The Eighth Trumpet (The Jared Kimberlain Novels) (17 page)

“Whoever’s after you isn’t from down here, and I doubt very much they’re afraid to cross anybody.”

“But Dom has his own island off the coast. It was built as a fortress for his family by his father, and that’s just what it is.”

“Been there often, have you?”

Lisa thought she caught a note of jealousy in Kimberlain’s voice. “Never, but he talks about it plenty—all those times he tried to convince me to go out with him.”

“You’re trying to tell me you never did?”

She nodded. “And I won’t be a hypocrite and say it’s because of what he is and does. He’s a businessman, Jared, and to tell you the truth he reminds me a little of you.”

“You know me that well already?”

“The few hours we’ve shared have been rather intense.” She sighed and forced back a shudder. “Those people who died were my employees, my friends, and the only thing stopping the guilt from setting in is the reality that if it weren’t for you I’d be dead too. When you’re indebted to somebody, you feel you know them better.”

“There’s some truth in that.”

Kimberlain also found himself agreeing with Lisa that Torelli was the best option available. He placed her personally in the young don’s hands, and although he couldn’t say he liked Torelli at first, neither did he dislike him. His interest in Lisa appeared to be as genuine as Kimberlain’s.

The Ferryman accepted the Airophone from the stewardess.

“Yes?”

“How good to hear your voice again, Ferryman.” It was Zeus, and suddenly everything became clear. “I understand you ran into some complications in Atlanta.”

“Calling to claim credit?”

The blind man laughed. “Not this time. But I’m still worried about the loss of five hundred pounds of C-12 plastic explosives. In case you’ve forgotten, that amount could quite easily level a large portion of a major city.”

“They’re about to serve dinner, Zeus, and I really am hungry.”

“I’m surprised the surfacing of the Hashi hasn’t spoiled your appetite.” Zeus paused, then spoke urgently. “Come back to us, Jared.”

“You’re sounding desperate, Zeus.”

“Just trying to do you a favor. Conscience is what your life is about now, these paybacks. I’m merely trying to save you the pain of partial responsibility for the millions of dead when those explosives are set off.”

“Don’t bother trying to pin this on me.”

“You can stop it, Ferryman. You can stop
them
. It wasn’t like the Hashi to take such a risk; to come so far over the surface. The risk must be worth it, and if you don’t try to at least find out why, you’ll be as guilty as the rest of us, who shouldn’t have allowed the theft in the first place.”

“Go to hell, Zeus,” Kimberlain said and switched the phone to OFF.

“This is where the murder happened,” Captain Seven explained to Kamanski and Kimberlain. The three of them were standing in the gazebo located direcly opposite Jordan Lime’s bedroom on ground level.

“In case you’ve forgotten, Lime was killed in his bedroom,” Kamanski snapped.

Captain Seven shook his head. “All those negative ions you’re pumping will ruin your liver, David. Chill out and pay attention. He died in his bedroom, but this is where he was killed from.”

“The gazebo was sealed. No one could have gotten inside.”

“
Electronically
sealed, Herman, and easily bypassed by a dude who knows the how of it, which obviously you don’t. Here, look.” Captain Seven shuffled his sneakered feet across the gazebo’s tile floor to its single entrance. “Basically the only seal you’ve got on this door is this switch,” he said, opening it and pointing at a small piece of plastic wedged against the frame. “Door breaks contact with the switch and,
boom
, alarm bells start chiming. Correct?”

“Of course. So what?”

“So tell your man to switch on the alarm system after I’m outside and watch. And put a hold on those negative ions, man.”

“Make it fast,” Kamanski said and reached for his walkie-talkie as the captain slid out the door and closed it behind him.

“All set,” Kimberlain called to Seven moments later.

With Captain Seven outside, they heard a slight scraping noise, then the door latch began to jiggle. At last it opened ever so slightly, and they moved close enough to see Seven, still on his knees, pressing something against the plastic switch on the hinged side. Next the door opened enough to let him slither through. The alarm had not sounded.

He crawled inside while what looked to be a very thin steel file stayed pinned against the switch. Then he closed the door again with enough care to trap the file as it was. He rose to his feet and brushed the dirt and dust from his knees.

