I have to get out of here.
A final look at the monitors showed him that Millgate's blood pressure,
respiration rate, and heartbeat were becoming less extreme. The old
guy's going to make it a while longer, Pittman thought. Relieved,
anxious, he turned to leave the room.
But he was shocked as an aged clawlike hand grabbed his right wrist,
making him gasp. Pittman swung in alarm and saw Millgate's anguished
eyes staring at him.
Pittman clutched the old man's fingers and worked to pry them off,
surprised by the ferocity of the -old man's grip.
Jesus, if he yells ...
"Duncan." The old man spoke with effort, his voice thin and crackly,
like cellophane being crumpled. He's delirious. He doesn't know who
he's talking to.
"Duncan." The old man seemed to plead.
He thinks I'm somebody else. I've been in here too long.
I have to get out.
"Duncan." The old man's voice thickened, now sounding like crusted mud
being stepped upon. "The snow."
Pittman released the old man's fingers.
"Grollier. " The old man's throat filled with phlegm, making a
grotesque imitation of the sound of gargling.
To hell with this, Pittman thought, then swung toward the French doors.
He was suddenly caught in a column of light. The entrance the room had
been opened. Illumination from the hall silhouetting the nurse. She
stood, paralyzed for a minute. Abruptly she dropped a tray. A teapot
and cup crashed onto the floor. She screamed. And Pittman ran.
Pittman's brief time in the room had made him feel warm. As he raced
onto the sundeck, the night and the rain seemed much more chilling than
they had only a few seconds earlier. He shivered and lunged through
puddles, past the dark metal patio furniture and toward the stairs that
led down from the deck. At once he was blinded, powerful arc lamps
glaring down at him from the eaves of the mansion above the sundeck,
reflecting off puddles. The nurse or a guard had switched on the
lights. From inside the building behind him, Pittman heard shouts.
He ran harder. He almost lost his balance on the stairs. Gripping the
railing, flinching from a sliver that rammed into his palm, he bounded
down the wooden steps. At the bottom, he almost scurried in the
direction from which he had come, toward the tree-lined driveway and.the
gate from the estate. But he heard shouts from the front of the house,
so he pivoted toward the back, only to recoil from arc lights that
suddenly blazed toward the covered swimming pool and the flower gardens.
There, too, he heard shouting.
With the front and rear blocked to him, Pittman charged to the side of
the house, across concrete at the entrance to the large garage, over
spongy lawn, toward looming dark trees. Rapid footsteps clattered down
the stairs from the walk.
" Stop!
"Shoot him!"
Pittman reached the fir trees. A needled branch pawed his face,
stinging him so hard that he didn't know if the moisture on his cheeks
was rain or blood. He ducked, avoiding another branch.
"Where the-?"
"There! I think he's over-!"
Behind Pittman, a bough snapped. Someone fell.
"My nose! I think I broke my fucking-!"
"I hear-!"
"In those bushes!"
"Shoot the son of a bitch!"
"Get him! If they find out we let somebody-!"
Another branch snapped. Behind him, Pittman's hunters charged through
the trees.
Just in time, Pittman stopped himself. He'd come to a high stone wall,
nearly running into it at full force. Breathing deeply, he fiercely
studied the darkness to his left and then his right.
What am I going to do? he thought in a frenzy. I can't assume I'll
find a gate. I can't keep following the wall. Too obvious. They'll
listen for the sounds I make. They'll get ahead of me and behind me and
corner me. Turn back?
No! The police will soon arrive. The house has too manyoutside lights.
I'll be spotted.
Then what are you going to ... ?
Pittman hurried toward the nearest fir tree and started to climb. The
footsteps of his pursuers thudded rapidly closer. He gripped a bough
above him, shoved his right shoe against a lower branch, and hoisted
himself upward along the trunk. Bark scraped his hands. The fir tree
smell of turpentine assaulted his nostrils. He climbed faster.
"I hear him!"
Across from the top of the wall, Pittman reached out along a branch, let
his legs fall away from the tree trunk, and inched hand over hand toward
the wall. The branch dipped from his weight. Dangling, he kept
shifting along. The bark cut deeper into his hands.
"He's close!"
"Where?
Moisture dropped from the fir needles onto Pittman. Even greater
moisture dropped from the branch to which he clung. Water cascaded onto
the ground.
"There!'
"That tree!
