Zack and I made our way slowly back down the hill toward the road, our footsteps deadened by a heavy bed of pine needles. I heard Zack wheezing in front of me, breathing through his mouth. After about ten minutes we stopped and kneeled in the dense brush beside the road.

'We need to set up an ambush,' he whispered.

'We should sneak back up the road to their car,' I responded.

'Right.' But he stayed where he was, hunkered down in the brush. 'You didn't really think it was me murdering those homeless guys, did you?'

I didn't want to talk about this now. We needed to keep moving.

'I gotta know,' Zack said. 'You really thought I was the unsub?'

'I'm sorry, Zack. But you looked pretty good for it. I couldn't get past the Vaughn Rolaine coincidence and how fucked up the murder book was. It was almost like you were trying to tank the case. And then after you damn near killed me. . I'm sorry, but for a while, that's the way I saw it.'

He shook his head, looking down at his shoes. 'Guess loyalty just ain't one a your strong suits,' he said, softly. 'What's important is, I was wrong.'

He was still kneeling there, shaking his head while cradling the automatic weapon in those huge, fleshy forearms. 'You know how completely fucked that is?' His voice was loud, carrying in the still forest.

Suddenly, I felt very strange about all this. I hadn't exactly proved that Sammy was the unsub. Boiled down to its essence, that was just a promising theory. I gripped the hunting knife tighter, wondering whether I'd just made another terrible mistake.

When Zack looked up at me, he had tears in his eyes. 'I'm afraid to let the people I love get close,' he said. 'Zack-'

'My dad committed suicide when I was eight. It hurt so much I swore I'd never let anybody hurt me like that again. The day he did it, he told me he was gonna go help pour out the rain. Thought he was talkin' about our rain cisterns out back. But that wasn't what he was talking about at all.'

'Zack, we gotta keep our mind on business here. These guys aren't pushovers. We gotta keep moving.'

I looked up the hill behind me. I couldn't see or hear anybody up there, but my combat training told me we'd stayed in one spot too long.

'Zack-'

'Shut up, okay?' he interrupted. 'I gotta tell you this. It may be our only time.' He took a deep breath. 'I found him down in the basement. His brains were on the ground, maggots crawling in his head. I puked. Couldn't touch him-my dad, and I couldn't touch him.' He shook his head. 'After that, Mom stayed drunk for two years. Her liver was so stewed they had t'put her in a hospital to dry her out. Kept my brother but dumped me in foster care, same as you. Only I was this fat kid nobody wanted and my foster folks kept throwing me back.'

Then he looked directly at me. 'You asked me why I hung on to you when you were so wasted. That's the reason, man. That's why I did it. I knew I couldn't let you go, 'cause you were just like me. It wasn't that you were too drunk to testify at my shooting reviews. It was because I understood you, Shane. I understood because your demons were the same as mine.'

We were quiet for a minute, both thinking about that shared emptiness.

Then we heard voices in the distance. Zack rose out of his crouch. 'Let's go.'

We took off, moving just off the road, hiding in the brush. It took us almost twenty minutes to travel three hundred yards. When we finally got close enough, Zack held up his hand, signaling me to stop.

We could just make out the black Cadillac through the brush, parked on the road about twenty yards away. One of the Russians was leaning against the car. Then, almost as if inviting an attack, he set his pistol down on the trunk to pull out a cigarette.

Zack pointed at me, then at his eyes, indicating he wanted me to keep an eye on him while he moved up closer. I was only armed with a knife, so I wasn't going to be much backup unless I got in close. I held up my knife and pointed at myself, then to the car. He shook his head violently, and before I could argue, moved off in a low crouch, staying by the side of the road.

He was almost halfway there when he stepped on a piece of wood.

There was a dry snap and all hell broke loose.

Chapter 61

At that moment a Kalashnikov RPK opened up from somewhere further up the road. Zack was spun around by a stream of bullets as the barrage turned him. Blood sprayed out of his chest. He went down hard. I spotted the Russian with the machine gun crouched behind a rock twenty yards further up the road.

We were the ones who'd been lured into the ambush. Sammy Petrovitch, also a combat veteran had left two rear guards and split them.

I ran toward Zack's fallen body, keeping the Cad between me and the second guard. The Kalashnikov started chattering again. Bullets thunked into the car, breaking windows. I ducked down, then rushed out, grabbed Zack by the heels, and dragged him off the road. The machine gun suddenly went quiet. The brigadier had emptied the weapon and was changing clips. A few seconds later, the machine gun started up again, but by then I had my partner behind the car. I rolled Zack over and checked his wounds. He'd been hit by more than half a dozen rounds. Blood was seeping out of both sides of him, but his eyes were still open.

'That didn't quite work,' he whispered weakly.

I knew the gunfire would bring the Petrovitches and henchman down on our position. There wasn't much time. I sprinted out into the road where Zack had dropped our.223. As soon as I showed myself, machine-gun fire erupted. I scooped up the long rifle and took off into the woods on the opposite side of the road. The Russian tracked my run with a stream of lead, hitting trees and boulders as I disappeared into the heavy foliage. I took cover in the deep forest, then started moving back toward him. I needed to clear the guy out before going back for Zack, and I knew Sammy and the others were headed this way.

Suddenly there was motion on the road. The brigadier had changed positions and was now standing below me with the Kalashnikov on his hip pointed up in my direction. He spotted me and started spraying bullets.

The cover was thin now and I was pretty much his for the taking. At that moment, I lost my sense of self, as rage over Zack and everything else that had gone wrong flooded over me. Without judging the danger or fearing for my safety, I ran straight down the hill at the Russian, firing the AR-15-charging right into his chattering Kalashnikov, squeezing off short bursts one after another, guided by some insane force.

'Motherfucker!' I yelled as I charged.

When we were only twenty feet apart, the Russian mobster swung his gun barrel toward me and pulled the trigger. But the Kalashnikov fired just one round and jammed. The slug went a foot wide and flew past my head, whining into the forest. The brigadier crouched, struggling frantically with the slide, trying to clear the breech.

I squeezed the trigger. A four shot burst caught him in the neck. He flew backwards into the road, landing on his back.

I hurried toward the man and checked his pulse. Dead.

Then I grabbed the Kalashnikov and ran back to Zack.

He had pulled himself into a sitting position, leaning against the Cadillac, but his eyelids were sagging. He was pale and losing blood fast.

'Let's go,' I said, reaching down for him.

He whispered. 'Time to go pour out some rain, Bubba.'

'You're not done, Zack. We're gonna make it.'

I threw the jammed Kalashnikov far into the woods, then pulled Zack onto his feet. He weighed over three hundred pounds, but I got him over my shoulder in an awkward fireman's carry and started lumbering down the road toward the chalet and my potential getaway car-the remaining FBI sedan. I couldn't carry him far without stopping. I was still weak from lost blood, but adrenaline was fueling my effort.

When we finally reached the clearing by the chalet, the gray sedan was gone. I spotted a woodshed off to the side of the property and ran toward it, stumbling as I went, finally going down, sprawling on the grass with Zack on

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