Middle Of Nowhere

   The cornered animal, pressured by LaMoia's deadly proximity, had reacted and was heading to the nest to finish the job. Heading away, making his opponent's handguns even less effective.

   Feeling the heat of LaMoia's firepower, Flek had fled to the cover of water, offering only the smallest of targets as he swam.

   Boldt missed a rung and fell.

   It happened so quickly: one moment descending; the next, free-falling. He dropped his gun, lunging to grab hold of absolutely anything he could, but hit the tower's cement pad on his left foot, twisting his ankle and buckling his knee. White pain blinded him. He forced himself to breathe in order to avoid passing out. He could see past his fallen gun, down to the water, Flek's arms sticking up and holding the rifle as he quickly negotiated the narrow passage, swimming and walking through the chest-deep water. Flek and that weapon would reach the shore within the minute. Boldt tried to stand, but cried out and fell with the pain—fell to within an arm's length of his handgun.

   Across the narrow bay, LaMoia appeared at water's

edge. But Flek spun around and managed several shots in that direction, and Boldt saw LaMoia dive for cover.

   No contest. Flek would reach the Eldorado—and Daphne—unchallenged. He intended for Daphne to pay for his brother's death.

   Boldt again tried to stand. Again he fell, this time onto his back, writhing in pain.

   He looked up into the sky, and there was the answer.

   Boldt rolled. LaMoia crawled toward the water's edge. Boldt cupped his lips and shouted, "No, John! Get back!" knowing full well that LaMoia would make the swim in an effort to save Daphne. "Back! Back!" Boldt shouted, pleased to see his normally disobedient sergeant retreat toward the boatyard.

   Lou Boldt was no crack shot. He regularly visited the firing range and put in the time required of him to place four out of eight shots somewhere on the body. Given a brace on which to rest his hands, he could manage a head shot on a lighted target thirty feet away. But something the size of a forearm, in the dark, at a hundred feet . . . he wasn't convinced he could hit it once, much less accomplish the repeated hits he believed required of him. Nonetheless, he dragged himself to the base pod of the nearest leg and braced for the shot. He steadied his two-fisted grip, checked once over his shoulder at Flek, now only a matter of yards from shore, returned his rain-blurred vision down the barrel, stretching it long and dark to the bead that he aimed onto the glistening, silver, high-voltage cable well overhead. He had six shots available.

   The first missed entirely, racing up into the night sky. Rain stung his eyes. He cleared his vision with the swipe of a hand, held his breath, took steady aim and squeezed. A blinding shower of sparks—he had nicked the line, or perhaps the insulated support binding it to the tower. His third shot missed. The fourth rained more sparks, this time like fireworks. The fifth severed the line. Boldt pulled his hands from the steel and rolled.

   It fell like a dragon's neck spitting fire, a blinding, lightning arc as it grounded first to one of the tower's legs, and then, whistling and veering through the black sky and grounding to another, dancing like a fire hose that has broken loose. It fell directly for Boldt with alarming speed, several tons of high-voltage cable without a home, all the while spitting sparks into the rainlaced air. Boldt could smell the burning ozone as the dragon's head free-fell for him, curving away only at the last instant, and winding itself up again, lifting higher and higher, that static-charged roar chasing its every move.

   It whispered and whipped through the wet air, suddenly like a broken rubber band, rebounding toward the distant tower across Miller Bay, taking its hissing sound and metal smell with it. The air became a flurry of white lightning and small explosions. It raised its head one final time—higher, higher, higher—stretching for the heavens, before turning and diving like a Kamikaze, the buzzing of electrically charged energy, rich and ripe and destined for the ultimate ground of all: water.

   It struck Miller Bay with a small explosion, a huge, white, pulsing light ripping through the water in waves that reminded Boldt of dropping a pebble in a still pond.

   Flek, no doubt, saw it approaching, this white apron of raw voltage. Saw it like a tsunami ripping through the water toward him. When it hit, it lighted his body unnaturally—a glowing white stick in a black pond. The weapon he held above his head exploded as its ammunition combusted. For a brief few seconds, Bryce Abbott Flek was his own fireworks display, culminated by the detonation of what sounded like a small bomb, which experts later said had probably been his head.

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