Dead Shot

There! A movement! A rifle muzzle was on him!

Their rifles fired at almost the same moment, but Kyle had been a hair faster.

His 7.62 mm bullet went through the mouse hole opening and struck Juba in the left cheek just as the terrorist pulled the trigger of his own weapon. Kyle’s round bored in straight along the jawline, taking out a line of teeth and a chunk of the left side of Juba’s face before shattering the jawbone and exiting.

The return shot had been deflected at the moment of firing, and Juba’s bullet crashed into the wall just above Kyle’s head.

In the mouse hole, Juba rolled away from the jarring pain, feeling as if his head had been torn off. Kill shot, he thought. He toppled into the spider hole, fighting to remain conscious to pull the wooden door into position. When it fell into place, he lay back with his hands holding his destroyed face and agony racking his body as blood rushed through his open wound. He could see the light of the tunnel beckoning, and began to crawl.

The heavy, speeding bomb smashed through the roof and penetrated the ceilings before the warhead detonated in the kitchen. Everything in the immediate vicinity was vaporized in a gigantic explosion, and the concussion blew the walls apart. Support beams and interior walls were torn to pieces, and the house collapsed into rubble, with thick layers of wood and dirt and junk piling up over the spider hole, sealing it shut and totally obscuring it from view. At the bottom lay a shredded computer.

Juba, bleeding heavily, was thrown against the walls of the narrow tunnel like a doll by the explosion. His head, already savaged, now felt like it was being kicked from his body, and his eardrums ruptured and began to bleed. His mouth and eyes filled with dirt, and when he cleared his vision, he saw that the frail walls of the tunnel were giving way and the light was disappearing. He put a hand to his breast and felt the slight bump of the memory stick secure in the pocket as the world collapsed about him.

Down the street, Kyle had been rocked from his chair by the explosion but quickly got up and went to the window. Fire had broken out in the wreckage of the house, and flames licked out of the mouse hole as a curtain of smoke climbed out of the rubble. He was satisfied. If he had not killed Juba, then the bomb had obliterated him. And with Juba gone, so was the formula and the overwhelming threat of the poison gas. Probably. He had to believe that.

Kyle put down his rifle and took a deep breath, staring at the scene of destruction. “Burn in hell, motherfucker,” he said.

EPILOGUE

ABOARD THE VAGABOND

THE WHITE YACHT WAS alone on this deep swath of the Atlantic Ocean, churning a lazy wake in the late afternoon. Kyle rested his elbows on the rail and watched with awe as a huge whale broke the surface of the sea, launched a third of its black bulk into the open air, and fell back with an immense force that threw curtains of water high into the air. Then it was gone, burrowing into the depths of the ocean, and the disturbed water on top settled back into a normal rhythm. An instant of action followed by a disappearance. My kind of whale, he thought and raised his beer in salute to the beast. A two-week holiday was just starting, and he felt good.

“What are you doing?” Delara Tabrizi joined him at the rail, and the sea breeze stirred her dark hair. The multilingual schoolteacher from Khorramshahr, Iran, was now the beautiful personal secretary of Lady Patricia Cornwell, well on her way to becoming a British citizen. The government was appreciative and discreet about her help on tracking the device that had struck London.

“Did you see that whale leap up a second ago?”

“Yes. We see them frequently out here, far from the shipping lanes.” Her voice was quiet, her British accent thicker. “Amazing creatures. How can anyone put something like that into a tourist attraction?”

Kyle looked over at her. The brown eyes were devoid of worry, the lines of stress from the mission and her brushes with death were gone, and she wore slacks and a casual white blouse, with minimal makeup. She didn’t need makeup, he decided. “So you’re okay?”

“I am fine,” she replied, and her voice was firm with decision. “I think about my family, my former students, and my country. It’s like that part of me is dead, and a new Delara is being created.”

Swanson laughed. “I know the feeling.”

Delara blushed and also laughed, a hand shading her brown eyes. “Oh! I forgot that Kyle Swanson is dead, too. You do know the feeling.”

“Yeah. Welcome to the club.”

“Lady Pat and Sir Jeff told me the story, Kyle. They swore me to secrecy, but since you are such a frequent visitor, and such an important part of their own lives, they felt that I should know your background. I am very sorry about Shari Towne. She sounds like a wonderful woman.”

“That she was. That she was.” Such a long time ago, he thought to himself. Long time.

One deck above them, Pat and Jeff were watching, drinks in hand. “Couple of strong kids, healing,” Jeff said.

“Sir Geoffrey Cornwell, you are a blind old bat,” his wife said. She put a hand on his shoulder and leaned against him. “Even you should be able to see the sparks flying between those two.”

“What? Patricia, they’re not even standing very close together. Just having a friendly conversation.”

She smiled. “Of course, dear. Right as always.”

BALI, INDONESIA

The dreams were a vivid new form of existence, sustained by strong opiates and undulating waves of soothing incense. Shiva, the destroyer, pursued, his four arms and the third eye and the hair of snakes. Then Shiva would dissolve into the golden-feathered Garuda with the bulging eyes and hooked beak, bringing some calm of the all- knowing Vishnu. A flash of pain, then more and stronger opiates and more horrible dreams. The pattern went on for a very long time as the mystery patient bordered on constant hallucination. The doctors at the special clinic wondered how he was still alive, shrugged, and went about their work.

Then one day, the weeks of massive facial and dental reconstruction were finally over, and the patient, his left eye blinded forever, was allowed to awaken. Only a week later, he was out of bed, walking the clean wooden floors of the clinic, helped by nurses, as bright sunlight played through long, slatted windows. Physical therapists guided the recovery, but the patient seemed to suck up pain and constantly pushed the boundaries of exhaustion, several times passing out from doing too much. Within a month he was walking on the nearby beach, alone, hobbling because of the broken leg, but determined to stride out strongly, and day by day, he got stronger. At night, he fell asleep to the noisy mumbles and chirps of jungle creatures and insects. He fed a curious gecko wall lizard, and it became his friend.

After a few months, he was moved from the clinic to a villa that overlooked a plain of rice paddies and forests that stepped down to the sea, and the medical specialists came to visit. Servants tended him and were amazed at his regimen of sit-ups, push-ups, crunches, running, martial arts exercises, and practice with knives and guns. He ate a perfect diet.

Two men who were not doctors came to the villa one day, wearing thin and decorated short-sleeved shirts over dark trousers. They did not remark on the partial paralysis around the mouth and jaw, or on the latticework of facial scars, or on the black patch over the left eye. “We have a job,” one said.

“Excellent,” said Juba, who was tired of paradise. “I’m ready.”