Sampson and I fired at the retreating men, but they made it out. We approached the back door slowly. Nobody was waiting there, and no more shots were fired at us for the moment.
Suddenly there was the sound of shooting away from the cabin. Half a dozen hollow pops. I heard the shrill screams of the two women cut through the trees.
I peeked my head around the corner of the cabin. I didn't like what I saw. The two women hadn't made it to their car. Both lay on the dirt road. They'd been shot in the back. Neither of them moved.
I turned to Sampson. “They'll come back for us. They're going to take us out here in the woods.”
He shook his head. “No they're not. We're going to take them out. When we see them, we open up. No warnings, Alex. No prisoners. Do you understand what I'm saying?”
I did. This was an all-or-nothing fight. It was war, not police work, and we were playing by the same rules as them.
Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice
Chapter Ninety-Five
It was awfully quiet all of a sudden. Almost as if nothing had happened, as if we were alone in the woods. I could hear the distant roar of the Jacks River, and birds twittering in the trees. A squirrel scampered up the trunk of a hemlock.
Otherwise, nothing moved. Nothing that I could see, anyway.
Eerie as hell.
I was getting a really bad feeling we were in a trap. They knew we would come here after them, didn't they? This was their turf, not ours. And Sampson was right, this was war. We were in a combat zone, behind enemy lines. A fire fight was coming our way. Thomas Starkey was in charge of the opposition and he was good at this. All three of them were pros.
“I think one woman is moving a little,” he said. “I'm going to check on her, Alex.”
“We both go,” I said, but Sampson was already slipping away from the cover of the trees.
“John?”I called, but he didn't look back.
I watched him run forward in a low crouch. He was down close to the ground, moving fast. He was good at this combat. He'd been there, too.
He was about halfway to where the women lay when gunfire erupted from the woods to his right.
I still couldn't see anybody, just whispers of gun smoke wafting up into tree branches.
Sampson was hit and he went down hard. I could see his legs and lower torso just over a bramble. One leg twitched. Then nothing.
Sampson didn't move anymore.
I had to get to him somehow. But how? I crawled on my stomach to another tree. I felt weightless and unreal. Completely unreal. There was more gunsmoke. Pinging off rocks, thudding into nearby trees. I didn't think I was hit, but they'd come damn close. The fire was heavy.
I could see sheets of smoke from the rifles rising to my right. I could also smell the gunsmoke in the air.
It struck me that we weren't getting out of this one. I could see Sampson where he lay. He wasn't moving. Not even a twitch. I couldn't get to him. They had me pinned down. My last case. I had said that right from the start.
“John,” I called. “John! Can you hear me?”
I waited a few seconds, then I called out again. “John! Move something. John?”
Please say something. Please move.
Nothing came back to me.
Except another round of heavy fire from the woods.
Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice
Chapter Ninety-Six
I hadn't experienced anything like the explosive rage, but also the fear, that I felt. This happened in combat, I realized, and considered the irony. Soldiers lost buddies in the war and went a little mad, or maybe a great deal mad.
Is that what had happened in the An Lao Valley? There was a noisy buzzing inside my head, bright flashes of color in front of my eyes. Everything around me felt completely surreal.
“John,” I called again. “If you can hear me, move something. Move a leg. John!”
Don't die on me. Not like this. Not now.
He didn't move, didn't respond. There was no sign that he was alive. He didn't shiver or twitch.