Pittman's shoes touched the top of the wall. He swung his legs toward
it, felt a solid surface, no razor wire or chunks of glass along the
top, and released his grip, sprawling on the top of the wall. The
gunshot was deafening, the muzzle flash startlingly bright. A second
shot was so dismaying that Pittman acted without thinking, flipping
sideways off the top of the wall. Heart pounding, he dangled. The
rough wall scraped against his overcoat. He didn't know what was below
him, but he heard one of his pursuers trying to climb the tree. Another
man shouted, "Use the gate!" Pittman let go. His stomach swooped as he
plummeted.
Exhaling forcefully, Pittman struck the ground sooner than he
anticipated. The ground was covered with grass, mushy from rain. He
bent his knees, tucked in his elbows, dropped, and rolled, trying
desperately to minimize the impact. That was the way a skydiver he had
once interviewed had explained how parachutists landed when they were
using conventional equipment. Bend, tuck, and roll.
Pittman prayed it would work. If he sprained an ankle, or worse, he
would be helpless when his pursuers searched this side of the wall. His
only hope would be to hide. But where? As he had swung toward the top
of the wall, his impression of the dark area behind it had been of
unnerving open space.
Fortunately he had an alternative to being forced to try to hide. Using
the momentum of his roll, he surged to his feet. His hands stung. His
knees felt sore. But that discomfort was irrelevant. What mattered was
that his ankles supported him. His legs didn't give out. He hadn't
sprained or broken anything.
On the other side of the barrier, Pittman's hunters cursed and ran.
Noises in a tree suggested that one of them continued to climb toward
the top of the wall. His chest heaving, Pittman charged forward. The
murky lawn seemed to stretch on forever. In contrast with the estate
from which he'd just escaped, there weren't any shrubs. There were
hardly any trees.
What the hell is this place?
It felt unnatural, eerie. It
reminded him of a cemetery, but in the
darkness, he didn't bump into any tombstones. Racing through the
drizzle, he noticed a light patch in the lawn ahead and used it as a
destination. At once the ground gave away, a sharp slope that caused
him to tumble in alarm, falling, rolling.
He came to a stop on his back. The wind had been knocked from him. He
breathed heavily, wiped wet sand from his face, and stood.
Sand. That explained why this section of the ground had been pale. But
why would ... ?
A tingle ran through him. My God, it's a golf course. There'd been a
sign when the taxi driver brought him into the subdivision: SAXON WOODS
PARK AND GOLF CLUB.
I'm in the open. If they start shooting again, there's no cover.
Then what are you hanging around for?
As he oriented himself, making sure that he wasn't running back toward
the wall, he saw lights to his left. Specterlike, they emerged from the
wall. Pittman had heard one of his pursuers talk about a gate. They'd
reached it and come through. His first instinct was to conclude that
they had found flashlights somewhere, probably from a shed near the
gate. But there was something about the lights.
The tingle that Pittman had felt when he realized that he was on a golf
course now became a cold rush of fear as he heard the sound of motors.
The lights were too big to come from flashlights, and they were in pairs
like headlights, but Pittman's hunters couldn't be using cars. Cars
would be too losing traction, spinning their wheels until they got in
the soft wet grass. Besides, the motors sounded too and whiny to belong
to cars.
Jesus, they're using golf carts, Pittman realized, his chest tightening.
Whoever owns the estate has private carts and access to the course from
the back of the property. Golf carts don't have headlights. Those are
handheld spotlights.
The carts spread out, the lights systematically covering various
sections of the course. As men shouted, Pittman spun away from the
lights, darted from the sand trap, and scurried into the rainy darkness.
Before Jeremy's cancer had been diagnosed, Pittman had been a determined
jogger. He had run a minimum of an hour each day and several hours on
the weekend, mostly using the jogging path along the Upper East Side,
next to the river. He had lived on East Seventieth at that time, with
Ellen and Jeremy, and his view of exercise had been much the same as his
habit of saving 5 percent of his paycheck and making sure that Jeremy
took summer courses at his school, even though the boy's grades were
superior and extra work wasn't necessary. Security. Planning for the
future. That was the key. That was the secret. With his son cheering
and his wife doing her best to look dutifully enthusiastic, Pittman had
managed to be among the middle group that finished the New York Marathon
one year. Then Jeremy had gotten sick. And Jeremy had died. And
Pittman and Ellen had started arguing. And Ellen had left. And Ellen
had remained. And Pittman had started drinking heavily. And Pittman
had suffered a nervous breakdown. He hadn't run in over a year. For
that matter, he hadn't any exercise at all, unless nervous pacing
counted. But adrenaline spurred him, and his body remembered. It
wouldn't have its once-excellent tone. It didn't have the strength that
he'd worked so hard to acquire. But it still retained his technique,
the rhythm and length and heel-to-toe pattern of his stride. He was out
of breath. His muscles protested. But he kept charging across the golf
course, responding to a pounding in his veins and a fire in his guts,
while behind him lights bobbed in the distance, motors whined, and men
shouted.
