Destroyer Angel: An Anna Pigeon Novel (Anna Pigeon Mysteries) (30 page)

During the endless trip across three yards of grass and weeds, Heath had formed a plan. It was simplicity itself. Reaching beneath the aluminum wheel cover, she felt for the air stem. She would uncap it, push the little button, and let the air out. Unless the pilot carried an air pump, two flattened tires would effectively abort takeoff. At least she thought it would.

The inner rim of the tire was smooth. The pilot had fancy Alaskan bushwhacking, tundra rolling, solid rubber things.

“It doesn’t matter,” she told Wily when he returned, panting, from a foray. “I’m sure the bastard carries an air pump anyway. Plan B.” Plan B was neither simple nor foolproof. Don Quixote would have embraced Plan B.

Near the wheel, centered under the pilot’s-side door, away from the thugs and their campfire, Heath removed all the sticks and grass she had collected on her journey. Directly above her, housed in the wing, was one of the plane’s two gasoline tanks. If she could get a fire high enough, hot enough, it would explode.

Maybe it would explode.

Working mostly by feel, she laid her fire; the driest, finest grasses first, crushed and wadded, then the smaller sticks, then the larger fuel—if twigs one or two feet long and as big around as her thumb could be called such. The pile, which had seemed so enormous when packed in her coat, was pitiful when laid out on the ground. Reaching as far around as she could, she gathered a few more handfuls. Wily lay down nearby. In the wing’s shadow, he was invisible, but the sound of his breathing made her feel less alone.

Her socks went on the pyre next. She set her jacket aside, then removed her shirt. With teeth and nails she managed to rip it into several pieces. The pieces went on the pile. In bra and panties, praying to Jesus and Pele, Heath took the lighter from the pocket of her jacket. Two cigarettes remained in the crumpled pack. The pack went on the fire, one cigarette behind her ear, one between her lips. Shifting her thumb on the rough wheel, she struck a light. Before putting it to the cigarette end, she admired it for a second. Light in the darkness, heat, fire was the first magic the gods had shared. According to Anna, gods had long since been banished into myth by churches. According to Paul, that didn’t alter the fact that their gift still worked.

Heath sucked in a lungful of smoke, then held the Bic to the pile of grass and sticks. Tiny flames ran out to the ends of the blades of grass and died. Heath twisted the smallest piece of her shirt and lit it. One hundred percent cotton. It burned just fine. Before she’d broken her back, Heath wore synthetic fabrics. During the first year after she lost the use of her legs, she developed a paranoid fear of fire.

On a visit, Anna happened to mention that wildland firefighters wore cotton underpants because natural fibers wouldn’t melt into the skin if one were caught in a burn-over. Since that day Heath had become a purist. Paranoia passed, but her panties and bras were still cotton.

Fire devoured the fine fuels with ravening tongues. Heath put her jacket on the blaze, then her pants, then her boots, then her bra. Flames reached no higher than a standing man’s waist, and she was down to her skivvies.

The fire died down as quickly as it had flared up. Not once had it climbed anywhere near the wing of the plane where the gas tank was housed. Its puny heat didn’t even discolor the aluminum. The gas probably hadn’t even gotten warm.

Plan B had failed.

Heath had failed.

Falling flat on her back, she stared at the underside of the wing. She felt like an egg with the meat blown out; the only thing remaining was a thin, fragile shell of skin. Inside her was hollow. Too worn down to feel sorry for herself, she turned her head and, cheek on the grass, stared at the fire she had given her all to build. Knee-high, no bigger around than a basketball, it had begun chewing methodically on her coat and boots.

Heath waited for it to die, and tried to summon up the energy not to die with it. Tilting at windmills. She’d known that from the beginning. Too bad foreknowledge didn’t dull the sting of failure.

Flames mesmerized her. Light spiked like the depiction of the star of Bethlehem. She blinked the illusion away. The fire seemed closer. The fire was closer. Flames were spreading. Not in a fierce wave that would destroy the airplane, in a creeping wall of fire scarcely two inches high. An able person would step over it. A clothed person would smother it with a coat. A rested paraplegic would scoot away. The best Heath would manage was swatting at it with bare hands. She wasn’t even sure she could sit up again without help.

In the faint and lurid light, she saw Wily rise to his three paws. He lowered his head and growled as if he would attack the flames. As the hungry little grass fire burned toward her, Heath tried to force herself upright. Her arms were made of water. They ignored her brain signals with the numb sullenness of her legs. Muscles would not bunch. Fingers would not bend and claw.

