Once A Spy Part 18

Charlie was troubled enough for them both: He'd figured the bronze statue was impenetrable. 'We need to get down,' he shouted over the echoing report.

Drummond didn't seem to follow. Rather than take time to explain, Charlie wrapped his arms around him and heaved them both off the front of the pedestal. They flopped onto the ground, putting the pedestal between them and the shooters.

The ground appeared to have received a fresh dusting of snow. In fact it was particles of raven excrement. Lovely, Charlie thought.

Some of the particles had filled the letters chiseled into the face of the pedestal.

GENERAL PIERRE GUSTAVE TOUSSAINT BEAUREGARD, 18181893.

A bullet chimed the horse's right cheek, ricocheted, and struck the pickup truck, shattering a headlight.

Drummond appraised the damage with a thin smile and said, 'As Churchill put it, There is nothing so enjoyable as to be shot at by one's enemy without result.''

Charlie asked himself, How did it come down to this? 'Didn't Churchill have a drinking problem?'

'Give me the Colt, please.'

Charlie saw a glow in Drummond's eyes. Had a mental a.s.sociation with Beauregard the dog triggered him?

It could have been an a.s.sociation with raven c.r.a.p, for all Charlie cared. Electrified, he handed over the gun.

Drummond pivoted to his left and squeezed off two quick shots.

The first missed by a wide margin, judging by the puff of dirt. Still, it sent Flattop diving for the cover of high gra.s.s. The second met him there. Red spouted from his leg, and he dropped from sight.

If not for fear of breaking Drummond's concentration, Charlie would have cheered.

Whirling to his right, Drummond trained the Colt on Scholar, now scurrying across a patch of barren ground about forty yards away, and fired. The bullet merely trimmed the high gra.s.s to Scholar's left.

Not an ideal time for Drummond to prove human, Charlie thought.

Drummond tweaked the barrel and snapped the trigger again. The result was a feeble click. 'It wasn't fully loaded,' he told Charlie. 'Give me the Walther.'

'I don't have it.'

'Where is it?'

'The glove compartment.'

'This isn't the time for your jokes.'

'In the car, you were rocking back and forth, obsessing with ketchup, and the gun was just kind of balancing there on the seat, so I thought it'd be for the best *'

Drummond's eyes slitted, which Charlie read as fury.

'It might have been for the best, actually,' Drummond said.

He outlined their escape plan.

27.

'The problem with that is the huge likelihood I'll get shot,' Charlie said. with that is the huge likelihood I'll get shot,' Charlie said.

'I'd say only fifty-fifty,' Drummond said coolly.

'Oh, okay, great.'

'What are our chances otherwise?'

'Way worse,' Charlie admitted.

A bullet gonged the horse's throat.

'All right, I'm getting ready,' Charlie said.

He forced himself into a sprinter's stance, which wasn't as simple as placing a hand here and a foot there. Anxiety had the effect of doubling the force of gravity. He worried that when the time came to run from behind the pedestal, he wouldn't be able to move, and their window of opportunity would slam shut. He clung to the hope, dim though it was, that some savior would arrive and render this brutal plan unnecessary.

Drummond crouched behind him. A bullet spat chips of granite. The bitter scent of cordite filled the air.

'What was the name of that catcher on the Mets when they won the World Series back in eighty-six?' Drummond asked.

'Gary Carter,' said Charlie, unsettled by the introduction of the topic.

'Just think about him.'

'He was pretty much the slowest runner in the majors.'

'I know.'

'So, what? You're saying this could be worse? I could be as slow as Gary Carter?'

'No, I just hoped it might take your mind off the other business.'

It had.

Charlie looked over his shoulder to convey his grat.i.tude. Drummond was pivoting in the opposite direction, his eyes locked on the pickup truck, his knees tensed to spring toward it. His would be by far the harder role, yet he was aglow, like he'd just stepped out of an adrenaline shower.

Awe burned away the remainder of Charlie's anxiety.

Drummond gave the go order*'Execute!'

Charlie surged out from the pedestal, faster than he'd imagined himself capable.

A bullet cleaved the air inches in front of his eyes.

To keep going, he thought, would be insane.

Out of the blue, however, a spirit took possession of him*that's how it felt*a spirit who saw things in greater depth and definition, and in slow motion. Both Flattop and Scholar appeared clearly in his peripheral vision, jumping from their hiding spots to capitalize on the open shot at him. In his new perception, they rose as if weighted, and the twinkle of the waning sun on their gun barrels was as slow as a turn signal. They pulled*tugged, it seemed*their triggers. He had the sensation of seeing, hearing, and feeling everything that followed: the crashes of firing pins, the jolts of explosive in the primers, the white heat gobbling the powder, the flames screaming through the flash holes, the propellant blasting, the cartridges groaning under pressure and expanding and swelling and bulging and, finally, the bullets bursting out of the barrels. He watched the plumes of flame balloon from the muzzles and the guns themselves sashay backward. He heard the booms of the projectiles as they exceeded the speed of sound, and he saw them revolving on their way toward him.

