When Gurney looked up from the burning body, Max Clinter was standing next to the open door of the Humvee in his camouflage uniform and snakeskin boots. His lips were drawn back and his teeth bared. He was holding a machine gun of the sort Gurney had seen only in old war movies, and then only set on a supporting base. It appeared too large, too heavy, for a man to carry, but Clinter seemed unaware of its weight as he took several long strides away from the Humvee and raised the huge gun’s muzzle toward the sky.

The angle of the weapon and the insane ferocity in Clinter’s eyes created a momentary impression that the man was about to assault the moon itself. But then the muzzle moved steadily toward the RAM helicopter, whose roaring downdraft was turning the placid surface of the pond into a mass of vibrating ripples.

As soon as Gurney realized Clinter’s objective, he screamed, “Max! No!”

But Clinter was beyond reach, beyond listening, beyond stopping. He set his feet wide apart and, shouting something Gurney could not decipher in the din, began to fire.

At first the stream of bullets seemed to have no effect. Then the helicopter lurched sideways and started to descend in small, swooping arcs. Max kept firing. Gurney was trying to get to him, but the blaze spreading out from Sterne’s body was blocking the way. The heat and the stench of burning flesh were horrendous.

Then, with an abrupt shudder, the helicopter pitched ninety degrees over onto its side, exploded into flames, and smashed down onto the causeway behind the Humvee. There was a second explosion and then a third, as Clinter’s vehicle was enveloped in the conflagration. Clinter seemed not to notice that he had been caught in a spray of burning fuel.

Gurney jumped into the pond to get around Sterne’s body, lurching through the waist-high water with the bottom slime sucking at his feet. By the time he’d scrambled back up onto the causeway, half crawling, half stumbling toward Clinter, the man’s clothes and hair were in flames. Still gripping the machine gun, Clinter began to run wildly in the direction of the cabin, the air from his rapid movement feeding the fire that was consuming him. Gurney propelled himself forward, trying to drive him off the path and into the pond, but they fell together on the ground just short of the water’s edge with the huge gun between them, spraying bullets out into the night.

Chapter 51

Grace

Late the next morning, Gurney was still in an emergency-room bed in a room off the main ER area in Ithaca’s municipal hospital. Although the ER personnel had been relatively sure that his condition was not serious—mostly first-degree and a few second-degree burns—Madeleine had insisted upon her arrival that the on-call dermatologist be summoned.