Fairstein, Linda - Silent Mercy

“Are you there, Coop?” Mike’s voice sounded a million miles away now that the killer was poised in midair between the two of us.

I didn’t want to answer or give my position away, so I turned off the flashlight and stuffed it into my pants pocket. Maybe Zukov hadn’t seen me yet. I had already committed myself to take the steps down — most reluctantly — padding farther along in my soft moccasins, hoping not to kick any loose rocks or debris in my path.

“That’s how they punished us, Detective. Two or three nights in solitary—‘in the hole,’ as they liked to call it. Bracing winter air. Builds character, is what they told us,” Zukov said. “I played with the snakes, actually. I found them nicer to be with than most people.”

And as cold-blooded as the young delinquent too. I was halfway down the steps, feeling ahead of me with one foot for any sign of the gun.

“You tend to those wounds. I’ve got to find your friend, haven’t I?”

I froze in place. What had he done to Mike? I could barely breathe as panic seized my chest and fogged my thinking.

Fyodor Zukov was one of the few people on earth who had walked every inch of this island. If there was a crevice in which to hide, I longed to find it. But I knew that if he got the Glock before I did, Mike Chapman and Chat Grant were doomed.

Above me I could hear him tread on the brambles and branches, first moving quickly over the ground to the side of the opening. Then suddenly, with his catlike moves, he was directly above me, his arms outspread and almost hanging there, like a silent apparition.

There was no hiding from him now. He had obviously seen that the slope to the water’s edge was too covered in growth for me to maneuver through in the dark. I had to get my hands on the gun before he had me trapped in this clammy cellar.

I took the last four steps as fast as I could move, listening to Zukov’s triumphant laugh when he spotted me below him.

I looked up in horror as he launched himself from the overhead wooden beam at the top of the staircase. Gripping it tightly, he pumped his legs back and forth, throwing himself down and forward, suspended from the crossbars, coming toward me as easily as if he were sliding along a length of rope.

I crouched as he approached, fearful that he would kick me in the head with one of his long legs. As I put out my hands to balance myself on the floor, I could feel the coldness of the gun. I reached for it and secured it in my waistband, pulling myself upright with some reserve of courage I didn’t know was there.

I was running across the smooth surface of the cement flooring. There had to be a closet to hide in or some object to stow myself behind while I got the gun in position. I knew it had a spring-loaded firing pin safety, and it would be a struggle for me to remember what I had learned about the weapon from my last trip to the NYPD’s range.

Zukov had his feet on the ground and was giving chase. This subterranean space was vast and full of as many apparent dead ends as a maze at an English country manor. I passed a dozen small rooms but none had doors, so I didn’t turn to go into any of them.

In the dim light I could see a massive wall looming straight in front of me. I looked to both sides, surprised to find a narrow opening to my right, and charged through it. Another huge room opened up before me, baffling me with what its uses had been and where it would lead me.

We were on equal footing on the flat surface. I was fast, too, with long strides that were a pretty decent match for the aerialist when he was earthbound.

I raced past scores of wooden planks that had once probably served as shelving for something in this damp basement. There was broken glass all over the floor and I needed to get through this space before Zukov tried to bring me down on it.

Another turn and the darkness lightened a bit. There were no windows in this next great room, but the thick granite walls narrowed at the far end.

It looked like there was an opening to the outside — almost as wide as the room itself — that had been boarded over with plywood, and someone had punched an enormous hole through it ages ago. My eyes had adjusted to the dim interior when I’d descended the staircase minutes earlier, but now it seemed as though the foggy exterior light beyond the room was, by comparison, as bright as neon.

I beat Fyodor Zukov to the wall by a matter of seconds. We were both winded and the only noise I could hear above the sound of his heavy breathing as he tried to grab hold of me was the waves crashing against rocks very nearby.

I bent down and stuck my right leg through the hole in the plywood. Zukov tried to pull me down by the collar of my jacket, but I threw back my head and the top of his hand was impaled on the jagged edge of the splintered wood pieces that hung like stalactites. He recoiled in pain and I pressed ahead, crawling through the space to what I assumed would be freedom.

I straightened up and inhaled the briny sea air. I opened my eyes wide and closed them just as quickly. I hadn’t expected to find myself standing on a stone ledge only ten inches wide, hung out over a rocky precipice that bordered the Vineyard Sound.

