The Scorching Read online

“Near the spot,” Fitch said. “The gorge will flood again.”

  “Then I stand corrected,” Sensor said. “On high ground near the spot.” He smiled, bearing the blunt firefighter no ill will. “How do we get there?”

  “We walk, sir,” Fitch said.

  “Then lead the way,” Sensor said.

  But as he followed the fireman, he stopped, turned, and stepped back. He reached in his pocket and produced a cell phone. “I want you to take this phone, Cantwell. It’s preprogrammed with two numbers, mine and the head of Homeland Security. You’re a smart young man. You’ll know if and when you need to use it.”

  Sensor walked away and again stopped. “One last thing. Do you know a man named Mike Norris?”

  Cantwell let his surprise show. “Yes, he was a smoke jumper squad leader, but he’s retired now. Why do you ask?”

  Sensor shook his head. “No reason. No reason at all. I was just curious.”

  CHAPTER 7

  “Well, where do we go from here?” Sarah Milano said. She had retrieved a small carry-on bag with wheels and a handle from Jacob Sensor’s helicopter, and now it stood at her feet along with her briefcase.

  “The car that brought me here is gone, so we’re lost in the Arizona woods without transportation,” Cory Cantwell said.

  “It’s Hansel and Gretel all over again,” Sarah said.

  “Let’s hope we don’t meet up with the wicked witch,” Cantwell said.

  “You already have,” Sarah said.

  That last made Cantwell smile. “We sure as hell can’t stay here,” he said.

  “Well, you’re the boss. What do we do?”

  Cantwell thought for a moment, then said, “We’ll hitch a ride to Phoenix and rent a car there.”

  “And then what?” Sarah said.

  “All right, here’s how it will go down. We check into a motel . . .”

  “Two rooms,” Sarah said.

  “Of course,” Cantwell said.

  “Just making things clear, Superintendent Cantwell. I don’t sleep with the boss.”

  “Very wise,” Cantwell said. “Anyway, when I’m in my room, I’ll call Homeland Security and I’ll say, ‘Hello, this is Superintendent Cory Cantwell here. If it’s not too much trouble, can you chaps tell me where my Punishers are at.’ They’ll all be very polite and helpful and tell me that they can arrange a Punisher meeting. Or maybe just a conference call. I don’t know which. And then they’ll say, ‘Glad we’ve been of help. Have a nice day, Mr. Cantwell.’”

  Sarah smiled. “And if you believe that, I’ve got a bridge I can sell you.”

  “You don’t think it will happen, huh?”

  “I work for Homeland Security, remember. You’ll be lucky if they let you talk to a filing clerk.”

  Suddenly Cantwell was irritated. “Well right now, that’s all I’ve got. Okay, I could get a big map of America’s forests and nail it to a wall. Then I could do what Sensor told me to do, stick colored flags into the most to the least vulnerable of them. The thing is, they’re all vulnerable to arson attack, every last color-flagged one of them.”

  “Listen, mister, I don’t want to be Little Red Riding Hood and move from state to state, taking long walks in the piney woods following the flags and dodging the big bad wolf,” Sarah said, her own irritation showing. “A forest is a forest is a forest . . . and that would be a stupid waste of time.”

  “Then what do you suggest?” Cantwell said. He wanted to say, “Has anyone ever told you that you look pretty when you’re mad?” but decided it could be a bad career move.

  Sarah said, “Forget about maps and colored flags. What we do is concentrate on the Punishers and come up with a way to form them into a well-organized, cohesive, crime-fighting unit.”

  “Like Eliot Ness did with his Untouchables during Prohibition?” Cantwell said.

  “Yes, just like he did. Only instead of Al Capone and the Chicago gangsters we’ve got pyromaniac Middle Eastern terrorists who hate our guts.”

  “Exactly,” Cantwell said. “So tell me about Eliot Ness.”

  “Didn’t you see the movie with Kevin Costner and Sean Connery?” Sarah said.

  “Yes, I saw the movie, who didn’t? But I don’t remember much about it. I know I got all choked up when Connery got killed. And yeah, and I loved it when Al Capone said, ‘You get a lot further with a kind word and a gun than you would with a kind word.’”

