Then Heidi didn't have the rifle anymore. For an instant it appeared that she had tossed it away. Both of her hands were clutching air. The blue steel barrel of the rifle caught light from one of the overhead floods as it rose a good ten feet above Heidi's head, spinning like a propeller, then came down muzzle-first toward Heidi's upturned face. Heidi was gaping in astonishment. The rifle barrel struck her with great force as shattered teeth flew from her mouth. Heidi's body jerked and turned rigid while the barrel, like a second, steel spine, penetrated her bodyâdown her throat, through the esophagus, into the stomach.
Heidi trembled, hands still outstretched, feet on the deck as if they had been nailed. Her eyes bulged from her head. Blood burbled like a slow fountain from her stretched gummy mouth.
The bolt of the rifle snicked back, rammed a cartridge into the breech.
Sherard, still crouched over Eden, looked away and into the face of Alberta Nkambe. The Nilotic strain in her mixed-blood features was more prominent than he'd ever seen; the planes of her face looked as harsh as a killer god's. Her eyes gleamed with unearthly life. It was a memorable sight, equal to the memory of a lion bursting out of high grass and charging in ten-yard bounds, coming in three blinks of an eye so close that he could, forever after, smell the animal's blood heat and rage.
It seemed to him that he could smell Bertie's rage nowâan odor like acetylene-melted steel or lightning in a seething skyâas she turned all of her
chi
on the transfixed, luckless Heidi.
The rifle she had half swallowed began firing in Heidi's gut, shots coming so quickly the action of the bolt and trigger were only a blur. The shots couldn't be heard, only followed as puckers appeared all over the front of
Heidi's pleated pants near the crotch, the cloth staining red. Then her feet came unstuck and Heidi did a little feckless flopping dance that reminded
Sherard of a secretary bird chopping up a grounded snake with its claws. All movement ceased abruptly as she stepped off the end of the dock and plunged out of sight.
Sherard sat up slowly. Only then did he pay attention to the back of his neck, which was numb on the right side, warm and bloody. He reached up carefully and found where the bullet had entered. It was still there in the muscle meat of his neck and, hopefully, hadn't fragmented; how close it had come to the spinal cord or the vital hindbrain he didn't know.
The other bullet had plowed at an angle through the flotation vest he hadn't had time to remove. He took it off now but couldn't find the bullet with a prodding finger. Doing something, anything, reduced the trembles and diverted his thoughts from how close the other one had come to killing him.
Regardless, the little bullet in his neck meant trouble and he knew it. Eden's eyes had opened. She wasn't focusing very well. She made sounds but not words.
Bertie, her face relaxed now, knelt beside Sherard and looked at his wound. He knew from her face what she thought, but she said cheerily, "Hey, it's nothing, a nick from a
panga
, Tom."
"Yeah, I've been hurt worse in thornbush." He turned his head and spat some blood onto the deck, clenched and unclenched his hands, alert for any sign of weakness. Then he stood with Bertie's help. Eden sat up slowly, still looking blankly at the two of them, trying to get her bearings.
Carlisle cleared his throat several times. "I've got a first aid kit aboard my boat."
"Where did the rifle come from?" Sherard asked. There was a slow seep of blood onto the back of his tongue.
"It's my varmint rifle. Use it for snakes, mostly. She wouldn't've had no trouble finding it. I'm sorry."
"Not your fault." Sherard was growing woozy. No time for that. But he feared going into shock. "You have any snakebite medicine in that kit of yours?" he asked Carlisle.
"Yes, sir. Hundred-proof bourbon."
"Let's get to it, then."
Carlisle looked as if he were about to cry. "I have to report this. God
damn
. How do I explain a woman gut-shot from the inside out with the barrel of my rifle stuffed down her throat?"
"Unfortunate accident," Bertie said. "But it cured her migraine. And she's down there in the deep for good. So is your rifle. Unless you want it back, Carlisle."
"What are you saying?"
