helplessly. “I’ve never won an argument with a woman in my life. And I don’t think I’m going to start a winning streak with these two.”
Shaw sighed deeply and, holding the gun ready, he set off. The others followed right behind.
CHAPTER
100
KUCHIN HAD chosen the ground, but not in the location one would have expected, not even Pascal. High ground was almost always good ground when it came to a conflict. Almost always. He aimed his rifle, sighting through the scope, and used a gloved hand to rub a bit of dirt off the glass. He pulled up his glove and eyed his watch. Then he lay back and waited, counting off seconds in his head to keep alert.
When the sounds first came he didn’t move. As the footfalls came closer he timed their impact with the ground and moved when they struck to disguise any noise he might make. The barrel came up; his dominant right eye leaned to the glass. The reticle did its job. Target acquired, there was no reason to wait. He fired.
“Shit!” screamed Whit, clutching his leg and falling to the ground immediately behind Shaw.
“Everyone down,” yelled Shaw.
They all flattened to the ground. Reggie slid over to Whit to see how bad the hit was. He was already pulling open his jumpsuit to try to stop the bleeding. “It went through,” he grunted. “Don’t think it hit the bone, but Jesus it hurts like hell.”
Reggie said, “We’ll get you out of this.”
Whit shook his head, his face growing pale. “It’s just like Rice. The bastard has his method, Reg. Leg first, then the torso.” He grunted in anguish, his whole body shaking with pain. His mouth quivering, he added, “And then the damn dogs.”
“I won’t let that happen.”
He grabbed her with his good arm and thrust the knife into her hand. “If you hear those dogs coming just finish me off before they get to me. Promise me!” She couldn’t answer him, but stared back at him helplessly. He shook her. “Damn it, Reggie, promise me. Don’t let them do to me what they did to Rice.”
Reggie looked down at the knife as tears formed in her eyes. “Whit, I can’t. I can’t do that.”
Whit seemed to gather his strength to make one more plea. “If you don’t then Kuchin wins. And we can’t let the bloody monster win, Reg, can we?” He lay back gasping.
Reggie clenched the knife tighter, brushed the tears away, and said, “All right, I will. If I have to.”
From where he crouched Shaw surveyed the landscape ahead. The fog was still rolling in, heavier now, covering everything with a gauzy haze. The shapes of things began to alter and transform, playing tricks on one’s eyes. The direction Whit had been shot from meant that Kuchin was somewhere in front of him, but that left a lot of degrees of the compass to account for. They might only get one chance at this. He told Katie to stay where she was and crawled over to Reggie and Whit. After checking on the wounded man, he handed her the gun. She looked at him questioningly.
Shaw said, “This is our last chance, Reggie. The only way we get out of this is to smoke him out.”
“How?”
“Muzzle flash. We haven’t seen one yet, but it’s still dark enough for the light to be clearly visible when it comes.”
“How are you going to manage that?”
“By making him fire again.”
“I know that, but how!” she said fiercely.
He pointed up ahead. “I’m going to run in a straight line directly in front of you from right to left. You keep your eyes up there. The flash will come from that direction. He’s close. I could tell from the sound of the discharge. It wasn’t fired from a distance.”
“Shaw, you—”
He looked over at Whit moaning on the ground. “When the muzzle flash comes—”
“Shaw, I can’t—”
He slapped her in the face so hard it left her cheek red and raw. “Don’t tell me what you can’t do. You will do this.”
She looked stunned from his strike but her eyes didn’t water. They appeared to harden. He seemed to notice this and his voice softened a notch. “You can make this shot, Reggie. I’ve seen you do it on the firing range. Six inches below the muzzle flash. Place a triple tap right there, grouped close. He won’t be wearing body armor because he doesn’t know we have a gun. As soon as you do it, you and Katie help Whit back to the coastline, and wait for Frank there.” He handed her the cell phone. “Keep calling him to check his progress and that way he should be able to link on the GPS chip in the phone.”
Reggie licked her lips. “Shaw?” she began.
“Just do it, Reggie. Just finish it. For me.”
She finally nodded dumbly and he immediately turned from her and stood half bent over.
“Shaw,” screamed Katie as she rose from the dirt and moved toward him. “Look out.”
Shaw glanced to his left. The son of a bitch had changed positions somehow, with the silence of a ghost. And he looked ghostly too, through the cover of fog. There was Kuchin, rifle already raised and ready to fire. With a weapon like that it was really point-blank. He couldn’t miss.
Shaw threw out his arms a split second before the shot. He felt the bullet burn across the surface of his right limb. As he lowered his arms, he wondered how the man could have missed that badly at this range. Then, like an avalanche, the truth came and crushed him.
“Katie!”
