Ricci tucked the Sig under his belt and flipped open the wallet’s ID window.
“Barry Hughes,” he said, glancing at the driver’s license. “That who you are?”
As Mr. Right started to nod against the upward pressure of his gun, Ricci tossed the wallet into a puddle and drove a fist into his cheek. Something gave at the hinge of the jaw.
“Give me your real name,” Ricci said.
The guy was silent, blood overspilling his lower lip.
“Your name.” Ricci stared into his face, pushing his Five-Seven deeper into the corner of his eye. He could see the skin below the socket crinkle under the end of its barrel. “Let me hear it or I’ll kill you.”
The guy looked at him without answering for perhaps three more seconds.
“Anton, you fucker,” he said at last, front teeth smeared red, his speech already distorted from the fractured jaw. It came out sounding like Antunnn yfuker.
Ricci nodded. At the periphery of his vision, he saw Glenn unlock the Explorer’s passenger door with the key he’d pulled from its hatch, reach in to give the ignition a quarter turn, then lower the window and cuff the other guy’s wrists around the vertical bar of its frame.
Grabbing his man by the shirt collar now, Ricci pulled him off the flank of the vehicle with a sudden wrench.
“Anton, I know your mouth hurts, but you’ll need to talk to us about a few things before giving it a rest,” he said.
There was a door at the side of the cabin that offered admittance to the kitchen and, directly beyond it, the living room.
Ricci had Anton lead the way to the door at gunpoint, one hand clamped over his shoulder, the other holding the Five-Seven to his ear behind the loose, misshapen swell of his jawbone. Behind them, Glenn had the stock of his VVRS cradled against his upper arm as he held it forward at the ready.
“Open the door,” Ricci said. He nudged Anton with the gun. “No surprises.”
Anton turned the knob, pulled. The rain was a constant susurrus that muffled the sound of its opening. Listening carefully, however, Ricci could hear a faint rustling in the brush to his right.
Okay, he thought.
Standing at an angle to the door, hidden from within behind the outer wall of the house, Ricci flung a glance around Anton through the small unoccupied kitchen. Past the living-room archway, three men were at a table playing cards. A fourth seated on a sofa to the extreme right seemed to be dozing there, arms folded behind his head, his legs outstretched and crossed at the ankles. The sables were lying at rest on the carpet between them. One of the dogs raised itself a little at the sound of the opening door, recognized Anton’s familiar presence across the length of the two rooms, then lowered its shaggy head back onto the floor.
Ricci turned slightly, motioned with his chin, and side-stepped.
A burly hand came around Anton’s bloodied mouth from behind, clapped over it, and pulled him back into the rain. Ricci heard the hiss of released aerosol to his left, then a shifting of foliage as Anton was ditched out of sight.
Thibodeau emerged from the wet vegetation, relieved of the unconscious man, slipping a DMSO canister into his belt holder. The rest of the entry team was in position on either side of the door.
Ricci looked at Thibodeau’s bearded face for the barest instant, then turned toward the open door again. Anton had spilled plenty outside the Explorer, and had seemed scared enough to have been telling the truth when he said the Killer was upstairs—which would mean the dogs would be no threat down here. They would do nothing belligerent without his personal command.
“I’m going in,” he whispered and ran into the cabin without a backward look.
Ricci’s estimate of Anton’s honesty under the gun proved right on. The flunky had told him the short spiral staircase would be in the living room, past the archway to his immediate left, and there it was, exactly where it was supposed to be.
His Five-Seven out in his hand, he crossed the kitchen in a dash. Ahead of him, the Killer’s men were springing to their feet, but then Ricci swung toward the stairs, and bounded up onto them, and suddenly the commotion and movement was behind and below him. He took the steps several at time, vaulting up them, knowing he had seconds at best to get to the bedroom. There were shouts, exchanges of gunfire, more shouts, all distant echoes outside the narrow, winding, ascending shaft of his awareness. Behind, below, outside, somewhere in another world. Ricci cared only about getting up to the second floor, and the taste in his mouth, the taste of his want.