Alex draped an arm around Carlisle's shoulders. "She is saying you don't have to worry about something that never happened. If nobody saw, then it didn't happen, honey. That is one bitchin' Russian philosophy. Now we need to haul
ass
. Did I say that right? Haul our lovely asses out of here."
"Can you take us by boat all the way to Nashville?" Bertie asked.
"W-where y'all wantin' to go?" Carlisle asked, looking as if he dreaded spending another moment in their company.
"The stadium," Bertie said. "Garth Brooks is about to bomb for the first time in his career. Tom, I'll patch you up as well as I can. But you ought toâ"
"No hospital. Not yet. What's become of my cane? Oh, thank you, Alex." Sherard's face had turned cold, along with his hands. He gripped the lion's-head cane tightly, made an effort not to breathe too fast. His shirt collar was sticky with blood. "How are you feeling, Eden?"
"I'm okay," she said, holding the back of her head, staring in horror at Tom. "Who shot you? Would someone
please
tell meâ"
"I'll post it on the Astral Internet," Bertie said, giving her a nudge toward the cruiser. "You can read while we're under way. It's good practice for you."
BIG COUNTRY RANCH, MONTANA ⢠JUNE 7 ⢠8:15 P.M. MDT
"B
uck Hannafin! As I live and breathe! You're about the last person I would have expected to show up on our doorstep tonight."
Buck and Courtney Shyla had been announced, so Rona had had the time to get over her surprise. The fact that she was now greeting them personally confirmed to Buck that, serendipity aside, Rona had calculated having him there was a piece of luck she could make good use of.
Keep your friends close
...
"I do humbly apologize for the intrusion, Rona, but as I happened to be right next doorâ"
"At the Broken Wheel?" Rona waved away all explanations as unnecessary, though Buck saw an instant of calculation in her eyes. Replaced by feminine curiosity as Rona turned her attention to Courtney with her most appealing smile and said, "Come in, come in, don't be strange! You
will
join us for dinner? I'll have one of the boys grain your horses." She looked sharply past Courtney to the hitching post at the foot of the steps. "Three horses? Is someone else with you, Buck?"
Buck and Courtney both removed their Stetsons as they stepped across the threshold. Buck gave Rona a brief embrace and the customary air-kisses near her cheeks.
Courtney said, "The piebald's name is Ezekiel, Mrs. Harvester. We picked him up at the vet's a little while ago; he's been limping and needed hock surgery." She held out a gloved hand. "I'm Courtney Shyla." Her Adam's apple bobbed nervously. "This is just the greatest honor of my life, meeting you, Mrs. Harvester."
"Pleasure's all mine, Courtney. Are you and Buck related?"
"Courtney is my half brother Max's oldest girl," Buck said. Having been officially welcomed, Buck and Courtney began to unbuckle their chaps.
"Wonderful," Rona said with the briefest glance at Buck, her smile shading to amusement. "So you've been over to the Broken Wheel, enjoying some R and R? Some of our people have been trying to locate you for
days
, Bucklin." She put an arm around Courtney's slim waist, separating her subtly from Hannafin, and walked them both toward the great room.
"That so?"
"Regarding S. 723. We wanted your input." Off his brief look she clarified, "Clint and I. But we won't talk legislation or policy tonight, even though I seldom have such a marvelous opportunity to hear your side of things. Now that we're four, we can play bridge after dinner. Do you play, Courtney?"
"Yes, ma'am." Courtney looked around the generously proportioned, multistoried foyer, her lips parted, childlike wonder in her eyes. There was a Marine captain ten paces away sitting on a bench with his back to the wall, one hand on a black attache case. He was the man with the so-called "nuclear football"âthe case contained a code book with strike options for intercontinental ballistics and submarine-based missiles. Seeing him, and knowing what kind of shape her President was in, gave Courtney a sinking feeling, down to the heels of her boots. She wondered if it was Rona who now carried the coded authentication card that identified the President of the United States in an emergency. There was another man, probably MORG security, standing one flight up on the helical stairway. She counted three surveillance cameras. "You have such a fabulous home, Mrs. Harvester."
