Gone, Baby, Gone (Kenzie & Gennaro 4)

“Patrick,” Angie said.

“Wait a sec. Shine your light down here.” I darted my beam back to my right, back to where I’d seen the curve of flesh, found only more green water.

“Ange,” I said. “Now, for Christ’s sake.”

She lay on the rock beside me and flashed her light beside my own. Having to travel sixty-five feet down weakened the light, and the soft green of the water didn’t help much either. Our circles of light ran parallel like a pair of eyes and swayed back and forth across the water, then up and down, in tight squares.

“What did you see?”

“I don’t know. Could have been a rock….”

The coffee-brown bark of the log floated under my beam, then the license plate again, crumpled as if by thick angry hands.

Maybe it had been a rock. The white light, green water, and surrounding black could be playing tricks with my eyes. If it had been a body, we’d have found it by now. Besides, bodies don’t float. Not in the quarries.

“I got something.”

I tilted my wrist, followed Angie’s shaft of light, and the twin beams bathed the curved head and dead eyes of Amanda McCready’s doll, Pea. It floated on its back in the green water, its flower-print dress soiled and wet.

Oh, Jesus, I thought. No.

“Patrick,” Angie said, “she could be down there.”

“Wait—”

“She could be down there,” she repeated, and I heard a kicking sound as she rolled onto her back and pushed one shoe off her left heel.

“Angie. Wait. We’re supposed to—”

On the other side of the quarry, the tree line behind the cliffs exploded. Gunfire ripped through the branches, and light popped and erupted in sudden blasts of yellow and white.

“I’m pinned down! I’m pinned down!” Broussard’s voice screamed over the walkie-talkie. “Need immediate support! Repeat: Need immediate support!”

A chip of marble jumped off the cliff and into my cheek, and then suddenly the trees behind us buzzed and sheared their branches, and sparks and metallic pings popped off the rock face.

Angie and I rolled back from the edge and I grabbed my walkie-talkie. “This is Kenzie. We’re taking fire. Repeat: We are taking fire from the south side of the quarry.”

I rolled back farther into the darkness, saw my flashlight where I’d left it on the edge, still pointing its shaft of light out over the quarry. Whoever was shooting from the other side of the water was probably using the flashlight as a homing beacon.

“You hit?”

Angie shook her head. “No.”

“Be right back.”

“What?”

Another barrage of bullets hammered the rocks and trees behind us, and I held my breath, waited for a pause. When it came in a roar of silence, I scrambled through the dark and swung the back of my hand into the flashlight, sent it over the edge and dropping toward the water.

“Christ,” Angie said, as I scrambled back to her. “What do we do?”

“I don’t know. If they got LAD scopes on their rifles, we’re dead.”

The shooter opened up again. Leaves in the trees behind Angie leaped into the night and bullets spit into the trunks, snapped thin branches. The gunfire paused for a half second as the shooter realigned his aim, and then metal slapped the cliff face below us, just on the other side of the lip, hammering the rock like a hailstorm. One shift of the gun an inch or two up in the shooter’s arms, and the bullets would streak over the cliff top and into our faces.

“Need evac!” Broussard screamed over the walkie-talkie. “Immediately! Drawing fire from both sides!”

“Evac en route,” a calm, cold voice replied.

I depressed the transmit button as the gunfire stopped again. “Broussard.”

“Yeah. You two okay?”

“Pinned.”

“Me too.” From his end, I heard a sudden stream of bullets and when I looked across the quarry I could see the steady white flash of muzzle fire in the trees.

“Son of a bitch!” Broussard shouted.

Then the sky opened up and poured white light as two helicopters streaked over the center of the quarry, lights powerful enough to bathe a football stadium strapped to their noses. For a moment, I was blinded by the sheer mass of the sudden white glow. Everything lost its color and turned white with the light: white tree line, white cliff face, white water.

The fury of white was disrupted by a long, dark object as it arced from the tree line on the other side, somersaulted in the air, end over end, and then dropped over the cliff and toward the water. I followed its descent enough to identify it as a rifle before it disappeared from view, but still more gunfire burst from the tree line across the water from us.

And then it stopped. I searched the white light and just glimpsed the butt end of another rifle as it dropped through the night toward the water.

One helicopter banked above the tree line on Broussard’s side and I heard the chatter of automatic fire, heard Broussard scream over the walkie-talkie, “Hold your fire! Hold your fire, you fucking lunatic!”

The green treetops were shredding themselves in the white light, popping and snapping into the air, and then the chatter of the weapon fired from the helicopter stopped as the second helicopter banked and pointed its light directly in my face. The wind from its rotor blades found my body and knocked me off my feet, and Angie grabbed the walkie-talkie and said, “Back off. We’re fine. You are in the line of fire.”

The white light disappeared for a moment, and when my vision cleared and the wind lessened, I saw that the helicopter had drifted up about forty feet, hovered over the quarry, and dipped its light toward the water.

All gunfire had stopped. The fury of mechanical noise, though, had been replaced by the whine of copter turbines and the chop of rotors.

I looked into the pool of white and saw the green water churn, the chunk of log and license plate bounce off Amanda’s doll. I turned back toward Angie in time to see her kick her right shoe off her foot and pull her sweatshirt over her head at the same time. She wore only a black bra and blue jeans as she shivered in the crisp air and blew color into her cheeks.

“You’re not going down there,” I said.

“You’re right.” She nodded and bent toward her sweatshirt, and then she burst past me and by the time I spun toward her, she was airborne, kicking her legs and throwing her chest out in front of her. The helicopter canted to its right and Angie’s body twisted in the light and then straightened.