Silver Cross
Page 32
Sharp was standing, arms at his sides, listening to the music, when he heard another sound—loud, sudden, something that didn’t belong with Rachmaninov. He opened his eyes. He heard running footsteps, two sets of them from different directions. One set was almost on top of him. He started edging down the shelf, toward the pit.
The Rachmaninov faded away as the man came over the edge of the lip and landed three feet from him. Sharp had a good five inches on the man, and he lifted his boot and kicked the man, knocking his legs out from under him. But the man was good, and he popped up again immediately. He stumbled a little, but he had a nasty-looking pistol, similar to Sharp’s Glock, and was raising it.
The Glock.
Sharp had the advantage of size and balance, and the other man was still off balance. He brought his Glock up in a smooth, practiced motion and placed a round in the man’s Adam’s apple. Then Sharp kicked him again and the man tumbled off the shelf, falling downward into the pit.
Then the other steps were upon him, and before he could turn around, he felt pain explode in his back, somewhere below his right shoulder blade. He fell, and then, just like the man he’d shot, Sharp began to roll off the shelf and toward the bottom of the mine.
* * *
Zale turned toward the office’s back door, which led out toward the ridge and the crushing facility. He’d heard three different sets of gunfire.
He took one look at Gray on the floor, another at Tolman, then stepped halfway out the back door, the 1911 still ready. “What’s going on?” he shouted. The only thing his men were supposed to shoot at was Ann Gray or Meg Tolman. They were covering him. What the hell are they doing?
“What are you doing?” he yelled.
He heard more shots, a shout, the scrabbling sound of bodies falling.
Idiots! Incompetent asshole idiots. Like Landon. Like Roader. Like Ann Gray. Like President Robert Mendoza.
Zale took another step.
* * *
Gray had been shot once before, seventeen years ago in Prague. She’d been sent to assassinate the finance minister of the Czech Republic by a cabal of former Communist party leaders who still thought Communism would survive in the former Soviet satellite states. She’d thought they were fools—Communism was bound to fail, even from its inception—but it had been a challenging job, and they paid well. That bullet, fired by one of the minister’s bodyguards, had lodged between two ribs, and the wound had pained her for years afterward.
Zale’s second wild shot—he was still off balance from Tolman having rushed the big man—had taken her in the soft tissue of her upper left arm. Blood soaked her sleeve. The pain was intense, but she’d felt much worse.
With her right arm, she began to pull herself along the floor. Across the room, Tolman was stirring.
Gray had to reach her bag, had to reach the desk. “Meg,” she whispered. “Meg, if you’re conscious, move toward the hallway. He’s easily distracted, but he’ll be back. Move now!”
She watched. Tolman started to crawl along the tile floor toward the hallway.
She is a tough one, Gray thought, upping her respect for Meg Tolman yet again. Inching along, dragging her left arm, grinding her teeth against the pain, Gray reached the edge of the desk.
“You have to get out of this building,” Gray whispered.
“You—,” Tolman said.
Gray reached her bag and dug into it. She withdrew a black three-ring binder and slid it across the floor. “Take it,” she said.
“What?” Tolman mouthed.
“It’s a history of The Associates. It has everything you need. Do with it—or don’t do with it—as you will. The choice is yours. But look at the first page first. It has what you need today, right now.”
“What?”
“I told you I no longer had the resources to stop April 19 from wiping out the protesters in Chicago. But you do. You do, and now you have the information to stop it.”
“You can still stop it.”
Gray shook her head. “Do you think I’m going to call Bart Denison? And if I did, do you think he would believe me? No, I don’t exist, Meg. You will have to do it.”
“You are out of your—”
“Get out of this building,” Gray said. “Go around the front, turn right toward the pit, and go up the ridge to the crushing facility. Get to the high ground.”
“But I’m not—”
“I’ll deal with The Associates,” Gray said. “After today, they are no more. And I won’t be taking any further actions. My points have been made. You have my word.”