The line of fire was only a couple of feet wide. Behind it was nothing but thin blackened grass, laid flat like the hairs on a balding man’s pate. In horrid fascination, Heath watched it creep closer to her side, gnawing its thin blue and orange line. Would her skin catch and char? She didn’t think so. A line of blisters, maybe, until the fire reached her underpants. They would catch. Maybe she’d only burn to her bikini line. In desperation she rolled over and tried to wriggle sluglike away from the flames, the rough weedy ground scratching at breasts and belly. Not an inch. Her very bones had gone soft.

Faintly Heath heard—or thought she heard—footsteps. Without further warning, a blinding light slashed across her eyes. One of the thugs had seen the fire, had come, was here. Fear gave her one last ounce of strength. She used it to snatch up handfuls of dirt. Flinging them at Wily, she cried, “Run, God damn you! Run!”

Like everything else she’d tried to accomplish, she failed at getting rid of the dog, too.

FORTY-FIVE

Buoyed up by the prospect of committing mayhem, Anna strong-armed her tired mind out of its cozy self-pity. In her frantic need to find Heath and Wily, she had ignored the rules of tracking, but she couldn’t be very lost. The men, the plane, Heath, open space, had to be within fifteen to thirty yards from where she sat on the rock. Opening ears and nose to the night, she waited for information. A breeze, a mere breath down in the trees, touched her forehead and cheeks. The weather had been blowing in from the northwest. She’d left the old logging camp on the northeast side. Therefore the clearing was on her left.

Heath and the others had been at the northernmost end of the open area. That meant Heath had to be ahead of her and slightly to the left. Rising, Anna turned on her headlamp and waited another minute. Very faintly, to her left and behind, she could hear a sound that was not of the wind or the trees or the night creatures: the uneven yaps of human laughter.

Breathing deeply and evenly, she unearthed patience and concentration. Breeze on her forehead, man-sound behind and to the left, headlamp trained on the forest floor, eyes alert for the smallest of sign, she moved slowly forward.

The spoor that marked the place where the thugs had stopped was not subtle. Suddenly the beam of her light ignited. Red, bright and gorgeous and loud, blood shouted up from the brown of the duff, gleamed in a great glorious ruby pool. Freshly spilled blood, still humming with color and life, was beautiful. Few appreciated it. When not sealed tightly in living containers, blood was jarring. Splashed across leaves and rocks it was obscene, graffiti profaning sacred ground.

Following smears of red, Anna quickly rewon the edge of the logging camp. While still in the trees, she turned off her headlamp, then flipped the lens so it rested on her forehead. Cloaked in darkness, she stepped from cover.

She had fully expected to see Heath in the dimly lighted expanse, but there was no woman, no dog. At the far end of the old camp, the thugs’ fire burned cheerily. Several yards away from where she stood, the plane squatted, sinister with the promise of abduction. Cigarette smoke trickled through the breeze to Anna’s nose. Mixed with it was the unmistakable odor of burning vegetation. Under the near wing of the small plane, screened from the thugs by the wheels, a blue snake of creeping flame curled out of the darkness, a tendril alive and seeking. Thrashing between the small horns of the fiery reconnaissance line was a dark form.

Anna ran lightly over the ground to duck under the shadow of the wing. The firelight showed her Heath, naked except for a pair of white panties with bits of grass stuck to them, floundering feebly, like a fish too long out of water. From hip to ankle, her left leg was drenched in blood. As ineffectual as a newborn baby, she was trying to drag herself from the reaching flames.

Wily, a growl rumbling in his shaggy chest, was lunging awkwardly, staggering and snapping at the line of fire. He made a strangled sound, then a stumbling rush at Anna. His teeth bit down on her ankle.

“It’s me, doggone it!” Anna hissed. “Let go. Goddammit, it’s me!” She turned on her light. It hit Heath, and she let out a mousy squeak, then began to keen. Wily bit down harder.

“Stop it,” Anna snapped at the dog. She pulled the light out on its elastic band and aimed it down onto her face. “It’s me.” The keening didn’t cease.

Anna removed Jimmy’s hat.

“Thank God,” Heath breathed, and her face hit the grass as she passed out or dropped dead.

Wily unlocked his jaws.