  “You remember more than you think,” Sarah said. “Ness put together a handpicked team of men he could trust, that couldn’t be bought, and that’s why he called them the Untouchables. And that’s what we should do, pick our own crack team of Punishers and present them to Sensor as a fait accompli.”

  “And where do we find these trusted men . . . and women?”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll find them. Once the word gets out, the best of them will come looking for us.”

  “I hope that’s the case,” Cantwell said. “We can set up a tent somewhere and a sign that says, ‘Trustworthy Punishers Wanted. Apply Within.’”

  “Roll up, roll up,” Sarah said. “We offer low pay and lots of danger.”

  “Umm . . .” Cantwell said. He was distracted, his gaze fixed on the sky. “What the hell? That’s not a Forest Service chopper.”

  Sarah Milano followed his eyes. No more than fifty feet off the ground, a tan-colored, two-seat helicopter raced toward them, its blade-slapping, whop-whop-whop racket shredding the silence. Cantwell caught a glimpse of the pilot and the man sitting next to him before the aircraft passed overhead.

  “Sarah, the passenger has a rifle!” he yelled above the clattering din. “Damn it, I think he could be after Sensor!”

  Cantwell retrieved his Glock from his pack then ran in the direction of the gully, and Sarah Milano followed after him, unsteady on high heels as she fumbled in her briefcase.

  * * *

  Cory Cantwell sprinted the hundred yards of open ground that led to a rock-walled gorge about forty feet deep, a few inches of water in its bottom and a few splintered tree trunks the only evidence that a killer flash flood had passed that way. Like men on a tightrope, using outstretched arms to steady themselves, two hundred yards away Jacob Sensor and Stewart Fitch walked along the base of the wall, picking their tentative path among sun-dried boulders and downed pines. Both seemed oblivious to the helicopter that hovered above them like a great, tawny bird of prey.

  Cantwell stood on the edge of the gully and, guessing that the younger Fitch would have better hearing, he cupped a hand around his mouth and yelled, “Fitch!”

  The firefighter turned, saw Cantwell at the edge of the gorge, and waved.

  “Get down!” Cantwell hollered. “Hit the deck!”

  Many past dangers had fine-honed Fitch’s reactions. If he couldn’t make out the words, he heard the spiking alarm in Cantwell’s voice and read the tension in the man’s body. He looked up at the helicopter . . . and then two events happened very quickly.

  Fitch grabbed Sensor and manhandled him to the rocky ground. A moment later, the chopper made a strafing pass, expertly flown, the tips of its spinning blades almost scraping the V-shaped walls of the gorge.

  Cantwell heard the flat chatter of a fully automatic rifle but had no time to see the effect of the fire. As the helicopter thundered past him, he got off a shot from the Glock, but the bullet went nowhere. The chopper climbed, then turned, coming in for another strafing run. Behind Cantwell, people were yelling to one another as they dived for cover. He two-handed the pistol into a shooting position as the chopper reentered the gorge. It was like trying to shoot the driver of a speeding NASCAR race car, and again Cantwell’s shot missed.

  Damn. This was impossible.

  He fired again and again as the airborne rifleman cut loose at his targets on the gully floor. Fitch sprawled on the rocks, and it looked like he’d been hit, but he saw no sign of Jacob Sensor, who’d probably taken the first bullets. The chopper hovered, the gunman leaned out of the cab, obviously hunting
for signs of life, and the roaring racket of the rotors in the ravine was earsplitting. Cantwell felt a tug on his sleeve, and beside him Sarah Milano held a blue Colt Python with a four-inch barrel.

  Cover me.

  The woman mouthed the words. And then she was gone, sliding down the wall of the ravine dislodging showers of shingle. Still wearing high heels.

  “You get back here!” Cantwell yelled. Like a dad calling after a mischievous toddler.

  Cursing, Cantwell went after her . . . the crazy chick was asking to get herself killed.

  Sarah’s feetfirst descent was arrested by a stunted willow that had rooted itself on the gorge wall. She’d lost a shoe and planted her bare right foot on the base of the tree, her left leg slightly bent as she leaned against the rocky slope. Cantwell skidded to a stop beside her.

  “Get out of here!” he yelled. “Hell, too late, he’s seen us.”

  “I think he’s got an AK-47,” Sarah said. Then, “He’s coming after us.”

  Nose down, the helicopter beat its way along the gully.

  Sarah yelled. “Shoot at the pilot.”