"Thank you. Clint and I put a lot of thought and effort into what we wanted for our sunset years. And call me Rona, please," the First Lady insisted, squeezing Courtney's waist above the belt line. Nothing but hard muscle there. "It will be you and me against the boys tonight." Another squeeze, higher. "Oh, Courtney, what I wouldn't give to be in the shape you're in! Or near your age again, for that matter."
Buck said, "Been looking forward to spending a little time with Clint. Didn't want to rush him, you understand."
"We're eternally grateful for the thoughtfulness of our good friends. But I'm sorry to say Clint is indisposed tonight. He retired early."
"Indisposed? Nothing serious, I hope."
"It's fatigue, mostly. I'm sure you understand."
"Then who's our fourth for bridge?"
Victor Wilding, drink in hand, got up from his fireside seat as they entered the great room. His wavy red hair was slicked back, still wet from a sauna and shower. The tip of his snubbed nose and his cheekbones glowed like new pennies from the heat of the log fire.
"You and Victor have met, haven't you?" Rona said casually to Buck.
"On two widely separated occasions," Buck said, recovering from a brief hitch in his stride. "How're you tonight, Mr. Wilding?"
"Fine. Nice to see you again, Senator."
"And this is Courtney, Shiloh, did you say?â
Shyla
, I didn't hear you correctly. She is, somewhere in the thickets of Hannafin genealogy, related to Buck."
"Very nice to meet you, Courtney."
The ritual of politesse and false good cheer made Buck want to spit on the terra-cotta floor. He'd seen the First Lady like this before and knew how thin the façade was; she was wound tight as an old dollar watch and on some kind of ego binge; hell, they both were. Wilding's gestures were a shade too precise, and he smiled like a man who had started his drinking early in the day. With no real capacity for the hard stuff. A shine in his eyes like the peephole into the heart of a blast furnace. Both of them were keyed to some high expectation. It was bound to be a night to remember, Buck thought. If they lived through it.
There was a houseboy standing by the bar. Buck named his potion. Courtney asked for a Coke. Rona, who drank no spirits, kept Courtney close to her while arranging more intimate seating, dragging an ottoman closer to the soapstone hearth. The pre-dinner gab was animated but perfunctory. Buck and Victor Wilding eyed each other with little regard. Buck had always wondered how someone so youthful-looking could have been running an organization like MORG going on ten years now. Both Wanda Chevrille and the (presumably) late Robert Hyde had collected data that was mostly conjecture. Wilding had gained his reputation within Multi-phasic Operations and Research Group by greatly expanding MORG's presence in the worldwide arms trade, thereby enhancing the exchequer by several billions of dollars. The technique of moving rapidly up the ladder is the same in any business or government. Acquire a mentor, secretly turn his followers against him, then depose him. The most successful monsters in the intelligence game were both snake charmers and blood workers. Buck wasn't all that offended by bloody hands, he'd been around too long. The bad apples eventually rotted themselves to the core. What he disliked most about Wilding was the man's steady assault on Appropriations, looking for fresh billions for empire-building while arrogantly refusing to accommodate the various oversight committees on the Hill.
Rona asked Courtney, who had opted for a starry-eyed routine and a naive personality, a lot of questions. Courtney seemed happy to play to Rona while she conducted her recon of household security. The First Lady had okay'd a complex of perimeter alarms well beyond the house, but the system depended heavily on infrared cameras. Motion detectors had been tried, but in a wildlife area filled with elk, mule deer, brown and black bears, badgers, and the occasional cougar, all of them nocturnal prowlers, such alarms were useless. Inside the house Rona liked her privacy. The Secret Service had limited their security efforts to cameras and motion de tectors that covered areas of access on the first floor, six in all. The motion detectors were never turned on until everyone had retired for the night, which often was the hour before dawn. While in residence at Big Country the President and First Lady were supposed to wear tracking devices, but Nick Grella had said they almost never remembered them.
Courtney spoke under her breath as they walked together. A camera full on her face could not have seen her lips move. The hearing aid Buck had substituted for the one he usually wore could pick up a whisper through a cement wall.