must have missed the driver. Either that, or the other two had gotten
to the SUV.
Load, load, come on, come on--!
--four, five, six!
He snapped the cylinder closed and crawled toward the road. As he
reached the edge of the trees, the Explorer roared past, accelerating
away.
'Fuck that!' Howard yelled. He scrambled up, ran into the road, and
whipped his gun up in both hands. The SUV was really moving; it was
eighty, ninety meters away as he cooked off all six as fast as he
could, closing his eyes to avoid the muzzle flashes-Again the SUV
squealed into a one-eighty turn, and the lights came around to find
Howard. But the car didn't start back, it just sat there. Ninety
meters--okay, okay, he had time to reload again-The SUV's door slammed
shut. Somebody got out?
Howard ejected the empties, reached for another speed loader. Plenty
of time-He saw the muzzle flash, felt the kick in his belly from a
heavy boot as he went down, then heard the boom! from the weapon.
Fuck! He was shot and his gun was empty. His side burned, over his
right hip. Get up, John, get up, now!
He half-crawled, half-rolled off the road and back to the woods. In
the trees, he kept moving, his fist jammed over the bullet wound. He
got as far as he could before his legs just quit working. He sat,
fumbled for his virgil, managed to trigger the distress signal as he
felt himself graying out. His last thoughts as he lost consciousness
were of disbelief: How could somebody have hit a target at ninety
meters like that? With a handgun, and only the headlights of a car in
the dark?
Hell of a shot... Gakona, Alaska
'What the hell happened?' Morrison said again and again.
'What the hell happened?'
The cool night air whistled through the car from the three holes in the
windshield. Morrison, in the back, was probably in shock, but at that,
he was a lot better off than Ventura's two men. One of them was dead
on the seat next to him, slumped against the passenger door; he'd taken
one right between the eyes. The other man was lying next to the fence
back at the pickup point, and he was just as dead, one to the heart.
Nice work.
The black man had done it. Ventura didn't know who the hell he had
been, but he'd screwed things up pretty good. How had the black guy
managed to find them and set up his ambush? That had been a good
trick. Still, it didn't matter. He was probably dead or dying himself
by now. Ventura had put one solidly into him; he wasn't going to be
causing any more trouble. If he was the Chinese's primary attack, he'd
failed, even though he had caused a lot of trouble. He should have
been wearing a vest. Odd that he wasn't. Ventura had his on.
The client was alive, and they would rendezvous with more of Ventura's
team in a couple of minutes. Nice try, but no cigar.
'What the hell happened?'
'Relax, it's okay now. They tried, but they failed. We'll regroup and
