The Hammer of Eden (52 page)

She got one foot on the bumper and grabbed the spare wheel. For a frightening moment she thought she would slip and fall; and she looked down to see the road speeding beneath her. But she managed to hold on. She clambered onto the flatbed among the tanks and valves of the machinery. She staggered to keep her balance, almost fell, and righted herself.

She did not know whether Granger had seen her.

He could not operate the vibrator while the truck was in motion, so she remained where she was, heart thumping, waiting for him to stop.

But he had seen her.

She heard glass shatter and saw the barrel of a gun poke through the rear window of the driver’s cabin. She ducked instinctively. The next moment she heard a slug ricochet off a tank beside her. She leaned to the left so that she was directly behind Granger, and crouched low, heart in her mouth. She heard another shot and cringed, but it missed her. Then he seemed to give up.

But he had not.

The truck braked fiercely. Judy was thrown forward, banging her head painfully against a pipe. Then Granger swerved violently to the right. Judy swung sideways and thought for a terrifying moment that she would be hurled to her death on the hard surface of the road, but she managed to hang on. She saw that Granger was heading suicidally straight for the brick front of a disused factory. She clung to a tank.

At the last moment he braked hard and swerved, but he was a fraction of a second too late. He averted a head-on smash, but the offside fender plowed into the brickwork with a crash of crumpling metal and breaking glass. Judy felt an agonizing pain in her ribs as she was crushed against the tank she was holding. Then she was thrown into the air.

For a dizzy moment she was totally disoriented. Then she hit the ground, landing on her left side. All the breath was knocked out of her body so that she could not even yell with pain. Her head banged against the road, her left arm went numb, and panic filled her mind.

Her head cleared a second or two later. She hurt, but she could move. Her bulletproof jacket had helped to protect her. Her black corduroys were ripped and one knee was bleeding, but not badly. Her nose was bleeding, too: she had reopened the wound Granger had given her yesterday.

She had fallen near the rear corner of the truck, close to its enormous double wheels. If Granger reversed a yard, he would kill her. She rolled sideways, staying behind the truck but getting away from its giant tires. The effort sent sharp pain through her ribs, and she cursed.

The truck did not reverse. Granger was not trying to run her over. Perhaps he had not seen where she had fallen.

She looked up and down the street. She could see Michael struggling to get the pilot out of the crashed helicopter, four hundred yards away. In the other direction, there was no sign of the SWAT wagon or the police cars she had spotted from the air, or of the other FBI helicopters. They were probably seconds away—but she did not have seconds to spare.

She got to her knees and drew her weapon. She expected Granger to jump out of the cabin and shoot at her, but he did not.

She struggled painfully to her feet.

If she approached on the driver’s side of the truck, he would surely see her in his side-view mirror. She went to the other side and risked a peek around the rear corner. There was a big mirror on this side, too.

She dropped to her knees, lay flat on her belly, and crawled under the truck.

She wriggled forward until she was almost beneath the driver’s cab.

She heard a new noise above her and wondered what it was. Glancing up, she saw a huge steel plate above her.

It was being lowered onto her.

Frantically she rolled sideways. Her foot caught on one of the rear wheels. For a few horrendous seconds she struggled to free herself as the massive plate moved inexorably down. It would crush her leg like a plastic toy. At the last moment she pulled her foot out of her shoe and rolled clear.

She was out in the open. Granger would see her at any second. If he leaned out of the passenger door now, gun in hand, he could shoot her easily.

There was a blast like a bomb in her ears, and the ground beneath her shook violently. He had started the vibrator.

She had to stop it. She thought momentarily of Bo’s house. In her mind she saw it crumble and fall, then the whole street collapse.

Pressing her left hand to her side to ease the pain, she forced herself to her feet.

Two paces took her to the nearside door. She needed to open it with
her right hand, so she shifted the gun to her left—she could shoot with either—and pointed it up to the sky.

Now
.

She jumped onto the step, grabbed the door handle, and flung it open.

