Judgement and Wrath (35 page)

‘Holy shit!’ Bradley said, with the realisation that I was going to use him as a shield. ‘What if they shoot me?’

‘They won’t do that,’ I told him, confidently. ‘And anyway, you’re wearing a Kevlar vest.’

‘They could hit my head!’

‘Nah, they’ll fire for centre mass. Only sure way of hitting the target.’

‘What about the killer? He won’t think twice about shooting me in the head.’

‘Then you’ll just have to count on me getting him first.’

‘Goddamn …’

‘Yeah,’ I agreed. ‘Not good odds, Bradley, but it’s all we’ve got at the minute.’

Then I told him what I wanted him to do.

We sat like that until the gunship did a loop and returned to its starting position. The chopper hovered over us and once again I was in the sights of the sniper scopes. My head was the only visible target, but my emphatic gesturing with the upside-down gun meant that I wasn’t going to experience my last moments with the smell of Bradley’s fear in my nostrils.

A second ‘Little Bird’ screamed into view. This one was about two hundred yards out, and it swept over the open field from the west. Passing over the top of the first chopper, it tilted and raced off over the long grass behind me. The combined roar of both choppers drowned out both Bradley’s and my exhortations for them to back off.

Out of the side door of the nearest chopper, a black garbed Hostage Rescue Team trooper rappelled to the floor. He was armed with an assault rifle and he took up a crouched covering position while two more members of the team dropped from the guts of the chopper like large black spiders on fat webs. Once the two exchanged positions with him, the first agent came towards us, his gun braced to his shoulder. The ‘Little Bird’ swooped away and finally I could hear myself think.

The FBI agent’s voice rang loud and clear.

‘Drop the weapon, Hunter. Now!’

I wasn’t surprised he recognised me. He was one of the men SAC Kaufman had been communicating with from the headset. Whatever Kaufman had told him, he wasn’t taking any chances. Truth was, even with my gun in an awkward upside-down position, I could manipulate it faster than the human eye could follow and could’ve shot him.

‘Lose the fucking weapon.’ To emphasise the command he leaned into his rifle so that it drew a bead on my forehead.

‘The killer is still out there,’ I shouted back. ‘I wounded him, but he’s still dangerous. I’m not dropping my gun.’

‘The perp’s our problem now. I have orders from SAC Kaufman to make you stand down.’

‘Bradley is
my
problem, and I don’t stand down until I know he’s no longer in danger.’

Switching tack, the anonymous agent said to Bradley, ‘Mr Jorgenson, we are here to protect you. You need immediate medical assistance. We can’t offer that while Hunter is armed. Tell him to stand down.’

‘Look,’ I said. ‘We’re on the same side here. Let’s cut the crap and get Bradley the hell away from here. I’m going after Dantalion.’

‘You aren’t going after anyone.’ He’d taken another step forward. The two back-up agents had also moved to flank me. I was the proverbial fish in the barrel. But out there in the water lurked a more dangerous creature in need of spearing.

Rising up from behind Bradley, I lifted the SIG so it was clear to all. ‘I’m going to holster my weapon, but that’s as far as it goes. You can load Bradley into one of those birds, but I’m staying.’

‘Step away from Mr Jorgenson,’ said the first agent as though I hadn’t spoken. ‘The FBI will deal with this situation now. You do not have official sanction in this matter, Hunter. You are no longer on active duty and do not work with our government’s agreement. If you refuse to step away you will be arrested for obstructing a federal agent.’

I stepped away.

I pushed the SIG into the waistband at the back of my jeans. One of the HRT agents came and laid a hand on Bradley’s shoulder. He took a grip on the cloth of Bradley’s shirt and pulled him round and away from me. As if I was the bad guy. The other two covered me with their rifles, but I was gratified to note that neither tried to disarm me. Not immediately.

I indicated the Ka-bar, hilt deep in the silt. ‘I’m taking that as well.’

I stooped and picked up the knife. As I rose from my crouch I was already pivoting. The Ka-bar is a man-killer. To kill is its primary function, and all other applications of the fighting knife are side-products of its design. Not that I was about to kill an FBI agent in the correct execution of his duty. I used only the butt-end to thrust into the midriff of the man nearest me. He was wearing armour, but my blow was delivered with all the power of my upswinging arm and the force went directly through the vest and into his internal organs. Wind rushed out of his wide open mouth, even as I whipped the rifle out of his grasp and turned it on the first agent. I hurled the rifle at him, end over end. His reaction was to bat it away with the barrel of his own gun. And into the space he’d left me I stepped and launched a kick that caught him in the juncture of his thighs. He was wearing a box, but it didn’t make a difference. Not when my shin lifted him a hand’s width off the floor. I jumped in as he landed on his face, kicking away his gun with the side of my foot.

One and a half seconds isn’t long in any violent confrontation. Viewed in afterthought it’s amazing how rapidly a tableau can change. But there was a third armed agent to deal with.

‘Now, Bradley,’ I yelled.

Bradley immediately became less than the crippled weight he seemed. He threw his arms round the man supporting him, grappling the agent’s rifle so that it was wedged between them. Bradley continued to drive into the man, and they went down on the ground, rolling in spongy earth. I charged over and grabbed the man’s rifle away from him. Then I spun so that I was covering them all with the levelled rifle.

‘OK, boys,’ I yelled. ‘The deal’s the same. You get Bradley out of here, I go after Dantalion.’

The first agent was the first to recover from our attack. ‘You have assaulted FBI agents in the execution of their duties. It is a federal crime, Hunter. You’ll be arrested for this.’