He turned in time to see Katie James toppling backward from the force of the ordnance that had just blown through her. The wisps of her blonde hair flew outward as the round exited her back and splattered into a rock behind her. She hit the ground, bounced slightly, and lay still.
Kuchin stood there, barely forty feet away. He looked down at the fallen woman and then up at Shaw, who could not draw his gaze from her.
Kuchin said, “I told you if you followed my instructions to the letter she would be released unharmed. Instead, you disobeyed me. You went back to the house and took her. You broke our compact. You are actually the reason for her death, my friend.”
By millimeter increments Shaw pulled his gaze from Katie to Kuchin. From the look in the man’s eyes, he realized that this had all been planned. No guards at the house, Katie all alone. A truck coming in at the end and a handful of shots fired to make it look good. It hadn’t been a planned ambush. He’d wanted Shaw to rescue Katie. Break the agreement. And he’d walked right into the trap. Fallen for it like the greenest sucker on earth.
With a blur of motion fueled by a level of rage he’d only felt one other time in his life, Shaw exploded forward and within four seconds had covered nearly all the ground between him and Kuchin, his knife raised in a killing position. But it had taken Kuchin less time than that to raise his rifle once more and take careful aim. Shaw’s brain was sighted clearly on his American-made reticle that had never missed its target. Right before he fired a swirl of fog covered Kuchin completely.
The shot came. Then another. And then a final one.
Kuchin lowered the rifle even as Shaw leapt. Then the rifle fell to the dirt as the Ukrainian’s grip weakened and blood started to spurt out of the three holes in his chest. The shots were so closely grouped that all three bullets had smashed into his heart.
Reggie lowered the pistol. The smoky firing range had paid off. She had just memorized where he was behind the fog. And this time the target hadn’t moved.
Kuchin dropped to his knees, his eyes wide with disbelief about what had just happened. This was so even though the man was already medically dead. Scientists sometimes referred to this as the “technical soul,” the last synaptic firing from a dead brain that left some trace of reason despite physical life already having come to an end.
An instant later, Shaw collided with Kuchin and drove the knife right through his skull with such force that it broke off at the handle. Fedir Kuchin fell backwards with Shaw on top of him. And he hit him, once, twice, the blows accelerating, raining down on the dead man until there was no face left, only tissue that had been turned to pulp as Shaw’s knuckles c
racked and his hands bled.
“Shaw! He’s dead. He’s dead.”
Reggie tried to pull him off, but he used one big arm to knock her off her feet. Then, seeming to realize what had happened, Shaw jumped up and raced to Katie. He checked her pulse but couldn’t find one. He straddled her, pumped her chest, then pinched her nose and blew air into her mouth. He pumped and blew. Pushing down on her chest, forcing air into lungs that refused to expand. But then she finally gave a moan, her body jerked, and she took an enormous breath.
Shaw looked up at Reggie, who’d raced over next to him. “Help me. Please.”
While Shaw cradled Katie’s head in his arms, Reggie opened her shirt and checked the wound.
“It went through her,” she said. “But it entered very close to her heart.” She dressed the wound and stopped the bleeding as best as she could. Shaw called Frank and told him what had happened. They were bringing a medical team with them, he told Shaw.
As Katie slowly breathed in and out, Reggie sat back on her haunches, looked over at Whit, who lay on the dirt clutching his leg and quietly moaning. Next, she stared over at Kuchin’s battered body and she remembered something. “May God understand why I do this,” she mumbled, then crossed herself.
When Reggie noticed that Shaw’s arm was bleeding she pulled up his sleeve, saw the bullet track scored into his skin.
“You fouled his shot,” she said.
“What?” said Shaw.
“His shot hit your arm before it hit her. You screwed the trajectory. He was probably aiming for her head. From what he said, he thought it was a kill shot for certain.”
Shaw looked at Katie, clearly not interested in this. “I’m the reason she got shot in the first place.”
“Shaw, you saved her life.”
“Not yet,” he said, a sob escaping his lips. “Not yet.” He held Katie as tightly as he could, as though that would prevent life from leaving her. And from the woman leaving him.
CHAPTER
101
KATIE AND WHIT were treated on the plane by a medical team Frank had brought. When they landed in Boston they were both rushed to a trauma hospital. Shaw, Reggie, and Frank sat in the waiting room for hours, Frank drinking cup after cup of bad vending-machine coffee while Shaw just stared at the floor. The doctors came out to tell them that Whit was fine and would fully recover. Then more hours passed.
Shaw stirred when a tall man and woman walked past the waiting room. It was Katie’s parents. He recognized them from a photo she’d once shown him. They looked both exhausted and frantic. They were with their daughter for an hour before they came back out and into the waiting room.
