The man’s eyes opened slowly, went wide at the sight of two big men aiming guns at him. He sat bolt upright. Started to speak, realized he still had the headphones on, yanked them off.
“Dr. David Gerrin, we have a duly authorized warrant to search these premises,” Taylor began.
The man’s mouth opened and closed repeatedly, but no words came.
“You can stop,” Barnard said.
“What?” Dolan and Taylor looked back at him.
“It’s not Gerrin.”
62
The dive shed was still lit, as Hallie had left it. Merritt lay where she had fallen, her face a stove-in, frozen red mess.
“Like she got hit by a fifty-pound bullet,” Graeter said.
“Must have missed Guillotte,” Hallie said.
“If he’s not here, the son of a bitch must be back in the station.”
They hurried outside, ready to jump on Graeter’s idling snowmo. Both stopped at the same time.
“What is that?” Hallie asked.
“A Cat D9,” he said. “Nothing else sounds like it.”
But it was not a Cat D9 they saw materializing out of the gloom several hundred yards away. It looked, in fact, like the face of an advancing black wave, just visible against the ice. “What the hell is that?” Graeter said. “And who’s running the Cat?”
“Guillotte. Has to be. He’s killed the lights.”
“Why would—” Graeter started to ask. Instead he exclaimed, “That’s a fuel bladder he’s pushing. He’s going to blow up the station.”
“We need to get him off that machine,” Hallie said.
“He’s locked himself into the cab for sure. And that glass is designed to protect operators in rollovers and landslides. Forget bullets. We’ll have to evacuate the station before he reaches it.”
“No phone, no radio comms — remember? The Dark Sector. We can get there, but that still won’t leave enough time to get everybody out.”
“Son of a bitch.”
“I have another idea,” she said.
“What?”
She took the first aid kit from the snowmo’s emergency box and used it like a brick to smash the headlight and taillights.
“We’re going stealth,” she said. “You drive.”
63
“Get out of bed. Keep your hands where we can see them.” Dolan’s voice was neither harsh nor courteous, just barely civil. He and Taylor weren’t pointing their weapons at the man, but neither had they holstered them.
“Yes, yes. Of course.” The one who was not David Gerrin was wearing blue flannel pajamas with white stripes. His terrified expression, as he climbed out of bed, suggested that he was accustomed to dealing with very different kinds of police.
“I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name,” Barnard said.
“It is Muhammed Kandohur Said.”
“Who is he?” Dolan asked Barnard.
“I am Dr. Gerrin’s executive assistant,” Said answered for himself, regaining a fraction of composure.
“Where is Dr. Gerrin?” Barnard asked. “And why are you here?”
“I am house-sitting for him,” Said answered. “As for his location, I am not sure I should …”
Dolan reached behind his back and brought forward a pair of handcuffs. “You can answer questions here or go with us.”
Said’s face lost what little poise it had regained. Where he had come from, Barnard thought, the phrase “go with us” probably implied a one-way trip to some medieval hellhole.
“He has left on vacation.” Said’s eyes were fixed on the handcuffs, which Dolan held out between them, the lower cuff swinging back and forth like a pendulum.
“Where?” Barnard asked.
“I do not know that,” Said blurted. He tore his eyes from the handcuffs to look at Barnard. “I honestly do not. Please believe me. Dr. Gerrin did not say, and it was not my place to ask.”
“He left you no way to get in touch with him?”
“No. I did ask about that, but he said he wished to relax on his vacation. Leave work behind, as he put it.” Barnard looked at Bowman, and they both exchanged glances with the marshals.
“We’ll still search,” Dolan said. “The warrant is for the premises. Owner doesn’t have to be present for us to execute it.”
Barnard turned back to Said. “Did Gerrin say how long he would be gone?”
“No.”
“Did he say anything?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“He said, ‘You should expect some visitors.’ I thought he was talking about friends.”
64
Guillotte loved operating heavy machinery. In the French Army, he had wanted to be a tank driver, but they’d used him for close-in killing instead. That was really his true calling. Regardless, he also found sexual pleasure in sitting atop all that roaring, throbbing power. And it was so easy, even with his right thigh aflame with pain where one of the tanks had struck a glancing blow. Right now, he had little to do but sit in the Cat’s comfortable, high-backed operator’s seat and input minor course corrections with the left joystick. The machine’s gigantic blade protruded a foot on either side of the bladder’s sled, so keeping it centered and moving forward was no problem.
The hard part would come later: triggering the emergency signal, then managing not to freeze to death waiting for the Twin Otter. The pilot would have his own challenges, landing on an ungraded iceway lit only by a few flares. If that plane crashed, though, its pilot would be the lucky one. He would die too quickly to feel anything. Guillotte, on the other hand, would freeze to death, unless he found some way to kill himself with less pain and more speed.
He hummed “La Marseillaise,” gazing up at the southern lights, thinking of nothing in particular. He had never felt regret or remorse, guilt or pity, so he did not care that the station and everyone in it were about to be incinerated, nor that Triage was wrecked. He had not much cared whether the plan worked or not, really. He knew that Merritt, Blaine, and Doc were true believers in the Triage cause. He, Guillotte, believed, too — in the money he was being paid. For him it was a job of work, nothing more.
He gave the throttle lever a hard push forward, but it was already jammed against the travel stop. There was nothing to do but sit and wait for the behemoth to crawl to its final destination. Really, there was no rush. The station certainly wasn’t going anywhere. He would push the fuel bladder underneath it, between two sets of stilts. Then he would open one of its valves and let gasoline run far enough that when he lit the long, liquid fuse he would not blow himself up along with everything else. He was looking forward eagerly to this part. Few people are ever privileged to see such an explosion. Here in the black polar night, it would be even more spectacular. Like standing close to the sun.
He nudged the left joystick gently, correcting the dozer’s course a few degrees right, and settled back to enjoy the remainder of the ride.
65
Guillotte could not hear the snowmobile and saw it only as a vague shape angling in and then creeping along beside the bladder’s front end a hundred feet ahead. He saw very clearly three red flares ignite in rapid succession and describe small arcs through the air before landing on the bladder’s broad, flat top.
His first thought was to jump over the blade onto the bladder while the dozer kept moving, but the possibility of his bad leg causing him to slip and fall beneath the machine dissuaded him. Instead, he stopped the Cat, clambered down, and limped forward, planning to hop onto the bladder and throw the flares away. It was never easy to hurry in bunny boots, and his injured thigh slowed him even more.