uncovered next to the Ridge Runner, complete
with skeletal human remains, you came running.”

“Yep.
We’re actually on emergency leave from our bureau jobs down in Portland,”
Ferriss/Wesley said with a sly wink. “Deaths in both of our families, don’t ya
know. It probably stretched the limits of believability, but it’s soon to be a
moot point. And besides,” he grinned evilly and turned his own gun on Healy.
“It’ll soon be true, more or less.”

Ferriss/Wesley
then cut a look at Mike. “I know you called down to Portland to check up on us.
I’m surprised Special Agent in Charge Griffin didn’t tell you that.”

Mike
shook his head. “He never said a word about it. Just verified your employment
and hung up. He probably felt it was none of my business where you guys were,
and I don’t really blame him. I wouldn’t go giving out my employees’ whereabouts
to some random phone caller, either, even if he was in law enforcement.”

“Whatever,”
Ferriss/Wesley said with a shrug. “Like I said, it’s a moot point, or soon will
be. And now that we’ve brought our friend and former partner in crime, here,
Mr. Jackson Healy, up to date on what’s been happening over the last couple hundred
years, I guess it’s about time to finish what he started so long ago.”

Ferriss/Wesley’s
eyes narrowed. He had lowered his weapon while speaking, but now he again brought
the gun to bear on Healy, pointing it directly at the prisoner’s head.
Cooper/Amos perked up noticeably, clearly pleased the talking was about to end
and the shooting would soon begin.

Mike
desperately racked his brain for some way to forestall the inevitable, but before
he could come up with a single idea, Jackson Healy – who obviously had a
stake in delaying things as well – burst out, “But I don’t understand
something…”

Cooper/Amos
blew out an exasperated breath. “Who gives a shit what you do or don’t understand?”
he growled, but Ferriss/Wesley, still very much in charge, snapped at his
brother, “I told you before, we have all the time in the world.”

Ferriss/Wesley
turned back to Healy. “What don’t you understand?” he asked, his voice as calm
as if they were discussing the New England Patriots cheerleaders over drinks at
the Ridge Runner.

“I
didn’t drink the magic juice until I was trapped inside that damned room and
nearly dead on my feet. Drinking it was a last-ditch effort to save my life. Afterward,
I must have passed out and have no memory of anything until waking up a couple
of days ago at the bottom of a muddy hole with a steady rain falling on my face.
How in the hell could I have survived for over a hundred and fifty years
without eating or drinking anything?”

Ferriss/Wesley
shrugged. “Good question. We ain’t no experts on the stuff. It’s been a century
and a half, and in all that time, we’ve never once gone back to Peru. Had
enough of that place to last a thousand lifetimes. But the Youth Juice comes
from a goddamned alien wellspring; who knows what properties it contains? My
best guess would be that the it has some kind of mystical ability to drop you
into a state of suspended animation.

“Maybe,”
he continued, warming now to the subject, “since you can’t die a natural death
once you’ve drunk it, your body was simply going to hang, cursed, halfway
between living and dead forever. God knows it’s better than you deserve. But
once the soil was peeled off the top of that room like a sardine can being
opened, and your body was exposed to fresh air and rain, that Youth Juice
somehow jump-started you, and brought you back from wherever the hell you were
suspended.”

“I was
starving, hungrier than I’ve ever been, for the first day or so after I came
back,” Healy muttered, more to himself than to anyone else in the room. “That
must have been some kind of reaction to being woken up such a long time.”

“Beats
me,” Ferriss/Wesley said. “And to tell you the truth, I have to agree with my
brother. I really don’t give a damn. Now, where were we?” Once again, both he
and Cooper/Amos raised their weapons. It was plain by the look on Ferriss’s
face that his patience for talking had come to an end. He and his nearly two
hundred year old brother were going to execute Jackson Healy in cold blood, and
undoubtedly turn their weapons on Mike immediately afterward. Then they would
walk out of the nearly empty police station – likely eliminating Gordie
Rheame on the way by – and disappear.

Ferriss/Wesley
growled, “Got any last words, compadre?” to Healy, who said nothing but shrank
backward as far as he was able. The handcuffs clanked tight against the tie
down ring and Healy’s progress was again jerked to a stop.

The two
brothers were spread out in the small room, separated. Cooper/Amos was to
Mike’s right, standing next to the wall, Ferriss/Wesley off to the left in
front of the table, standing roughly five feet from the interview room’s closed
door. They were too far apart for Mike to take them both down at the same time,
so in a split-second decision, he decided to go after Cooper first. That
brother seemed by far the more unstable of the two lunatics, so Mike’s only
hope was that if he launched himself over the table and brought Cooper down,
Ferriss might be distracted enough to give Mike time to scramble to his feet
and go after him as well.

It was
foolhardy.

It was
suicidal.

It was his
only option.

Mike
tensed his muscles and prepared to spring.

And
then everyone froze at the sound of a quick knock on the interview room’s door.
A half-second later it swung open, revealing Officer Sharon Dupont.

