The Black Ice (hb-2)

sense to Bosch. Unless-
    “The pilot is trapped,” Aguila said.
    Harry looked into the cockpit. Ramos was shining a flashlight on the pilot, whose blond mustache was inked with blood. There was a deep slash on the bridge of his nose. His eyes were wide and Bosch could see the flight control apparatus was crushed in on his legs.
    “Where’s the radio?” Bosch said. “We’ve got to get help out here.”
    Ramos stuck his upper body back through the cockpit window and came back out with the hand-held radio.
    “Corvo, Corvo, come up, we’ve got an emergency here.” While waiting for a response, Ramos said to Bosch, “Do you believe this shit? That fucking monster comes outta nowhere. I didn’t know what the-”
    “What’s happening?” Corvo’s voice came back on the radio.
    “We’ve got a situation here. We need a medevac out here. Tools. The Lynx is wrecked. Corcoran is pinned inside. Has injuries.”
    “– cation of the crash?”
    “It’s not a crash, man. A goddamn bull attacked it on the ground. It’s wrecked and we can’t get Corcoran out. Our location is one hundred yards northeast of the breeding center, the barn.”
    “Stay there. Help’s on the way.”
    Ramos clipped the radio to his belt, held the flashlight under his arm and reloaded his handgun.
    “Let’s each take a side of a triangle, the chopper in the middle and watch for this thing. I know I hit it but it didn’t show a thing.”
    “No,” Bosch said. “Ramos, you and Aguila take sides of it and wait for help. I’m going to clear the barn. Zorrillo’s getting-”
    “No, no, no, we don’t do it like that, Bosch. You aren’t calling any of the shots here. We wait here and when help-”
    He stopped in midsentence and made a full turn. Then Bosch realized he heard it, too. Or, rather, felt it. A rhythmic vibration in the ground, growing stronger. It was impossible to place the direction. He watched Ramos turn in circles with the flashlight. He heard Aguila say, “El Temblar.”
    “What?” Ramos yelled. “What?”
    And then the bull appeared at the edge of vision. A huge black beast, it came at them undeterred by their number. This was his turf to defend. The bull seemed to Bosch in that moment to have come from within the darkness, an apparition of death, its head down and jagged horns up. It was less than thirty feet away when it locked on a specific target. Bosch.
    In one hand he held the Smith. In the other the vest, with the wordPOLICE on it in reflective yellow tape. In the seconds he had left he realized the tape had caught the beast’s attention and singled him out. He also came to the conclusion that his gun was useless. He could not fell the animal with bullets. It was too big and powerful. It would take a perfect shot on a moving target. Wounding it, as Ramos had, would not stop it.
    He dropped the gun and held the vest up.
    Bosch heard yelling and shooting from his right side. It was Ramos. But the bull stayed on him. As it came closer he swept the vest to his right, its yellow letters catching the light of the moon. He let it go as the animal closed in. The bull, like a blur of black in darkness, hit the vest before it left his hand. Bosch tried to jump out of the way but one of the massive shoulders of the animal brushed him and sent him tumbling.
    From the ground he looked up to see the animal cut to its left like a gifted athlete and close in on Ramos. The agent was still firing and Bosch could see the reflection of the moon off the shells as they were ejected from his gun. But the bullets did not stop the beast’s charge. They did not even slow it. Bosch heard the gun’s ejector go dry and Ramos was pulling the trigger on an empty chamber. His last cry was unintelligible. The bull hit him low in the legs and then raised its brutish and bloodied neck up, ejecting him into the air. Ramos seemed to tumble in slow motion before coming down headfirst and unmoving.
    The bull tried to stop its charge but momentum and damage from bullets finally left it unable to control its huge weight. Its head dipped and it cartwheeled onto its back. It righted itself and prepared for another charge. Bosch crawled to his gun, picked it up and aimed. But the animal’s front legs faltered and it went down. Then it slowly turned onto its side and lay unmoving, save for the hesitant rise and fall of its chest. Then that stopped, too.
    Aguila and Bosch took off for Ramos at the same time. They huddled over him but did not move