The Seal of Solomon (Alfred Kropp #2)(10)

He flung open my door and yanked me onto the pavement. “Oh, no,” I said. “Mike, I can’t swim.”

“Good thing I can!”

He forced me over to the concrete barrier.

“It’s pretty simple, Al! Jump and live or stay here and get your head blown off!”

I stared at him for a second. “Okay,” I said. We climbed onto the barrier. Mike gave me a nudge in the small of my back, and we plunged a hundred feet down, into the murky waters of the Tennessee River.

9

I hit the water feetfirst and just kept sinking, my eyes clinched shut, thinking, This is where Alfred Kropp buys the farm. I flailed my arms and kicked my feet, but I just kept sinking. My lungs began to ache and my movements slowed down, and then a great sense of peace settled over me like a comfortable blanket. This wasn’t so bad. Maybe I’d take a nap. My chin dropped to my chest and I thought of cold winter nights in Ohio where I grew up, snuggling under the warm covers, drifting off to sleep while Mom sat in the kitchen, working her calculator as she balanced some business’s books.

A hand grabbed my collar and I slowly started to rise. Whatever was left in me that still wanted to live took over, and I began to kick my feet again. My head broke the surface and I took a huge gulp of air.

“Shhhh,” Mike Arnold whispered in my ear. “We’re not out of the woods yet.”

He gently rolled me onto my back so I was lying on top of him, his arm around my chest as he backstroked toward the south shore. I could hear the thumpa-thumpas of the helicopters as they patrolled the river, swinging the searchlights right to left and back again, looking for us. Just our faces were out of the water, though, and Mike pushed us along slowly, causing barely a ripple.

“Nice night for a swim, huh, Al?” Mike murmured into my ear. “Okay, real quiet now; we’re almost at the shore. I’m gonna set you down easy. About twenty yards south we’ve got some cover, but it’s gonna be a long twenty yards, Al. Easy now. Almost there.”

He took his arm away and I sank about a foot before my butt hit the bottom. I raised my head a little and saw a chopper over the river, so low, the water churned beneath it, the wind of the blades creating little whitecaps in the harsh glare of the searchlights. I didn’t see the other one. We were about five feet from the rocky shore. The ground rose sharply toward a densely wooded hillside directly ahead.

“Okay,” Mike breathed. “On my mark. Three, two, one . . . mark!”

I was a couple of seconds behind Mike. I never was good at races. In PE the whistle would blow and everybody would be six feet in front of me before I took the first step. Mike was already out of the water, running doubled over, his knuckles practically touching the ground, before I even reached the shore. I told myself as I started to run that the roar of the helicopter behind me wasn’t getting louder, but of course it was.

Mike had reached the edge of the trees, waving his arms frantically, as if that’s all I needed to run faster.

About halfway between the water and the trees I froze. The second gunship had risen from behind the trees; I was trapped between them. The air began to whip around me as they bore down, and I stood still, pinned like a bug by the blinding searchlights. I could hear Mike screaming my name.

I don’t know how long I stood there, river water pooling under my wet tennis shoes, waiting for the bullet to rip through my brain. All I know is after a lifetime or two Mike made a decision and came to get me, grabbing me by the shoulder and hurling me toward the safety of the trees.

I stumbled once, tearing the knee in my jeans on the rocky ground. Mike yanked me up and half dragged, half pushed me into the crowded underbrush of the wooded hillside.

He pushed me face-first into the ground and put his hand on the small of my back as he whispered in my ear, “Don’t move!”

The choppers circled slowly overhead. Sometimes they sounded right above us; sometimes the blades’ thumping sounded very far away. The searchlights stabbed through the canopy, and they looked like white columns, the kind you see on Southern mansions, as they illuminated the misty air.

The columns of light kept moving farther and farther away, and after a while I couldn’t hear the helicopters’ engines at all. Finally, I couldn’t take it and told Mike I had to pee.

“When you gotta go, you gotta go,” Mike said. So I went behind the nearest tree, and when I came back Mike was sitting up. He unwrapped a piece of gum and carefully folded the stick into his mouth. I sat down beside him and examined the tear in my jeans. My knee was bleeding.

“Catch your breath, Al. We got five, maybe ten minutes,” Mike said around his fresh wad of gum. “They’re looking for a place to land.”

“And what happens after they land?”

“They’ll come for us on foot. They’re very determined little suckers.”

“Who are determined little suckers?”

He didn’t answer at first. He picked up a stick and commenced to jabbing it into the rocky ground.

“The Company,” he said.

“OIPEP?”

He nodded. “OIPEP.”

“Why is OIPEP trying to kill us, Mike?”

“I don’t think they’re trying to kill you, Al. It’s me they want.”

That didn’t surprise me. Mike had betrayed the knights and OIPEP, but I still didn’t understand why he had kidnapped me. Did he think I still had Excalibur?