She came face-to-face with Richard Granger.

He looked as scared as she felt.

She pointed the gun at him with her left hand. “Turn it off!” she screamed. “Turn it
off!”

“Okay,” he said, and he grinned and reached beneath his seat.

The grin alerted her. She knew he was not going to turn off the vibrator. She got ready to shoot him.

She had never shot anyone before.

His hand came up holding a revolver like something out of the Wild West.

As the long barrel swung toward her, she aimed her pistol at his head and squeezed the trigger.

The bullet hit him in the face, beside the nose.

He shot her a split second later. The flash and noise of the double gunshot was terrific. She felt a burning pain across her right temple.

Years of training came into play. She had been taught always to fire twice, and her muscles remembered. Automatically she pulled the trigger again. This time she hit his shoulder. Blood spurted immediately. He spun sideways and fell back against the door, dropping the gun from limp fingers.

Oh, Jesus, is that what it’s like when you kill someone?

Judy felt her own blood course down her right cheek. She fought a wave of faintness and nausea. She held the gun pointed at Granger.

The machine was still vibrating.

She stared at the mass of switches and dials. She had just shot the one person who knew how to turn the thing off. Panic swept over her. She fought it down.
There must be a key
.

There was.

She reached over the inert body of Ricky Granger and turned it.

Suddenly there was quiet.

She glanced along the street. Outside the Perpetua Diaries warehouse, the helicopter was on fire.

Michael!

She opened the door of the truck, fighting to stay conscious. She knew there was something she ought to do, something important, before she went to help Michael, but she could not think what it was. She gave up trying to remember and climbed out of the truck.

A distant police siren came closer, and she saw a patrol car approaching. She waved it down. “FBI,” she said weakly. “Take me to that chopper.” She opened the door and fell into the car.

The cop drove the four hundred yards to the warehouse and pulled up a safe distance from the burning aircraft. Judy got out. She could not see anyone inside the helicopter. “Michael!” she yelled. “Where are you?”

“Over here!” He was behind the busted doors of the warehouse, bending over the pilot. Judy ran to him. “This guy needs help,” Michael said. He looked at her face. “Jesus, so do you!”

“I’m all right,” she said. “Help is on the way.” She pulled out her cell phone and called the command post. She got Raja. He said: “Judy, what’s happening?”

“You tell me, for Christ’s sake!”

“The vibrator stopped.”

“I know, I stopped it. Any tremors?”

“No. Nothing at all.”

Judy slumped with relief. She had stopped the machine in time. There would be no earthquake.

She leaned against the wall. She felt faint. She struggled to stay upright.

She felt no triumph, no sense of victory. Perhaps that would come later, with Raja and Carl and the others, in Everton’s bar. For now she was drained empty.

Another patrol car pulled up, and an officer got out. “Lieutenant Forbes,” he said. “What the hell went on here? Where’s the perpetrator?”

Judy pointed along the street to the seismic vibrator. “He’s in the front of that truck,” she said. “Dead.”

“We’ll take a look.” The lieutenant got back in his car and tore off down the street.

Michael had disappeared. Looking for him, Judy stepped inside the warehouse.

She saw him sitting on the concrete floor in a pool of blood. But he was unhurt. In his arms he held Melanie. Her face was even paler than usual, and her skimpy T-shirt was soaked with blood from a grisly wound in her chest.

Michael’s face was contorted with grief.

Judy went to him and knelt beside him. She felt for a pulse in Melanie’s neck. There was none.

“I’m sorry, Michael,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

He swallowed. “Poor Dusty,” he said.

Judy touched his face. “It will be all right,” she said.

*  *  *

A few moments later Lieutenant Forbes reappeared. “Pardon me, ma’am,” he said politely. “Did you say there was a dead man in that truck?”

“Yes,” she said. “I shot him.”

“Well,” the cop said, “he ain’t there now.”

22

S
tar was jailed for ten years.