  Later a CIA report of the incident mentioned that Sarah Milano “handled her weapon with considerable skill and, according to Superintendent Cory Cantwell, revealed commendable coolness under fire.” What Cantwell in fact said was that she’d John Wayne’d it in high heels and mascara.

  Sarah Milano opened fire first, a double tap that hit the chopper’s windshield. The .357 rounds punched two small spiderwebs into the plexiglass less than an inch apart. The aircraft reared up, roaring like a wounded animal. Cantwell slammed shot after shot into the stricken machine, the flat reports of his 9mm joined by the louder blam! blam! blam! of Sarah’s bucking Colt.

  The chopper’s nose came down again, and Cantwell caught a glimpse of the pilot slumped over the controls. The rifleman jumped clear but dropped his rifle. Cantwell didn’t watch where the man landed, his attention fixed on the damaged aircraft. With a noise like a spiked iron ball rolling down a marble hallway, the helicopter careened along the gorge until its blades clipped the wall. Its nose suddenly dipped, and it slammed into the rocky bottom and exploded, shooting sheets of yellow and red flame and black smoke high into the air.

  Sirens sounded in the distance, and the air was fouled with the smell of burning helicopter. Sarah suddenly pointed down into the gorge. “Cory, look!”

  The man who’d jumped out of the helicopter scrambled painfully over the rocks to reach his rifle that lay fifty feet from him. The gunman wore a white T-shirt, black shorts, and a New York Yankees ball cap. His seriously injured right leg was visible. The broken shinbone stuck through the bloody skin, and the man may have been too shocked to feel it.

  “Hey, you!” Cantwell yelled. “Leave the gun and stay right there!”

  The man turned to the sound and saw Cantwell and Sarah making their way toward him along the wall of the gorge, and his ashen, strained face twisted in malice. He looked away and redoubled his efforts to reach the Kalashnikov.

  Cantwell raised his Glock and snapped off a shot. The bullet spaaanged off a boulder in front of the gunman and then . . .

  Sensor emerged from a shallow cleft in the rock wall.

  Cantwell saw him glance at Stewart Fitch’s sprawled body before he reached inside his coat and produced a. 32 caliber Walther PPK. The gunman shrieked his frustrated anger and increased his efforts to reach his rifle. Sensor raised the pistol to eye level and neatly shot the man in the side of the head an inch above the top of his left ear.

  He was already dead when he hit the rocks at his feet.

  CHAPTER 8

  “Stewart Fitch is dead,” Cory Cantwell said. “He leaves a pregnant wife and two kids.”

  “I’ll see to it personally that the Fitch family lacks for nothing,” Jacob Sensor said.

  Sarah Milano said, “It won’t bring the poor woman’s husband back.”

  “No . . . no it won’t,” Sensor said. “That is why a war like the one we’re fighting is such a terrible thing.”

  Firefighters picked their way into the gully and crowded around Fitch’s body, their voices muted, faces tight and pale. Coming on the heels of the flash flood, the death of a respected and well-liked base manager had hit them hard. It was a punch to the gut they didn’t need.

  Sensor stepped closer to Cantwell, who’d just comforted a female smoke jumper he knew and liked, and whispered, “Come see this. You too, Miss Milano.”

  Sensor led the others to the dead body of the helicopter gunman and used his foot to roll him onto his back. The dead man had yellow hair, and his open eyes were blue. “He isn’t,” Sensor said, “a Middle Eastern terrorist. This fool was a homegrown hit man.”

  Cantwell looked at the dead man and said, “If he wasn’t a terrorist, then why the hell did he hold a grudge against you?”

  “There’s nothing on earth more vicious and dangerous than a snowflake with a cause,” Sensor said. “I reckon this man was hired to assassinate me because of my opposition to OBOA, and somebody bankrolled him. Seems like he knew some liberal bigshot with a pile of money.”

  Cody Cantwell voiced what Sarah Milano was thinking. “That’s a stretch, Mr. Sensor.”

  “Not too much of one,” the older man said. “Like our own Mafia, Islamic terrorists do their own killing. They don’t hire it done. No, this man had only one target . . . me. Once Homeland Security looks into his background, I’ll know who he was and maybe the identity of the man who paid for the helicopter and its pilot.”

