Run for Your Life (Michael Bennett 2)

Clothes on fire, he rolled out the same doorway I’d just departed. Both he and the flames disappeared as he hit the water with a sizzling splash.

He surfaced right next to me! I lurched away, kicking at him, as he clawed at my eyes with a burnt hand, making a sound that was like an animal screech.

That was when the weirdest thing of all happened. A euphoric, druglike rush swept over me, and my face split into a huge smile. I swung my arms around his neck in a headlock, threw my weight on top of him, and took us both under.

The sound of the world ceased as I dragged him down through the cold, dark water. With newfound strength, I turned up the pressure, throttling him to crush his throat against his spine.

It was glorious.

In my entire life, I had never been as confident or as single-minded as I was at that moment. If there was one outcome that I was sure of in all of my existence, it was that this evil thing I held in an unbreakable headlock, this murderous bastard who had threatened my family and very nearly murdered me, wasn’t ever going to make it up into the land of the living again. I was going with him, but it was the best possible way I could go.

Time disappeared from my mind. I had no idea how much of it passed before he stopped struggling. But finally, as the air in my lungs gave out, so did my strength. I held onto him until the last possible instant before he slipped out of my fading grip.

Alone, I kept on twisting through the water—up, down, I didn’t know which, and it didn’t matter. I was done for, numb, too weak to move. My aching, burning lungs screamed for air. In a few more seconds, my body would be forced to inhale cold salt water.

But even as I paid the ultimate price, that peace was still with me.

Suddenly, ahead in the water, I saw a pale luminous form floating toward me. It had to be a hallucination. I had just been through about as much trauma as a human being could endure.

I stared at it in terror as it came closer. Then, with certainty, I knew everything was okay.

Because it was my wife, Maeve.

Everything fell into place. She was the reason I’d survived the crash—my guardian angel, watching over me just like I’d prayed for her to do.

But as I reached out to touch her glowing hand, she shook her head sadly and vanished.

The next thing I knew, there were other human shapes around me—big dark ones, with nothing ethereal about them. Rough hands gripped me and something rubbery was shoved between my teeth.

With my mouth forced open, I couldn’t hold my breath any longer. The dam burst, and my starving lungs sucked in desperately.

But instead of the bilgy water I’d been braced for, it was pure, sweet air—from the Aqua-Lung of a Coast Guard diver, I learned soon afterward, one of a team who’d helicoptered in to intercept the crashing Cessna, and plunged into the chilly bay to find me.

When those heroes got me back to the surface, other choppers and craft from the Coast Guard and city authorities were converging on the site, to contain the fire and search for survivors.

Thank God, I was the only one of those.

The crazy events weren’t quite over yet. After the Coast Guard guys dragged me onto the deck of a cutter, I stood up and actually tried to dive back in. It took two paramedics to strap me, kicking and screaming, into a stretcher.

“Take it easy, Detective,” one of them said, trying to calm me. “The pilot’s gone. It’s over.”

“To hell with him!” The muscles in my face and throat felt like they were tearing as I yelled out at the flame-filled dark water.

“Maeve!” I screamed. “Maeve!”

Epilogue

HOCKEY STYX

Chapter 97

IN ADDITION TO MY WRIST, I’d broken an ankle and three ribs, which put me in the hospital for the next week. NYPD cops don’t get paid all that much, but our health insurance is hard to beat, thank God.

The pilot of the F-15 that shot us down, Major Vickers, actually came to my room the night before I got out, in order to apologize.

“Are you kidding me?” I’d said, clapping the baby-faced twenty-eight-year-old on the back. “With that freak, I should have called in an air strike sooner.”

A month later almost to the day, I hobbled into Holy Name Church, still on crutches. The altar looked like a formal garden. When the organ started, it played Handel’s Water Music—Maeve’s favorite.