“Dammit!”
“Go,” Gray said, then added, “I’m sorry for your friend. I left her alone that night and Victor’s men killed her. It was a lapse in judgment, but it hasn’t gone unpunished.”
Tolman took the book and scrabbled to her feet. The wound on her head was nasty looking and she would have a headache, but Gray knew from experience that it looked worse than it was. “Go now,” she said to Tolman. “Give my regrets to Dr. Journey. I had hoped I would be able to meet him today.”
She and Tolman locked eyes. Tolman took the binder under her arm, staggering a little against the door, then she turned and ran down the hallway. Gray reached for her bag again.
* * *
Zale was dizzy with the rage that coursed through him. After all he’d done, coming from nowhere in north Georgia to serve his country in Vietnam, in Panama, in Grenada, in Iraq … the army, the Agency, The Associates … and everyone around him was incompetent. Unworthy of someone like Victor Zale, who had dedicated his life to something greater than himself, to ensuring that America did what it was supposed to do, regardless of the whims of idiot politicians and mindless generals and inept business “leaders.”
He turned to the doorway to finish Tolman and Gray. These women would not get the best of Victor Zale. When he turned around, Ann Gray filled the doorway, and she was pointing a CZ 75 at his chest.
“You won’t do it, Ann,” Zale sneered, and took another step toward her.
“I am not that predictable,” Gray said, lowered the gun, and shot him in the left knee, then the right.
Zale went down, the 1911 still in his hand. He fired one shot, but it went wild. He looked up at Gray, with her bloody sleeve. “I should have hired a man for this fucking job,” he spat.
Gray smiled, walking to him, her arm throbbing. She kicked the 1911 away from him and into the mud.
“Get it over with, then,” Zale said. He looked toward the ridge. A few more steps and she’d be in the open and one of the snipers could take her down. “Come on and do it! Or are you too moral and ethical and professional to kill me, Ann?”
She stopped, still smiling. “Oh yes, I’m going to kill you, Victor. You shouldn’t have gone around me with Jim and Dana Cable, and you shouldn’t have tried to kill Journey and Tolman, certainly not with Journey’s son around. That was inexcusable. And trying to turn April 19—my own creation—against me to wipe out the ultimate innocents. You have no sense of ethics.”
“But what I do will save my country. No matter what you think, even if you kill me right here, right now, Chicago goes on. The people die, the goddamn idiot protests stop, April 19 is blamed, then Mendoza is blamed for not doing enough to stop it. The Associates will go on, with or without me. You can’t do anything about it, Ann.”
“Don’t you think so?”
“Do it! Get it over with!”
“On my terms, Victor. On my terms.”
Zale looked up at her. Gray was still smiling, and for the first time, Zale began to feel afraid.
CHAPTER
43
The Explorer came around the sharp curve and into the clearing in front of the office as Tolman ran out the front door. She sprinted around the edge of the building and headed up the slope behind it, carrying something under her arm.
“Meg,” Journey breathed, and laid on the horn.
Tolman turned but didn’t break stride. Her look was blank.
He hit the button to lower the Explorer’s window. “Meg!” he shouted and he pulled off the gravel of the parking lot to follow her up the slope. She zigged and zagged, still running.
Journey saw movement on the ridge, a man, a rifle. He heard the shot and saw Tolman hesitate, doing something of a slide-step, then she fell.
“No!” Journey roared, twisting the steering wheel.
He closed to within a few feet of where Tolman lay, then braked hard. He tumbled out of the driver’s seat and grabbed Tolman’s arms, looking for the wound.
“I don’t think you’re hit,” he said.
“Just fell, goddammit,” Tolman muttered.
Journey grinned and McCaffree helped him get her into the Explorer’s backseat as more shots rippled down the ridge. One of the Explorer’s windows shattered. Three seconds later Deputy Marshal McCaffree was buried under a hail of safety glass with a bullet in the side of his head.