  “The firefighters say the pilot was burned beyond recognition,” Sarah said.

  “No matter.” Sensor toed the dead man. “This one will provide all the information I need.” He looked down the gully and frowned. “Here come the cops with their rolls of yellow tape, and I want you two out of here.”

  “They’ll want to talk to us, Mr. Sensor,” Sarah said. Her pantyhose were in tatters, and she held her scuffed high heels in her hands. “It was Cory and me who brought down the helicopter.”

  “Don’t worry about that, I’ll tell the law who to talk to and when they can talk to them,” Sensor said. He looked around and said to an older firefighter, “Please find Superintendent Cantwell and Miss Milano a ride into Phoenix.”

  “I’ll do it myself,” the man said. He looked at Cantwell. “I’ll let you get your gear, Superintendent. When do you and the lady want to leave?”

  “Now. They want to leave now,” Sensor said. Then to Sarah, “Keep watching the news.”

  * * *

  The driver was a firefighter named John Monahan. He’d served twenty years as a smoke jumper and was due to retire. He told Cantwell and Sarah that he and his wife had already bought a two-bedroom, one-bath, condo in Boca Raton, Florida, with a view of the ocean, a rectangle of blue bookended by two other condos. “The place is big enough for me and Jane,” he said. “And the spare bedroom will be nice when the kids visit.”

  “Happy retirement,” Sarah said. “I’m told Boca Raton is lovely year-round.”

  “Hurricanes can be a problem,” Monahan said. He shook his head. “Lot of traffic on this road, huh?” An ambulance with flashing lights and a wailing siren sped past, followed by a sheriff ’s car and then a posse of media vans with satellite dishes carrying blond female reporters and intent drivers.

  “There are some nice motels on the edge of town,” Monahan said. “And there’s a Budget Car Rental close by and a steakhouse.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Cantwell said.

  “Not to me!” Sarah said. “I want a Hilton with a minibar, room service, and a long soak in a big tub. Our expense account can handle it.”

  Monahan laughed. “Good for you, Miss Milano. Well, Superintendent, is it a Hilton?”

  “She’s the boss,” Cantwell said. “Just stop at a 7-11 or something. I need to buy cigarettes.”

  “Anyone ever tell you that smoking is bad for your health?” Sarah said.

  “Click!” Cantwell said. “Accord
ing to the adding machine in my brain, that makes the three thousand, seven-hundred and forty-fifth time.”

  * * *

  “I’ve ordered dinner for two, Cory,” Sarah Milano said, standing at Cantwell’s hotel room door. “At eight o’clock. I hope you’ll join me.”

  “I’d love to,” Cantwell said. “Dinner with a beautiful lady. What more could a man ask?”

  “I don’t know what he could ask. Usually men find that I’m all that they need.”

  Slightly flustered, Cantwell said, “I’m . . . uh . . . what did you order for me?”

  Sarah was dressed in the same white blouse she’d worn earlier but had changed into a pair of faded jeans and wedge-heeled sandals. She’d pulled back her hair and tied it with a pink ribbon. She looked beautiful and cool and poised, like a fashion model. Only a slight paleness and faint shadows under her eyes revealed the toll the events of the day had taken on her.

  “Medallions of fillet of beef with au gratin potatoes and vanilla ice cream for dessert,” Sarah said. “I kept it simple. Oh, and wine of course. Merlot. But I don’t remember the vintage.”

  “And for you?”

  “Same thing. When it comes to food, I like meat and potatoes. I’m not very adventurous.”

  “I’ll knock on your door at eight,” Cantwell said. “Black tie, of course.”

  Sarah smiled slightly and handed him a plastic drinking cup. “Jack Daniel’s . . . enjoy.” She looked into his eyes. “But no funny business tonight, Cory. I’m too damned tired.”

  “That makes two of us,” Cantwell said. He smiled, then, “I look forward to joining you for dinner.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Nasim Azar got the call he expected at one thirty in the morning as rain rattled on his bedroom window, driven by a boisterous wind. Mike Norris sounded drunk, his words slurred. “We do it my way, you understand?”

  “Mr. Norris, how nice to hear from you,” Azar said. Then after a moment’s hesitation, “Even at this late hour.”

  “It isn’t late, it’s early, early morning,” Norris said. “Did you hear me? We do it my way, like the Sinatra song.”