polished stone floor as rage crowded out every other emotion. Fury filled her as she raised herself up and glared at the dark hallway and the wall with the two shadowed bullet holes.
With purpose she walked toward the rear of the building, squeezing the pistol in her hand. She saw drops of blood where Liquida had gone. Sarah knew she hit him. Now she would track him into the bush and kill him. She was not without caution, but anger filled her every pore. Her body was awash in a sea of adrenaline.
Chapter Sixty-Four
The wounded soldier leveled the barrel of the machine gun at the wrecked red sedan as it raced toward them. Finger on the trigger, he was trying to save the last few rounds. He would wait until the car was on top of them before he opened up.
The Jeep blocked the road. At the last second, Herman held up a hand. “Hold it! Don’t shoot.”
The commando eased off on the SAW.
“I know them.” Herman smiled as he saw Harry through the broken windshield. He looked like Poseidon holding a trident in his lap.
As the car pulled up next to them, Herman realized that the fire engine red exterior was not all paint. The driver’s-side window came down. Herman was left staring at the stern and angry face of his boss.
“Where is she?” I ask.
“She’s OK,” says Herman. “She’s in a building back there for safekeeping. Adin is with her.”
“Who the hell is Adin?”
“That’s right, the two of you never met,” says Herman. “A young man. Nice guy.”
“I’ll bet. So tell me, is he responsible for bringing her down here or are you?”
Herman swallows hard.
Joselyn is behind me with her hand on my shoulder. “Relax!” she says. “You’ve killed enough people for one day.”
“I’m just getting warmed up,” I tell her.
“Don’t say something you’re going to regret. She’s OK and that’s what counts.”
“We’ll talk about it later,” I tell Herman. “Where is she?”
He points up the road behind him. “Third building on the right. How you doin’?” He looks at Harry.
“Better than you at the moment.” Harry smiles. “See you later.”
We pull away and drive toward the building.
“Cut him some slack,” says Harry. “If you lived with your daughter and tried to tell her no lately, you would know it ain’t easy.”
“What are you saying?”
“She’s a lot like you.”
“Hold your chin up just a little higher and ask a couple more questions, I’m sure he can hit you dead center,” says Joselyn.
“OK, enough,” I tell them.
“He’s in a bad mood,” she says.
“You think he’s bad now, wait till he talks to his daughter,” says Harry.
Liquida lugged the money as far as he could. He wasn’t going to run any farther. He stashed the bags behind some brush and started dripping false blood spoor down the path leading to the small lake behind the complex.
The area was dotted with deep cenotes, some of them with sheer cliffs, walls fifty feet high. In other places, surface lakes bubbled up in the otherwise dry jungle where thick, deep mudlike brown cement ringed their shores.
Liquida dripped blood almost to the edge of the water from several different directions along three different trails so in case she got lost she could still find her way to the lake. If there was one thing that was certain, it was that Liquida wasn’t going back to those buildings or anywhere near the landing strip. He could hear explosions in the distance, not rifle fire or artillery. Whoever won was busy blowing the place up, carefully timed detonations. To Liquida this spelled one thing-the military hand of government. And he didn’t care which one. They were all bad.
He stanched the bleeding from his shoulder with a handkerchief, then carried the rifle into the bushes and waited. Liquida checked the magazine. It was empty. He had one round left in the chamber. If he couldn’t kill her with that, then he shouldn’t be in business.
Sarah tried to keep her head, to recall everything Adin had taught her about the pistol and how it fired. The Glock had no external manual safety. She pressed the magazine release on the side and checked the clip. She had only six rounds left plus the one in the barrel itself.
It was the problem with the small light handgun. It was so fast and easy to shoot that you could squeeze off fifteen rounds in a matter of seconds and not even know it. She slid the magazine back into the handle and pushed it home until it clicked into place.
Bracing the gun in both hands, Sarah moved cautiously down the trail as she followed the drops of blood. She could hear explosions in the distance and began to wonder if she had made a mistake. It might have been wiser to go after Herman, tell him what had happened.
Then Sarah steeled herself and said no. Liquida had killed both her girlfriend, Jenny, and now Adin. He had tried to murder her not once, but twice. Adin was an innocent victim. She knew he was dead only because he had been standing too close to her at the wrong time. She knew that if she didn’t find Liquida now, he would be gone.
In her own mind, he had passed from the realm of the human to a lower form of life. Killing him was like flushing an amoeba. He was diseased in the way a rabid animal was and required killing for the same reason. She couldn’t believe she was having such thoughts, that she could harbor such hate. A year ago she had been in college, but so much had happened in that year. She shook off the thought and looked down the path.
The jungle growth was low, the trail covered with overhanging brush. In places, Sarah had to stoop to get under it. Suddenly something snapped off to the right. She stopped, her eyes trying to penetrate the dense foliage. It was as if she could feel hands coming out of the brush at her. A noise to the right-she turned and fired, squeezing off two quick rounds. She listened and heard nothing except the pounding of her own heart. She could feel the surging blood at her temples.
Sarah looked down the path and saw a continuous trail of blood. She began to wonder if she had wounded him more seriously than she thought.
Again she heard the snapping of brush off to the right. She knew he was there. She turned with the pistol and aimed toward the sound, but this time she didn’t fire.
Liquida could hear her footsteps as she moved down the trail, snapping twigs and dry leaves under foot. She would never make it as an Indian scout. He sat on a rock and listened as she came closer.
He tried to gauge how far back she was. Then he picked up another stone and tossed it back up the trail and across to the other side. A second later he heard two more shots. By now she must have been sweating blood.
He sat calmly on the rock and listened as she crunched down the track toward the lake. He waited a few seconds and threw another stone. She fired again and then click.
Liquida smiled. He checked the one remaining round in the rifle. It was time to go to work.
Sarah stood stone still on the trail and trained her eyes on the traces of blood to where they ended twenty feet ahead at the edge of the lake. It was as if someone had dripped it along the path using a paintbrush. She silently slipped the magazine with the two remaining rounds back into the handle of the pistol. The slide on the top