And now he was at the upstairs landing and off it into a short hall. He paused a beat. How long since he’d entered the cabin? Five seconds? Ten? Maybe he’d have five more. Tops, five. Four, three . . .
There were a couple of wide doors along the hallway to his right, adjacent to each other. Another narrower one to his left—a closet. That second door on the right, Anton had told him it was the master bedroom, was where the Killer had her, where the Killer would be. . . .
Ricci made his choice, lunged forward, stopped for half a heartbeat, kicked his foot out against the first door at the point where the latch met the hasp. It flung open, crashed back against the wall, and he burst into the room, his Five-Seven in a two-handed police grip—
His back to the open doors of a terrace overlooking the seaward plunge of the bluff, the Killer stood across the room by a plain wooden chair.
She was in it. Gagged. Trussed. Hands bound behind her with rope, bound to the chair.
Above the gag, on her face, an expression of terror without surrender.
Ricci reached into himself for her name, pulled it through the atavistic howl of rage filling his mind.
Julia.
She. Was. Julia.
The Killer was holding a combat knife to her throat.
“Let her go,” Ricci said. His eyes on the Killer’s eyes. The Five-Seven thrust out in front of him. “Let her go now.”
The Killer did not move.
The blade in his grip, its honed edge against her throat, he did not move.
Ricci unwrapped the fingers of one hand from the gun, reached back, felt for the door, pushed it shut. Somewhere behind it, on the other side, the shouts and gunfire were fading. There were footsteps coming rapidly up the stairs.
The Killer kept staring at Ricci in silence. He did not move the knife from Julia’s throat.
The footsteps had reached the door now. Behind it, an urgent shout:
“Ricci!” Glenn’s voice. “Ricci you in there?”
Ricci didn’t answer.
“Ricci—”
“Stay out,” Ricci said. “Tell everybody to back off.”
Through the door, Glenn said, “What’s happening? Is Julia—?”
“She’s okay,” Ricci said. “Thibodeau and the others will be right behind you on those stairs. Just keep everyone down the hall. Don’t ask questions.”
Ricci looked at the Killer.
“Let her go,” he repeated a third time. “It’s finished.”
The Killer did not move his knife.
“She’s piecework to you. Nothing. Just another job,” Ricci said. His gun remained level with the Killer’s heart. “You do her, I do you, what’s the point? But there’s still something in this room you want. Something you’ve wanted since Khazakhstan. Since Ontario. And I’m giving you a chance to have it. I’m promising you the chance.”
The Killer watched Ricci’s face.
Studied it for another long, long moment.
Then he dropped his knife hand from the soft white flesh of Julia’s throat, went behind the chair, cut the ropes around her wrists with one quick slice, crouched, severed her ankle bindings, and straightened. Only the gag remained uncut.
Ricci nodded slowly.
“There’s been no circulation in her legs,” he said. “Step away from the chair—two steps to your right—so I can help her up.”
The Killer stepped back.
Still covering him with the gun, Ricci moved toward the chair, sli
pped an arm around Julia, and eased her to a standing position, not letting her stumble, holding her erect with his own strength, gradually feeling her legs take over. Above the gag, her face remained composed.
“You can make it on your own now,” Ricci said to her. Then he tilted his head back toward the door, raised his voice. “Glenn . . . you hear me?”
From outside the door: “Yeah. Hearing you fine. Sounds like they’ve got things under control downstairs.”
“Good,” Ricci said. “I’m sending Julia out. Stay away, don’t come near the door. Don’t let anybody else get close to it, either. No matter what, got me?”
“Ricci—”
“Got me?”
A pause.
“Yeah,” Glenn said, then. “Yeah, man. I do.”
Ricci backed toward the door, his gun on the Killer, his free hand on Julia, steadying her, guiding her along with him. He reached behind him again, opened the door just wide enough for her to pass through and nodded for her to leave.
She hesitated, looking at him.
“Go,” he said. “It’ll be all right.”
Julia held her gaze on him for another moment. Then she nodded and went through the opening.
Ricci slammed the door shut behind her.
“We’re almost ready,” he said. His weapon pointed at the Killer. “Better slide that chair across to me.”
