Doc Ford 19 - Chasing Midnight (25 page)

The man was afraid of me, I realized. It was a source of perverse satisfaction that
I
could enjoy, but only for an instant. I told him, “If
you follow us and Armanie sees that you’re armed, he’ll shoot you. Then he’ll shoot us. Your letters won’t be delivered. Is that what you want? Is that what Abraham wants?”

The laughter that boiled out from behind the tree was as startling as the change in Geness’s voice when he replied, “‘The Lord will bring about for Abraham what He has promised him!’ What do you think about that, Ford?”

For a moment, I wondered if there were two people hiding there. The voice had a gravely, whiskey-scarred tonality that sounded nothing like Geness’s flat monotone. I hesitated, but then continued walking toward him. “Tomlinson was impressed by your knowledge of the Bible. We were just talking about that.”

From the shadows, I heard: “‘My lips will not speak wickedness, and my tongue will not utter deceit!’ Hah! The Book of Job—which you’ll never get to read if you lie to me one more time.”

A moment later, I heard: “You don’t get the picture, do you? Geness might be afraid of you, but I’m not. To fear men is to make man your idol. Why would I be afraid of something that’s an abomination on Earth?”

A body length from the tree, I stopped and held my hands palms out so the twin could see they were empty. “Do you want me to deliver the invitations or not? That’s what your brother wants me to do. Didn’t Abraham tell you that—”

The voice interrupted, “I
am
Abraham, you dumb fucker!”

The pistol revealed another inch of itself from the shadows, an insane man’s eyes above it. I took a step backward, an instinctive response.

“Scared?” I heard laughter. “You should be terrified. Because I can blow your heart open, if I want. Then my idiot brother shoots the blond hag like I ordered him to do. One shot, two kills.”

I could feel my pulse thudding in my jugular, a series of rapid
warning taps that told me to run. But where? The only escape, I decided, was to try to reenter this lunatic’s brain, which required a very risky bluff.

“You asked about the Rapture,” I said. “You and your brothers wanted to find out if killers will be judged like murderers. I can give you the answer.”

The offer was unexpected, judging from the long pause. “Liar! You don’t know the first thing about God or His Word.”

“You’ve never broken the first commandment,” I replied, then gave it a few beats before adding. “I don’t have to memorize a psalm to know what it’s like to feel damned for the rest of your life.”

“I guess I should be heartbroken—if I gave a shit about your eternal soul. But I don’t.”

I raised my voice a little. “I’m talking about you if you pull that trigger.” Guessing there was a biblical quote that condemned or forgave almost every behavior, I added, “You already know the verse that applies. What is it?”

I was giving the twin a chance to show off again. Hopefully, some fitting Scripture would pop into his brain because I certainly didn’t have anything ready. Instead of him replying, though, the lunatic’s eyes retreated into the shadows. After several seconds of silence, Geness’s soft voice took over, saying, “Tell me. I’d like to know the answer. Abraham says it’s okay for me to ask.”

I had to clear my throat before I could speak. “When I come back with Armanie and Kazlov, I’ll tell you. Not now. But until you hear the truth from someone who knows—
really
knows—you’re risking more than you realize.”

What was at risk, I had no idea, and I was worried I’d pushed the gambit too far—I’m no actor. But Geness took it seriously because he replied, “Why should I believe you?”

I told him the first thing that came to mind. “Put it this way:
there’s a reason I don’t read the Bible. You’ve got thirty minutes to think about that. Then I’ll tell you.”

Before the man could respond, I pivoted and walked away, then sprinted to catch up with Tomlinson after I got around the bend, the percussion of my shoes as loud as the gunshot I anticipated with each stride.

It didn’t happen.

Something else that didn’t happen: I didn’t find Tomlinson.

I hunted around for a minute or two, called his name, but the thermal monocular confirmed that my pal’s heat signature was long gone. Motivated by guilt, probably, or noble intentions, I guessed that he had decided to deliver the letters without me.

