and he figured that he had about two minutes to escape unobserved.
Kilkenny watched the man’s approach-it was cautious, but pointed directly at the battered Mustang. Nolan was ready to call out when he noticed the elongated pistol in the man’s left hand. Even in his battered state, he knew that Good Samaritans didn’t carry silenced weapons. Kilkenny remained motionless, watching through the slits of his eyes as the stranger advanced.
Falk studied the two forms inside the Mustang carefully as he approached. The passenger was slumped forward, almost on her knees. The driver lay back against his seat, with one arm hanging out the battered door. Both looked dead from where he stood, but he needed to confirm the kill before he could collect the rest of his fee.
He walked over to the driver’s side, shuffling sideways in the narrow space between the car and the barrier, and placed two fingers on Kilkenny’s neck.
With a swift motion, Kilkenny’s left arm shot up from the door and hammered a pressure point in Falk’s forearm just below the elbow. The nerves in Falk’s arm flared with pain for a moment before going completely numb from the blow. Before Falk could react, Kilkenny flipped his fist over and drove it upward into the assassin’s jaw. Kilkenny’s fist glanced off Falk’s chin and continued upward, where it connected solidly with his nose. Blood and tears flowed around Falk’s eyes as the fragile bones shattered.
Falk rocked back, dizzy and partially blinded by the blow to his face. Blood hammered around his skull, which throbbed with pain. Kilkenny reached out with his right arm and grabbed Falk’s weapon hand, pulling the killer against the car with a quick, violent motion. Falk’s chest and abdomen bounced off the door, the air bursting from his lungs on impact. Despite the blow, Falk still held on to his weapon.
Gasping for breath, Falk threw his right forearm across Kilkenny’s face and drew back his weapon to fire. Kilkenny slammed both of Falk’s arms up violently into the car’s roof; the blow knocked the pistol from the killer’s hand and into the Mustang’s rear seat. Falk’s belt buckle glistened with the fire’s reflection, a glowing target through the shattered window of Kilkenny’s door. Pinning Falk’s arms with his left forearm, Kilkenny struck just above the killer’s groin with the flat palm of his right hand. The angle and force of Kilkenny’s attack lifted Falk several inches off the ground, jamming him against the concrete barrier. Falk’s pelvis made an audible snap as it cracked in two and twisted against the tail of his spine.
Falk staggered as his body lost all its strength. Shock would soon give way to unconsciousness and finally death from internal bleeding. Kilkenny locked eyes with the killer as the last flickers of understanding died out and the penetrating stare glazed over. Falk’s body went limp and Kilkenny released his hold, letting the unconscious form slide to the ground.
The wind shifted and sent a black curl of oily smoke over the Mustang and across Kilkenny’s face. The eddies and whorls seemed to drift with an unnatural sluggishness to Kilkenny, who was in a deeply focused mind-set, his warrior one. All his senses were charged.
He’d eliminated one threat and was searching for any others through the haze. His search stopped on what he thought was a person in the road ahead. The figure stood motionless, fading in and out of Kilkenny’s vision as the billowing clouds of blackened smoke passed between them. He tried hard to focus clearly on the figure, but the air around him seemed to thicken as the smoke mixed with steam from the Mustang’s cracked radiator.
Kilkenny’s eyes burned as he tried to stare through the smoke and blood that obscured his vision. He began to suspect what he saw was simply a mirage, when the wind shifted and the smoke began to clear. Not ten feet from Kilkenny stood an Asian man staring directly back at him. The man made no move toward him, but Kilkenny felt an intense rage, as if they were sworn enemies. He’d never seen the man before, but, like Etienne Masson, the man’s hatred filled the space between them.
He wiped his bloodied face with his sleeve to get a better look, but, as soon as he cleared his eyes, the man was gone. Kilkenny looked around quickly, but he found no sign of the man.
The driver of the pickup rushed past the battered Mustang and fled in the killer’s van. Nolan was unable to make out the van’s license number as it sped away. Seeing no other dangers, he turned and cradled Kelsey in his arms.
36
Michigan state trooper Jean Gordon was approaching the area where several bales of hay had stopped traffic, when she saw the fireball rise over the crest in the road ahead. She pulled onto the shoulder, to drive around the growing line of cars stopped there, and sped toward the explosion.
‘This is car forty-one-five. I have a large explosion on I-Ninety-four near mile marker one forty-nine, and I am moving to investigate. We’re going to need fire and medical teams and additional units to block off the highway in both directions. Do you copy, base? Over.’
‘We copy, forty-one-five,’ the dispatcher at the Jackson State Police post responded.’Additional units are en route to your position. Please advise when you reach the scene.’
‘Roger, base. Forty-one-five, out.’
Gordon slowed as she approached the accident. She could make out three vehicles in the cloud of swirling smoke: a battered car, a pickup truck, and an overturned tanker that was engulfed in flames.
‘Forty-one-five to base, over,’ Gordon called out on her radio.
‘Go ahead, forty-one-five.’
‘I have a multivehicle accident blocking eastbound I-Ninety-four. One vehicle is a gasoline tanker that is burning. We’re going to need a lot of help out here.’
‘Understood, forty-one-five. Additional support is on the way.’
Survival Flight lead pilot Dean Waters had just rescued the POWs from the enemy prison camp and was racing his helicopter across the desert sands of the Middle East when his pager began beeping furiously. He paused the game on his computer, grabbed his flight bag, and sprinted out of the basement-level offices housing the University of Michigan’s Survival Flight Service. Waters ran past the elevators, bounded up four flights of stairs, and quickly emerged on the rooftop lobby of the Taubman Center, next to the helipad.
‘What do we have?’ he asked as he reached the dispatcher.
‘MVA out on I-Ninety-four, a nasty one,’ the dispatcher replied. ‘Two passenger vehicles and a fuel truck. We’ve got two injured and the truck is burning. Here are your maps with possible landing zones. Your contact on the scene is a state trooper named Gordon. You can reach her on this frequency. Byrd and Landis are already on the pad.’
Waters nodded.’Our patients are in good hands today. Let’s get to it.’
Waters walked out to the Bell 230 medical helicopter, where the two flight nurses were loading supplies. ‘A lovely day to fly, don’t you think?’
‘We’re ready when you are,’ Landis replied as Byrd climbed aboard.
Waters boarded the helicopter and strapped in. Landis and Byrd took positions in the rear, linking up with the on-call physician in the emergency room. After running through the preflight check, Waters powered up the helicopter and opened the throttles on the Bell’s engines. The helicopter responded with a near-deafening roar as the rotors chopped through the air. Waters increased the angle on the main rotor blades and lifted the helicopter off the helipad.
As soon as the helicopter reached its cruising altitude, Waters saw where they were headed. A plume of black smoke smeared the horizon, creating a hazy filter over the late-day sun. The winds were light, out of the south, with visibility that was measured in miles. Waters estimated this would be a fifteen-minute trip to the accident scene. In the seat behind him, Landis made contact with the state police officer on the scene.
Five miles east of the crash, Waters flew over the start of a long traffic jam. I-94 would be closed for a while and everyone parked below would be better off finding an alternate route. He banked the helicopter into a wide circle around the smoke plume as he looked for a place to land that was free of fuel. A smooth patch of gravel, just upwind of the burning truck, met his needs nicely. Below, paramedics fed Byrd and Landis status reports on the survivors.
Once on the ground, the flight nurses bolted from the helicopter. Two firemen met them at the door to help with their medical gear. Waters kept the chopper warmed up and ready to move once the patients were on
