Michael Palmer

by The Last Surgeon

Koller kept his weapon level. As his left hand moved to pick up the phone, his eyes left Nick for perhaps a second. It was just enough time.

  The nail gun’s bright orange handle stuck out of the tool bucket holster like an outlaw’s six-shooter. It was a cordless model, not the compressor type Nick had used in his early teens to help his father frame a modest addition on their house.

  The magazine on the Paslode gun was designed to be easily visible. Nothing upset a framer or roofer more than running out of nails mid-job. Nick had already noticed that the tool was full with what looked like three-inch nails. If the battery was charged, he had a chance. If not, he hoped it would be over quickly.

  Koller’s gun hand dropped several inches as he looked down to locate the phone. In that moment, Nick went for the nail gun. Koller saw movement, but turned his head just before he raised his pistol. In that instant, Nick snatched the nail gun out of its holster and in a continuous motion drove the tip into the back of Koller’s hand with all the force he could muster.

  There was a sharp pop, followed by a geyser of blood from the spot. Simultaneous with the sound, Nick heard the cracking of bone as the nail plowed through skin, then metacarpal, then nerves and muscle, and finally through skin again. The shaft shot down its full three inches, exiting the palm and entering the wood, impaling the killer’s hand onto the workbench.

  Koller’s feral scream was more surprise and rage than agony.

  Nick dove for the floor, clutching the nail gun with both his hands as he hit. He was positioned directly beside Koller, and hoisted the nail gun again, this time driving the steel nail into the top of Koller’s shoe. Koller’s scream, louder this time, reverberated throughout the office.

  Run! Nick yelled to himself. Run now!

  Koller remained cool enough to work his hand free and turn to shoot. The bullet tore through Nick’s upper right arm with the sensation of touching a hot stove. A second shot missed.

  Crouching, Nick charged toward the windows, zigzagging sharply. He had considered the stairs, but those were to his back and turning around would have cost seconds he didn’t have.

  Three feet.

  Nick closed his eyes and lunged for the canvas flap hanging in front of the Dumpster chute, barely aware of the pain in his arm. The flap gave way, and in an instant, he plunged into darkness, flying downward three stories inside Noreen’s makeshift trash-can slide.

  The trip down was bruising. The hard rubber of the barrels gouged at his face and chest as he sped toward the disk of evening light at the bottom.

  The Dumpster itself was hardly a sanctuary. It was half filled with splintered boards, broken glass, jagged metal, and nails.

  Nick shot headfirst from the end of the tube, dropping two feet into the potentially lethal trash, shielding his face from the impact. When he hit, it was into a blanket of pink fiberglass insulation. Glass fragments embedded in the insulation tore at his skin. He rolled to the right as he landed, gashing his scalp just above one eyebrow on a strip of rusty metal. Blood began pouring into his eye.

  His thoughts were fogged and his vision blurred from the combination of pain, blood, and what he had endured in Noreen Siliski’s office. Partially by feel, he found the Dumpster’s edge and began to climb out, jamming an exposed nail through his sneaker and into his foot. He cried out, but kept on scrambling.

  He hit the asphalt of the parking lot heavily, and immediately toppled over, pawing at the blood that was oozing down into his eye. Closing that eye, he looked up for any sign of Koller and saw him ripping down the canvas covering the window. It was too gloomy to see if the nail that had pierced through the man’s hand was still lodged there. But then, with a warrior’s pride, the killer held it out for Nick to see that it was.

  “You look bad, Doc,” he called out. “Real bad.”

  God, he’s smiling! Nick realized.

  Koller hoisted his gun and Nick took off running. Two shots snapped harmlessly into the asphalt several feet from him. He clambered for the woods, blood continuing to blur his vision, and reached the tree line knowing that although he was still alive, he was not in the least safe.

  Koller would follow.

