Now both of Eagle’s hands were occupied, and Bart saw his chance. He whipped the bowie knife out of its scabbard stuck down his pants and swung it in a wide arc at Eagle’s throat, feeling it hit the mark and seeing the blood spurt. Eagle went down on one knee, clutching at his throat, and Bart backhanded him and knocked him to the ground, then ran for the front door.
VITTORIO COULDN’T BELIEVE what he had seen. He drew his gun and his cell phone simultaneously and dialed 911 as he made his way, running, through the rocks and down the hill.
“Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?” the operator asked.
“I need an ambulance and the police. A man has been knifed in the throat and the assailant is in his house, where his wife is.” He gave the address, closed the phone and grabbed his radio. “Cupie, Eagle is down, ambulance on the way. Get up here and be careful; single assailant in the house now!”
BART DREW HIS PISTOL and entered the house, leaving the door open behind him. He saw no one inside. “Mrs. Eagle?” he called. “I have a package for you, too. I need a signature.” He got no response. Holding the gun at his side, he made his way toward where he believed the kitchen would be. Then he heard running footsteps from the driveway outside.
“Ed,” a voice shouted. “Hold this on the wound and apply pressure.”
BART FOUND THE KITCHEN and went out the rear door as fast as he could. He made his way around the corner of the house and peeked at the front porch. Eagle was lying on his back, and whoever had been there must have gone inside. He sprinted for the pickup truck, got it started, backed out and started up the hill, away from Tesuque. In his rearview mirror he saw a fat man huffing and puffing his way up the hill, then he was around a bend and gone.
VITTORIO WENT into the house carefully, his gun drawn. He checked the kitchen, then crept into the living room, which was empty. He was headed toward where he thought the bedrooms would be when he heard the truck start outside and the crunch of tires on gravel. Shit, the guy was gone. “Mrs. Eagle?” he yelled. “Are you all right?”
Susannah Wilde Eagle stepped from a doorway, a pistol held out in front of her, and fired two rounds.
Vittorio was spun around and went down.
CUPIE STOPPED TO CHECK on Eagle, who was breathing and pressing a bloody cloth to his throat. “Hang on, Ed, an ambulance is on the way.” He walked into the house just in time to hear two gunshots. “Oh, shit,” Cupie said aloud. “I hope he hasn’t shot Susannah.”
BART DROVE AS QUICKLY as he safely could over the hill, then turned toward the north side of Santa Fe and made his way on back roads until he crossed under I-25. He traveled south, toward Albuquerque, keeping parallel with but avoiding I-25, where he knew the state patrol might already be looking for the truck. At one point, nearly to Double Eagle Airport, he stopped and pulled the FedEx signs off the truck, called the dealer from whom he had bought the truck and told him he could pick it up from the parking lot at Double Eagle and ship it to L.A., as planned. Then he called Barbara.
“Yes?”
“It’s done.”
“You’re sure he’s dead?”
“I cut his throat and left him bleeding out on his front porch.”
“What about the woman?”
“Problem there. She went back into the house. I followed her in, but turns out Eagle had two men, those P.I.s, watching the house. I got out just in time, but I heard shooting from inside. I don’t know who fired or got shot.”
“Do the P.I.s know who you are?”
“They don’t know my name, and only one of them, the Indian, has seen me.”
“Where are you now?”
“I’m nearly to Double Eagle. I’ll ditch the car and be in the air in twenty minutes.”
“Call me when you’re back in town.” She hung up, and so did he.
He drove the last mile to Double Eagle, got his gear out of the truck and wiped the vehicle down with Windex, then hurried to the ramp where his airplane was parked. He’d already paid for his fuel and parking, and he wasn’t going to file a flight plan.
He got the engines started and began working through his checklist as he taxied. At the end of the runway he did a quick run-up of the engines, then announced his intentions over the airport frequency, checked for landing traffic, then taxied onto the runway and shoved the throttles forward.
Half an hour later he was at sixteen thousand five hundred feet, sucking oxygen, on his way to Burbank Airport, in the San Fernando Valley, near where he lived. He felt elated.
34
Vittorio held out a hand and yelled, “Don’t shoot, Susannah!”
“Vittorio?” she asked. “My God, have I shot you?”
“Call nine-one-one and tell them we need two ambulances instead of one,” Vittorio replied, struggling to sit up and check his wounds. He found he had taken a bullet high and to the left in his chest, and after checking his breathing and the blood flow, he figured it had missed the lung and the artery. “You have any bandages?” he asked Susannah. “Just a clean dishcloth will do.”
She ran to the kitchen and returned with a dishcloth, and he pressed it to his chest. “Where’s Ed?” she asked.
“He’s on the front porch. Cupie is with him.”
She ran for the front door.
Vittorio changed his position for comfort and heard something hit the tile floor. He looked behind him and saw a bloody, intact bullet on the floor. Thank God she had been using hardball ammunition instead of hollow-points. He calculated that unless they found internal injuries he hadn’t figured on, he would need only stitches, a dressing and a shot of ampicillin.
He felt exhausted now, having used up all his available adrenaline. “Cupie!” he yelled.
Cupie came running through the doorway. “Vittorio, you okay?”
“Not exactly,” he said. “Did she call for another ambulance?”
“I did,” Cupie said, kneeling beside him and pulling away the dishcloth so that he could check Vittorio’s wound. “Not bleeding too bad,” he said. “Just enough to keep it clean.” He checked Vittorio’s back. “Same here,” he said. “I think you got lucky. Hang on, I’ll get another dishcloth.”
Vittorio waited patiently for him to return with the cloth, which Cupie pressed to his back. Then Cupie leaned him against the wall. “Did you get a look at the guy?” he asked.
“Nah,” Cupie said. “He was already in the truck when I saw it, and I had the light-reflection problem on the window. How about you?”
“He was wearing a baseball cap, and I was looking down on him.”
“Was it Bart Cross?”
“I don’t know. He was tall enough, but that wasn’t Cross’s vehicle.”
“He could have stolen it,” Cupie said. “I hear sirens.”
“About time,” Vittorio said. “Don’t let them give me morphine. I want a clear head.”
“Whatever you say,” Cupie replied.
“How’s Eagle?”
“I don’t know,” Cupie said. “Ed is still bleeding, but holding pressure on the wound may be slowing it down. The
