sunset, these four had moved north on foot, making their way deeper into old Santa Fe's narrow streets.
He had followed them at a safe distance. The short trek had taught him much about his quarry. These men were not mere street thugs or anarchist ruffians lured by the Movement rally, as he had first thought. Their movements were too precise, too well planned, and too well executed. They had slipped right past the FBI and police surveillance around the Lazarus camp. And more than once he had been forced to hurriedly go to ground to avoid being spotted by one of their number hanging back as a rear guard.
Trailing them had been like stalking big game — or tracking a patrol of elite enemy commandos scouting unknown territory. In some ways, Mac-Namara found the challenge exhilarating. It was a high-stakes game of wits and skill that he had played many times before, in many different parts of the world. At the same time, he was conscious now of an underlying sense of fatigue, a slight dulling of his perceptions and reflexes. Perhaps the strains of the past several months had taken a higher toll on his nerves and endurance than he had first reckoned.
The shaven-headed man he was observing suddenly straightened up, going fully alert. The man whispered a few words into a tiny radio mike fixed to his collar, listened carefully to the reply, and then leaned forward to peer cautiously around the edge of the doorway.
MacNamara rapidly shifted his view to the other watchers, noticing the same unmistakable signs of increased readiness. He shifted his own stance and breathed out gently, tamping down the first surge of adrenaline as his body prepared itself for action. The vague feeling of weariness fell away. Ah, he thought, here we go. The prolonged period of waiting motionless in the cold and dark was almost over.
Still peering through the night-vision scope, he panned across the front of the Plaza Mercado. A man and a woman had just come out of the building. They were standing together on the sidewalk out front, carrying on an animated conversation. He recognized the slender, attractive woman straightaway. He had seen her bustling around the Lazarus camp. Her name was Heather Donovan. She was the local activist who handled press inquiries for the Movement.
But who was the dark-haired man she was talking to? The clothing, boots, and cowboy hat all suggested he was a local, but somehow MacNamara doubted that was really the case. Something about the way the tall, broad- shouldered man moved and held himself was oddly familiar.
The dark-haired man swung around, pointing toward the concrete parking garage off down the street to the west. For that brief instant, his face was plainly visible. Then he turned away again.
Malachi MacNamara slowly lowered his night-vision scope. His pale blue eyes were both amused and surprised. “Bloody hell,” he muttered under his breath. “The good colonel certainly has a talent for popping up wherever and whenever one least expects him.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Brick paths curved through Santa Fe's central Plaza, circling the various monuments and winding under a spreading canopy of trees — towering American elms and cottonwoods, firs, maples, honey locusts, and others. Wrought-iron park benches painted white were set out at intervals along the walkways. A thin scattering of fallen leaves lay on patches of grass and hard-packed earth.
Surrounded by a low iron railing, an obelisk commemorating the Civil War battles in New Mexico stood in the very center of the square. Few people remembered that the bloody war between the North and South had spread this far to the west. In some spots, thin rays of light filtered through the trees, cast by the street lamps surrounding the Plaza, but otherwise this centuries-old expanse was a place of darkness and dignified silence.
Jon Smith glanced at the slender, pretty woman walking beside him. Shivering, Heather Donovan hugged her black cloth coat tightly around herself. Whenever they crossed the broken streaks of pale light between the shadows he saw her breath steaming in the chilly night air. With the sun long gone, the temperature was dropping fast. It was not uncommon for Santa Fe's daytime highs and nighttime lows to vary by as much as thirty or forty degrees.
After they finished their tea at the Longevity Cafe, he had volunteered to escort her to her car, which was parked on a side street not far from the Palace of the Governors. Though plainly surprised by this old-fashioned act of chivalry, she had also accepted his offer with evident relief. Santa Fe was ordinarily a very safe city, she had explained, but she was still feeling a little jittery after seeing the horrors outside the Teller Institute.
They were just a few yards away from the Civil War obelisk when Smith stopped abruptly. Something was wrong, he thought. His senses were sending him a warning signal. And now that they had stopped walking, he heard others — two or three men, he judged — moving quietly up the path at their backs. He could just make out the faint crunch of heavy boots on the brick pavement. In the same moment, he noticed two more vague shapes slipping through the shadows under the trees ahead, drawing steadily nearer.
The Lazarus Movement spokeswoman noticed the figures closing on them in that same instant. “Who are those men?” she asked, clearly startled.
For a split second Smith stood still, hesitating. Were these guys FBI agents sent by Kit Pierson? He had been sure that he was under surveillance earlier that afternoon. But when he had checked for tags before heading to the Longevity Cafe he had come up empty-handed. Had he missed them earlier?
Just then one of the men moving in from the front strayed into a small pool of light. He had a shaved head and wore an Army fatigue jacket. Smith's eyes narrowed at the sight of the silenced pistol the man held out and ready. So much for the FBI, he thought coldly.
They were being surrounded — boxed in on the open ground in the middle of the Plaza. His instincts kicked into gear. They had to break out of this trap before it was too late.
Reacting quickly, Smith grabbed Heather Donovan's arm and tugged her with him to the right, around the curve of the obelisk. At the same time, he drew his own pistol from the shoulder holster concealed by his corduroy jacket. “This way!” he muttered. “Come on!”
“What are you doing?” she protested loudly, too shocked by his sudden action to pull away. “Let go of me!”
“If you want to live, come with me!” Smith snapped, still drawing her away from the open space around the Civil War monument and toward the darkness under the surrounding trees.
One of the two men who had been coming up behind them stopped, aimed quickly, and opened fire. Phut. The silencer on his pistol reduced the sound of the shot to that of a muffled cough. The bullet tore past Smith's head and smacked into the trunk of a tall cottonwood tree not far away. Phut. Another round shattered a low- hanging branch. Splinters and falling leaves rained down on them.
He pushed the Movement spokeswoman to the ground. “Stay down!”
Smith dropped to one knee, swung his SIG-Sauer pistol toward the shooter, and squeezed the trigger. The weapon barked once, a loud crack that echoed back from the buildings surrounding the Plaza.
His shot, fired hurriedly and on the move, missed. But the sound of gunfire drove three of the four attackers he could see to the ground. They went prone and began shooting back at him, firing rapidly.
Heather Donovan screamed piercingly, pressing herself flat against the hard, unyielding earth.
Pistol rounds whined close by, either thudding into the trees on either side or spanging off a nearby park bench in showers of sparks, torn bits of metal, and pulverized white paint. Smith ignored the near misses, concentrating instead on the one gunman who was still moving.
It was the shaven-headed man he had first spotted. Hunched over in a crouch, the gunman was sidling off to the right, trying to make it back into the shelter of the trees and then come up on his flank.
Jon squeezed off three shots in rapid succession.
The bald man stumbled. His silenced pistol tumbled to the ground. Slowly he fell forward onto his hands and knees. Blood poured out of his mouth. Black in the dim light, it spilled across the brick pavement in a widening pool.
More bullets ripped past Smith as the wounded man's comrades kept shooting. One round punched through the broad felt brim of his brand-new Stetson and tore it right off his head. The hat sailed off into the shadows. They were getting way too close, he thought grimly — starting to zero in on him.
He threw himself prone and fired three more shots with his SIG-Sauer, trying to keep their heads down or at least shake their aim. Then he rolled quickly over to where Heather Donovan lay with her face pressed to the earth.