  CHAPTER 46

  Weaving awkwardly, Nick hobbled across the parking lot. The impact of the asphalt on his injured foot sent jolts of pain up his leg. His upper arm was afire, and any number of lesser injuries were also making themselves known. Blood continued to flow down into his eye. It took most of a minute to reach the woods. He tangled with a wall of saplings and thick brush that lined the forest perimeter and lost his balance, falling face-first onto the rain-soaked ground. The damp leaves turned red with his blood. His face was muddied and bruised.

  Keeping low to the forest floor, and running clumsily ahead, Nick ripped a strip of fabric from his shirt and tied a makeshift bandage around his head. Even with pressure in place, blood from the cut still oozed down into his eye. With branches snapping across his face, he risked a glance over his shoulder, but could not see his pursuer through the rain and mounting gloom.

  Veering to his left, Nick tried to gauge where the road might be. The building housing Noreen’s office was an odd one, and quite isolated, as if a developer had bought a lot of land, built the first building of a planned office park, and then simply stopped. Nick sensed that he was heading not toward the highway, but deeper into the dense woods.

  He thought about trying to find the road but rejected the notion and plunged ahead.

  Another thirty or forty feet and he stopped and listened. The rain was continuing steadily, and he was breathing heavily, making it difficult to hear anything else. He held his breath and risked a furtive glance behind him. It took several seconds for him to make out the soft crunching of brush. Koller had traversed the parking lot and was moving stealthily but steadily toward him.

  Hide or run?

  Through the dark, he thought he saw the man’s silhouette. He cast about, trying to get a sense of his position. There really was no place to hide.

  The darkness was his ally. His injuries were his foe. But Koller was hurt, too, he reminded himself.

  Crawling forward on hands and knees, Nick waited until the trees grew taller and denser before rising to his feet again. His only chance was to push deeper into the darkening woods. The predator was closing in.

  Ignoring the burning from his gunshot wound, and sacrificing his forearms to the whipping branches, Nick shielded his face and barreled ahead. Here, the forest floor was uneven, and decaying leaves hid sinkholes that with one unfortunate step could break an ankle. He accelerated toward a small clearing. That was when the ground dipped unexpectedly. He failed to see an exposed rock directly in his path. His foot caught the solidly embedded stone and he tumbled down a steep embankment, landing heavily on his back in the middle of a slow-moving stream. His head snapped against a rock with dizzying force.

  The water instantly soaked through his shirt and jeans, weighing him down when he tried to stand. Again, he paused and listened. Again he heard branches breaking somewhere up the embankment behind him.

  Damn.

  For no well-conceived reason, he decided to let the bank of the stream be his guide. His lungs were burning now with each labored breath, and a painful stitch had developed in his right side.

  Soaked through, he began following the stream as it widened and snaked its way through the forest in what seemed like an east-west flow. Dusk had given way to a deepening darkness. The going was slow. Twice the muddy bank gave way, dropping him into the water. Despite his intense exertion, he quickly began to chill. Now, though, when he stopped, he heard nothing except the spattering of rain and the white noise of insects.

  Have I lost him?

  Twenty feet . . . thirty . . . forty. Oblivious to the pain, Nick dove ahead.

  Suddenly, from behind and to his right, he heard the crack of a gunshot followed by the hum of a bullet cutting through the heavy air. At almost the same moment, a small tree to his right splintered. Whirling, he saw Kol
ler’s silhouette, perhaps a hundred yards away, climbing over a fallen log. Given the distance, the accuracy of the shot was astounding. Driven by new, intense urgency, he pushed forward.

  Another shot zipped past, this one slicing into a tree, only inches above his head. The thought of hiding from the killer, even in the mounting darkness, vanished with that near miss. His only chance was to somehow get out of the woods to a neighborhood and call for help. It seemed, though it was probably totally irrational, that continuing to follow the water was his best chance.

  Once again the storm intensified. Rain pelted his face, washing away the mud and blood. His injured foot ached with every step, sending hot needles up into his calf.

  “Give me what I want and I promise your lady won’t be hurt.”