“About time,” Anna muttered. Again she turned off the headlamp. The aluminum skin of the plane responded to the halogen light with silver lightning bolts. Somebody was bound to notice.

“And you damn well owe me one,” she added as Wily’s chagrined muzzle winked into shadow. Half hangdog, half cocky, he hobbled over and sat next to Heath. Hoping the moose hide was still intact on her moccasins, Anna began stomping out the flickering orange and blue line. From his mistress’s side Wily watched closely until the last of the enemy had been crushed into the soil.

The main part of the fire had shrunk to the size of a softball; still, it was too big and too hot for Anna to trust her moccasins to it. First things first, she told herself.

“Move over,” she ordered the dog as she knelt next to Heath. Being as gentle as she could with only one functional arm, Anna rolled Heath onto her back. Her skin was cool to the touch, eyes half closed, mouth slack. Her hands fluttered as if she were trying to help.

Anna bent down and put her lips against Heath’s ear. “Can you hear me?”

“It’s me, doggone it.” Heath’s words were so slurred as to be almost unintelligible.

Anna laughed quietly. Heath didn’t respond. Heath hadn’t been trying to lighten the mood; she just echoed Anna’s words. Even if she didn’t bleed to death from the bullet the dude or Reg put in her leg, Heath was not out of danger. Hypothermia, trauma, hunger, thirst, exhaustion: The thugs had created the perfect recipe for shock. Anna had treated dozens of cases, but few had had all the deadly ingredients.

Mouth still next to Heath’s ear, Anna murmured, “We can’t stay here. I have to have light.” With that announcement of misery to come, she tried to manhandle Heath into the fireman’s carry she’d used on Jimmy. Though Heath was twenty pounds lighter than the bearded thug, using only one arm Anna couldn’t lift her the eighteen inches needed to pull her into place.

Heath moaned.

Wily whimpered grievously.

“You didn’t whimper when I got shot,” Anna whispered acerbically. Wily said nothing.

Working quickly, Anna shoved Sean’s knife through her belt, then let the purloined coat slide off her shoulders. The fabric adhered to the blood on her upper arm. Gritting her teeth so hard she heard her jaw crack, she tugged the left sleeve down. The coat fell to the ground, exposing an arm black with dried blood. With no pocket except that in her trousers, Anna tucked the hand at the end of her injured arm in the waistband of her pants. It wasn’t as good a sling as the sleeve and pocket had proven, but it would reduce movement and pain.

Working awkwardly, she spread the coat on the ground. “Sorry, soon over, here we go,” she muttered as she rolled Heath onto the coat and arranged her in a fetal position. “Hug your knees. Hang on,” she told Heath and, clutching the cuffs of both sleeves in her right fist, inch by inch, began dragging the coat with its burden toward the tree line.

“No,” Heath gasped. “Feed the fire … reach the gas tank.”

Fuel to build up the fire was too far away, too hard to find in the dark.

“Never mind,” Anna said. “After we get you situated, I’ll get in the cockpit and start slashing wires. I’m bound to bust something.”

Every time the coat jerked over a rough spot, Anna worried Heath would cry out. When she didn’t, Anna worried she’d killed her.

“Am I hurting you?” she asked.

“I don’t feel … right,” Heath managed.

Anna doubted any of them, including the thugs, was feeling right.

Inch by inch.

Finally, they reached the safety of the trees. Letting go of the sleeves, Anna fell back on her butt. Jarred into grievance, the bullet wound sent waves of nausea to her stomach. Wily nosed his head under her good arm. “Don’t worry, buddy. I’m not quitting on Heath. Slave driver,” she added, turning on her headlamp to assess Heath’s injuries.

“Shot in the thigh,” Anna began her cataloguing. Using half of her water and the cuff of Jimmy’s coat, she sponged away the blood. “Neat entry. Didn’t hit the femoral artery.”

Heath made a whuffing sound uncannily like Wily’s laugh.

“Right,” Anna said. “You’d be dead. I don’t think the bullet broke any bones. I don’t know how shock works when you can’t feel pain, but a broken femur registers in all other systems. Let’s roll you onto your side.

“Exit wound is a nasty bugger—that’s medical jargon. I don’t expect you to understand it,” Anna said and was rewarded by another whuff. “You lost a chunk of meat about the size of a baby’s fist. Still bleeding, but not gushing.” There was no point in listing the minor damages. Knowing how scraped, punctured, and bruised her legs and feet were would only serve to increase anxiety and worsen shock.