Jack slid his left foot a few inches toward the door. Then, making it look as if he was merely shifting his weight, he leaned left and brought his right foot over to it. Before leaving this morning, he'd stashed a Tokarev 9mm under the front seat of the Taurus. If he could get out the door alive, he had a chance to make it to the car. And then it would be a whole new ball game.
"Do not be silly, Thomas," Kemel said, holding his hands palms-out like a supplicant. "That is not what anyone was thinking. You will be paid just as we promised."
Another slide left… another weight shift…
"Damn right I will. This is mine, not yours. Mine. And I deserve it. So I'll be dictating the terms."
"We have terms," Kemel said.
"New deal," Thomas said. "It's my deck, and I call the game. But first…" He licked his lips. "First I want all the guns on the floor."
Another slide… Jack was closer to the door… a few more feet and he could risk a break. He saw Yoshio give him a barely perceptible nod, as if to say, Tell me when, so I can time my move with yours.
"Forget it," Baker said as if the words tasted bad. He was coiled and ready to spring, his pistol pointed at Thomas.
Thomas took a step closer to Kemel. "If you don't, I'll shoot your paycheck here."
"And when he's down, what do you think'll happen to you?"
Jack had a sudden feeling that Baker might be thinking of becoming management. He might not know what this was all about, but he must have figured out that the contraption taking up most of the space here was pretty damn valuable to someone.
"Tell them," Thomas said to Kemel. "You're paying them. Tell them to put their guns down and lie on the floor."
Kemel turned to Baker. "Perhaps you should—"
"Fuck that," Baker said, and shot Thomas.
The loud report was a starter pistol for Jack—he was off to the races. As he ran he saw a spray of red from the exit wound in Thomas's back and heard Alicia scream. Then another shot, half as loud as Baker's, as Thomas's pistol went off. Kemel grunted and clutched his abdomen. Thomas and the Arab hit the floor about the same time.
Jack ducked past the one called Kenny and grabbed his Tec-9 before he could bring it to bear. The assault pistol fired a line of slugs through the ceiling as Jack tried to wrench it away, but the merc had the strap wrapped around his forearm like a good soldier and it wouldn't come free. Jack had to settle for putting him down with an elbow to the face.
And then Jack was through the door, cutting hard to the left and heading down the slope for the trees. The path to the Taurus was off to his right across the clearing, but all that open space would make him an easy target. The trees were closer down the slope. They'd provide cover as he worked his way around to the car.
The clouds had thickened overhead, darkening the afternoon sky. He remembered that this was one of the shortest days of the year. The light would be fading fast. And that could only help him.
More gunfire behind him, and another scream from Alicia. He risked a glance over his shoulder and saw Yoshio pop through the door going full tilt, his arms and legs pumping wildly as he veered toward Jack. And his empty hands showed he'd had as much luck as Jack in capturing a weapon.
Jack reached the trees then and had to slow because of the underbrush and the branches. He put the six-inch trunk of an oak between the cabin and himself and stopped. Crouching in the brush, he looked back. Yoshio was almost down the slope to the trees—the guy was fast—when the merc called Barlowe leaped through the door and started firing.
"Come on," Jack whispered as Yoshio began weaving left and right. "Come on!"
And then Yoshio let out a short, sharp cry and went down, clutching his thigh. But still he kept crawling toward the trees. Baker and Kenny joined Barlowe as he caught up to Yoshio and planted a boot in his back, pinning him to the ground.
Jack watched Baker give some orders. Barlowe and Kenny split, one to the right, the other left.
Good move, Jack thought. These guys were experienced. Kenny's heading would cut Jack off from the car while Barlowe circled around to get behind him.
Jack held his ground, watching Baker who remained behind with Yoshio. He saw him say something to the prone man, then bend and position his pistol about an inch from the back of Yoshio's head.
Jack pounded back the urge to shout, to charge—he was too far away to do any good. He heard a 9mm crack! and saw Yoshio's body jerk, spasm, then lie still.
