Intending to go back to the alley, I wandered into the bathroom, finding it also stripped except for a short stack of newspapers on a shelf by the toilet.
The papers were months old. Two were classified sections with circled ads for what Michele said were flea markets and junkyards. The other three were folded and featured partially done crossword puzzles. There were doodles of stars and geometric designs around the puzzles of the first two sections.
But there were no stars or boxes around the third puzzle. Above it, however, there was a crude doodle in black felt pen that didn’t make sense. But when I turned it upside down, Michele’s breath caught in her throat.
“It’s a study of a horse’s leg,” she said. “And look at the way it’s drawn. That’s the leg and rear haunch, positioned much as the statue of Al-Buraq was.”
I immediately took a picture of the sketch and sent it to Louis Langlois and Investigateur Hoskins, along with a text that read, “Drawing of Al-Buraq’s leg,” and the address.
I hit send, and we heard the dead bolt thrown.
Then the front door swung open.
Chapter 96
FOR ME, EVERYTHING became simple then. Whoever was coming into the apartment was part of AB-16, and given the group’s actions until now, I had to assume they were armed, dangerous, and ready to kill, which meant I needed to be just as ready and just as deadly.
Setting the newspaper and horse drawing aside on the vanity, I motioned to Michele to stay quiet and not move. Then I slipped to the transom and listened to footsteps that entered, and stopped. The front door shut.
I took a peek and saw a big woman, short blond hair, dressed in hipster black. She had one of the bucket lids in her hands.
Which meant if she had a gun, she couldn’t go for it easily. It was my opportunity, and I acted, stepping out into the hallway in a combat crouch, the Glock braced in two hands. We were no more than twenty-five feet apart.
I couldn’t remember how to say “Get down on the floor,” so I yelled, “Asseyez-vous!”
Sit down!
She jumped in alarm, twisted toward me in panic. I yelled at her again. But instead of going to the ground, she whipped the plastic bucket lid at me like a big Frisbee. She must have had mad disc skills because the lid came whizzing at me with surprising snap and accuracy. I had to bat it out of the air, which gave her the chance to flee.
“Damn it,” I said, and raced after her down the passage.
I should have slowed down, taken my time. Instead, I barreled into the choked living area like a stampeding bull. The blonde darted down the entry hall at the same time I caught motion to my left and was immediately hit with a spray of short sharp bits of metal.
Most of the shrapnel caught me on the right side of my face, and only reflexes prevented a piece from blinding me. It cut into my eyelid and blurred my vision. I lunged right, trying to get out of range so I could turn and shoot.
But when I tried, I tripped against one of the big buckets. By the time I regained my balance and was fighting for a sight picture, it was too late.
Haja Hamid had me dead to rights.
Crouched behind several stacks of magazines that covered her chest, she was aiming a pistol with a sound suppressor at me.
I froze.
And she tapped the trigger.
Her bullet smashed into the exposed grip panel of the Glock, just below my thumb. It was as if an electrified sledgehammer had hit my hand, causing it to close and inadvertently pull the trigger, discharging a round before the pistol slipped from my useless fingers and fell to the floor.
Even in that crowded space, the sound was deafening, disorienting. Blood was blinding my left eye. My right hand had gone completely numb. And from wrist to shoulder, my muscles twitched and my bones burned.
I realized that Haja was shouting at me, and that in shock, I’d gone to one knee, holding my useless arm. She came at me. The blonde returned. She shouted, but Haja couldn’t hear, or wasn’t listening.
Haja was getting a better angle. Maybe she’d aimed for my hand at first because she wanted to find out how much I knew before killing me. But my gun going off had ended that idea.
The shot would bring the police, and she had to be gone when they came. She would kill me now to cover her tracks. I could see it in her nickel-gray eyes when she stepped out from behind the stacks of magazines, raised her pistol, and aimed, two feet away, no more.
“Haja! Don’t!”
Those were the first words I heard clearly after my gun went off, and they hadn’t come from the blonde.
Michele Herbert was standing in the mouth of the hallway, afraid, but insistent when Haja turned to her.
“Don’t shoot, Haja! It’s me, Michele!”
Seeing Michele surprised and broke something in Haja. Her arms, hands, and pistol began to sink.
It registered in my daze, and once again my marine training kicked in. I let go my damaged hand, and lunged at her.
My left shoulder hammered the side of her left knee. Haja crashed sideways. Her gun went off as she fell. I went frantic then, and scrambled up on top of her, straddling her legs. I saw her pain and hatred of me, and the fact that she no longer had the pistol.
But she’d found a nasty chunk of metal, and swung it hard at my head. I blocked it with my good arm, stunned at the raw power of her blow. Then she bucked against me. With her ironworker strength she damn near threw me off.
Then she hit me in the face with the butt of her palm, caught me right under the jaw, and rocked me. She cocked back that hunk of metal again, meaning to finish me off.
Flinging out my left hand again, I caught the inside of her elbow, and then used the only other weapon I had.
My head became my hammer. I swung it with every bit of my remaining strength and felt my forehead crack and crush the bridge of her nose.
When I lifted my head, she was addled, and there was blood gushing from her nostrils. But I hit her a second time, just to make sure.
Panting, drenched in sweat, my face slick with sweat and blood, I heard something, and looked to my right in time to see the blonde. She gripped a three-foot piece of angle iron, which was already in full swing at my head.
Halfway through the arc, I heard a thud.
The blonde hunched up and let go of the iron piece. It flung through the air, clipped my ear, and hit something behind me. Dumbly, she looked at me, and then down at her chest before going down in a breathless heap.
“Jack?” Michele said weakly. “Help. Me.”
I pivoted. She was sitting up against a piece of busted furniture. Haja’s pistol was in her lap, and her hands were clasped across her belly and blouse, where a dark rose of blood had bloomed.
Chapter 97
14th Arrondissement
6:12 p.m.
SHAREN HOSKINS PULLED her car over in front of La Santé prison. She climbed out, came around the back door, and opened it for me.
I was in handcuffs. My face was swollen and held together by thirty-two stitches. A black patch covered antibiotic cream smeared over my sewn eyelid. My arm was in a sling, and my spiral-fractured wrist in a cast.
A dull throb had returned to my fingers and lower forearms as Hoskins led me, Juge Fromme, and Louis Langlois toward the security entrance.
Louis’s doctor friend had figured out that he’d slightly dislocated the head of his tibia, and had snapped the bone back into place. But it was still so sore he could only walk as fast as the magistrate’s top speed.
My chief concern, however, was Michele Herbert, who was still in surgery. I had put her there, gut shot, and it was killing me. The fact that I was walking up to prison doors instead of in vigil outside the operating room was killing me too. To my way of thinking, you owe a person who takes a bullet for you, and then saves your life by putting a bullet through someone else.