  Koller’s taunts seemed to echo from every direction. Nick kept his vision focused forward as he thrashed ahead. He would have sacrificed himself for Jillian without hesitating, but if Koller even had her, he was bluffing about letting her live. Ramsland could never leave survivors now. Despite his bluster, he had never really intended to. There was too much blood on his hands to chance putting his patriotism to the test. He might believe in the horrible things he had done or authorized, but it was doubtful the electorate would.

  Nick forged on for what he guessed to be a quarter of a mile without slowing down. His eyes stayed fixed on the ground in front of him as he dodged treacherous rocks and heavy roots. He had done well to avoid going down as the last fragments of light seeped from the forest. Several checks behind showed no sign of Koller, and Nick began allowing himself to believe he might have somehow lost the man.

  The forest landscape began to change. There were fewer trees here, more low brush. It was as though the woods were disappearing. Then the brush, too, gave way. He lifted his head just in time to see the stream fall away. He dropped to his knees and inched forward, peering down into the darkness. A thin, shallow waterfall disappeared beneath him. Fifty feet straight down? Seventy-five? It was impossible to tell. The gorge, formed by the river below, cut the forest in two. It was a hundred or two hundred feet wide, and ran ahead as far as he could see. The sound of rushing water reverberated off the cliff walls. From behind him, Nick heard dead branches and leaves crunching.

  How could he have made such a mess of things?

  To travel the ridge of the gorge in either direction would leave him totally exposed from lack of cover. Going down beside the narrow falls was an option, but not a desirable one.

  Years ago, before Nick traded in his adrenaline addiction for EMDR therapy, his skills as a rock climber hovered just below expert. In his heyday, Nick could engineer the three most common rope systems blindfolded. He knew the right knots to tie in for most climbing situations. Abseiling down a rock wall such as this was always a favorite maneuver of his. He did some rappelling in the Army and always excelled at it. But free-solo descent was a Different beast entirely, especially in the rain.

  There were no ropes here to provide him a quick trip down. He had tried bouldering before, but that hardly qualified him as more than a rank novice at free-solo techniques. Still, with Koller getting nearer, he had no options.

  “Necessity is the mother of insanity,” Nick muttered to himself.

  Lying flat on his stomach, he inched over the cliff ’s edge. Forty feet down, there appeared to be a rock overhang. If he could descend the top part of the drop and reach the overhang before Koller spotted him, there was a chance he could hide out underneath it until it was safe to move again—until dawn if necessary.

  More rustling to his back.

  There were no options.

  He would have to on-sight this route—figure out his holds on the fly as he worked his way down.

  Turning around and dropping his feet so he was facing the rock, Nick eased himself over the ledge. He located his first foothold five feet down. Moss and the rain had turned every rock and crevice slick and treacherous. There was no sure footing here, no dependable handholds. He kept his hands just past shoulder width, digging around the loose stone until he found what seemed like a reasonable grip. His left leg was shaking, perhaps from the tension of the tiptoe hold, but probably from exhaustion as well.

  The first twenty feet down passed fairly easily. The rocks jutted out like jagged teeth, making the holds painless to feel out, even in dim light. Nick was gaining on the overhang, ignoring his fear and the pain from the gunshot wound in his right arm, and focusing all his intensity on the goal.

  Almost there . . . Keep going . . . Easy . . . Easy . . .

  A voice called out to him from above.

  “Hey there, Doc,” Koller said. “Haven’t you read about the dangers of climbing at night without ropes?”

  The monster was only a silhouette, but even in darkness, Nick thought he could see the white of his Cheshire Cat grin. He hurried his movements, inch by inch working his way down.

  “You made this very easy, Doc. Set up a perfect non-kill, actually. Watch out for falling rocks. Those can be a bitch.”

  A small boulder clattered past, just two or three feet from Nick’s face. He sensed the miss might have been on purpose.

  “What about the DVD?” Nick yelled up into the blackness. “You don’t have my copy.”

  “Yes, it’s a shame your death will make it harder to find. But I know it’s not far from where your friends Siliski and Mollender are napping. The good news is you’ll be dead so I won’t have to send you my medical bills for the hand and foot you impaled with that fucking nail gun.”

