Rough Weather - By Robert B. Parker Page 0,8

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 went flying. 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 hip so he couldn’t. I got hold of his hair and pulled his head out away from my shoulder. We rolled over in the muck. I banged his nose with my forehead. He let go of me and got his hands on my throat. I head-butted him again. He tried to choke me. I bit his forearm. He grunted but kept choking. I gave him another head-butt. He didn’t let go. I freed my left hand from under him and put my forearm against his throat and pushed his head up, pulling it back farther with my right hand in his hair. Suddenly he let go of my throat and tried to pull my forearm away. I kept the pressure. He rolled over beneath me. It was too slippery to stop him. I tried to get my forearm back under his neck but he wriggled away, and then we were on our feet again, wading through the saturated soil in mud past our ankles. I went after him as best I could. I think he wanted to run. But he wasn’t sure what direction. He tried to feint left, like a punt returner, and go right. But in the swamp we were in, footwork was primitive. He slid a little and I was on him, trying to keep my feet under me. Neither of us had