Jack closed his eyes and swallowed, then took a deep breath and opened them. Yoshio's body lay facedown where he'd fallen, and Baker was walking back toward the cabin like a gardener who'd just pulled an annoying weed and left it lying on the lawn.
Jack had kind of liked Yoshio, even though he'd only spoken to him that one time in the car. Some sort of kinship there; he thought they'd both sensed it. But Yoshio was no innocent bystander. He was a killer by his own admission. And he'd known the risks.
But still… the way Baker had seemed to relish that head shot…
Okay, Jack thought. Now we know the rules of the game.
And from what he'd gathered from Baker's comments back in the cabin, a bullet through the brain might be a blessing compared to what the mercenaries wanted to do to him if they caught him.
The prospect of capture was like a clump of these cold wet leaves slapped between his shoulder blades. Bad enough to have two well-armed goons after him anywhere, but out here, in the woods… this was about as far from his home turf as he could get. What did he know about the great outdoors? He'd never even been a Cub Scout.
One thing Jack knew: He had to move.
To his right he heard Barlowe crashing through the underbrush. Jack sensed the contempt behind all that racket: I've got a cool assault pistol with thirty-two rounds in its clip, and the jerk I'm after ain't got dick. So why bother with sneaking around? I'll make as much noise as I can and flush him out like a pheasant. Then I cut him down and drag his carcass back home.
Keeping low, Jack took advantage of all the noise and began making his own way through the brush, moving away but on an angle he figured would eventually intersect Barlowe's path. He wished it were summer, or spring at least—with all this growth in bloom, it would be a cinch to hide until nightfall evened the odds a little. At least his sweater was mostly brown, but the light blue of his jeans wasn't exactly an earth tone. With everything bare like this, sooner or later—probably sooner—they'd spot him.
His foot caught on a vine, and he fell, landing on a slim path through the brush. He had a close-up view of its packed soil, pocked with hoofprints. Jack knew next to nothing about hunting, but he'd lay odds this was some sort of deer trail. He disengaged his foot from the tough, flaky-barked vine strands—the underbrush was laced with the wiry stuff—and got to his feet. The path seemed to head in the same general direction he was going, so he followed it.
The trail allowed him to move faster. He stopped every so often to get a fix on Barlowe's racket, and figured the merc ought to be crossing the deer trail soon himself. Would Barlowe be able to resist the path of least resistance? Jack doubted it.
Which meant he should set up somewhere along here.
7.
"Broadcast power, huh?"
Alicia watched Baker from her spot in the corner by the filing cabinets as he paced up and down before the banks of electronic equipment.
He'd wanted to know what it did—"What is all this shit, anyway?" as he put it—and she'd told him. Why not? She didn't care who knew. She just wanted to keep him distracted from her, and herself distracted from the bodies on the blood-spattered floor.
Thomas was gone. So quickly. One moment he'd been standing there talking, the next he was dead. She tried to dredge up some grief, but could find none. Compassion… where was her compassion for someone who shared half her genes, even if it was the wrong half?
Gone. Like Thomas. And what did genes mean anyway? Why should you care for a poor excuse for a human being just because you share some g
enetic material?
But even Thomas deserved better than to be shot down like a dog.
"Wireless electricity," Baker said, rubbing his jaw. "Christ, that's got to be worth—"
A moan snapped Alicia's attention to the floor. The Arab, the one Thomas had called Kemel, was moving, curling into a fetal position as he clutched his bloody abdomen.
"Please," Kemel moaned, his voice barely above a whisper. "I must have a doctor."
Baker waggled his pistol at Alicia and then the Arab. "You're a doctor, right? Fix him."
"With what? He needs a hospital."
"Check him, dammit!"
"All right."
Alicia stepped over to Kemel and knelt beside him. From this angle, she could see Thomas's gun on the floor next to his body. Baker couldn't see it from where he stood. But it was far beyond Alicia's reach. Still, it was good to know it was there.
She stiffened as she saw one of Thomas's hands open and close. She glanced at his face and saw his eyes open, stare unseeingly for a moment, then close again.