  “I hope they really hurt.”

  Nick’s right foot hungrily sought out a new hold. The tips of his fingers began to burn from fatigue. Koller dropped another rock, missing by no more than a foot. The overhang was too far away for Nick to reach in time to get cover. Another rock clattered down, then another—this one glancing off his left shoulder.

  “Once you fall and hit bottom, I’ll amble down myself and make sure if you’re still alive that you die slowly. You stuck there?”

  The next rock, a foot or more around, smashed just above Nick’s head, spraying a cloud of loose stone and dust into his face. The river continued to churn some fifty feet below, and he began peering down, searching for a pool. There was one. He felt certain of it. But there was no way of guessing its depth. Even if it ran deeper than six feet, a drop from this height could still be fatal, or at least leg-breaking, which would be the same thing.

  Still, his options had all but vanished.

  Where did I screw up? he wondered. What could I have done Differently?

  Koller’s next drop hit Nick squarely on the shoulder. Startled, he lost his footing and for several seconds his body swung out over the river like a hinged door, with only the fingers of his left hand sustaining him. Teeth clenched, he held on and waited to swing back.

  Staying there was suicide, he decided. He had to jump.

  “And Doc,” Koller’s voice rang out, “I’m going to do your girl before I kill her.”

  Driven by the demon’s words, Nick found the grip he needed. His footing felt solid enough. The handholds were in long fissures of the rock, which provided him with surprisingly good leverage. He visualized the move he was about to perform. There was no time to work up the needed courage. No matter what, he was going to jump. He flattened against the rock, feeling the cool moisture on his skin. Then, with every bit of power he could generate, he pushed himself away from the crag, and flew.

  Am I far enough out?

  His arms and legs flailed against the rushing air as he plummeted downward.

  Please, God . . . Please . . .

  Nick hit the water with the force of a thunderclap. Air exploded from his lungs. His head snapped forward. His legs hit bottom, then gave way. Immediately, the current pulled him under, grinding his body against rocks and sand before spitting him back to the surface again. Nick choked and sputtered on the musty-tasting water.

  A bullet slapped into the river mere feet from where he was being
carried downstream. It was followed by another shot, but there was no sound of impact. Nick took one stroke, but again was pulled under. His lungs burned. His strength was all but gone. Panic had replaced fear, and he was desperately hungry for air. Back on the surface, Nick gagged and coughed out the water threatening to fill his lungs. His arms windmilled wildly, searching for anything that would hold him on the surface. Each time he submerged he felt it would be his last. The sense of dying one moment, living the next was a cruel joke. Finally, the churning water slowed, and the turbulent river became a placid stream once more. Nick floated on the surface, completely spent.

  Don’t give in, Garrity. . . . Stay conscious. . . . Stay alive. . . .

  Everything went black.

  NICK HAD no idea how long he’d been out. He was faceup in the stream, and he was still alive. His shirt had caught on a branch that was jutting out over the water, and might have been what had saved him. He was chilled to the core, and unable to stop shaking. The first sound he heard besides the rippling water was Koller, calling his name. The killer was somewhere upstream, but moving in Nick’s direction.

  It wouldn’t be long.

  “I know you’re out there. I hope you’re suffering. I hope I don’t find you dead. I owe you. I owe you for the holes in my hand and my foot. And I owe you because I’m getting cold. Please don’t be dead.”

  Nick freed himself from the branch and sank to eye level in the chilly water, which was only two or three feet deep at this spot. Bit by bit, details of his flight from the killer came into focus.

  Hesitant to leave the water despite his chill, he pushed himself downstream. The rain had stopped, and moonlight had broken through the clouds in places. Thirty or forty feet ahead were the roots of a huge fallen tree.

  He let go of his hold and guided his body toward it. The tree was hollow. The opening was barely big enough for him to fit through, but Nick managed to squeeze his body inside. No sooner had his feet disappeared into the moss-lined opening than he heard Koller pass by, at most five feet from him.