So now I had a tough decision to make: retrieve my homemade weapons and return to the lodge? Or find Tomlinson?

I went after my friend. There was no guarantee that Geness had stopped following me, and I still had a chunk of time before the deadline.

Using the TAM, it didn’t take me long to pick up the glowing remnants of footprints. I’d been right. Tomlinson had continued north, where Armanie and his armed bodyguard were waiting.

Viktor Kazlov was waiting, too, as it turned out.

T
he house Abdul Armanie had rented was isolated on the northern tip of the island, a ponderous structure of pilings and gray wood that appeared larger, more formidable, because it shouldered a nightscape of stars and clouds that strobed with silent lightning.

There was no guard on the porch, as anticipated. And no sign of Tomlinson, which was unsettling. Could he possibly have been accepted into the house so quickly?

Yes.
From forty yards away, I stopped and used thermal vision. Inside the foyer, near the door, were three people. Details were fogged by siding and drywall, but the heat signature showed all men, one of them Tomlinson, because Armanie had arrived with only his bodyguard. The numbers added up.

Plus, Tomlinson’s scraggily shoulder-length hair had come loose from its ponytail and it set him apart from the other two men.

How the hell had he talked his way in so fast? Or maybe I was misreading the situation. Armanie and the bodyguard could have
forced
Tomlinson into the house. They might be pointing a gun at him right now.

I didn’t like the odds. As I jogged toward a gazebo that fronted the house, I was thinking,
Just one gunshot and an innocent woman dies.

It could happen. I believed what Geness Neinabor had told me. If Armanie or the guard fired a shot or pulled a trigger accidentally, Sharon Farwell would be killed. “Sacrificed,” if you inhabited the brains of the twins—or were inhabited by some bipolar monster who provided an alibi for murder. Unless… unless Geness had taken my warning to heart about not killing until he had heard my “truth.” It was a long shot, of course, but everything was a long shot now.

The possibility was maddening because it was beyond my control and forced me to be doubly cautious as I neared the house. Even if Tomlinson had been invited inside, I couldn’t risk startling Armanie. The man hated me. He might fire a warning shot or even shoot to kill. If that happened, Sharon would die seconds later.

The shell path ended near the ruins of what might have been a boathouse. There were pilings and a cement stanchion. As I ducked behind it, I heard a night bird’s warning cry. From atop a piling, a gargoyle shape dropped toward the water, then struggled to flight—a cormorant. I watched the bird angle starward, wings creaking, then I turned and used thermal vision to check the path behind me.

So far, I’d seen no sign of Geness. Maybe he was tailing me from the distance or maybe he had returned to the lodge to wait. If my lie had caused him to turn back, great. If it had fired any moral uncertainties in his brain, better yet, but I doubted it. If the twin had gone to the fishing lodge, it was to score his first kill when, and if, Tomlinson and I failed to return on time.

The luminous numerals of my Chronofighter told me that Sharon Farwell had only twenty-two minutes to live.

In a rush, I turned my attention to the house. I lifted the monocular to my eye and saw the three men moving toward an open doorway. A moment later, they disappeared into another room, shielded by walls from the TAM-14’s heat sensors.

Damn it.

I told myself to stay calm. I had to choose my next move carefully. Was it smarter for me to stay where I was? Maybe Tomlinson would hand Armanie the letter and get the hell out. If that happened, it would take us only a few minutes to retrieve my homemade weapons. A couple of minutes later, we’d be in position outside the fishing lodge. If I could force the hijackers to evacuate and somehow find and disarm the explosive, maybe we’d make it through the night with only three casualties.

As good as that sounded, I was reluctant to wait. I decided to get a look at the house from a different angle. If I could see what was going on inside, it might help me make a more informed decision. I checked behind me one last time, then ran.

