Doc - 19 - Chasing Midnight

by Randy Wayne White

  It could happen. I believed what Geness Neinabor had told me. If Armanie or the guard fired a shot or pulled a trigger accidentally, Sharon Farwell would be killed. “Sacrificed,” if you inhabited the brains of the twins—or were inhabited by some bipolar monster who provided an alibi for murder. Unless… unless Geness had taken my warning to heart about not killing until he had heard my “truth.” It was a long shot, of course, but everything was a long shot now.

  The possibility was maddening because it was beyond my control and forced me to be doubly cautious as I neared the house. Even if Tomlinson had been invited inside, I couldn’t risk startling Armanie. The man hated me. He might fire a warning shot or even shoot to kill. If that happened, Sharon would die seconds later.

  The shell path ended near the ruins of what might have been a boathouse. There were pilings and a cement stanchion. As I ducked behind it, I heard a night bird’s warning cry. From atop a piling, a gargoyle shape dropped toward the water, then struggled to flight—a cormorant. I watched the bird angle starward, wings creaking, then I turned and used thermal vision to check the path behind me.

  So far, I’d seen no sign of Geness. Maybe he was tailing me from the distance or maybe he had returned to the lodge to wait. If my lie had caused him to turn back, great. If it had fired any moral uncertainties in his brain, better yet, but I doubted it. If the twin had gone to the fishing lodge, it was to score his first kill when, and if, Tomlinson and I failed to return on time.

  The luminous numerals of my Chronofighter told me that Sharon Farwell had only twenty-two minutes to live.

  In a rush, I turned my attention to the house. I lifted the monocular to my eye and saw the three men moving toward an open doorway. A moment later, they disappeared into another room, shielded by walls from the TAM-14’s heat sensors.

  Damn it.

  I told myself to stay calm. I had to choose my next move carefully. Was it smarter for me to stay where I was? Maybe Tomlinson would hand Armanie the letter and get the hell out. If that happened, it would take us only a few minutes to retrieve my homemade weapons. A couple of minutes later, we’d be in position outside the fishing lodge. If I could force the hijackers to evacuate and somehow find and disarm the explosive, maybe we’d make it through the night with only three casualties.

  As good as that sounded, I was reluctant to wait. I decided to get a look at the house from a different angle. If I could see what was going on inside, it might help me make a more informed decision. I checked behind me one last time, then ran.

  Ahead and to my left, a hedge of hibiscus traced the property line. Beyond it, near the pool, was a rock privacy wall too thick to reveal a heat signature if someone was hidden behind it. It was a chance I had to take. Beyond that, I could see the marina docks and the vague silhouettes of Kazlov’s black-hulled yacht and No Más. Not so many minutes earlier, a man with a rifle had been standing near the privacy wall, smoking a cigarette, and he had fired a rifle at me.

  Once again, I wondered how Tomlinson had gotten in the house so quickly. And why had the guard left his post to join his boss and Tomlinson inside?

  I was still sorting through explanations as I jogged along the hedge, past the wall. That’s when the answer hit me with all the subtlety of a sledge. Yes, the bodyguard had abandoned his position—but only for a few minutes. He had slipped into the shadows to urinate, which was apparent because the man was still struggling with his zipper when I rounded the corner and we almost collided.

  Startled, the bodyguard hollered something in Russian as I spun away from his shoulder and went stumbling past him. I had almost regained my balance when my foot hit something—a tree root, possibly—which caused the thermal vision unit to go flying before I landed hard in a patch of oversized whelk shells.

  Had the man not been so surprised, he might have taken his time and done it right. He could have backed away several yards, then taken aim with the rifle that was slung beneath his arm. Instead, he bellowed something guttural, lunged at me with the butt of the rifle and tried to hammer my head into the ground.

  I got my hands up too late, I knew it, and swung my face away from the shattering impact. But the guard’s momentum, or the darkness, caused him to miss, and the rifle butt crushed a shell next to my ear. The crunch of calcium carbonate has a bonelike resonance. It was a chilling sound to hear so near my head and a sobering reminder that I would need reconstructive surgery, or a hearse, if I didn’t get my ass in gear and take my attacker to the ground.