“Oh, shit,” Journey said softly.
“Up,” Tolman said. “Up, up, up! By the crusher.” She pointed. Journey spun the wheel to the left and floored the accelerator, with McCaffree’s blood coating the other seat.
“What are you doing here?” Tolman said. “You’re supposed to be in North Carolina interviewing an old man.”
“I did,” Journey said. “I came back.”
“No shit,” Tolman said.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m not shot, if that’s what you mean. But I was knocked in the head.”
“Again?” Journey said, thinking of last year.
“Don’t be a smart-ass, Nick.”
“Where’s Darrell?”
“Jesus, I don’t know,” Tolman breathed. “He was outside. He went to do a perimeter patrol.…”
More gunfire sounded from above them. One shot thudded into the side of the Explorer. Twenty more yards to the crushing facility with the giant truck sitting under its empty chute. Journey steered around a wide puddle of mud and glanced down into the pit below.
“There are people down there,” he said.
* * *
Sharp had snagged an arm on one of the lower shelves of the pit, but he couldn’t hold it because of the pain in his back. It slowed his fall, and he slid more than fell the rest of the way to the pit floor. He’d already lost his Glock, and he’d felt the M&P340 slide out of the unsnapped holster on the way down. He didn’t see where it went.
He came to rest on his butt and stayed that way, in a sitting position. He tried to stand up, but the pain knocked him down again. But strangely, as one minute passed, then another, he felt the pain begin to dull.
It had been this way in Key West. The intense moment of impact, whether by gun or knife, was unlike any pain he had ever known, but after a while, it began to ebb. Shock? Adrenaline? Blood loss? He didn’t know, but he knew to take advantage of the precious time he had before the pain seeped in again to destroy him.
I won’t let this destroy me, he thought.
He had paintings to do. He wanted to go home to his Arkansas hills. He wanted to have Meg come over and play his piano.
Sharp squinted.
I’m helping Meg.
He steadied himself against the lowest shelf and slowly got to his feet. The bottom of the pit was smooth, almost as if it had been polished, with puddles of water standing at the edges from last night’s rain. He saw a few little green and pink flags staked into the ground. He glanced to the left and saw the body of the second man he’d shot, unmoving.
He looked to the right and saw the other man, the one who’d shot him, coming closer. He looked surprised that Sharp was standing.
“Think you’re a tough bastard, do you?” the man said.
“No,” Sharp said.
The man stopped, as if the word surprised him. Sharp scanned the pit, then his eyes found what he was looking for: his FN Special, near the body of the other man. Ten, maybe twelve feet away, toward the center of the pit.
Now or never.
Sharp slide-stepped to the right and the man shot him again. He was a moving target, so the bullet went a little lower than the assassin wanted, but he felt it go into his belly, right at the edge of his knife scar.
He fell toward his rifle, arms outstretched. His arms were long, but he couldn’t quite reach it.…
Sharp heard the man moving.
“Okay, tough guy,” the killer said.
A footstep, two, three. Lying on his side, the pain in his stomach worse than that he’d felt in his back, he inched forward. His fingers stretched. He could almost get it.…
He thought of how Meg’s hands looked on the piano keys when she played, the way she always found the right notes, the way they never missed, the way they could reach.…
He laid his hands on the stock of the rifle, swung it around, sighted, and fired. He stopped the man in his tracks, red blooming on his torso. Before he could fall, Sharp shot him again, putting a second round almost on top of the first. The man fell, twitched a few times, then didn’t move again.
Move! Sharp thought. Move or die.…
Still on his side, he began to crawl toward the road that led out of the pit. He left a wide trail of his own blood behind him.
* * *
“Oh God, that’s Darrell,” Tolman said. “Can you get to him?”
“Don’t know,” Journey said, and spun the wheel the other direction. Now instead of going up, the Explorer started down toward the pit road.
