Free Fire and ice by Dana Stabenow Page A

sound.
    It was coming from very near to where Wy's Cub was parked. Liam moved forward to crouch behind a plane on wheel-floats. He peered around the rudder.
    He recognized the little red and white plane as 78 Zulu, but now it looked like the wing closest to him had been through a Cuisinart. Their fabric coverings had been shredded, so that the Dacron hung in thin, ragged strips, exposing the steel tubes beneath. On the far side, a large figure worked at the second wing with what looked like a crowbar, shredding it as well.
    As an act of malicious, wanton waste it was enough to take Liam's breath away. It brought him involuntarily to his feet, his head smartly smacking into his hiding place's fuselage with a clang that reverberated down his spine and for a hundred feet in every direction.
    All sounds from the Cub stopped.
    His scalp had caught some sharp edge. Warm fluid seeped down the side of his face and into his left eye. "Ouch!" He clapped one hand to his head and the other to his holster. "Dammit! Hey! State trooper! Knock that shit off right now!"
    The big figure, caught with his crowbar raised over his head, froze in place. And I picked tonight to forget the goddamn flashlight, Liam thought as he stepped unsteadily into the open. "Just hold it right there, mister. Just--shit! Halt, goddammit!"
    The figure, moving with alarming speed for something of its bulk, had turned to run. Liam ran after him. "State trooper, I say again; stop or I will shoot!" Which would have been a neat trick with his gun still holstered. Liam unsnapped the cover as he ran, the rain in his face, running into wingtips, tripping over tie-down lines and tie-downs and just generally blundering around like a drunken elephant.
    He thudded full tilt around the tail of a plane so yellow it nearly glowed in the dark and caught the merest glimpse of a tall dark monster looming up on his left before the sky fell on him with a thump that caved in the left side of his face. He had a brief flash of jumbled images that included the monster stooping over him, an upraised arm, the claw end of a crowbar; and then things got really weird--the beat of wings, feathered this time, sharp talons and a razor beak, a challenging, inhuman scream answered by a very human shriek of pain, as the menacing hulk looming over Liam was enveloped in darkness.
    The rain woke him, a few minutes or a few hours later, beating against his face, soaking his clothes, and forming puddles around his body. He opened his eyes, and found himself staring up at the underside of the yellow plane's right wing. A wind had come up and was driving the rain sideways, causing it to tippety-tap against the aluminum side of the plane.
    So far as he could tell, he was alone in the airplane parking lot.
    Or not. There was a kind of scraping sound overhead that he first mistook for more rain, but a movement caught his eye and he looked up again, squinting against the rain, to see the head of a raven peering over the side of the wing, its black head gleaming wetly. It looked irritated. It sounded it, too, when it croaked at Liam.
    Liam blinked back. The raven gave a sour-sounding caw and launched itself into the air. A second later, it had vanished, black shape into rainy night.
    Head wounds were tricky things, he knew. They bled worse than any other injury, and anyone suffering a head injury was entitled to a hallucination or two.
    It was either that or he'd wound up in the middle of a science fiction remake of The Maltese Falcon.
    The thought surprised him into a laugh, which made his head ache but also propelled him to his feet. He had to lean up against the plane until the wave of dizziness had passed.
    He should go the hospital, he thought, have himself checked out.
    He should report this incident to the Newenham police.
    He should call Wy, tell her about her plane.
    Instead he staggered back to the Blazer, fell in, and drove himself to his office, by a miracle finding it on the first try. It looked