detached, as sparks arced above him and bullets bit into the wall and ricocheted away.
When he came to it felt like he had been out for hours, but he quickly realized it was only a few seconds. The sound of the gunfire still echoed down the tunnel. He smelled cordite. He heard running steps again. Running away, he thought. He hoped.
Bosch rolled in the darkness and water and spread his hands out to find the M-16 and the goggles. He gave up after a while and tried to draw his own gun. The holster was empty. He sat up and pushed himself against the wall. He realized his right hand was numb. The bullet had hit him in the ball of the shoulder, and his arm hummed with dull pain from the point of impact down to the dead hand. He could feel blood running under his shirt and down his chest and arm. It was a warm counterpoint to the cool water swirling around his legs and balls.
He became aware that he was gasping for air and tried to regulate his intake. He was going into shock and he knew it. There was nothing he could do.
The sound of the steps, the running away, stopped then. Bosch held his breath and listened. Why had he stopped? He was home free. Bosch scissored his legs along the floor of the tunnel, still looking for one of the weapons. There was nothing there, and it was too dark to see where they had fallen. The flashlight was gone as well.
There was a voice then, too far away and too muffled to be distinguished or understood, but someone was talking. And then there was a second voice. Two men. Bosch tried to make out what was said but couldn't. The second voice suddenly grew shrill, then there was a shot, and then another. Too much time had elapsed between shots, Bosch thought. That wasn't the M-16.
As he thought about the significance of this, he heard the sound of steps in water again. After a while, he could tell the steps were coming through the darkness toward him.
There was nothing hurried about the steps that came through the water toward Bosch. Slow, even, methodical, like a bride coming down the aisle. Bosch sat slumped against the wall and again swished his legs along the watery, slimy floor in hopes of locating one of the weapons.
They were gone. He was weak and tired, defenseless. The humming pain in his arm had moved up a notch to a throb. His right hand was still useless, and he was pressing his left against the torn flesh of his shoulder. He was shaking badly now, his body in shock, and he knew he would soon pass into unconsciousness and not wake up.
Now Bosch could see the beam of a small light moving toward him in the tunnel. He stared fixedly at it with his mouth dropped open. Some of his muscle controls were already shutting down. In a few moments the sloshing steps stopped in front of him and the light hung there above his face like a sun. It was just a penlight but it was still too bright; he couldn't see behind it. Just the same, he knew whose face would be back there, whose hand held the light and what was in the other.
"Tell me," he said in a hoarse whisper. He hadn't realized how parched his throat had become. "That and your little pointer a matched set?"
Rourke lowered the beam until it pointed to the floor. Bosch looked around and saw the M-16 and his own gun side by side in the water next to the opposite wall. Too far to reach. He noticed that Rourke, dressed in a black jumpsuit tucked into rubber boots, held another M-16 pointed at him.
"You killed Delgado," Bosch said. A statement, not a question.
Rourke didn't speak. He hefted the gun in his hand.
"You going to kill a cop now, that the idea?"
"It's the only way I'll come out of this. The way it will look is Delgado gets you first with this." He held the M-16 up. "Then I get him. I come out a hero."
Bosch didn't know whether to say anything about Wish. It would put her in danger. But it might also save his life.
"Forget it, Rourke," he finally said. "Wish knows. I told her. There's a letter in Meadows's file. It ties you in. She's probably already told everybody up there. Give it up