At first, prison was torture. The regimented existence was hell for someone whose whole life had been about freedom. Then a pretty wardress called Jane fell in love with her and brought her makeup and books and marijuana, and things began to look up.

Flower was placed with foster parents, a Methodist minister and his wife. They were kindhearted people who could not begin to understand where Flower was coming from. She missed her parents, did poorly at school, and got in more trouble with the police. Then, a couple of years later, she found her grandma. Veronica Nightingale had been thirteen when she gave birth to Priest, so she was only in her mid-sixties when Flower found her. She was running a store in Los Angeles selling sex toys, lingerie, and porno videos. She had an apartment in Beverly Hills and drove a red sports car, and she told Flower stories about her daddy when he was a little boy. Flower ran away from the minister and his wife and moved in with her grandma.

Oaktree disappeared. Judy knew there had been a fourth person in the ’Cuda at Felicitas, and she had been able to piece together his role in the affair. She even got a full set of fingerprints from his woodwork shop at the commune. But no one knew where he had gone. However, his prints showed up a couple of years later, on a stolen car that had
been used in an armed robbery in Seattle. The police did not suspect him, because he had a solid alibi, but Judy was automatically notified. When she reviewed the file with the U.S. attorney—her old friend Don Riley, now married to an insurance saleswoman—they realized they had only a weak case against Oaktree for his part in the Hammer of Eden, and they decided to let him be.

Milton Lestrange died of cancer. Brian Kincaid retired. Marvin Hayes resigned and became security director for a supermarket chain.

Michael Quercus became moderately famous. Because he was nice looking and good at explaining seismology, TV shows always called him first when they wanted a quote about earthquakes. His business prospered.

Judy was promoted to supervisor. She moved in with Michael and Dusty. When Michael’s business started to make real money, they bought a house together and decided to have a baby. A month later she was pregnant, so they got married. Bo cried at the wedding.

Judy figured out how Granger had got away.

The wound to his face was nasty but not serious. The bullet to his shoulder had nicked a vein, and the sudden loss of blood caused him to lose consciousness. Judy should have checked his pulse before going to help Michael, but she was weakened by her injuries and confused because of loss of blood, and she failed to follow routine.

Granger’s slumped position caused his blood pressure to rise again, and he came around a few seconds after she left. He crawled around the corner to Third Street, where he was lucky enough to find a car waiting at a stoplight. He got in, pointed his gun at the driver, and demanded to be taken to the city. En route he used Melanie’s mobile to call Paul Beale, the wine bottler who was a criminal associate of Granger’s from the old days. Beale had given him the address of a crooked doctor.

Granger made the driver drop him at a corner in a grungy neighborhood. (The traumatized citizen drove home, called the local police precinct house, got a busy signal, and did not get around to reporting the incident until the next day.) The doctor, a disbarred
surgeon who was a morphine addict, patched Granger up. Granger stayed at the doctor’s apartment overnight, then left.

Judy never found out where he went after that.

*  *  *

The water is rising fast. It has flooded all the little wooden houses. Behind the closed doors, the homemade beds and chairs are floating. The cookhouse and the temple are also awash
.

He has waited weeks for the water to reach the vineyard. Now it has, and the precious plants are drowning
.

He had been hoping he might find Spirit here, but his dog is long gone
.

He has drunk a bottle of his favorite wine. It is difficult for him to drink or eat, because of the wound to his face, which has been sewn up badly by a doctor who was stoned. But he has succeeded in pouring enough down his throat to make himself drunk
.

He throws the bottle away and takes from his pocket a big joint of marijuana laced with enough heroin to knock him out. He lights it, takes a puff, and walks down the hill
.

When the water is up to his thighs, he sits down
.

He takes a last look around his valley. It is almost unrecognizable. There is no tumbling stream. Only the roofs of the buildings are visible, and they look like upturned shipwrecks floating on the surface of a lagoon. The vines he planted twenty-five years ago are now submerged
.

It is not a valley anymore. It has become a lake, and everything that was here has been killed
.