Fyodor Zukov was coming out behind me. I guessed the trapeze platforms he had flown from were smaller than this ledge and higher off the ground and, like it, had no safety net. This was his territory and I needed to escape it.

With my back to the building, I moved step-by-step to the left. Heights made me dizzy, so I turned my head in the same direction and focused on getting to land — maybe twenty feet away — as quickly as I could.

Something fluttered above my head and startled me. I looked up, expecting to see a diving gull flapping its wings. But it was a bolt of silk, rolled into a ball, that Zukov had thrown, trying to secure it to a shrub just beyond my position. It landed short and he pulled it back toward him — drawing it across my body — as I continued my baby steps to the side.

“It’s hopeless, Ms. Cooper,” he called out to me. “I’m going to get you. You’ll die here alone, like one of the lepers.”

“I’ve got the gun, Zukov,” I shouted into the wind. “Stay back or I’ll shoot.”

I sucked in some air to combat the dizziness and kept walking as fast as I could. The small ball of silk sailed overhead again and almost snagged on the bare branches of a bush but fell just short.

I could practically feel his cold breath on my neck when he laughed and said, “That’s not likely to happen.”

With three feet to go, he tossed the blue fabric over my head. It caught and wrapped like a lasso around a dense thicket of Rosa rugosa shrubs just in front of me. I stopped in panic and watched as Zukov yanked on the strip to make sure it was secure before dropping off the ledge and flying to a clearing in the dirt just above the rocks and below the rosebushes. The gust of air, the draft created by his movement, had nearly carried me with it, practically knocking me off-balance and onto the pile of thick rocks below.

I was close enough now to shuffle to the end of the precarious ledge and jump down to the ground. Zukov had overshot that position by just a few yards to get ahead of me and was scrambling up the slope to take me on face-to-face.

I needed to circle around the bottom of the hill that held the old basement enclosure and retrace my steps to the pit in which Mike and Chat were confined. I started to climb, pushing brambles out of the way and trying to ignore thorns that nipped at me from the sturdy rosebushes.

Zukov’s hand reached almost to my foot. I could see the blood dripping from it, where the splintered wood had cut him. He was gaining on me, seemingly oblivious to the pain when his hand brushed thorns or scraped rocks.

At a break in the rise to the crest of the small cliff, I stepped to a clearing at my side and straightened up. I had only seconds to think through my decision as Zukov tugged on his silken bolt to retrieve it from the bush, no doubt planning to use it again, perhaps to restrain me when he caught up with me.

I would be fortunate to outrun him to return to Mike, but far likelier to be overtaken by him and fall victim to the combat techniques of his extreme ministry. In either case, the gun was a liability in my hands, without the opportunity to examine and prepare it for firing.

I went to my waistband to retrieve it, and while Zukov watched in disbelief and stretched out his bloody hand to try to stop me, I heaved the pistol as mightily as I could, beyond the rocky shore and into the icy waters of the Sound.

I didn’t wait to see where it landed, as he did. I knew from the splash that it was beyond his deadly reach, and that my best chance for helping the captives was for me to get to them before Zukov.

“You’ll die here,” he called out to me again. “I promise you that.”

As frightened as I was, the thought that I might die, that I might be too late to help Mike, juiced me to go even faster. I twisted and turned among the thickets, knowing that he had to do the same. On this scrubby terrain, it was impossible for Zukov to fly.

At the summit of the small slope I called out to Mike. “Are you alive?”

I needed to know that he was, and I wanted his voice to guide me in the right direction.

“Don’t come back here, Coop. Get help.”

I had only halted for a fraction of a second and was on my way again. As agile as Zukov was, the rough landscape had slowed him too.

I reached the granite coping of the pit, sat on the side of it, and lowered myself to the ground. Chat Grant was struggling quietly against her restraints. I ran past her to Mike’s side. He’d been punched and kicked, and the bullhook was stuck into the ground, pinning both hands behind his back to hold him in place. It was unbearable — unthinkable, really — to see him incapacitated by this murderous perp.

“You’re mad to come back,” he whispered as I tried to lift the long instrument out of the ground.

“Not a word more,” I said.