Still alive, she thought, but not for much longer.
The Arab cried out when Alicia tried to roll him onto his back, so she was forced to examine him on his side. Gingerly—all her experience with infectious diseases screamed warning at the very possibility of contacting blood—she pulled his hands away from his wound. She saw the hole in the crimson wetness of his shirtfront, saw the blood oozing from it, caught the fecal odor.
Her mind ran the probabilities: perforated intestine, internal bleeding but aortic and renal arteries probably intact or he'd be dead by now. And there was absolutely nothing she could do to help him.
Kemel let out another agonized moan.
"He's critical," she said.
"I could've told you that," Baker said. "I've seen gut shots before. Ugly way to go. What can you do for him?"
"Nothing here," she said, rising. "He needs emergency surgery."
"Well, then," Baker said with a shark's smile as he pointed the pistol at her. "I guess that makes you pretty damn useless, doesn't it?"
Alicia fought panic. How much did he know? She swallowed, searching for moisture.
"Not if you want to sell the broadcast power technology," she said.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Because I'm the only one who can make it work."
She saw Baker's eyes narrow as he stared at her. Her insides were heaving with grand mal shakes. She prayed they didn't show.
"Yeah? Why should I believe that?"
How much does he know? Had he seen the will? No… odds were against that But considering the Greenpeace clause in the will, he'd probably been told from the start not to hurt her. At least she hoped so. If she was wrong, her next words could buy her Thomas's fate.
"You mean you weren't told to treat me with kid gloves?"
She watched him consider that, then saw him lower the pistol.
"All right," he said. "We'll find out what's what after we finish off your boyfriend."
"He's not my boyfriend."
"I guess not. Not the way he took off without you."
Alicia wondered about that. She'd been shocked to see him run rather than attack, but when she considered his chances of defeating three armed men, she couldn't blame him. She just hoped he planned on coming back for her.
She realized with a start that she didn't have to hope. She knew he'd be back.
She had to start believing in someone.
Suddenly she heard the rattle of gunfire from somewhere in the woods.
"Sounds like my guys have found your boy," Baker said with that grin. "I wouldn't want to be in his shoes. Not even for all the money this stuff's worth."
Another burst of gunfire.
"Listen," Baker said, his grin broadening. "It's like music."
8.
Jack hid behind a big oak. At least he thought it was an oak. All he knew for sure was that its trunk was about two feet across—barely enough to hide him—and bordered the deer trail. Jack held one of the lateral branches of a smaller tree growing between the big oak and the trail. He'd used his Swiss Army knife to trim most of the branch's twigs, leaving only one-inch stubs jutting out like nails.
And now he waited, listening to Barlowe's noisy approach along the trail.
He had a length of the ubiquitous vine coiled loosely about his left wrist, and the tree branch that had once stretched face-high across the trail bent back as far as he dared without snapping it off the trunk.
His knuckles looked blue from the cold, but his palms were sweating. Timing was everything here. A second too early or late and Jack would be following Yoshio into the Great Whatever.
And so he waited, letting the sounds get louder and closer, waited until he sensed that Barlowe was just about to step into view, then he let go and ducked back, loosening the loops of vine as he slid around the other side of the trunk.
Barlowe's cry of pain and his sudden wild shooting were Jack's signals to go. He leaped from the back side of the tree, landing directly behind Barlowe. The merc was stumbling back toward Jack, his left hand to his face, firing blindly with the Tec-9 in his right. Jack waited a heartbeat until Barlowe lowered his left hand, then looped a coil of the vine around the merc's throat and yanked the startled man backward.
As he slammed Barlowe's back against the big tree, he noticed blood running from his left eye. One of the twiglets Jack had left had found its mark. In hyperdrive now, Jack dropped one end of the vine, put the trunk between them, then reached around the other side and reclaimed the loose end.