Shaw remembered that Katie had told him her father was an English professor. He was tall and spare, his hair mostly gray. Katie’s mother looked like her daughter, slim and blonde, same eyes, same way of walking.
Katie’s father said, “They told us that you helped our daughter.” He directed this at Shaw. Shaw could barely lift his head to look at the man. He tried to speak, but couldn’t. He looked back down, his guilt paralyzing him.
“Thank you,” said Katie’s mother.
Shaw still couldn’t look at them.
Sensing what he was going through, Frank rose and escorted the Jameses out of the room, talking to them in a low voice. He came back in later and sat next to Shaw. “I put them in another waiting room. They’re calling the rest of the family.”
Reggie glanced over at him. “How is Katie?”
Frank said, “Still touch and go apparently. They still don’t know the extent of the damage.”
More hours passed. Frank had gotten some food from the cafeteria for them, but only he and Reggie ate any of it. Shaw just kept staring at the floor. Then they saw Katie’s parents come out of the intensive care unit again.
From the looks on their faces the news was good. Katie’s mother came over to Shaw. This time he rose and she hugged him. “She’s going to make it,” the woman said. “She’s out of danger.” This came out in a gush of relief. Her husband shook Shaw’s hand. “I don’t know what really happened, but I do want to thank you with all my heart for helping to save her life.”
After a few more minutes they left to call Katie’s siblings and give them the good news.
Shaw just stood there staring at his feet.
“You did help save her, Shaw,” said Frank.
Shaw waved off his comment with a short thrust of his hand.
Reggie said, “Shaw, you need to go in and see her.”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t have that right,” he said between gritted teeth. He clenched and unclenched his hands, looked like he wanted to put both fists through the wall. “She almost died because of me. And her parents are thanking me for saving her. It’s not right. None of that is right.”
Reggie gripped his face and turned it so he was forced to look at her. “You need to go and see her.”
“Why?” he said fiercely.
“Because she deserves that.”
Their gazes locked for what seemed like forever. Reggie slowly released him and stepped back.
Shaw moved silently past her and left the waiting room. A few minutes later he was standing next to Katie’s bed. Tubes covered her; machines surrounded her. The nurse told Shaw he only had a minute, then she retreated, leaving them alone. He picked up Katie’s hand, holding it gently.
“I’m sorry, Katie. About a lot of things.”
He knew she was full of pain meds and wasn’t conscious, but he had to say these things. If he didn’t he felt he would combust.
“I shouldn’t have left you in Zurich. I should have come after you sooner in Paris. I…” He faltered, fell silent. “I really, really care about you. And…” The tears started to trickle down his cheeks and he drew a ragged breath, felt sick to his stomach. He bent down and kissed her hand. As soon as he did, he felt her fingers tighten slightly around his hand. He looked at her face. She was still unconscious, but she had squeezed his hand.
He saw the nurse staring at him from the doorway.
“Good-bye, Katie,” he said, finally letting her go.
CHAPTER
102
SURE YOU don’t want me to drive?” Frank said. He’d just climbed in the passenger seat of their rental.
“Yeah, I’m sure.” Shaw drove faster than he should have to the airport.
Frank looked over nervously from time to time, but seemed loath to break the silence. Finally, he said, “We found the rest of Kuchin’s boys, all dead, all except for this Pascal guy. He was nowhere to be found.”
“Good for him.” Shaw’s gaze never veered from the road ahead.
“You sure you don’t want to stay around here? I can get you the time off. You can be there when Katie leaves the hospital.”
“The only thing I’m going to do is get as far away from her as I possibly can.”
“But Shaw—”
Shaw slammed on the brakes, bringing the car to a rubber-burning stop as horns blared all around them and cars whizzed past on either side.
“What the hell are you doing?” exclaimed a stunned Frank.
Shaw’s face was red; his big body shook like he was suffering from meth withdrawal. “She almost died because of me. And it wasn’t the first time. So I am never going near her because this is never going to happen again, Frank. Do you understand me?”
“Yeah, yeah, I got it.” Frank had seen Shaw under virtually every situation imaginable, but he had never seen him like this.
Later that night Shaw and Frank boarded a British Airways 777 at Boston’s Logan Airport that would take them to London by the next morning. During the flight Frank watched a movie, had some drinks and dinner, did some work and napped.
Shaw spent the entire six-hour-and-twenty-minute flight staring out the window. When they landed the men cleared customs at Heathrow and walked toward the exits.
“Shaw, I’ve got a car. You want a lift
into town?”
“Just get me another assignment, the sooner the better.” Shaw kept walking, head down, bag swinging at his side.
Frank stared at him for a bit, then found his ride and was driven off.