I could see Zukov approaching the edge of the dark pit. I removed my flashlight from my pants pocket and knelt beside Mike.

“You got the gun?” he asked.

“Take this,” I said, placing the flashlight in his hands. I knew he’d be furious if I told him about the Glock. “Count to five and turn it on.”

“What will that—”

“I’m still in the driver’s seat. Just listen to me,” I said, my mouth against his ear.

Zukov had turned his back to us as he retied a length of aerial silk to the boulder where it had been earlier. He was preparing to float down into the pit while I slipped across to the corner beyond Chat Grant. He would be looking for me as soon as he alit.

He was halfway through his descent when Mike pushed the button to illuminate the flashlight. Zukov turned his head as the eerie torch suddenly backlighted one of his captives. Neither of us could see much against the blackness of the dirt wall, but Zukov stormed in that direction, assuming that I was holding the torch, trying to set Mike free.

“Where are you?” he shouted to the heavens, unable to see me crouching alongside Chat.

“Shoot, Coop,” Mike yelled as Zukov worked to pull the bullhook out of the ground. “He’s going to use this on one of us. He’s going to kill one of us with it. Shoot, dammit, will you?”

Zukov kicked Mike again and laughed as he pulled his weapon loose and raised it with both arms, over Mike’s chest. “I have not come to bring peace on earth,” he said, “but a sword, like Jesus Christ.”

I lifted the heavy ax from the ground beside Chat’s head and quickly took three or four steps that brought me directly behind the killer. Mike was wide-eyed, shocked out of his poker-faced expression at the sight of my armed advance.

Zukov turned his head to see what had captured Mike’s attention. I swung the ax with all my strength and struck at his outstretched arm.

He fell to his knees, cradling his wounded wrist. I picked up the flashlight and shined it on him as he doubled over in agony, covered in his own blood.

Fyodor Zukov’s scream was louder than any human sound I’d ever heard.

I took the gag off Chat Grant’s mouth and untied her hands and feet. She wrapped her arms so tightly around my neck that I thought she’d never let go.

“Don’t try to talk,” I said, stroking her matted hair. “There’s no need to say anything.”

There would be hours and hours of debriefing after she was treated at a hospital.

Mike was limping around the hole, about twenty feet by forty. Zukov seemed to have passed out — maybe his body had gone into shock from the blood loss — and Mike had bound his legs together. He wasn’t going anywhere, but neither were we.

“His arm?…” I started to ask. I had meant to disable the madman, not to sever his hand.

“Don’t go soft on me, blondie. You took a healthy bite out of him, but you didn’t get the whole thing. I don’t think he’ll put the word ‘flying’ in front of his name anymore.”

“Let’s have your jacket,” I said, reaching out for it as Mike removed it.

“How come you didn’t warn me about this place?” he asked.

I wrapped his blazer, with its shredded sleeves, around Chat and we kept her huddled in a corner, trying to warm her up.

“It wasn’t a hole last time I was here. I think it’s the foundation of the old laundry building,” I said.

“But what’s that big old ruin you were describing?”

“I had forgotten all about it. In the 1870s, long before the leper colony was built, a professor from Harvard started an institution here. Built a home and a laboratory and a boathouse. The Anderson School of Natural History. That must have been the ruins of the Anderson mansion — much grander than the leper colony ever was.”

“One of the haunted houses?”

“Exactly. I’m sure my brothers will delight in telling us about it,” I said. “How’s the leg?”

“I’m likely to do a trapeze act before Zukov is.”

Both of us were pacing back and forth — Mike nursing a mild limp — grateful that the fog was lifting and counting on help to get to us soon.

It was about four thirty in the morning when I heard voices. Mike answered first. “Come this way! Can you hear me?”

“Loud and clear.” I didn’t know who responded, but I was elated that a team was on their way.

Within minutes, four uniformed Coast Guardsmen were standing over us, and beside them was Maggie Rubey Lynch.

“That’s Mike Chapman,” she said with a smile. “And Alex Cooper.”

“You’re a woman of your word, Captain Lynch,” Mike said.

“Well, I promised an armada, but all I came up with was a flotilla. Best I could do on short notice.”

“I’m still buying the drinks if you get us out of here,” Mike said, blowing her a kiss. “Can you get Ms. Grant up first, guys? She needs medical attention.”