Trader of Secrets: A Paul Madriani Novel (47 page)

They were still laughing when Sarah looked over his shoulder and saw him. At first she just stood there with a quizzical look on her face.

“What’s the matter?”

“Look out!”

Before the words cleared her lips, the shot rang out. The explosion of the Kalashnikov reverberated through the room as Adin flung himself into Sarah. They landed in a heap on the floor.

Liquida tried to line up for another shot, but the guy was on top of her. He moved for a better angle. As he did, the wall behind him came alive with bullet holes as the blast of gunfire echoed through the room. At first he wasn’t sure where the shots were coming from. Then he saw the gun in her hand pressed to the floor by the weight of the man’s body.

A second flurry of shots, one of which nicked his shoulder, told Liquida he’d had enough. He fired another round from the rifle as he retreated out through the back door, the way he had come in.

Sarah pulled herself out from underneath Adin and fired two more well-aimed rounds at Liquida’s fleeting shadow. “Are you all right?” She turned and looked at Adin. He wasn’t moving. There was blood on the floor. She rolled him over and looked into his face. She put her cheek to his nose searching for breath and felt for a pulse at his throat. There was nothing. She knew that the spark of life that had danced so freely in those large brown eyes had been extinguished. He was dead.

Sarah knelt there looking at him. She wanted to cry but she couldn’t. She tapped the muzzle of the gun on the polished stone floor as rage crowded out every other emotion. Fury filled her as she raised herself up and glared at the dark hallway and the wall with the two shadowed bullet holes.

With purpose she walked toward the rear of the building, squeezing the pistol in her hand. She saw drops of blood where Liquida had gone. Sarah knew she hit him. Now she would track him into the bush and kill him. She was not without caution, but anger filled her every pore. Her body was awash in a sea of adrenaline.

Chapter
Sixty-Four

T
he wounded soldier leveled the barrel of the machine gun at the wrecked red sedan as it raced toward them. Finger on the trigger, he was trying to save the last few rounds. He would wait until the car was on top of them before he opened up.

The Jeep blocked the road. At the last second, Herman held up a hand. “Hold it! Don’t shoot.”

The commando eased off on the SAW.

“I know them.” Herman smiled as he saw Harry through the broken windshield. He looked like Poseidon holding a trident in his lap.

As the car pulled up next to them, Herman realized that the fire engine red exterior was not all paint. The driver’s-side window came down. Herman was left staring at the stern and angry face of his boss.

*  *  *

“Where is she?” I ask.

“She’s OK,” says Herman. “She’s in a building back there for safekeeping. Adin is with her.”

“Who the hell is Adin?”

“That’s right, the two of you never met,” says Herman. “A young man. Nice guy.”

“I’ll bet. So tell me, is he responsible for bringing her down here or are you?”

Herman swallows hard.

Joselyn is behind me with her hand on my shoulder. “Relax!” she says. “You’ve killed enough people for one day.”

“I’m just getting warmed up,” I tell her.

“Don’t say something you’re going to regret. She’s OK and that’s what counts.”

“We’ll talk about it later,” I tell Herman. “Where is she?”

He points up the road behind him. “Third building on the right. How you doin’?” He looks at Harry.

“Better than you at the moment.” Harry smiles. “See you later.”

We pull away and drive toward the building.

“Cut him some slack,” says Harry. “If you lived with your daughter and tried to tell her no lately, you would know it ain’t easy.”

“What are you saying?”

“She’s a lot like you.”

“Hold your chin up just a little higher and ask a couple more questions, I’m sure he can hit you dead center,” says Joselyn.

“OK, enough,” I tell them.

“He’s in a bad mood,” she says.

“You think he’s bad now, wait till he talks to his daughter,” says Harry.

*  *  *

Liquida lugged the money as far as he could. He wasn’t going to run any farther. He stashed the bags behind some brush and started dripping false blood spoor down the path leading to the small lake behind the complex.

The area was dotted with deep cenotes, some of them with sheer cliffs, walls fifty feet high. In other places, surface lakes bubbled up in the otherwise dry jungle where thick, deep mudlike brown cement ringed their shores.

Liquida dripped blood almost to the edge of the water from several different directions along three different trails so in case she got lost she could still find her way to the lake. If there was one thing that was certain, it was that Liquida wasn’t going back to those buildings or anywhere near the landing strip. He could hear explosions in the distance, not rifle fire or artillery. Whoever won was busy blowing the place up, carefully timed detonations. To Liquida this spelled one thing—the military hand of government. And he didn’t care which one. They were all bad.

He stanched the bleeding from his shoulder with a handkerchief, then carried the rifle into the bushes and waited. Liquida checked the magazine. It was empty. He had one round left in the chamber. If he couldn’t kill her with that, then he shouldn’t be in business.

*  *  *

Sarah tried to keep her head, to recall everything Adin had taught her about the pistol and how it fired. The Glock had no external manual safety. She pressed the magazine release on the side and checked the clip. She had only six rounds left plus the one in the barrel itself.

It was the problem with the small light handgun. It was so fast and easy to shoot that you could squeeze off fifteen rounds in a matter of seconds and not even know it. She slid the magazine back into the handle and pushed it home until it clicked into place.

Bracing the gun in both hands, Sarah moved cautiously down the trail as she followed the drops of blood. She could hear explosions in the distance and began to wonder if she had made a mistake. It might have been wiser to go after Herman, tell him what had happened.

Then Sarah steeled herself and said no. Liquida had killed both her girlfriend, Jenny, and now Adin. He had tried to murder her not once, but twice. Adin was an innocent victim. She knew he was dead only because he had been standing too close to her at the wrong time. She knew that if she didn’t find Liquida now, he would be gone.