  I was ready an instant later when the bodyguard stabbed the rifle at me again. Hands up, I had my right leg fully extended, my left knee close to my chest. As the man leaned, I knocked the gun butt away while my legs went to work. I hooked my right foot behind the guard’s ankle and yanked it toward me as I kicked him thigh-high with my left foot. Kicked him so hard that his knee flexed backward on its own hinges and he screamed. As he fell, I maintained control of his leg, my right foot behind his ankle, left foot on his thigh. I used them to apply more pressure, and steer him away so he didn’t land on me.

  That should have been enough, but Armanie’s bodyguard wasn’t convinced. He had dropped the rifle when he fell but managed to grab the thing just as I got my hands on it. The man was on his back, his knee was a grotesque mess and the pain had to be excruciating. Even so, he wrestled the weapon away by rolling toward me, which was unexpected, then battled to get his finger on the trigger. Pull the trigger and the round would either graze my leg or cut a trench beneath me. Either way, the bullet would kill Sharon Farwell.

  I slapped my hands over his and bent his index finger back until he yelped. Just before his knuckle joint snapped, he released the weapon, then tried to use his free arm to slam an elbow into my face. I tucked my chin fast enough so that the blow glanced off my forehead, but the impact still caused a dizzying sensation behind my eyes as if an ammonia capsule had burst. If I caught another elbow, it might be enough to put me out, so I got an arm over the man’s shoulder and pulled myself onto his back.

  Keeping one hand over the trigger guard, I said into his ear. “Stop fighting! Stop, and I won’t hurt you.”

  The bodyguard replied by trying to buck free of my weight, which was futile. From atop his back, I was in a position to control his hands, his legs and the rifle, too. That would soon give me several endgame options—none of them pleasant for Armanie’s man. Even if he had been the one who’d shot at me while I was on Tomlinson’s boat, there was nothing to be gained by crippling him further. I wanted to subdue the guy so I could get moving, not incapacitate him for life. And I also wanted a question answered—Who was the third man inside Armanie’s house?—because the numbers no longer tallied.

  Even so, the bodyguard didn’t stop struggling until I threaded my ankles around his damaged knee and levered his leg upward, which caused him to cry out, “Enough! Is breaking my spine—please!”

  I rocked back to reduce the pressure on his knee. At the same instant, I snared the rifle from beneath his belly and got my first good look at the thing. Even though it was dark and we were in the shadows of a gumbo-limbo tree, I recognized the weapon. It was a shortened carbine version of some kind of sniper rifle, judging from the scope; a precision shooting instrument. There was no way to be sure how close the slug had come to hitting me, but it had slammed into the sailboat’s cabin more than a foot from my head. How had a trained bodyguard missed a man-sized target only a hundred yards away?

  I pressed the rifle’s magazine release, ejected the chambered round, then placed the weapon nearby before cradling the man’s throat in my hands. As I applied pressure to his jugular vein, I whispered, “You shot at me tonight and missed intentionally. Why?”

  When he refused to answer with a shake of his head, I stopped the flow of blood to his brain until he tapped my arm frantically, telling me he’d had enough.

  “You were on sailboat?” he croaked after taking several breaths. “Abdul say kill you, but why go to prison for murder? So I missed. Ab
dul is lying bitch, don’t care nothing what happens to me. He tells me I’m fired, I tell him, ‘Lying bitch, I quit.’” Then the bodyguard grunted and said, “My leg… my leg is broken. Need doctor—son-bitch hurts!”

  I released the guard’s throat and reduced the pressure on his back by getting to my knees. “Did you see a man with long hair go into the house? Maybe five minutes ago, he just got here.”

  The bodyguard shook his head—No—and said, “Need ice for leg. Drugs for pain—son-bitch, this is bad! Don’t tell Abdul, maybe he kill me and blame you to police. He most total lying bitch ever. Seen him kill two men, always blame someone else.”

  It was useful information, but I didn’t have time to pursue it. I swung off the bodyguard and checked his feet because I needed something to restrain the guy. He was wearing running shoes, which was good enough. As I removed his shoelaces, I said, “There’s another man inside with your boss. Who is it?”

  “You have pills?”

  “I’ll give you an injection for the pain. But later.”

