Legacies

The trail allowed him to move faster. He stopped every so often to get a fix on Barlowe's racket, and figured the merc ought to be crossing the deer trail soon himself. Would Barlowe be able to resist the path of least resistance? Jack doubted it.

Which meant he should set up somewhere along here.

7.

"Broadcast power, huh?"

Alicia watched Baker from her spot in the corner by the filing cabinets as he paced up and down before the banks of electronic equipment.

He'd wanted to know what it did—"What is all this shit, anyway?" as he put it—and she'd told him. Why not? She didn't care who knew. She just wanted to keep him distracted from her, and herself distracted from the bodies on the blood-spattered floor.

Thomas was gone. So quickly. One moment he'd been standing there talking, the next he was dead. She tried to dredge up some grief, but could find none. Compassion… where was her compassion for someone who shared half her genes, even if it was the wrong half?

Gone. Like Thomas. And what did genes mean anyway? Why should you care for a poor excuse for a human being just because you share some genetic material?

But even Thomas deserved better than to be shot down like a dog.

"Wireless electricity," Baker said, rubbing his jaw. "Christ, that's got to be worth—"

A moan snapped Alicia's attention to the floor. The Arab, the one Thomas had called Kemel, was moving, curling into a fetal position as he clutched his bloody abdomen.

"Please," Kemel moaned, his voice barely above a whisper. "I must have a doctor."

Baker waggled his pistol at Alicia and then the Arab. "You're a doctor, right? Fix him."

"With what? He needs a hospital."

"Check him, dammit!"

"All right."

Alicia stepped over to Kemel and knelt beside him. From this angle, she could see Thomas's gun on the floor next to his body. Baker couldn't see it from where he stood. But it was far beyond Alicia's reach. Still, it was good to know it was there.

She stiffened as she saw one of Thomas's hands open and close. She glanced at his face and saw his eyes open, stare unseeingly for a moment, then close again.

Still alive, she thought, but not for much longer.

The Arab cried out when Alicia tried to roll him onto his back, so she was forced to examine him on his side. Gingerly—all her experience with infectious diseases screamed warning at the very possibility of contacting blood—she pulled his hands away from his wound. She saw the hole in the crimson wetness of his shirtfront, saw the blood oozing from it, caught the fecal odor.

Her mind ran the probabilities: perforated intestine, internal bleeding but aortic and renal arteries probably intact or he'd be dead by now. And there was absolutely nothing she could do to help him.

Kemel let out another agonized moan.

"He's critical," she said.

"I could've told you that," Baker said. "I've seen gut shots before. Ugly way to go. What can you do for him?"

"Nothing here," she said, rising. "He needs emergency surgery."

"Well, then," Baker said with a shark's smile as he pointed the pistol at her. "I guess that makes you pretty damn useless, doesn't it?"

Alicia fought panic. How much did he know? She swallowed, searching for moisture.

"Not if you want to sell the broadcast power technology," she said.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Because I'm the only one who can make it work."

She saw Baker's eyes narrow as he stared at her. Her insides were heaving with grand mal shakes. She prayed they didn't show.

"Yeah? Why should I believe that?"

How much does he know? Had he seen the will? No… odds were against that But considering the Greenpeace clause in the will, he'd probably been told from the start not to hurt her. At least she hoped so. If she was wrong, her next words could buy her Thomas's fate.

"You mean you weren't told to treat me with kid gloves?"

She watched him consider that, then saw him lower the pistol.

"All right," he said. "We'll find out what's what after we finish off your boyfriend."

"He's not my boyfriend."

"I guess not. Not the way he took off without you."

Alicia wondered about that. She'd been shocked to see him run rather than attack, but when she considered his chances of defeating three armed men, she couldn't blame him. She just hoped he pla

She realized with a start that she didn't have to hope. She knew he'd be back.

She had to start believing in someone.

Suddenly she heard the rattle of gunfire from somewhere in the woods.

"Sounds like my guys have found your boy," Baker said with that grin. "I wouldn't want to be in his shoes. Not even for all the money this stuff's worth."

Another burst of gunfire.

"Listen," Baker said, his grin broadening. "It's like music."

8.

Jack hid behind a big oak. At least he thought it was an oak. All he knew for sure was that its trunk was about two feet across—barely enough to hide him—and bordered the deer trail. Jack held one of the lateral branches of a smaller tree growing between the big oak and the trail. He'd used his Swiss Army knife to trim most of the branch's twigs, leaving only one-inch stubs jutting out like nails.

And now he waited, listening to Barlowe's noisy approach along the trail.

He had a length of the ubiquitous vine coiled loosely about his left wrist, and the tree branch that had once stretched face-high across the trail bent back as far as he dared without snapping it off the trunk.

His knuckles looked blue from the cold, but his palms were sweating. Timing was everything here. A second too early or late and Jack would be following Yoshio into the Great Whatever.

And so he waited, letting the sounds get louder and closer, waited until he sensed that Barlowe was just about to step into view, then he let go and ducked back, loosening the loops of vine as he slid around the other side of the trunk.

Barlowe's cry of pain and his sudden wild shooting were Jack's signals to go. He leaped from the back side of the tree, landing directly behind Barlowe. The merc was stumbling back toward Jack, his left hand to his face, firing blindly with the Tec-9 in his right. Jack waited a heartbeat until Barlowe lowered his left hand, then looped a coil of the vine around the merc's throat and yanked the startled man backward.

As he slammed Barlowe's back against the big tree, he noticed blood ru

He hauled back on the two ends of the vine, putting all his weight into the job. He couldn't see Barlowe on the far side of the trunk, but Jack could hear his choking grunt as the vine garrote cut off his air. His legs thrashed frantically and he tried to fire his Tec backward, angling the muzzle around the trunk, but Jack simply moved to his left without loosening up on the vine. The two bursts Barlowe got off did little more than kick up wet leaves.

And then the shooting stopped, though the thrashing continued. That could mean only one thing: Barlowe had realized that his Tec-9 was not going to save his life. And Jack figured what he'd try next.

Quickly he twisted the two ends of the vine together so he could keep it taut with one hand. Then he stretched around to his right.

Just as he'd suspected, Barlowe was pulling his Special Forces knife from its scabbard. The wicked-looking saw-toothed Rambo blade gleamed in the light as Barlowe brought it up behind his head to saw at the vines.