“No bells,” he said, smiling.

“Okay,” Kamanski granted. “So somebody could get into the gazebo, but they couldn’t get to it over the grounds. Not with our surveillance cameras sweeping constantly.”

“What are they trained for?”

“Motion. If a stray one is found, they automatically search for a security medallion keying them that it’s one of our men. Otherwise the alarm would sound instantly. And don’t try telling me this phantom of yours made off with one of our medallions or made one of his own. Neither is possible.”

“Don’t worry, my phantom wouldn’t have needed a medallion.” Captain Seven paused long enough to wink at the Ferryman. “Your alarms go off every time a bush blows in the breeze, Herman?”

“Of course not.”

“Why? What stops them?”

“The lenses pick up the lack of a heat pattern given off by the needles, leaves, and branches.”

“So a stray bush getting pushed around in the wind wouldn’t make bells.”

“I just told you no.”

Captain Seven got down on his stomach and began to shimmy across the gazebo floor with his elbows supplying the thrust. “Ain’t done this since Nam,” he moaned. “Brings back great memories, let me tell you.”

“Get to the point!” Kamanski ordered.

“Get to your doctor, dude. I’ll take my time.” He gazed up at Kimberlain, who didn’t bother to hide his smile. “Picture me, the back of me anyway, covered in a light coating of natural greens. Maybe it’s even part of my clothes, like sewn in. It’s night here at the Lime estate, and nobody’s home except you weirdos. So I dig myself a hole, not much of one, just enough for me to slide under the fence to the other side and then fill everything back in so it won’t be noticed. Are you picturing this, Mr. Negative Ions? Okay, so I’m in now and disguised in a way that’ll keep your cameras from locking in on me. My victim isn’t on the grounds yet, so your guards’ attention is low enough to miss me. I’ve done similar stuff before. I know all the tricks.”

Kamanski was listening now.

“I reach the gazebo and make my way inside as demonstrated a couple of seconds ago. The toughest part is over.”

“You’re still not even close to Lime.”

“I’m as close as I need to be.” Captain Seven climbed back to his feet and moved to the front window of the gazebo, which looked up at Lime’s bedroom. “The killer opened this window just like he opened the door. Everything was in place.”

“For what?”

“Let’s head into the mansion and I’ll show you.”

The two Pro-Tech guards were standing before Jordan Lime’s bedroom when they got there.

“Wanted everything to be just the way it was four nights ago,” the captain explained. “Let’s go inside.”

After they did, Kamanski’s eyes swept about him in shock. “What the hell did you do in here?”

“Made some changes. Like I said, I wanted everything to be just like it was the night of the murder.”

“You disturbed evidence, you ass. Evidence!”

“Put a hold on it, Herman. There was no evidence to disturb, nothing worth anything to the police or the FBI … except what they missed. Let me show you something.” He moved to the window, which was open just as it had been the night Jordan Lime had been killed.

Seven had made sure the bulletproof glass curtains were drawn, and they fluttered slightly in the wind as they had Sunday night. The captain pulled a small container of talcum powder from his pocket, twisted it open, and squeezed the nozzle against the back of the curtain. White dusty particles danced into the air of the room. Seven squeezed the container again, and more joined the first batch.

“You notice these holes and slight slices in the curtain?”

“Normal wear and tear, we thought,” replied Kamanski. “No evidence of any weapon as the cause.”

“Meaning any weapon you’re aware of. Let’s take it by the numbers now. Lime’s lying in bed. He hears a crash.”

“Glass breaking,” said Kamanski. “It’s on tape. We figured it was the painting falling from the wall.”

“It was. The most subtle yet the most important part of the entire plan.”

“Because it made Lime sit up and turn the lights on,” the Ferryman guessed. “With the right equipment, his shape would have been clearly visible from the gazebo even behind the curtains.”

“And a shape was all our killer needed to focus on.” Captain Seven separated his hands by about a foot and imitated holding a weapon. “It would have been the size of a small bazooka, easily concealed beneath his jacket while he crawled across the lawn toward the gazebo. “

“What would have been?” asked Kamanski.

“A water cannon,” Captain Seven said without missing a beat.

“A water
what
?”