It was pushed forward. Ricci swept it around his body and leaned it against the door, wedging its back under the doorknob. Then he set his gun down on a small table he’d seen out the corner of his left eye.
Outside the door, he could hear Thibodeau’s voice shouting up from downstairs, then Glenn answering him, telling him Ricci had gotten Julia out, that she was free of any threat. There were some more words exchanged between them, followed by the tread of heavy ascending footsteps.
Ricci saw something like a smile on the Killer’s face as he dropped his knife to the floor, and then pushed it aside with his foot.
“Now,” the Killer said, “we take our chances.”
Ricci nodded.
“Now,” he said.
Kuhl and Ricci advanced on each other, sidling for position as they moved into the center of the room.
His fists clenched, his sinewy arms raised to protect his head, Ricci bounced a little on his knees to loosen them up. His opponent had a good three inches on him, a longer reach. Probably twenty or thirty more pounds of muscle slabbed over his broad frame. He would have to get in close and tight, rely on speed to overcome those advantages.
Kuhl shifted now, feinted toward him. Ricci didn’t buy it. His hands still blocking, he wove around him, found an opening under the massive arms, came in low with a right uppercut meant for the chin.
Faster than he looked, Kuhl parried the blow sidearm, tried grasping hold of Ricci’s outthrust wrist to pull him off his feet. But Ricci slipped the grab, got back away from his reach, and then rounded again, setting himself to throw another punch across Kuhl’s body.
This time Kuhl was even more prepared, his left foot snapping out at the moment before contact, getting between Ricci’s legs to kick the inside of his opposite shin and throw him off balance. Before Ricci could recover, a right hook came smashing hard against his cheek.
Ricci went staggering, the side of his face exploding with pain, blood filling his mouth, his vision momentarily dimming. And then Kuhl was coming in on him again, hitting him with a series of powerful jabs, his fists repeatedly, brutally pounding Ricci’s face and neck.
Ricci felt gravity pulling him down, dragging at his legs and head, and managed to resist it barely in time to duck an overhand right that seemed to shoot straight for his eyes out of a grainy nowhere. He sucked in a breath to fill his chest with air, inhaled again, again, and then shuffled a little to get his heart pumping and dispel the motes of swirling nothingness from his vision.
Kuhl was not about to give him that opportunity. He launched forward, his fingers pointed outward, going for Ricci’s eyes, trying to blind him, gouge his eyes from their sockets with the tips of those stabbing fingers. Ricci shifted back, bobbed down under the hand, swallowed more air, got more of the blackness out of his face, and then came up under the Killer’s throat, came up fast, jamming his cocked right elbow into it with all the strength he could muster, connecting with it right below the knob of his Adam’s apple.
Kuhl grunted, swayed a little. A small, moist sound escaped his throat. Ricci pressed him, knowing this might be his only break, needing to make the most of it. Chin low, feet planted wide, he bored into Kuhl, pistoning his fists into Kuhl’s stomach and sides, pounding him with lefts, rights, jabs, pressing, pressing, his knuckles hammering him with one blow after the next.
Then Ricci felt the Killer loosen up, or maybe slip, he wasn’t sure, didn’t care, just knew he had him where he wanted him, and rammed his kneecap up between his legs, digging it into his groin.
Kuhl went down to the floor, kneeling, sagging forward, attempting to brace himself from going flat on his face with his outspread palms. But Ricci stayed on top of him, kicking his face, arms, legs, and body, making him bleed, opening wounds all over him, watching the redness spurt from his torn, lacerated flesh.
Wanting to bring him down as low as he possibly could.
And then, suddenly, coming up in the Killer’s fist, a bright flash of steel.
The combat knife.
He’d gotten the knife off the floor.
It flicked up, and then out, as Kuhl successfully thrust the blade in Ricci’s direction, jabbing its point into the back of his right leg.
Ricci felt its hot/cold penetration deep in his thigh muscle, swung a final kick at the Killer’s hand with his opposite foot, managing to land it between his wrist and elbow.