Pittman's effort was so excruciating that he cursed himself for ever
having allowed himself to get out of shape. Then he cursed himself for
having been so foolhardy as to get into this situation.
What the hell did you think you were doing, following the ambulance all
the wayout here? Burt wouldn't have known if you hadn't bothered.
No. But I'd have known. I promised Burt I'd do my best.
For eight more days.
What about breaking into that house? Do you call that standard
journalistic procedure? Burt would have a fit if he knew you did that.
What was I supposed to do, let the old man die?
As Pittman's stiffening legs did their best to imitate the expert
runner's stride that had once been second nature to him, he risked
losing time to glance back at his pursuers. Wiping moisture from his
eyes, he saw the drizzle-haloed spotlights on the golf carts speeding
toward him in the darkness.
Or some of the carts. All told, there were five, but only .two were
directly behind him. The rest had split off, one to the right, the
other to the left, evidently following the perimeter of the golf course.
The third was speeding on a diagonal toward what Pittman assumed was the
far extreme of the course.
They want to encircle me, Pittman realized. But in the darkness, how
can they be sure which way I'm going?
Rain trickled down his neck beneath his collar. He felt the hairs on
his scalp rise when he suddenly understood how his pursuers were able to
follow him.
His London Fog overcoat.
It was sand-colored. Just as Pittman had been able to see the light
color of the sand trap against the darkness of the grass, so his
overcoat was as obvious to his pursuers.
Forced to break stride, running awkwardly, Pittman desperately worked at
the belt on his overcoat., untying it, then fumbling at buttons. One
button didn't want to be released, and Pittman yanked at it, popping it
loose. In a frenzy, he had the coat open. He jerked his arm from one
sleeve. He lifted his other arm. His suit coat had been somewhat dry,
but now drizzle soaked it.
Pittman's first impulse was to throw the overcoat away. His next
impulse, as he entered a clump of bush, was to drape the coat over a
bush to provide a target for the men chasing him. That tactic wouldn't
distract them for long, though, he knew, and besides, if ... when ...
he escaped, he would need the coat to help keep him warm.
The brushy area was too small to be a good hiding place, so Pittman fled
it, scratching his hands on bushes, and continued charging across the
murky golf course.
Glancing desperately back over his shoulder, he saw the glare of the
lights on the carts. He heard the increasingly loud whine of their
engines. Rolling his overcoat into a ball and stuffing it under his
suit jacket, he strained his legs to their maximum. One thing was in
his favor. He was wearing blue suit. In the rainy blackness, he hoped
he would disappear with his surroundings.
Unless the lights pick me up, he thought.
Ahead, a section of the golf course assumed a different color, a
disturbing gray. Approaching it swiftly, Pittman realized that he'd
reached a pond. The need to skirt it would force him to lose time. No
choice. Breathing hard, he veered to the left. But the wet, slippery
grass along the slope betrayed him. His left foot jerked from under
him. He fell and almost tumbled into the freezing water before he
clawed his fingers into the mushy grass and managed to stop himself.
Rising frantically, he remembered to keep his overcoat clutched beneath
his suit jacket. With an urgent glance backward, he saw a beam of light
shoot over the top of the slope down which he'd rolled. The whine of an
engine was very close. Concentrating not to lose his balance again,
Pittman scurried through the rainy darkness.
He followed the rim of the pond, struggled up the opposite slope, and
lunged over the top just before he heard angry voices behind him.
Something buzzed past his right ear. It sounded like a hornet, but
Pittman knew what it was: a bullet. Another hornet buzzed past him. No
sound of shots. His hunters must have put silencers on their handguns.
He scurried down a slope, out of their line of fire. To his right,
through the rain, he saw lights trying to overtake him. To his left, he
saw the same. His legs were so fatigued, they wanted to buckle. His
heaving lungs protested. Can't keep this up much longer. He fought to
muster energy. Have to keep going.
Too late, he saw the light-colored patch ahead of him. The grass
dropped sharply. Unable to stop, he hurtled out into space, fled, and
David Morrell - Desperate Measures Page 7