  The man swore softly in Russian as he rolled onto his side and explored his shattered knee with his hand. I was about to repeat my question when he said, “Mr. Kazlov is in house. Soon after lights go out, he escape from lodge. He show up asking for help because he afraid they find him on his boat. The hippies, they shoot him, but not too bad. Shoot him in ass, lots of blood, though. Too much blood, I think. Abdul think that very funny. But tell him, ‘Sure, come in, I protect you from crazy hippies.’ The woman bring him.”

  Geness Neinabor hadn’t missed, apparently. I had the shoelaces out and was deciding whether to trust the bodyguard or tie his hands as a precaution. I could guess who the woman was but I asked, anyway.

  The injured man told me, “Beautiful Chinese girl, she married to Mr. Bohai. Girl with big”—the bodyguard held a cupped hand to his chest to illustrate breasts—“and long hair. Not very good wife, that woman, because sometimes she in Abdul’s bed. Many times with Mr. Kazlov, too, I think. Every meeting with Mr. Bohai, those two fight over who be with her when old man sleeping.”

  I nodded and knelt to retrieve the rifle and magazine. I hadn’t seen Bohai’s young wife through the thermal monocular. She would have been unmistakable because the guard had described her physical attributes accurately, which meant she had been in another room. Otherwise, the tally was right. Three men: Armanie, Kazlov and Tomlinson, although it seemed odd that Kazlov was still on his feet after being shot.

  I checked the shadows around our perimeter, still wary of Geness Neinabor, and asked, “Did your boss care enough about Bohai’s wife to kill the old man?”

  “Old Mr. Bohai was shot tonight?” The bodyguard’s surprise sounded genuine. “Abdul, he maybe kill because he hate, but not because he love. Mr. Kazlov, though, I think he care for the bad woman. His boat captain, we good friends, and he tell me Mr. Kazlov will do any stupid thing for that bitch.”

  “Vladimir?”

  “We serve Russian Army together. You know Vladie? When we have enough money, we open a restaurant maybe. Hell with this shit, working for crazy assholes.”

  My respect for Russians, already considerable, was growing by the minute. I thought for a moment, then stuffed the shoelaces in my back pocket. “There’s a chair by the pool, I’ll help you. But I want your word you won’t try something stupid. Any other weapons on you?”

  The bodyguard shook his head but I frisked him anyway as he asked, “What means, ‘want word’?”

  I stood and showed him a switchblade knife, plus a full magazine of .308 cartridges, I’d just found in the cargo pocket of his slacks. “It means don’t lie to me again. Or I’ll tie your hands, leave you out here all night. No pain pills, no doctor. Understand?”

  In the man’s pockets, I’d also found a surgical glove stuffed with several more gloves—standard equipment for a professional who might be required to kill without leaving fingerprints. Because I had no idea of what I might be forced to do before the night was over, I snapped on a pair of elastic gloves, then jammed another pair into my pocket.

  One arm around my shoulder, I helped the bodyguard hobble toward the pool thirty yards away. It was slow going, which was exasperating because it was 1:30 a.m., only fifteen minutes before the twins executed Sharon. When I realized the time, I dumped the guy over my shoulder and carried him fireman style.

  I’d give it five more minutes, I decided. I couldn’t risk waiting any longer to return to the lodge—no matter what.

  As I placed the man on a wooden pool lounger, I noticed a balloon of candlelight crossing an upstairs window. Taking a couple of steps back to get a better angle, I got a quick look at Armanie, then possibly Tomlinson and maybe a third person, too, although I couldn’t be sure because the candle vanished into another room.

  I told the man, “I don’t want to hear a sound out of you,” then rushed to grab the rifle before using the TAM to search the upstairs of the house.

  Nothing.

  I changed angles, checked again, then ran to the side of the house, where I got lucky. There were two, maybe three people in a corner room, their body heat no longer shielded by multiple walls. The details were blurred, their facial features impossible to distinguish, but they were all flat-chested, so Bohai’s wife wasn’t among them. Two of the men resembled luminous apparitions, auras glazed with phosphorus. The third man was more difficult to decipher because he remained partially screened by what might have been a wall-mounted television.