In her own mind, he had passed from the realm of the human to a lower form of life. Killing him was like flushing an amoeba. He was diseased in the way a rabid animal was and required killing for the same reason. She couldn’t believe she was having such thoughts, that she could harbor such hate. A year ago she had been in college, but so much had happened in that year. She shook off the thought and looked down the path.

The jungle growth was low, the trail covered with overhanging brush. In places, Sarah had to stoop to get under it. Suddenly something snapped off to the right. She stopped, her eyes trying to penetrate the dense foliage. It was as if she could feel hands coming out of the brush at her. A noise to the right—she turned and fired, squeezing off two quick rounds. She listened and heard nothing except the pounding of her own heart. She could feel the surging blood at her temples.

Sarah looked down the path and saw a continuous trail of blood. She began to wonder if she had wounded him more seriously than she thought.

Again she heard the snapping of brush off to the right. She knew he was there. She turned with the pistol and aimed toward the sound, but this time she didn’t fire.

*  *  *

Liquida could hear her footsteps as she moved down the trail, snapping twigs and dry leaves under foot. She would never make it as an Indian scout. He sat on a rock and listened as she came closer.

He tried to gauge how far back she was. Then he picked up another stone and tossed it back up the trail and across to the other side. A second later he heard two more shots. By now she must have been sweating blood.

He sat calmly on the rock and listened as she crunched down the track toward the lake. He waited a few seconds and threw another stone. She fired again and then
click.

Liquida smiled. He checked the one remaining round in the rifle. It was time to go to work.

*  *  *

Sarah stood stone still on the trail and trained her eyes on the traces of blood to where they ended twenty feet ahead at the edge of the lake. It was as if someone had dripped it along the path using a paintbrush. She silently slipped the magazine with the two remaining rounds back into the handle of the pistol. The slide on the top had been held open after she had fired the single round in the chamber. She knew he would hear the empty click. He was somewhere off to the left. The last stone he threw nearly hit her.

She steadied the pistol with both hands and kept her thumb on the slide release the same way Adin had shown her at the FBI range. As soon as she pressed it, the slide would spring forward and carry the first of the two rounds from the clip into the chamber. From there, in less than a second, if she could get a clear shot, she could pump the two rounds into him. She tried to envision the silhouette targets from the indoor range—center mass, chest high.

*  *  *

Liquida was about to step out onto the trail when he heard the thrashing in the brush behind him. He turned to look and before he could move, the Doberman was on him, flashing teeth and dog breath. The animal seized his arm, the sharp canines ripping into his flesh.

Liquida tried to fling him from his arm. The dog hung on like a bear trap, growling and kicking up dust as he pulled with his hind legs. Somehow Bugsy had lost his leash running through the brush. Liquida got a grip on the rifle with his left hand, finger on the trigger; he tried to steady it but the dog was in too close. He couldn’t get the muzzle of the barrel on him. He kicked the animal in the stomach, and the dog bit down harder all the way to the bone.

Chapter
Sixty-Five

S
arah heard growling and thrashing in the brush. She pointed the pistol toward the noise and waited.

“Bugsy! Here, boy. Come here!” She knew from the sound, like a parent knows a child. She tried to coax him out, but he wouldn’t come.

Suddenly there was the sound of a shot, close, no more than twenty feet away. The dog screeched.

Sarah saw red. She held the point of the pistol chest high and fired into the brush. With the second shot, she heard a deep groan and suddenly everything went quiet.

She stood there on the trail looking at the bushes and listening. She waited a few seconds. “Come on, Bugs. Come on out.” But the dog didn’t come. There was no sound, no movement in the brush.

She waited, what seemed like forever, and then slowly began to inch her way down the trail toward the lake. She called the dog again but heard nothing.

She reached the edge of the mud, the soft shore, with her back to the water. She held the gun out, even though she had no more bullets. She wanted to close the slide but couldn’t remember how. She pressed the slide return on the side, but it didn’t work. If Liquida stepped out now and saw the slide was back, he would know that the gun was empty.

Sarah remembered the snub-nosed revolver strapped to Adin’s ankle, but it was too late. A second later Liquida crashed through the brush with the butt of the rifle over his head. He came at her swinging it like a club.

She saw the mass of blood on his left side as the rifle came down on her shoulder. It drove her to the ground as she dropped the pistol in the dirt.

Liquida pounded on her back with the butt of the rifle as if driving a post into the ground. He dropped the gun, descended on her, and pulled out the stiletto. He straddled her back and pushed her face in the dirt. Taking the handle of the blade in both hands, he raised it above his head like an Aztec priest in a ritual sacrifice.

Harry was forty feet away when he saw the flashing blade in the air just as Paul, like a heat-seeking missile, hit Liquida from the side. Madriani drove his shoulder through the Mexican’s upper body, sending both of them skidding into the mud at the edge of the lake.

They lay crumpled in the muck, both dazed by the blow for several seconds before Liquida rose to his knees. When he stood, Harry could see that the knife was still in his hand.

Before Paul could get to his feet, Liquida was on him, the slashing tip of the blade searching for its target. The glistening point buried itself in Madriani’s right arm as Liquida drove him back to his knees. With his foot he kicked Paul in the stomach and pushed the lawyer over backward into the water. Liquida landed like a panther on Paul’s back and tried to drown him, all the while cutting and slashing with the blade.

Somehow under the water Madriani found the Mexican’s feet and pulled. Suddenly Liquida found himself upended, thrashing about on his back in the shallows. He slashed out with the knife and missed. Madriani backhanded him hard across the face, the bones of his knuckles ripping the flesh under the Mexican’s right eye. Before Liquida could recover, Paul’s hand came back the other way as a closed fist and caught him on the cheek on the other side.