He must have missed the driver. Either that, or the other two had gotten to the SUV.
Load, load, come on, come on—!
— four, five, six!
He snapped the cylinder closed and crawled toward the road. As he reached the edge of the trees, the Explorer roared past, accelerating away.
“Fuck that!” Howard yelled. He scrambled up, ran into the road, and whipped his gun up in both hands. The SUV was really moving; it was eighty, ninety meters away as he cooked off all six as fast as he could, closing his eyes to avoid the muzzle flashes—
Again the SUV squealed into a one-eighty turn, and the lights came around to find Howard. But the car didn’t start back, it just sat there. Ninety meters — okay, okay, he had time to reload again—
The SUV’s door slammed shut. Somebody got out?
Howard ejected the empties, reached for another speed loader. Plenty of time—
He saw the muzzle flash, felt the kick in his belly from a heavy boot as he went down, then heard the boom! from the weapon.
Fuck! He was shot and his gun was empty. His side burned, over his right hip. Get up, John, get up, now!
He half-crawled, half-rolled off the road and back to the woods. In the trees, he kept moving, his fist jammed over the bullet wound. He got as far as he could before his legs just quit working. He sat, fumbled for his virgil, managed to trigger the distress signal as he felt himself graying out. His last thoughts as he lost consciousness were of disbelief: How could somebody have hit a target at ninety meters like that? With a handgun, and only the headlights of a car in the dark?
Hell of a shot…
“What the hell happened?” Morrison said again and again. “What the hell happened?”
The cool night air whistled through the car from the three holes in the windshield. Morrison, in the back, was probably in shock, but at that, he was a lot better off than Ventura’s two men. One of them was dead on the seat next to him, slumped against the passenger door; he’d taken one right between the eyes. The other man was lying next to the fence back at the pickup point, and he was just as dead, one to the heart. Nice work.
The black man had done it. Ventura didn’t know who the hell he had been, but he’d screwed things up pretty good. How had the black guy managed to find them and set up his ambush? That had been a good trick. Still, it didn’t matter. He was probably dead or dying himself by now. Ventura had put one solidly into him; he wasn’t going to be causing any more trouble. If he was the Chinese’s primary attack, he’d failed, even though he had caused a lot of trouble. He should have been wearing a vest. Odd that he wasn’t. Ventura had his on.
The client was alive, and they would rendezvous with more of Ventura’s team in a couple of minutes. Nice try, but no cigar.
“What the hell happened?”
“Relax, it’s okay now. They tried, but they failed. We’ll regroup and wait for them to contact us.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Listen, you can’t take this personally. It’s just business. They tried, they missed, so now they’ll deal. Nothing has changed.”
“I could have gotten killed!”
“And you still could. But none of this matters. What matters is that you aren’t dead now. You still have something they want, and they are still going to have to pay to get it. You move on.”
“This is madness,” Morrison said.
“Way of the world, Doctor. If you don’t want to get hit, don’t step into the ring. You’re here now, so we have to make the best of it. Think of it as a great story to tell your new friends someday.”
He saw Morrison in the rearview mirror, his face dimly lit by the instrument lights. The man looked as if somebody had just told him there was a rattlesnake in his pocket.
Ventura watched the road, his pistol in his lap. Amateurs just didn’t understand how the world worked. They took everything so personal.
25
“Sir?”
Michaels came out of a shallow sleep, blinking. He was in his office, on the couch. What—?
One of the night crew — Askins? Haskins? — stood in the doorway. Must not be time for shift change yet. Michaels sat up. “Yes?”
“We got a distress signal from General Howard’s virgil. From Alaska.”
“What?” He still wasn’t quite awake and tracking yet. Where was Toni?
“Federal Marshals found him, he’s been shot. An Alaska National Guard copter is on the way; he’s up near Gakona.”
He looked at his watch. It was six A.M. He needed to wash his face and to find Toni. What had John gotten into?
But before he could reach the door, his own com chirped its top-priority tone. He hurried to the receiver and picked it up. “John?”
“No, it’s Melissa Allison.”
The director. What was she doing up at this hour?
She didn’t give him time to wonder: “I just got a call from Adam Brickman in the U.S. Marshals office. One of his men was wounded in a shoot-out in Nowhere, Alaska, attempting to serve an arrest warrant authorized by your office. So was General John Howard. They are alive, just barely, on their way to a hospital in Anchorage, but Brickman isn’t happy. I’m not happy, either, Commander, because when he started chewing me out for not warning his people this was a shoot-sit, I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.”
Uh-oh. “I’m sorry, Madam Director, I didn’t realize there was any danger.”
“You sent marshals and the head of Net Force’s military arm to pick up somebody — which is outside your charter, unless there are special circumstances. I’m going to be in my office in forty minutes. I suggest you be there when I arrive.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Michaels said.
He cradled the receiver. Great. Just great. He had a federal marshal and John Howard shot up and the director of the FBI ready to tear him a new asshole. Great way to start the day, wasn’t it? Maybe if he was lucky, a big meteor would fall on him.
“Alex?”
Toni. “Hey,” he said.
“What’s up? The place feels as if it’s about to explode.”
He rubbed at his face with both hands. “Walk with me and I’ll fill you in.”
Because Ventura wanted to have a few words with the Chinese, he had Morrison’s phone when it rang. He used the headset, the engine and wind noise of the DC-3 being enough to interfere with hearing.
“Dr. Morrison?”
“No. Ventura.”
“Ah, Luther. How are you?”
“Why, I’m just fine, Chilly. Though I can’t say the same for your people. The feint was pretty good, but the follow-through was, well, sad. I expected better.”
There was a moment’s hesitation. Then Wu said, “Much as I’d like to turn this to my advantage, I have to confess I don’t know what you are talking about, Luther.”
“Come on, we’re professionals here, I don’t hold it against you, I realize it was just business.”
“Nope, sorry, I’m not tracking.”
Ventura considered it. There was no real reason for Wu to be coy. He knew that if they tried to snatch Morrison and failed, Ventura wouldn’t care; it was how things were done, they were men of the world here. “So you didn’t send people to, ah, have an informal chat with my client?”
“No.”
Ventura heard the “Not yet” in that single word, but he also had to stop and think real hard about the implications. Of course Wu would lie if it was to his advantage, that was to be expected. But Wu had to know he couldn’t gull anybody into believing that the Chinese were benevolent businessmen who’d never stoop to such a thing as kidnapping and torture. Sure, they’d pay if they had to pay, but if they could get what they wanted for free, they’d do it. They were as cheap as anybody else.