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KUCHIN HAD chosen the ground, but not in the location one would have expected, not even Pascal. High ground was almost always good ground when it came to a conflict. Almost always. He aimed his rifle, sighting through the scope, and used a gloved hand to rub a bit of dirt off the glass. He pulled up his glove and eyed his watch. Then he lay back and waited, counting off seconds in his head to keep alert.
When the sounds first came he didn’t move. As the footfalls came closer he timed their impact with the ground and moved when they struck to disguise any noise he might make. The barrel came up; his dominant right eye leaned to the glass. The reticle did its job. Target acquired, there was no reason to wait. He fired.
“Shit!” screamed Whit, clutching his leg and falling to the ground immediately behind Shaw.
“Everyone down,” yelled Shaw.
They all flattened to the ground. Reggie slid over to Whit to see how bad the hit was. He was already pulling open his jumpsuit to try to stop the bleeding. “It went through,” he grunted. “Don’t think it hit the bone, but Jesus it hurts like hell.”
Reggie said, “We’ll get you out of this.”
Whit shook his head, his face growing pale. “It’s just like Rice. The bastard has his method, Reg. Leg first, then the torso.” He grunted in anguish, his whole body shaking with pain. His mouth quivering, he added, “And then the damn dogs.”
“I won’t let that happen.”
He grabbed her with his good arm and thrust the knife into her hand. “If you hear those dogs coming just finish me off before they get to me. Promise me!” She couldn’t answer him, but stared back at him helplessly. He shook her. “Damn it, Reggie, promise me. Don’t let them do to me what they did to Rice.”
Reggie looked down at the knife as tears formed in her eyes. “Whit, I can’t. I can’t do that.”
Whit seemed to gather his strength to make one more plea. “If you don’t then Kuchin wins. And we can’t let the bloody monster win, Reg, can we?” He lay back gasping.
Reggie clenched the knife tighter, brushed the tears away, and said, “All right, I will. If I have to.”
From where he crouched Shaw surveyed the landscape ahead. The fog was still rolling in, heavier now, covering everything with a gauzy haze. The shapes of things began to alter and transform, playing tricks on one’s eyes. The direction Whit had been shot from meant that Kuchin was somewhere in front of him, but that left a lot of degrees of the compass to account for. They might only get one chance at this. He told Katie to stay where she was and crawled over to Reggie and Whit. After checking on the wounded man, he handed her the gun. She looked at him questioningly.
Shaw said, “This is our last chance, Reggie. The only way we get out of this is to smoke him out.”
“How?”
“Muzzle flash. We haven’t seen one yet, but it’s still dark enough for the light to be clearly visible when it comes.”
“How are you going to manage that?”
“By making him fire again.”
“I know that, but how!” she said fiercely.
He pointed up ahead. “I’m going to run in a straight line directly in front of you from right to left. You keep your eyes up there. The flash will come from that direction. He’s close. I could tell from the sound of the discharge. It wasn’t fired from a distance.”
“Shaw, you-”
He looked over at Whit moaning on the ground. “When the muzzle flash comes-”
“Shaw, I can’t-”
He slapped her in the face so hard it left her cheek red and raw. “Don’t tell me what you can’t do. You will do this.”
She looked stu
Reggie licked her lips. “Shaw?” she began.
“Just do it, Reggie. Just finish it. For me.”
She finally nodded dumbly and he immediately turned from her and stood half bent over.
“Shaw,” screamed Katie as she rose from the dirt and moved toward him. “Look out.”
Shaw glanced to his left. The son of a bitch had changed positions somehow, with the silence of a ghost. And he looked ghostly too, through the cover of fog. There was Kuchin, rifle already raised and ready to fire. With a weapon like that it was really point-blank. He couldn’t miss.
Shaw threw out his arms a split second before the shot. He felt the bullet burn across the surface of his right limb. As he lowered his arms, he wondered how the man could have missed that badly at this range. Then, like an avalanche, the truth came and crushed him.
“Katie!”
He turned in time to see Katie James toppling backward from the force of the ordnance that had just blown through her. The wisps of her blonde hair flew outward as the round exited her back and splattered into a rock behind her. She hit the ground, bounced slightly, and lay still.
Kuchin stood there, barely forty feet away. He looked down at the fallen woman and then up at Shaw, who could not draw his gaze from her.
Kuchin said, “I told you if you followed my instructions to the letter she would be released unharmed. Instead, you disobeyed me. You went back to the house and took her. You broke our compact. You are actually the reason for her death, my friend.”
By millimeter increments Shaw pulled his gaze from Katie to Kuchin. From the look in the man’s eyes, he realized that this had all been pla
With a blur of motion fueled by a level of rage he’d only felt one other time in his life, Shaw exploded forward and within four seconds had covered nearly all the ground between him and Kuchin, his knife raised in a killing position. But it had taken Kuchin less time than that to raise his rifle once more and take careful aim. Shaw’s brain was sighted clearly on his American-made reticle that had never missed its target. Right before he fired a swirl of fog covered Kuchin completely.
The shot came. Then another. And then a final one.
Kuchin lowered the rifle even as Shaw leapt. Then the rifle fell to the dirt as the Ukrainian’s grip weakened and blood started to spurt out of the three holes in his chest. The shots were so closely grouped that all three bullets had smashed into his heart.
Reggie lowered the pistol. The smoky firing range had paid off. She had just memorized where he was behind the fog. And this time the target hadn’t moved.
Kuchin dropped to his knees, his eyes wide with disbelief about what had just happened. This was so even though the man was already medically dead. Scientists sometimes referred to this as the “technical soul,” the last synaptic firing from a dead brain that left some trace of reason despite physical life already having come to an end.
An instant later, Shaw collided with Kuchin and drove the knife right through his skull with such force that it broke off at the handle. Fedir Kuchin fell backwards with Shaw on top of him. And he hit him, once, twice, the blows accelerating, raining down on the dead man until there was no face left, only tissue that had been turned to pulp as Shaw’s knuckles cracked and his hands bled.