Fast as she'd been, she hadn't been fast enough. She got to her feet, racing to where Miata lay in the open ground between the burning house and the treeline, where the dog had fallen halfway to target. The pool of blood spreading beneath him was enough to make her certain he was dead, but as she reached him, Miata managed to lift his head, tongue lolling, chest heaving, finding her.
Knowing it would get her killed, she stopped long enough to pick him up anyway, then ran for the trees beyond the man she'd just dropped. "At least one of them was coming from the other direction," Alena told me. "Coming to try and flank me, as his friend had told him to. I couldn't leave Miata lying there. I couldn't do it. What if he'd decided to finish him?"
I nodded my understanding, thinking but not saying that she'd been luckier than she'd ever had a right to be, something she already knew, anyway. I also didn't say that carrying eighty-seven pounds of Doberman in her arms while being shot at was possibly the most stupid, foolish, and noble thing she'd ever done in her life. She and Miata were almost to the trees when the second man, the one who'd come around the right side of the house to flank her, opened fire at her exposed back. He, too, had come with a submachine gun, and the burst he laid down was long, which cost him accuracy. Two rounds scored, one creasing her right thigh an inch and a half below the hip, the other cutting a trough out of her upper arm, also on the right side, across the tricep. Between her perpetually weakened left leg and that, she went down, dog and mistress tumbling together through branches and brush. She scrambled herself behind the thickest tree she could find, pulling Miata after her by his paws. She had no idea how bad off Miata was, and wasn't even sure how wounded she was, herself, but she was seeing a lot of blood. More bullets cut through the woods, snapping branches and showering pine needles around them.
The house was engulfed entirely in flames now, and the roar of the fire was tremendous, creating its own breeze. She could hear glass shattering inside, but no more shouting, and she risked a low peek past a tree, trying to spot the new shooter. He'd retreated, backing off from the inferno he'd created with his friends, and Alena tried to capitalize on that, firing twice at him and missing both times. I was staring at her, and Alena grew indignant.
"I'd been hit in the arm," she reminded me. "I was doing the best I could." The man lay down a return burst to cover his retreat, but it was suppressing more than targeting, and only succeeded in hurting more trees.
For a second, then, Alena had a moment to consider her options, and not one of them was to her liking. She spared a moment to assure herself that her wounds were minor, or at least relatively so, then put her hands to Miata. The dog was not doing well, his breathing rapid and ragged, his eyes half-closed. She tried to stop the bleeding, but realized she had nothing to stop it with, and if she didn't do something soon, Miata would hemorrhage out. Taking him up again and making a run through the woods wouldn't work; even if she could make it through to the road on the far side, near the Lagidze house, the men remaining had a car, and they had automatic weapons. Trying to evade them now would only make sure she died winded and tired. And the Benz, she was now positive, was a total loss.
Which meant she had to take their vehicle, and that meant she had to take them.
She gave Miata a kiss on the muzzle, promising him she'd return, then made her way back to the treeline, dripping blood from the wounds on her arm and leg. The man she'd killed was only a meter or so away, but she passed him by without stopping, staying in the trees as she made for the right side of the house as fast as she dared, as fast as her weakened leg would allow, following the direction the last shooter had retreated. She took the corner wide, still in the woods, and saw no one.
Here, she decided that she needed to rely on speed more than stealth next, and to do that, she required open ground. She had just come out of the woods, preparing to make a run for the corner, when she heard a spasmodic crack and then, immediately, an even more tremendous bang as, inside the house, the major support beams gave way, one after another. The roof collapsed in a shower of sparks, splinters, and embers. Burning debris pelted her even as more heat blossomed, somehow more intense than before. She recoiled involuntarily, bringing her right arm up to shield her eyes.
When Alena brought it down again, she saw that the walls had collapsed along with the roof, and she was looking across the ruins and the flames at an angle, to the front of the house. Through the rippling air she could see two men, the one who'd fired at her last and another, each of them likewise reacting to the destruction of the building.
And they could see her.
She brought the Walther up, moving to her left as she did so, firing on the man nearest to her, the one she'd dogged around the side of the building. She shot him twice, adjusted while still in motion, and fired off another double-tap at the last man standing. Once again she missed, or thought she did, because he returned fire with a submachine gun of his own, and somehow managed to miss her completely.
Then he sagged to his knees, and pitched forward, and she realized that she had succeeded in hitting him after all.
Skirting the ruins of the burning house, she moved to each of the two men in turn, dumping an additional round into their heads. The car they'd arrived in was an Audi sedan, a new one, parked close to the mouth of the road, perhaps ten meters back, most likely to spare it from the fire they'd known they were going to start. She searched each of the men, finding no keys. She emptied each of their wallets of all the bills she could find, stuffing them down the front of her underpants, then ran back to the first man she'd dropped. He had the keys, and more cash, and she took both, as well as the denim jacket he wore and his belt, for good measure.
Miata was unconscious but breathing when she got back to him. With the jacket and the belt, she fashioned a pressure dressing as best as she could around the Doberman, then lifted him and carefully brought him to the Audi. She laid him across the backseat, then climbed behind the wheel and spun the car around, chewing dirt and gravel with the tires, leaving our still-burning home behind.
She headed north, pushing the Audi as fast as she dared given the road, covering the almost fifty kilometers to Poti in thirteen minutes. She couldn't stay in Kobuleti, she knew, and heading south to Batumi had instinctively seemed like a bad idea; I had left bodies in Batumi, and she was certain the men who had come to Kobuleti and what had happened there ten days earlier were connected. Batumi was out.
She needed a doctor or a vet, and she needed one fast, and that left Poti as the only option. So she raced along the coast road, swerving around the sparse early morning traffic and flooring it whenever there was opportunity, all the while talking to Miata, all the while telling him that she would take care of him, the way she had before.
For Alena, the situation had kindled a disturbing sense of deja vu. Miata had become her dog in very similar circumstances, when she had taken money from one man who dealt and packaged large amounts of cocaine to kill another who did the exact same thing. The target in question had guarded his workplace with a variety of booby traps and dogs. The booby traps were one thing, but the dogs had posed a problem entirely of their own. Each had been treated in the same way, abused and beaten, their vocal cords severed. Dogs need their voices, and denying them it can drive them mad, which, of course, was just what the dealer in question had desired.