32

Sharon sprinted along the
basement corridor, driven by the same sense of impending doom she had been
feeling since shortly after driving out of the police station parking lot. She
had no idea what Ferriss and Cooper might be up to, but she knew allowing them
to be alone in a tiny room with Jackson Healy – and with Mike – had
been a very bad idea.

She
chastised herself for not being stronger, for not making her case more clearly
to Mike. He was in charge, but she knew how heavily he valued her sense of
intuition and her instincts as a cop.

She
should have been able to more clearly state her position.

She had
failed.

Hopefully
it wasn’t too late.

She
skidded to a stop in front of the heavy steel door, not bothering to peek
through the tiny wire mesh-reinforced window, not wanting to waste the time.
Every second counted now; she could feel it in her gut.

She
took a deep breath and then knocked on the door, a perfunctory,
I’m knocking as a courtesy, but I’m damned
well coming in no matter what you say
knock, and then turned the handle and
threw the door open.

What
she saw froze her in shock, standing motionless in the doorway for a critical half-second.

Agent
Ferriss stood directly in front of her, his gun pointed at Jackson Healy’s
head. Agent Cooper was braced against the wall to her left, his weapon also
trained on the prisoner. Healy was straining hard against his handcuffs, which
had been locked into place on the table’s tie-down ring; he looked as though he
would gladly gnaw through his wrists and propel himself backward through the
cinderblock wall. Mike was frozen in a half-standing position directly across
the table from her. He looked like he had been preparing to launch himself at
Cooper.

She
took it all in in an instant and reached reflexively for her service weapon.
Somewhere in a dark corner of her brain she registered that all of her fears
and suspicions had been right on target, and then the thought vanished as the
scene disintegrated into chaos.

Ferriss
spun on his heel and squeezed off a shot, just as Cooper rotated to his right
and did the same. Both slugs ricocheted off the metal door with a pair of
rapid-fire pings. Mike was screaming “Get down, get down!” as he continued
moving forward, scrambling over the table and plowing into Cooper
shoulder-first, slamming him into the wall.

Sharon
dropped straight to the floor, hitting it with a jarring crash and rolling
backward into the hallway. She prepared to return fire but Ferriss beat her to
the punch, squeezing off another shot that whistled over her head. Had she
remained standing, Sharon guessed the slug would have pierced her heart.

Out of
the corner of her eye, she observed Mike and Agent Cooper struggling for
Cooper’s gun. The FBI man had somehow kept his weapon in his right hand while
absorbing the devastating hit by Mike, and Cooper appeared to be gaining the
advantage now, as he peppered the side of Mike’s face with a series of jabs
with his left.

She
rose to her knees and raised her gun. She knew Ferriss would not miss again. Before
she could fire, the FBI man took one long stride and
kicked
the door closed. It swung noiselessly on its hinges and
slammed shut inches in front of her face. Then she heard the manual lock click
into place.

She
scrambled to her feet and pressed her nose to the eye-level window, trying desperately
to calculate the odds of getting off a successful shot through it. The glass
was at least half an inch thick, reinforced with thick wiring in a criss-cross
diamond pattern.

Even
with a rushed glance she could see that hitting what she was aiming at with any
degree of accuracy would be impossible. She would have to raise her weapon to
eye level and aim it awkwardly down. Once she pulled the trigger, the slug would
ricochet wildly off the thick glass and there would be no way to predict whom
it would strike, if anyone.

She
would be just as likely to shoot Mike or the prisoner as either FBI agent.

She
cursed bitterly and slammed a fist against the door in frustration. Pain
blossomed in her hand and she turned and raced along the empty corridor,
feeling like she had just abandoned Mike, knowing there was every possibility
she would never see him again alive. But her cop instincts took over, and she
knew there was nothing she could do for him with just a Glock 9 mm sidearm.

It was
time to get the heavy artillery.

33

Mike slammed Cooper/Amos against
the cement wall, driving his shoulder into the agent’s gut and churning with
his legs. He heard air rush out of the man’s lungs with an elongated
“Uhhhhh”
and felt a savage sense of
satisfaction. The agent’s gun rattled against the wall with a metallic
clack
but to Mike’s utter disbelief,
somehow Cooper managed to hold on to it.

Another
shot rang out, the concussive blast as loud as a cannon in the enclosed room.
As he fought for his life, Mike listened for the cry that would tell him Sharon
had been hit but could hear nothing over the ringing in his ears.

And now
he was in big trouble. He had counted on his jarring blow knocking the gun from
Cooper’s hand, allowing him to dive at Ferriss, but now that plan was moot. The
minute Mike turned toward away from the still-armed Cooper, the agent would put
a slug in his back.

A loud
bang
told him the interrogation room
door had been slammed shut. Mike tried to push Ferriss from his mind and turned
his attention back to Cooper/Amos. He had succeeded in knocking the wind out of
the agent, but now he was at a serious disadvantage; bent over, his shoulder
planted in Cooper’s midsection. The agent began pummeling Mike’s face, raining
closed-fist blows down on him while Mike tried desperately to yank the gun from
Cooper’s grasp.

He slammed
Cooper’s hand into the wall.

Nothing.