“You won’t find it in any of your old
Soldier of Fortunes
, Herman, because technically it doesn’t exist in the form I just described. What exist are high-speed water jet drills that can slice through anything from titanium to taffy. Heart of the system is a pair of pumps: a standard motor-driven hydraulic piston pump which drives a plunger type called an intensifier. Hydraulic oil is delivered to a large piston in the intensifier, driving it back and forth in a tubular housing—that’s what I meant by bazooka. Connected to the large piston are two smaller piston plungers which pump the water through the system under extremely high pressure. By the time the water emerges from the nozzle it’s traveling at least three thousand feet per second at sixty thousand psi.”

“Wow,” said the Ferryman.

“Yeah, but like I said, it don’t exist, at least it didn’t used to. See, the problem with utilizing the water jet principle as a weapon is that air dulls the jet’s cutting abilities. Less than a foot of travel in open air reduces effectiveness to practically nil, and the gazebo is a full fifty feet from the bedroom window, making things even more difficult.”

“So where does that leave us?” asked an exasperated Kamanski.

“Somebody made modifications. Increasing power of the pistons would be the key to generating a faster pace for the water. You’d also need more molecules packed into the same size stream, which would actually require a slightly bigger tube. Get the speed of the jets up to around fifty thousand feet per second and mix in sufficient levels of abrasive particles like garnet or silica and the jets’ll cut through damn near anything from up to maybe a hundred feet away.”

“For how long?” Kimberlain asked.

“Depends on the size of the tank. Six seconds would be a pretty fair guess, like a single clip from a machine gun.” Captain Seven paused to collect his thoughts. “Picture it all now. The shooter down in the gazebo eases his water cannon onto the window ledge. He’s got the layout of the bedroom memorized, and it’s a simple problem of mathematics to figure out the necessary angle to send the picture crashing to the floor and sever your video feed line in the process.”

Captain Seven stopped suddenly and dove onto Jordan Lime’s freshly made bed. “Lime hears the crash, bolts up instinctively, and turns on the lights.” He sat up and mocked turning the lights on from the switch above the headboard. “The light goes on and that cues the shooter to Lime’s position. The shooter takes aim, fires, and the water jet slices through the glass curtains in part of the pattern I showed you, and enough of the first spray finds Lime sitting up in bed or …” Captain Seven threw his legs over the side and feigned shaking himself alert. “Or maybe he was starting to get out, something like this. Either way the jet finds him. We’re talking about a weapon with the same cutting power as a laser beam here. But the jet itself has a diameter only about the same size as a pen point. Whatever it touches, it slices clean through and off. Totally clean. No burned or jagged edges.” The captain spun himself around for effect. “The first burst tears Lime’s arm off, and the shock straightens him long enough for another spray to catch him. The shooter would have had to maneuver the cannon only slightly down in the gazebo to achieve what happened to the rest of Lime. It would have been over very fast.”

“Incredible,” was Kamanski’s only comment.

“We’re talking high-tech murder here, Herman.” Captain Seven staggered from the area of the bed. “All those screams indicate Lime must have been alive through most of it. The blood keeps spewing as the jets continue to tear him apart, scattering the pieces all over the room.”

Kamanski was nodding. “The blood that was all over the walls—we couldn’t figure out how it got there. It must have mixed with the jets and splashed.”

“On the money, David. And the jets didn’t carve the walls to shreds because penetrating Lime’s body had slowed them up.”

“One last thing, Captain,” said the Ferryman. “When the alarm was sounded, the estate was sealed from bottom to top, including the area around the gazebo. How’d the shooter escape?”

“Dudes running everywhere?” Seven asked Kamanski.

“Of course.”

“Police too?”

“All over the grounds in a matter of minutes.”

“Then you had to turn off your special cameras that key off those medallions.”

“Yes. Why?”

“Simple.” And with that, Captain Seven pulled back the buttons of his denim work shirt to reveal the uniform top of a Pro-Tech guard beneath it. “Ta-daaaaah!” he exclaimed. “Presto-chango. In all the confusion, our killer just mixed in and walked off into the darkness.”

“Unbelievable,” Kamanski said.

“Can I keep the shirt?” Captain Seven asked.

“Only if you tell us how to find where this water cannon came from,” Kimberlain told him.