He felt dismally inadequate because he couldn't scoop her up in his arms and carry her out of there as a hero might have done in a movie.
He leaned on the woman as little as he dared and turned left with her in the direction of the open bay door, which was obscured by the smoke.
He dragged his left leg. No longer any feeling in it whatsoever, no pain, not even a tingle. Dead weight. Eyes squeezed shut against the stinging smoke, bursts of color coruscating across the backs of his eyelids. Holding his breath, resisting a powerful urge to vomit.
Somebody screaming, a shrill and terrible scream, on and on. No, not a scream. Sirens. Rapidly drawing closer. Then he and the woman were in the open, which he detected by a change in the wind, and he gasped for breath, which came cold and clean into his lungs.
When he opened his eyes, the world was blurred by tears that the abrasive smoke had rubbed from him, and he blinked frantically until his sight cleared somewhat. Because of blood loss or shock, he was reduced to tunnel vision. It was like looking at the world through twin gun barrels, because the surrounding darkness was as smooth as the curve of a steel bore.
To his left, everything was enveloped in flames. The Lexus.
Portico.
Service station. Arkadian's body was on fire. Luther's was not afire yet, but hot embers were falling on it, flaming bits of shingles and wood, and at any moment his uniform would ignite. Burning gasoline still arced from the riddled pumps and streamed toward the street. The blacktop along the perimeter of the blaze was melting, boiling.
Churning masses of thick black smoke rose high above the city, blending into the pendulous black and gray storm clouds.
Someone cursed… Jack jerked his head to the right, away from the terrible but hypnotically fascinating inferno, and focused his narrowed field of vision on the soft-drink machines at the corner of the station. The killer was standing there, as if oblivious of the destruction he had wrought, feeding coins into the first of the two vending machines.
Two more discarded cans of Pepsi lay on the asphalt behind him. The Micro Uzi was in his left hand, at his side, muzzle pointing at the pavement. He slammed the flat of his fist against one of the buttons on the selection board.
Feebly shoving the woman away, Jack whispered, "Get down!"
He turned clumsily toward the killer, swaying, barely able to remain on his feet.
The can of soda clattered into the delivery tray. The gunman leaned forward, squinting, then cursed again.
Shuddering violently, Jack struggled to raise his revolver. It seemed to be shackled to the ground on a short length of chain, requiring him to lift the entire world in order to bring the weapon high enough to aim.
Aware of him, responding with an arrogant leisureliness, the psychopath in the expensive suit turned and advanced a couple of steps, bringing up his own weapon.
Jack squeezed off a shot. He was so weak, the recoil knocked him backward and off his feet.
The killer loosed a burst of six or eight rounds.
Jack was already falling out of the line of fire. As bullets cut the air over his head, he fired another shot, and then a third as he crumpled onto the blacktop.
Incredibly, the third round slammed the killer in the chest and pitched him backward into the vending machine. He bounced off the machine and dropped onto his knees. He was badly hurt, perhaps mortally wounded, his white silk shirt turning red as swiftly as a trick scarf transformed by a magician's deft hands, but he wasn't dead yet, and he still had the Micro Uzi.
The sirens were extremely loud. Help was nearly at hand, but it was probably going to come too late.
A blast of thunder breached a dam in the sky, and torrents of icy rain suddenly fell by the megaton.
With an effort that nearly caused him to black out, Jack sat up and clasped his revolver in both hands. He squeezed off a shot that was wide of the mark.
The recoil induced a muscle spasm in his arms. All the strength went out of his hands, and he lost his grip on the revolver, which clattered.onto the blacktop between his spread legs.
The killer loosed two-three-four shots, and Jack took two hits in the chest.
He was knocked flat. The back of his skull bounced painfully off the pavement.
He tried to sit up again. He could only raise his head, and not far, just far enough to see that the killer had gone down after squeezing off that last barrage, facedown on the blacktop. The round in the chest had taken him out, though not fast enough.
Jack's head lolled to his left. Even as his tunnel vision constricted further, he saw a black-and-white swing off the street, into the station at high speed, fishtailing to a stop as the driver stood on the brakes.
Jack's vision closed down altogether. He was totally blind.
He felt as helpless as a baby, and he began to cry.
He heard doors opening, officers shouting.
It was over.
Luther was dead. Almost one year since Tommy Fernandez had been shot down beside him. Tommy, then Luther. Two good partners, good friends, in one year.
But it was over.
Voices. Sirens. A crash that might have been the portico collapsing over the service-station pumps.
Sounds were increasingly muffled, as if someone was steadily packing his ears full of cotton. His hearing was fading in much the same way that his vision had gone.
Other senses too. He repeatedly pursed his dry mouth, trying unsuccessfully to work up some saliva and get a taste of something, even the acrid fumes of gasoline and burning tar. He couldn't smell anything, either, although a moment ago the air had been ripe with foul odors.
Couldn't feel the pavement under him. Or the blustery wind. No pain any more.
Not even a tingle. Just cold. Deep, penetrating cold.
Utter deafness overcame him.
Holding desperately to the spark of life in a body that had become an insensate receptacle for his mind, he wondered if he would ever see Heather and Toby again. When he tried to summon their faces from memory, he could not recall what they looked like, his wife and son, two people he loved more than life itself, couldn't remember their eyes.or the color of their hair, which scared him, terrified him. He knew he was shaking with grief, as if they had died, but he couldn't feel the shakes, knew he was crying but couldn't feel the tears, strained harder to bring their precious faces to mind, Toby and Heather, Heather and Toby, but his imagination was as blind as his eyes. His interior world wasn't a bottomless pit of darkness but a blank wintry whiteness, like a vision of driving snow, a blizzard, frigid, glacial, arctic, unrelenting.
CHAPTER THREE
Lightning flashed, followed by a crash of thunder so powerful it rattled the kitchen windows. The storm began not with a sprinkle or drizzle but with a sudden downpour, as if clouds were hollow structures that could shatter like eggshells and spill their entire contents at once.
Heather was standing at the counter beside the refrigerator, scooping orange sherbet out of a carton into a bowl, and she turned to look at the window above the sink. Rain was falling so hard it almost appeared to be snow, a white deluge. The branches of the ficus benjamina in the backyard drooped under the weight of that vertical river, their longest trailers touching the ground.
She was relieved she wouldn't be on the freeways later in the day, commuting home from work. Due to a lack of regular experience, Californians weren't good at driving in rain, they either slowed to a crawl and took such extreme precautions that they halted traffic, or they proceeded in their usual gonzo fashion and careened into one another with a recklessness approaching enthusiasm. Later, a lot of people would find their usual hour-long evening commute stretching into a two-and-a-half-hour ordeal.