‘Get a fuckin’ life,’ I snapped. ‘We all know how this is gonna go down. I’m leaving. You lot get the fuck out of here. You tell Kaufman I escaped. I’ve gone after the demented killer we all want to see dead. Where’s the fucking crime in that?’

I threw the gun aside, took out my SIG and raced away. None of them lifted a weapon, so it seemed they’d seen sense in my words.

I’d seen something too. Way ahead of me. A pale blur of a face turned my way. A dark-garbed figure loping across the field towards the huge buildings on the horizon.

41

The bullet had clipped Dantalion’s right shoulder when he was about to shoot Bradley Jorgenson in the face. It had cut away a large chunk of his hide, but had missed anything serious like an artery or bone. The wound was numb, likely very soon screaming in agony, but not totally debilitating. He could still hold his Glock, he could still shoot, and he could still finish his mission.

The force of the bullet had knocked him off balance, but that might prove a boon. It offered him another chance at killing Jorgenson. Next time it would take much, much longer and involve an infinite amount of pain.

The bullet had also thrown him headlong into the putrescent stream, providing salvation. If he’d fallen on the dry ground, Hunter would most definitely have killed him. The murky water had given him cover while he swam away. He was able to surface many yards west of where he’d fallen, concealed from the eyes of Hunter by overhanging foliage. There he’d been able to catch his breath and check the two things most important to him. The Glock was wet, but serviceable. After his last plunge into the Inter-Coastal Waterway, he’d taken care to protect his book in cling film, so it was barely damp when he fished it from inside the jumpsuit. Everything was A-OK.

Then fortune smiled on him again. The FBI helicopters forced Hunter away from the stream, giving him the opportunity to make his own break for freedom. He heard the roar of the choppers, the hard snap of rifles, and knew that the FBI had confused Hunter with him. Maybe they’d kill the bastard and leave the door open for him to get at Bradley a second time. Or maybe not. He couldn’t rely on Lady Luck. He had to make his own opportunities.

He scrambled along the stream bed, found a place to climb out and crawled up on to the far side. Lying on the embankment, he watched as a chopper set down three armed agents and witnessed Hunter dispatching all three in the space of seconds. Impressive. Hunter was proving a dangerous enemy. Time, he decided, to finish him off.

Glancing back over his shoulder, he scrutinised again the power station he’d intended taking Bradley to. The buildings had a decrepit look, as if they had not known service in some time. They were bordered by a chain-link fence, but here and there he could make out breaches in it as though vandals had broken into the compound many times over the years. One of the nearer buildings had metal sheets over its windows and doors, but he could also see a gaping doorway where the sheet had been prised loose.

Rising up, he cast a look backwards.

Hunter met his gaze, and he nodded in the direction of the buildings.

Come and get it, asshole.

Then he took off across the field, heedless of the two McDonnell Douglas choppers circling the nearby field. His leg pained him. His arm didn’t yet, but it would only be a matter of time. He had to reach the buildings before Hunter could get close enough to shoot. Exposed as he crossed the open space, Hunter would be easy meat for Dantalion’s bullets.

A chopper came over the top of the power station, rotors buzzing like an angry hornet. It wasn’t one of the black gunships, but the liveried Bell Jet Ranger once piloted by the man whose clothes he now wore.

The sun was behind the chopper, but he could make out a single man on board. One of the agents from back at Eunice Jorgenson’s home. Probably the asshole tasked with bringing him down.

Dantalion came to a standstill and lifted the Glock. He saw a widening of the eyes of the man piloting the chopper. Dantalion fired. Three rapid bursts that cut a zigzag pattern across the windshield. Behind the starred glass the cockpit changed colour, scarlet puffing in the air.

Then the chopper was dipping towards him and Dantalion was forced to move as the whirling rotors cleaved air above him as if in a decapitating frenzy. He charged to the left and he felt the displacement of air as the chopper hurtled to the ground. Behind him it sounded as if the earth had exploded. Dirt and dust and grass showered around him. There was the screaming of an engine on overload, the
bang! bang! bang!
of rotors churning into the ground, followed by shrieks as chunks of hot metal were torn loose and thrown into the air.

He looked back.

The Bell Jet Ranger was reduced to scrap metal. Oily black smoke rose like a funeral pyre from the burnt-out engine components. The rotors had been reduced to gnarly stumps. Still, the dying helicopter was groaning, but only until sparks jumped from the overheated engine into the spilled fuel and it gave out one final roar as the entire craft exploded.

The concussion sent Dantalion sprawling to the ground. Searing heat washed over him and for the briefest of moments he felt as though all life was being sucked from his body. An image flashed through his mind of the petrified victims found in the ashes of Pompeii after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, charred and desiccated corpses twisted into foetal balls. He thought that was how he must look. Except now the heat had gone, the in-gust taking the flames back towards the wreckage of the chopper, and he realised that – apart from singed hair and a throat that felt like it burned – he was unharmed.

He was face down on the ground with his arms over his head. He had no recollection of striking the pose. He quickly snapped to attention, wondering how much time his killing of the chopper pilot had taken, and how much of his advantage had been torn away in doing so.

Rolling to his feet, he looked for Hunter. He was two hundred yards nearer and gaining. Then smoke from the doomed chopper rolled across the intervening space and Hunter’s charging form was lost from view. Dantalion broke into an ungainly lope, hand fumbling for his book. The book was there, but it took him a second to register that the hand he’d used should have been holding a Glock. He ground to a halt, turned round, searching for where the explosion had thrown the gun to.

He couldn’t see it. Smoking debris lay everywhere. Chunks of hot metal and divots of earth obscured the ground all around where he’d fallen.