Ahead and to my left, a hedge of hibiscus traced the property line. Beyond it, near the pool, was a rock privacy wall too thick to reveal a heat signature if someone was hidden behind it. It was a chance I had to take. Beyond that, I could see the marina docks and the vague silhouettes of Kazlov’s black-hulled yacht and
No Más
. Not so many minutes earlier, a man with a rifle had been standing near the privacy wall, smoking a cigarette, and he had fired a rifle at me.

Once again, I wondered how Tomlinson had gotten in the house so quickly. And why had the guard left his post to join his boss and Tomlinson inside?

I was still sorting through explanations as I jogged along the hedge, past the wall. That’s when the answer hit me with all the
subtlety of a sledge. Yes, the bodyguard had abandoned his position—but only for a few minutes. He had slipped into the shadows to urinate, which was apparent because the man was still struggling with his zipper when I rounded the corner and we almost collided.

Startled, the bodyguard hollered something in Russian as I spun away from his shoulder and went stumbling past him. I had almost regained my balance when my foot hit something—a tree root, possibly—which caused the thermal vision unit to go flying before I landed hard in a patch of oversized whelk shells.

Had the man not been so surprised, he might have taken his time and done it right. He could have backed away several yards, then taken aim with the rifle that was slung beneath his arm. Instead, he bellowed something guttural, lunged at me with the butt of the rifle and tried to hammer my head into the ground.

I got my hands up too late, I knew it, and swung my face away from the shattering impact. But the guard’s momentum, or the darkness, caused him to miss, and the rifle butt crushed a shell next to my ear. The crunch of calcium carbonate has a bonelike resonance. It was a chilling sound to hear so near my head and a sobering reminder that I would need reconstructive surgery, or a hearse, if I didn’t get my ass in gear and take my attacker to the ground.

I was ready an instant later when the bodyguard stabbed the rifle at me again. Hands up, I had my right leg fully extended, my left knee close to my chest. As the man leaned, I knocked the gun butt away while my legs went to work. I hooked my right foot behind the guard’s ankle and yanked it toward me as I kicked him thigh-high with my left foot. Kicked him so hard that his knee flexed backward on its own hinges and he screamed. As he fell, I maintained control of his leg, my right foot behind his ankle, left foot on his thigh. I used them to apply more pressure, and steer him away so he didn’t land on me.

That should have been enough, but Armanie’s bodyguard wasn’t convinced. He had dropped the rifle when he fell but managed to grab the thing just as I got my hands on it. The man was on his back, his knee was a grotesque mess and the pain had to be excruciating. Even so, he wrestled the weapon away by rolling toward me, which was unexpected, then battled to get his finger on the trigger. Pull the trigger and the round would either graze my leg or cut a trench beneath me. Either way, the bullet would kill Sharon Farwell.

I slapped my hands over his and bent his index finger back until he yelped. Just before his knuckle joint snapped, he released the weapon, then tried to use his free arm to slam an elbow into my face. I tucked my chin fast enough so that the blow glanced off my forehead, but the impact still caused a dizzying sensation behind my eyes as if an ammonia capsule had burst. If I caught another elbow, it might be enough to put me out, so I got an arm over the man’s shoulder and pulled myself onto his back.

Keeping one hand over the trigger guard, I said into his ear. “Stop fighting! Stop, and I won’t hurt you.”

The bodyguard replied by trying to buck free of my weight, which was futile. From atop his back, I was in a position to control his hands, his legs and the rifle, too. That would soon give me several endgame options—none of them pleasant for Armanie’s man. Even if he had been the one who’d shot at me while I was on Tomlinson’s boat, there was nothing to be gained by crippling him further. I wanted to subdue the guy so I could get moving, not incapacitate him for life. And I also wanted a question answered—
Who was the third man inside Armanie’s house?
—because the numbers no longer tallied.

Even so, the bodyguard didn’t stop struggling until I threaded my ankles around his damaged knee and levered his leg upward, which caused him to cry out, “Enough! Is breaking my spine—please!”