Alicia twisted and saw the fresh clip in Baker's hand as he fumbled it into the opening in the bottom of the pistol's grip.
"No!" she cried, and grabbed his arm.
He almost dropped the clip but maintained his grasp by his fingertips. He snarled as he kicked her away.
Alicia landed on her back. Jack was almost here, but through a haze of pain she saw Baker slam the clip home and raise the pistol with both hands. Jack wasn't going to make it. Baker was going to get a point-blank shot at him. She thought of Thomas's gun, but it was back inside the cabin, too far away…
Alicia closed her eyes and screamed as she heard three shots in rapid succession… from directly behind her.
She opened her eyes and saw Baker falling away as Jack slammed into the place where he'd been standing. She turned and saw someone crouched in the cabin doorway, leaning on the door frame.
Thomas.
He looked ghastly. The doughy white of his face made the blood trickling from both corners of his mouth seem so much redder. The pistol hung loosely at the end of his limp arm.
As she watched, he seemed to deflate, seemed to shrink within his clothes as he slumped to the floor.
Baffled, Alicia crawled over to him.
"Oh, Thomas. Thank you, Thomas. But…" She had to ask. She'd never known him to do anything for anyone. "Thomas, why?"
"Don't you know?" he said in a voice bubbling wet with blood. "You're supposed to be so smart. Don't you know?"
"Know what?" She was almost afraid that she did.
"Those were the worst years of your life. But they were the best of mine."
He coughed up a dark red clot, and then his body stiffened as the light went out of his eyes.
Alicia reached a hand toward him. She'd never thought she could touch him, but now she had to.
She smoothed his hair and began to cry.
12.
Jack bounced off the door and dropped to Baker's side. He held Barlowe's Special Forces knife to his throat as he pulled the pistol from his limp fingers. He saw Baker's glazed, staring eyes, checked his throat for a pulse. Dead. Three .32s to the side of his chest had done it.
Jack knelt there and sucked air deep into his blazing lungs, then he stood and leaned against the door. His left thigh flamed and throbbed with pain, more so when he bent it.
He watched Alicia crouch over her brother in the doorway, and heard her sobs. He wasn't crazy about the idea, but he probably owed Thomas his life. And it didn't look like a debt he was going to get a chance to repay.
That had been close…
He heard a groan from inside. He stepped past Alicia and found Kemel writhing on the floor.
"A doctor," he moaned. "Please… get me to a hospital."
"The only place you're going is outside," Jack said.
He grabbed the back of Kemel's collar and dragged him toward the door. The Arab howled as he passed Alicia.
"Really, Jack," she said, straightening up and wiping her eyes. "Is that necessary? Can't you just leave him there?"
The adrenaline was still shooting through his arteries, his heart still pounding, his lungs still afire. He looked down at his free hand and saw the fine tremor. The fight was over but his body hadn't got the message yet. He'd come this close to buying it and was still shaking from the sight of Baker's pistol zeroing in on his chest a few moments ago.
He wasn't feeling too polite.
"The answers are, in order: Yes…and No. He's stinking up the place."
Jack dragged him outside, past Baker's body, and released him in the weeds. "Please… a doctor…"
Jack wanted to kick him but held back.
"Get me to a hospital."
Jack squatted next to Kemel and leaned close, speaking through his teeth. "Guess what, pal? I just polled the passengers on JAL 27. I said, 'Anyone who thinks Kemel should have a doctor raise your hand.' You know what? Nobody moved. So no doctor for you."
As he rose, he noticed that it was starting to snow. He returned to the cabin. Alicia was leaning against the wall next to the door, her head back, her eyes closed. She looked pale and weak, as if the wall was the only thing keeping her upright. Snowfiakes brushed her face.
"Thanks for the help," he said.
She opened her eyes. "Thanks for coming back."
"I didn't have much choice."
"You could have kept going."
"No, I couldn't."
"No, I guess you couldn't." She gave him half of a very tired smile. "And you know, somehow I knew that." She glanced down at his bloody thigh. "Let me check that—"
"I'll be all right for now. I'll get it stitched up back in the city."
"It needs more than that strap. Come with me."
Jack followed her into the cabin. Maybe she needed something to do. She pulled the sheet off the cot and began tearing it into long strips.
"Sit and pull your jeans down."
"I told you the other night not to get any ideas."
She didn't smile. "Just do it."
Jack loosened the strap, then slid his jeans down to his knees.
Alicia inspected the two-inch vertical slit. "That's a deep one. Did you feel it hit the bone?"
"No. The guy who did it didn't have much oomph left."
"Luckily it runs in line with the muscle fibers of your quadriceps," she said as she began to wrap the thigh with strips of the sheet. She seemed to have slipped fully into her doctor mode. "The femoral artery and nerve are over here, so it missed them completely. Should heal up pretty well, but you will need stitches. ERs have to report stab wounds—"
"I know a guy who doesn't."
"I'm sure you do."
"What's our next step here?" he said as she continued to bind his leg.
"I was hoping you'd know."
"I can take care of the bodies. Haul them off in whatever they arrived in—a dark van, I'll bet—and leave them somewhere."
"Not Thomas," she said. "We owe him."
Jack looked over at Thomas's crumpled, bloody corpse. "Yeah, I guess we do. Okay, so I'll drop the bodies somewhere and place a call, telling the local sheriff or whatever where they can be found. And then let the crime busters have a grand old time figuring out the who, what, where, when, and how."
"Do you think they will—figure this out, I mean?"
"Not if I drop them far enough away. But the other question is… how are you going to handle broadcast power, now that you're the sole owner?"
"I guess I'm supposed to reveal it to the world. But if what Thomas said about the patents is true, I can plan on a long fight with the patent holders. Frankly, I've had enough of lawyers for a long time."
"There's always the Japanese. Yoshio's people will pay big bucks."
"You sound like you like that one."
"Yeah, well, take the money and run, and let them worry about the lawyers."
"You know," she said, "I don't care how much anybody wants to pay. The thought of profiting from anything that man touched makes me physically ill."
"So that leaves giving away the technology to everybody. Publishing it on the Internet—"
Her eyes flashed as she looked up at him. "Along with pictures of Thomas and me?"
"Hey, I didn't mean that. I meant the Internet would allow anybody who wanted to develop the technology to have free access to the plans."
"But what about you?" she said. "A third of nothing is nothing. I hate to see you come out on the short end of this, Jack. I mean, you've been stabbed, you almost got killed—"
"Don't worry about that. I couldn't take the money anyway."
"Why not?"
"Because I already have pretty much everything I want."