had been held open after she had fired the single round in the chamber. She knew he would hear the empty click. He was somewhere off to the left. The last stone he threw nearly hit her.
She steadied the pistol with both hands and kept her thumb on the slide release the same way Adin had shown her at the FBI range. As soon as she pressed it, the slide would spring forward and carry the first of the two rounds from the clip into the chamber. From there, in less than a second, if she could get a clear shot, she could pump the two rounds into him. She tried to envision the silhouette targets from the indoor range-center mass, chest high.
Liquida was about to step out onto the trail when he heard the thrashing in the brush behind him. He turned to look and before he could move, the Doberman was on him, flashing teeth and dog breath. The animal seized his arm, the sharp canines ripping into his flesh.
Liquida tried to fling him from his arm. The dog hung on like a bear trap, growling and kicking up dust as he pulled with his hind legs. Somehow Bugsy had lost his leash running through the brush. Liquida got a grip on the rifle with his left hand, finger on the trigger; he tried to steady it but the dog was in too close. He couldn’t get the muzzle of the barrel on him. He kicked the animal in the stomach, and the dog bit down harder all the way to the bone.
Chapter Sixty-Five
Sarah heard growling and thrashing in the brush. She pointed the pistol toward the noise and waited.
“Bugsy! Here, boy. Come here!” She knew from the sound, like a parent knows a child. She tried to coax him out, but he wouldn’t come.
Suddenly there was the sound of a shot, close, no more than twenty feet away. The dog screeched.
Sarah saw red. She held the point of the pistol chest high and fired into the brush. With the second shot, she heard a deep groan and suddenly everything went quiet.
She stood there on the trail looking at the bushes and listening. She waited a few seconds. “Come on, Bugs. Come on out.” But the dog didn’t come. There was no sound, no movement in the brush.
She waited, what seemed like forever, and then slowly began to inch her way down the trail toward the lake. She called the dog again but heard nothing.
She reached the edge of the mud, the soft shore, with her back to the water. She held the gun out, even though she had no more bullets. She wanted to close the slide but couldn’t remember how. She pressed the slide return on the side, but it didn’t work. If Liquida stepped out now and saw the slide was back, he would know that the gun was empty.
Sarah remembered the snub-nosed revolver strapped to Adin’s ankle, but it was too late. A second later Liquida crashed through the brush with the butt of the rifle over his head. He came at her swinging it like a club.
She saw the mass of blood on his left side as the rifle came down on her shoulder. It drove her to the ground as she dropped the pistol in the dirt.
Liquida pounded on her back with the butt of the rifle as if driving a post into the ground. He dropped the gun, descended on her, and pulled out the stiletto. He straddled her back and pushed her face in the dirt. Taking the handle of the blade in both hands, he raised it above his head like an Aztec priest in a ritual sacrifice.
Harry was forty feet away when he saw the flashing blade in the air just as Paul, like a heat-seeking missile, hit Liquida from the side. Madriani drove his shoulder through the Mexican’s upper body, sending both of them skidding into the mud at the edge of the lake.
They lay crumpled in the muck, both dazed by the blow for several seconds before Liquida rose to his knees. When he stood, Harry could see that the knife was still in his hand.
Before Paul could get to his feet, Liquida was on him, the slashing tip of the blade searching for its target. The glistening point buried itself in Madriani’s right arm as Liquida drove him back to his knees. With his foot he kicked Paul in the stomach and pushed the lawyer over backward into the water. Liquida landed like a panther on Paul’s back and tried to drown him, all the while cutting and slashing with the blade.
Somehow under the water Madriani found the Mexican’s feet and pulled. Suddenly Liquida found himself upended, thrashing about on his back in the shallows. He slashed out with the knife and missed. Madriani backhanded him hard across the face, the bones of his knuckles ripping the flesh under the Mexican’s right eye. Before Liquida could recover, Paul’s hand came back the other way as a closed fist and caught him on the cheek on the other side.
The blow rattled Liquida’s brain but not before he sliced the front of Madriani’s shirt open, drawing a line of blood across his stomach and chest.
The two of them engaged in a death match as Joselyn reached Sarah lying in the dirt at the end of the trail. The speargun that Harry had clutched all afternoon, now that they needed it, was left in the car.
Paul and Liquida fought in a slow death spiral, dancing for position in the water. Madriani had come to a knife fight empty-handed, and Liquida intended to make the most of it. He smiled as he watched the rivulets of blood flowing from the shallow slash across the lawyer’s chest. What he didn’t see were the two hooded bumps on a log floating just at the surface of the lake as it drifted in behind him.
Madriani stood motionless, his back to the shore. Suddenly a flash of white water erupted behind Liquida. Before he could even flinch, the jaws of death bearing a hundred razor-sharp teeth slapped shut around the Mexican’s hips. The crocodile and his bloodied prey twisted and thrashed.
Liquida screamed and slashed out with his knife. The thin sharp point snapped as it struck the armor-hard scales on the back of the beast. The crocodile rose up and rolled over, taking Liquida beneath the waves. As the roiling surface settled, all that could be seen were bloody bubbles of air as they burst forth from the surface of the lake’s dark waters.
Chapter Sixty-Six
Four and a half hours after the final shots were fired in the jungle near Coba, a single errant asteroid somehow slipped undetected into the inner solar system. It had happened before, close calls with potential impactors, but this one was far nearer and more dangerous than most.
News accounts of the mysterious fire in the sky over the southern United States received sparse coverage in the world’s media. Less than two inches appeared on one of the inside pages of the only major daily in Phoenix, Arizona.
Scientists at NASA were still gathering data and analyzing the potential for disaster. A few members of Congress renewed their calls for more funding to scan the skies, the first step toward avoiding any future catastrophic event.
But most leaders, including those in the White House, assured the public that there was no real reason for concern. There was, after all, a far greater chance of winning the lottery than being killed by an asteroid.
Near disasters were always something that government leaders sought to downplay, especially if their own incompetence and possible corruption were contributing factors. It was one of the time-tested reasons for classifying otherwise public information. People in positions of power always had to survive; otherwise the world might turn upside down. Doctors merely buried their mistakes. Presidents shoveled them by the ton into the constantly sucking and massive dark hole of national security.
Fortunately the asteroid merely skimmed the earth’s upper atmosphere before skipping out into space, a close call, but no harm-colorful fireworks that illuminated the evening sky over the American Southwest.
What the newspapers and even the American government didn’t know was that Lawrence Leffort’s attempt to peddle secrets to a foreign power, and to test the deadly results in the desert of Arizona, was doomed from the inception.
Even without the failed rocket mounts, the iron asteroid that Leffort and his colleagues had so carefully