“They shot him,” Tolman said. “Oh God, they shot Darrell. He’s—we have to get him, Nick! If something happens to him—”
“I know,” Journey said, steering onto the narrow pit road. He was thinking of Sandra.
* * *
Without stepping from the shadow of the office building, Gray put the CZ 75—a weapon exactly like the one she’d thrown into Lake Michigan after killing Zale’s man on the S.S. Badger—into the waistband of her slacks and grabbed one of Zale’s arms with her own good arm.
“What—,” Zale said.
“I don’t think you should talk,” Gray said. “This is going to be rather labor intensive.”
“—are you doing?”
“We’re going inside. If your man shoots now, all he’ll hit is you.”
“Goddammit, Ann—”
“Shhh,” Gray said. She pulled him a few inches, then stopped. It was slow going with only one good arm, and she was feeling a little light-headed. She pulled again, getting Zale onto the concrete stoop at the back door of her office.
* * *
Zale’s closest man to the office was named Harrison, and he came out of cover in time to see the tall woman—their primary target—pulling his boss by one arm. Harrison squinted. Blood on the woman’s shirt, blood on both of Zale’s legs.
“This operation is screwed,” Harrison muttered.
He sighted down his rifle, but the woman had disappeared around the edge of the building, and all he could see of Zale were the boss’s bloodied legs.
Very slowly, Harrison put down his rifle and left it on the ground.
Screwed, he thought again. Then: I’m not dying for Zale. The mine is shut down, the project is over, and Zale was shot through both legs.
No way.
Harrison began to trot away from the office, toward the front gate of the mine. After a few steps, he broke into a run.
* * *
Journey made the turn at the foot of the pit road and braked. He and Tolman tumbled out as shots rained down on either side of them. Using the Explorer as a shield, they crept to Sharp. Tolman cradled his head. “Oh God, Darrell,” she said. “I’m so sorry.…”
Journey was examining the wounds. “He’s been shot twice.” He tried to keep the worry out of his voice.
“Meg,” Sharp said, “will you come over and play the piano?”
“Oh Jesus, Darrell,” Tolman said. “Yes, I will. I’l
l play anything you want. Come on, let’s get you in the car. We have to get out of this pit.”
Together they helped the big man struggle to his feet. He moaned and breathed loudly but said nothing. They moved him into the backseat and Tolman cradled him. “He’s losing blood,” she said.
“Right,” Journey said, and drove the Explorer up the road.
At the top, he cut the wheel hard toward the crushing facility. As he began his turn by the giant dump truck, the Explorer went out of his control and skidded to the side.
“What happened?” he said.
“Tires,” Tolman said. “They probably shot one or two of the tires. Get out!”
They pulled Sharp out, and he half-walked and was half-dragged around the edge of the chute that fed the truck, eerily silent now.
“Okay, lay him down,” Journey said. He worked Sharp’s shirt off and ripped it, using it to apply pressure to the wounds.
Sharp moaned again and said, “My rifle?”
“We didn’t get it,” Tolman said, shaking her head.
“Expensive rifle,” Sharp said.
“Later, Darrell.”
Journey looked at her and mouthed, Do you have your gun?
Tolman mouthed, No, and inclined her head down toward the office.
Journey grimaced, then said, “Wait.” He crawled to the Explorer, held his breath and averted his eyes from Deputy McCaffree, then pulled the man’s pistol from the floorboard. He handed it to Tolman.
Shots pinged into the chute above them. Gravel flew. “Back there,” Journey whispered. They dragged Sharp farther from the edge of the chute, under the awning of the crusher. Journey crouched and looked under the wheels of the dump truck.
He could see the man’s legs, coming over the rise. Only two legs, one man.
“Wait,” Journey said. He edged along the side of the truck and reached the front, where a steel ladder led up into the cab.
He swung onto the ladder. He was breathing hard and he felt shaky and weak. But he was gambling that in the apparently hasty withdrawal from the mine, The Associates’ people—or were they Gray’s people? he wondered—hadn’t tended to all the small details.