  Could I be certain one of the men was Tomlinson? I adjusted the monocular’s brightness and contrast, then methodically interpreted the data it provided. The heat variations were subtle, the unit’s learning curve slow, but I was catching on.

  Yes, Tomlinson had entered the room, sandwiched by two men. It was confirmed by a web of hair that collected warmth from my friend’s face and shoulders. I also suspected that he was in trouble. I knew it for sure when, a moment later, I watched him thrust out both arms and crouch into what I would have described as a shooter’s position were it anyone but Tomlinson. Yet, he’d reacted so aggressively, I couldn’t explain the movement any other way.

  I took several steps backward to get an unrestricted view as I experimented with the focus. Was the black geometric in Tomlinson’s hands a pistol? It seemed an impossibility, yet the object began to assume shape as heat molecules wicked their way in slow progression from his fingers. A radiating line soon formed that revealed a gun barrel’s precision edge. Then a loop of warming metal appeared that could only be a trigger guard.

  When I saw the trigger guard, I knew it was true. Tomlinson had a gun and he was using it to threaten either Abdul Armanie or Viktor Kazlov. Armanie probably, because the host would have entered the room first.

  How the hell had Tomlinson gotten his hands on a weapon? Not that there was much chance of him actually using the thing. The man was an apostle of nonviolence; a peacenik who refused to even touch a firearm. The incongruity caused me to lower the thermal monocular and blink my mind clear.

  When I looked again, though, I no longer doubted what I was seeing. Tomlinson was still in a shooting stance as if moments from pulling the trigger. He had stopped three paces away from a shorter, thicker man. It definitely wasn’t Kazlov. Kazlov was as tall as Tomlinson and almost as lean. Plus, the Russian had taken a bullet in the buttocks and was bleeding badly, according to the bodyguard. He wouldn’t have stood so erect and unflinching while a gun was aimed at his chest.

  Yes, it was Armanie. Tomlinson had the man cornered and was ready to shoot.

  This couldn’t be happening.

  If it did happen, though, I knew there wasn’t a damn thing in the world I could do to stop it.

  19

  I felt a morbid sense of the inevitable as I watched Tomlinson hold Armanie at gunpoint, and doubly helpless because Kazlov, who was just as dangerous, stood within easy striking distance only a few yards away.

  I had to do something, so I reacted without thinking. I swu
ng the monocular away from my eye, unslung the rifle I was carrying and snapped it to my shoulder. For an absurd moment, I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t decipher details through the scope. Before I bothered checking the lens caps, though, I understood the problem.

  Idiot.

  Problem was, I’d forgotten the obvious: a conventional rifle scope doesn’t read heat signatures through wooden siding. I could guess where my target was standing—a viable option if everyone in the room was a threat. But I couldn’t open fire with Tomlinson in there. In fact, I couldn’t risk squeezing the trigger no matter what happened.

  One gunshot and Sharon Farwell dies.

  I considered sprinting to the front of the house and kicking in the door. From what I’d just witnessed, though, the scene upstairs was degrading by microseconds, not minutes. No… I didn’t have time. For now, all I could do was watch the drama play out, then try to provide backup. I thumbed the rifle’s safety and ran to look through a nearby window. A membrane of light showed through the curtains, and I hoped it would provide a cleaner view of what was happening. If Tomlinson pulled the trigger, if anyone fired a shot, I wanted to be in position to take out one or both of the black marketeers. There was no helping Sharon if a shot was fired, but I might still be able to save my friend.

  The window was useless, though, so I changed positions. As I moved, I heard voices from inside the house for the first time. Angry voices suddenly loud enough to pierce the walls. I couldn’t distinguish words, but the escalating volume had the flavor of an argument.

  I positioned the thermal unit flush over my eye and took a quick look. In the last thirty seconds, the scene had changed in subtle, dangerous ways.

  I could see that Tomlinson, gun in hand, had backed Armanie to the wall. The Iranian had his fingers laced behind his head as if he’d just been taken prisoner. Thermal optics add an X-ray starkness when imaging the human body, so the skeletal framework of Armanie’s teeth and jaws scissored with every word as the two men argued. Kazlov was still behind Tomlinson, his face only partially screened. Now, though, he had a shoulder braced against the doorway, probably because his wound had made him too weak to stand.