Kuhl’s fingers opened, dropping away from the knife handle. Lurching forward, his head bowed, blood and saliva pouring from his mouth, the Killer propped himself on his knee, tried to thrust himself to his feet, failed, and started to topple forward.
Ricci caught him by the front of the shirt on the way down.
“Here, murderer,” he said, the knife still sticking out of his thigh. “Here’s a little help for you.”
He hauled Kuhl up onto his rubbery legs, simultaneously turning him toward the terrace, forcing him backward, standing him up against the glass doors, using his own weight to prop Kuhl’s limp, weakened body against the doors as he reached out over his shoulder, slid one of them partially open by its handle, and again pushed him backward—through the opening now, into the wind and rain, back and back and back across the terrace to the guardrail.
The rain swirling around them, lashing them, washing their blood down onto the terrace floor so it mingled together in flowing, guttering cascades that went spilling over the lip of the terrace into the drop, Ricci held the Killer up and looked into his face, shaking him hard, his fists around the bunched wet fabric of his shirt, holding him, holding him there against the iron guardrail above the vertiginous, storm-swept plunge of the canyon and staring into his eyes for one last, long moment of time.
“You son of a bitch,” he said. “You son of a bitch, we did this to each other.”
And pushed him over into the abyss.
Thibodeau had heard the crashing in the room on the cabin’s second floor and wondered what in the name of everything holy was going on.
Upstairs now, working his way down the hall past Derek Glenn, Julia being hustled out of the cabin behind him, it was the room’s sudden dead silence that had gotten his mind racing everywhere at once.
Thibodeau tried to push in the door, found it blocked, and ordered the men behind him to put the ram to it.
Moving through the splintered doorframe into the room, he noticed two things that made his eyes grow wide.
The first was Ricci sitting on the floor, rain blowing over him through an open terrace door. He had propped himself back against the wall, a wide pool of blood under his right leg, a slick reddened knife on the floor besid
e him.
The second thing Thibodeau noticed was that he was alone.
Thibodeau put away his questions for the moment, rushed across the room, and crouched over him.
“You’re bleeding like a stuck pig, gonna need something to stop the flow,” he said. Then he saw that Ricci had gotten open the tac pouch on his belt and was struggling to fish something from inside it. “What’re you looking for in there? I can help you get it out . . .”
Ricci looked at him, hesitated a beat.
“Wound-closure gel,” he said, nodding for him to reach inside.
THIRTEEN
SAN JOSE GABON, AFRICA
ENTERING HER DINING ROOM, ASHLEY GORDIAN glanced up at the wall clock above the Sword op’s head and was amazed to see that morning had turned into afternoon. What sleep she’d gotten since Julia’s disappearance had come only when she let her guard down against it, and in each instance she hadn’t kept her eyes shut for long. Ten minutes here, fifteen there, she wouldn’t let herself yield to more than that. Ashley’s reluctant sub-missions to fatigue had felt more like automatic power-downs than true periods of rest—the physical equivalent of going offline for system maintenance, she supposed—and between them she had lost all sense of time’s orderly progression. Yet afternoon it was. The hands of the clock had moved on since she’d last been in the room . . . even if the Sword op hadn’t since she’d last entered it.
Seated below it at a mahogany lowboy he’d been using as a workstation, his shirt sleeves rolled up, he was hunched over the laptop computer in front of him, staring at the screen. Ashley wasn’t sure of his name; his ID tag was on his jacket, and his jacket was slung over the back of his chair. There were so many of her husband’s security people around the house and its grounds giving everything of themselves, working well past their scheduled shifts, defying exhaustion in ways she couldn’t fathom. Some were men and women Ashley recognized, others were people she’d never seen until a day or so ago, but all wore the same look of implacable resolve on their faces. Her admiration and gratitude went beyond words, and she’d provided whatever assistance she could, making them as comfortable as possible, bringing them food and drinks to keep them going, little things that made her feel useful in a way she paradoxically thought almost selfish. She needed to do something, needed to participate, even though her participation hardly seemed to measure up to their efforts. The alternative was to succumb to the crushing sense of futility and helplessness that always seemed to be lurking just past the next moment.
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