Rough Weather: A Spenser Novel

us almost instantly. With Adelaide adding to my wind resistance, it was hard to be agile. Rugar walked through it, bent forward slightly, without looking back at me. It was very dark. I realized suddenly that there were no lights on in the big house. I looked back at the chapel wing. I could see no lights there. The electrical power must have succumbed to the storm.
    Lightning flashed. Ahead of us there was something in the darkness. We had to get right next to it before I could be sure it was the helicopter. It was a big one. I knew little of recent helicopters, but this one was clearly capable of lifting at least a platoon of evildoers. Rugar opened a side door of the helicopter.
    “Strap her in the seat,” he said. “Here.”
    The pilot appeared with a big flashlight and held it while I maneuvered Adelaide into a seat along the side of the chopper and buckled her in. Her eyes were open, but she still looked as if without the seat belt she’d collapse.
    Rugar turned to the pilot.
    “Can you fly in this weather?” he said.
    “Oh my good God, no,” the pilot said. “We can’t get up until the storm passes.”
    “And if I order you?”
    “Order away,” the pilot said. “Even if we wanted to die, we can’t get off the ground.” He spoke like a native-born American,though not from the Northeast, but in the ambient light from the helicopter instrument panel I could see he was Asian. Japanese, probably. He wore a leather jacket unzipped, and a baseball hat. I could see the butt of a gun in a shoulder holster.
    “Will the vehicle survive on the ground?” Rugar said.
    “You mean will the hurricane blow it over?” the pilot said. “No, it’s big and heavy and low and aerodynamic. It should stay put.”
    “How long?”
    “Morning,” the pilot said. “In the morning it’ll be beautiful.”
    “How about a boat?” Rugar said.
    “I don’t do boats,” the pilot said. “But I’ll guarantee you that any boat on the island will swamp ten feet out from the dock, if they haven’t torn lose and blown away already.”
    Rugar nodded. He looked at me.
    “I’ll accept your surrender,” I said.
    He almost smiled, but didn’t answer me.
    “We can’t get out,” he said. “But no one can get in.”
    “What are we gonna do?” the guy with the MP9 said.
    “I’ll let you know,” Rugar said. “Take him back to the wedding and wait.”
    “Hold them there?”
    “Yes.”
    The gunny and I turned back toward the house. Five feet from the helicopter I couldn’t see it. The wind was blowing at my back now, making it hard not to fall forward.
    “We’re going the wrong way,” I said to the gunny.
    “Keep going,” he said.
    I turned a little so that the drenching wind slanted more at me from the side.
    “You want to wander around in this all night?” I said. “We’re going away from the house.”
    “Keep moving,” he said, but he turned the way I had.
    I did the small maneuver a couple more times, until the rain was driving like buckshot straight into our faces.
    “It was like this walking out here,” the gunny said, trying to see me through the pelting tempest.
    “The wind has shifted, you idiot,” I said. “It always does in a hurricane.”
    If I was right, we were near the water’s edge, on the back side of a big stone barn. We moved on. The wind was heavier. The rain more dense. I could feel, more than I could see, the barn on my left, and we hunched against it as we moved along. It didn’t do much to shelter us. The wind and rain were howling along its side directly at us. I knew the far end of the barn was maybe thirty feet from the cliffs. Lightning blared for a moment. I was right. It was there, and forty or fifty feet below was the ocean. When we reached the far end, barely able to see, I stepped suddenly to the left, around the corner of the barn, and sprinted.
    “You sonova bitch,” I heard the gunny say, and heard his footsteps. I was far enough from him in the howling murk that I knew he couldn’t see me. I turned the next corner and flattened against the wall. When he came around after me, I lunged into him with my right shoulder. It staggered him, and his gun wentflying. I brought my right forearm around and caught him on the side of his face. He got his arms around me and buried his cheek into my shoulder so it was hard to hit him, and both of us went down in the slick mud. It was like wrestling in deep oil sludge. He tried to get his knee into my groin and I twisted my