He hauled back on the two ends of the vine, putting all his weight into the job. He couldn't see Barlowe on the far side of the trunk, but Jack could hear his choking grunt as the vine garrote cut off his air. His legs thrashed frantically and he tried to fire his Tec backward, angling the muzzle around the trunk, but Jack simply moved to his left without loosening up on the vine. The two bursts Barlowe got off did little more than kick up wet leaves.
And then the shooting stopped, though the thrashing continued. That could mean only one thing: Barlowe had realized that his Tec-9 was not going to save his life. And Jack figured what he'd try next.
Quickly he twisted the two ends of the vine together so he could keep it taut with one hand. Then he stretched around to his right.
Just as he'd suspected, Barlowe was pulling his Special Forces knife from its scabbard. The wicked-looking saw-toothed Rambo blade gleamed in the light as Barlowe brought it up behind his head to saw at the vines.
"No you don't," Jack said, and grabbed his wrist.
The struggle was a short one. Weakened by lack of air, Barlowe didn't have the strength to pull free of Jack's grip.
Finally, he sagged.
But Jack wasn't about to release the vine. Barlowe could be playing possum.
Just then the bark on the trunk above Jack's head exploded into stinging fragments to the rattling tune of assault weapon fire.
He ducked and turned. He spotted the other merc, Kenny, about fifty yards away, crashing toward him.
Kenny whooped and yelled. "Hey, Barlowe! What're you shooting at? I found him! He's over here! Yo, Barlowe! Over here!"
Jack released the vine and crawled around to Barlowe's side of the tree. The merc's face was blue-tinged, his eyes closed as his body sagged to its knees.
On the far side he could hear Kenny's noisy progress, yelling and firing short bursts as he approached.
"Gotcha now, fucker! Say your prayers, 'cause you got about a minute to live. Hope you're shittin' your pants, fucker. Hey, yo, Barlowe! Where are you, man? You're gonna miss the fun!"
"Barlowe's right here," Jack whispered. "Waiting for you."
Jack grabbed Barlowe's Tec-9 but its strap was wrapped and twisted around his arm. He yanked first, then tried to untangle it, and all the while he could hear Kenny crashing closer.
"Dammit!" he hissed as he fumbled for the strap release.
And then pain blazed through t
he front of Jack's left thigh. For an instant he thought he'd been shot, then he looked down and saw Barlowe's knife dropping out of a bloody slit in his jeans, and Barlowe staring up at him with the reddest whites Jack had ever seen.
And Kenny just on the other side of the tree.
Ignoring the pain in his leg as best he could, Jack hauled Barlowe to his feet—had to hand it to the guy, he was one tough, determined son of a bitch—and faced him toward Kenny's sounds. As he held him up he wriggled his hand under the merc's right arm, searching for the Tec-9's grip.
Kenny arrived with his own Tec blazing, and Jack felt the jolting impact of the slugs tearing into Barlowe.
"Oh, Christ!" Kenny wailed as the shooting stopped. "Barlowe, what—?"
Jack couldn't see Kenny, but he could imagine his expression. Jack's questing finger found the trigger of Barlowe's Tec then, and he pulled it. He had no idea where he was aiming, he simply started firing blind and wild, and hoped the clip wouldn't run out.
He chanced a peek over Barlowe's shoulder and saw Kenny stumbling backward, arms and eyes wide, his chest a bloody ruin.
Jack released Barlowe and his Tec, letting him fall forward. Both mercs hit the ground about the same time.
And then Jack sagged against the big tree, clutching his bloody thigh. It hurt like hell every time he moved his leg.
Just what I need, he thought.
But at least he was no longer the only unarmed man on the hill.
9.
The gunfire had stopped.
"Well," Baker said, "that's it for your boyfriend."
He leaned against the desk, his pistol still in his hand.
"You don't know that," Alicia said.
She could not imagine Jack dead. He seemed too resourceful to be dead. But then, she'd only seen him playing his tricks. She'd never seen him in a gunfight. And no matter how good he was, how could he overcome two men armed with automatic weapons?
Repairman Jack [02]-Legacies Page 35
