He and Angel were almost within touching distance.
“I go on three, you go on four,” he whispered. The slight delay would make them harder targets if the road was being watched, the second man distracting from the first, sowing just enough confusion to give them an edge. He raised his right index and middle fingers, spreading them apart to form a V. “I go left, you go right. Don’t stop until you get to the trees.”
Angel nodded. They stayed low until they reached the edge of the forest, then Angel watched Louis’s lips make the count. One. Two.
Three.
Louis sprinted for the road. A second later Angel was moving, veering away from his partner, zigzagging once again but not as violently as before, intent only on getting across the open road, where he would be most vulnerable, as quickly as possible.
They did not even make it to where the ground began to rise. The first shot sent a spume of dirt into the air a couple of inches from Angel’s feet. The second and third struck the road itself, and then the scattered shots became a fusillade, forcing the two men back into the forest. They flattened themselves on the ground, and returned fire with the Steyrs, aiming at the muzzle flashes, keeping to short bursts in order to conserve their ammunition. Louis saw a figure running low, wearing a green combat jacket. He fired, but the man kept moving. He was beyond the limited range of the Steyrs.
“Stop firing,” he told Angel after each of them had exhausted a magazine, and instantly Angel did as he was told, reloading with his face pressed hard against the ground.
The shooting from the other side of the road did not cease, but neither did the shots draw any closer. Instead, the shooters seemed happy to knock bark from the trees behind them, too far over their heads to do any damage as long as they stayed down, or to send clouds of dust and gravel spurting from the surface of the road. Slowly, Angel and Louis moved back into the cover of the trees.
Only then did the gunfire stop, although their ears still rang from the noise. They could see them now: a line of three men in hooded ponchos, barely visible in the woods on the other side of the road. One held his rifle at port arms while the others leaned against the trees to his left and right, rifles at their shoulders, sighting down the barrel at their targets. They did not seem troubled that Angel and Louis could see them. Then more men appeared from the north and south, following the road, and took up positions among the trees. Some of them even seemed to be smiling. It was a game, and they were winning. Angel dropped the Steyr and raised his Glock, but Louis reached out and indicated that he should hold his fire.
“No,” he said.
They’ve strung themselves out along the road, thought Louis. They took note of where we came in, then made an educated guess at where we’d come out. The line might have been thinner a little farther to the east or west, but they knew that they could reinforce it quickly.
From somewhere on the other side of the road, he heard the crackle of a radio, then it was lost in the sound of an approaching vehicle, and a flatbed truck appeared from the south and stopped thirty or forty feet away from where Angel and Louis knelt. They could see the shapes of two men in the cab. The truck idled. Nobody moved.
“What the hell is this?” asked Angel.
But Louis did not reply. He was performing calculations in his mind: times, distances, weapons. He tried to work out their chances of killing the two men in the truck if they used the cover of the forest to work their way south. They were good, but the chances of getting away from the pursuers who would inevitably follow were less favorable: close to zero, he reckoned.
And yet this couldn’t go on indefinitely. They were being contained for a purpose. He wondered if there were men already approaching from behind, cutting them off. They were like foxes fleeing the hunters only to find that the entrance to their den had been sealed, forcing them to turn and face the dogs.
“We go back,” he said.
“What?”
“They’ve closed off the road, for now. They also know where we’re at, and that’s not good. We use the forest while we can. There’s a house to the northeast. It was on the satellite photographs. Could be we can lay our hands on a car or a truck there, or at least a phone.”
“We could call the cops to come get us,” said Angel. “Tell them we came here to kill someone by mistake.”
Rain began to fall, large drops that made a slapping noise upon the leaves above them. Even though the sun had now almost risen, the sky above them remained cloudy and dark. The rain fell harder and faster, quickly soaking them to the skin, but the men watching from the woods did not move. The rain slid from their slickers and ponchos. They had been prepared for rain. They had been prepared for everything. Slowly, Louis and Angel retreated into the trees.
There was massive internal bleeding. His brain swelled inside his skull, causing more hemorrhaging. They fought for him, trying to prevent herniation, for that would be the end of him. They removed bone fragments, and a clot, and the bullet. Finally, all of their work would leave only the faintest of scars, hidden by his hair.
And while they battled to save him, Louis sat by a lake, surrounded by trees. Across the water, he could see the house in which he had grown up. It was empty now, fallen into ruin. It was no longer home. He could not go back there, so there was no life within its walls. There was no life anywhere. The woods were quiet, and no fish swam in the lake. He sat in the dead place, and he waited.
After a time, a man emerged from the darkness of the forest to the east. His face was gone, and his teeth were bared in his lipless mouth. He had no eyes with which to see, but he turned his head toward Louis. The wounds to his face made him look as though he were grinning. Perhaps he was. Deber had always been grinning, even when he killed Louis’s mother.
To the west, a light appeared, and the Burning Man took his place by the water, his mouth forming words, speaking soundlessly to his son of rage and wrath.
North: the house. South: Louis. East: Deber. West: the Burning Man. Compass points.
But Louis was not the southern point. He heard footsteps behind him, and a hand gently brushed the back of his neck. He tried to turn, but he could not.
And his grandmother’s voice whispered: “These are not the only choices.”
It was the beginning of the end, the seed that would lead to the slow flowering of a conscience.
The wound took a long time to heal. The bullet had penetrated his skull, but had not passed into his brain. His mother had always told him he had a hard head. Even after his survival was assured, he had trouble forming certain words and distinguishing colors, and his vision was blurred for months. He was tormented by phantom sounds, and by pains in his limbs. Gabriel was tempted to cut him loose, but Louis was special. He had been the youngest of Gabriel’s recruits, and he still had the potential to exceed all of Gabriel’s expectations. He responded quickly to therapy, in part because of his own natural strength, but also, Gabriel knew, out of a desire for revenge. Bliss had disappeared, but they would find him. They could not let what he had done go unpunished.
It took ten years to track him down. When he was found, Louis was sent to execute him.
He was living in Amsterdam as a Dutch national, under the name van Mierlo. Some surgery had been performed on him; not much, but just enough on the nose, eyes, and chin to ensure that if any of his old acquaintances crossed his path they would fail to recognize him immediately. It was all about buying time: hours, minutes, even seconds. Louis knew that Bliss would have spent the years since the Lowein incident preparing for the day when he might be found. He would be ready to run at any time. He would know his environment intimately, so that the slightest change in routine would alert him. He would always be armed. He would own a car, kept in a secure private parking garage not far from where he lived, but would rarely use it. It would be kept for emergencies, in case the airport or the trains were closed to him for any reason, or when alternative travel arrangements were denied him.