He didn't just dive, he took off; gravity no longer seemed to have sway over him. He landed after just ten feet, behind the barrel of the cannon, because that's what Drummond's plan called for. Rocks cut into his palms, his forearms, and his chin. No big deal.

Whatever had lodged in his left calf, though, returned the world to its normal pace. A hatchet, it felt like. Spotting the hole in his dungarees, he realized it was a bullet. And, holy f.u.c.king b.l.o.o.d.y d.a.m.ned Jesus, he hadn't imagined a bullet could hurt even a hundredth as much. The thing seemed to be setting him on fire from the inside. He wanted to tamp it somehow and to scream in pain. He lay still, facedown, as if dead. That was part of the plan too.

Vomit, tasting of a stale convenience store hot dog, erupted from his esophagus, burning its way up his throat and into his mouth. He couldn't very well spit it out if he were dead. So he let it seep out. It welled on the ground by his face. Each time he inhaled, bits went up his nostrils.

Bullets whacked the opposite side of the cannon, kicking the ground into a brown-gray haze. But the big gun shielded him, as Drummond had said it would. A solid hit to one of the brittle wooden wheels might bring the ton of bronze crashing down on him, though. He managed to lie still, his eyes slits. Out of a corner of one of them, he spotted a blur: Drummond, running through the gra.s.s, toward the pickup truck.

Cadaret leaped up from a cl.u.s.ter of stalks at the far end of the field and fired three times. Drummond dove for the blacktop. Cadaret's bullets kicked up the gra.s.s.

Drummond lunged to the safety of the pa.s.senger side of the truck. The engine block would now protect him. Theoretically.

Scholar and Flattop rammed fresh clips into their guns and joined Cadaret in firing at the truck. They made a punch card of the wobbly hood, dislodging it.

The steel slab banged down onto Drummond, sandwiching him against the asphalt. Luckily. The hood protected him when more bullets brought bits of gla.s.s raining from the windshield, and more rounds burst apart the headlight caddies, causing the lamps within them to explode.

Without letup in their fire, the three gunmen closed in. The pickup's grille, side panels, engine, mirrors, and roof rang like a steel band, and the whole cha.s.sis staggered. With a report as loud as the sum of those preceding it, the gasoline tank exploded into a mound of fire. In a blink, the fire swelled to the size of a house, encasing Drummond along with the entire truck. Just as fast, it receded into puddles of flame and burning pieces of upholstery scattered about the parking lot.

The wind thinned the smoke, revealing the truck's charred remains. And Drummond. The hood that shielded him had been cast aside. He lay flat on his back on the asphalt. His chest, swamped in shimmering crimson, had ceased to rise and fall.

28.

Cadaret strode onto the blacktop, followed by Flattop and Scholar. With a twisted grin, Cadaret aligned his pistol for a game of 'shoot the can' with Drummond's head. onto the blacktop, followed by Flattop and Scholar. With a twisted grin, Cadaret aligned his pistol for a game of 'shoot the can' with Drummond's head.

'Enough, enough,' Charlie cried from the ground behind the cannon. 'How many times do you need to kill him?'

Cadaret whirled at him, gun leveled.

Charlie tried to stand up. Each movement made it feel like he was being shot in the leg again. 'Look, our plan was s.h.i.t. You win,' he said, hobbling to the blacktop, where the wide-eyed stares said he'd succeeded in playing dead. 'If you'll let me live, I'll tell what you want to know.'

Flattop and Scholar looked curiously at Cadaret. He flexed his shoulders.

'What do we want to know?' he asked Charlie.

'About the shootings.'

'What shootings?'

'Yours,' Drummond said, reaching up from behind Cadaret and surprising him by grabbing hold of his belt. Using Cadaret as a counterweight, Drummond rose to his feet, then threw his forehead into the killer's temple with a resounding crack. Cadaret crumpled, unconscious, into Drummond's arms.

Both Flattop and Scholar swiveled toward Drummond and fired. Flattop's shot flew wide. Scholar's was absorbed by Cadaret*now Drummond's shield*fatally.

Drummond lifted Cadaret's limp hand, the gun still in it, and pressed the trigger. With a blast, a bullet plunged into Flattop's chest. Convulsing as if he'd instead absorbed a jolt of electricity, he fell to the parking lot. Another twitch and he lay still, for good.

Drummond pivoted Cadaret's body a few degrees and fired again. A round slammed into Scholar's right collarbone, sending him reeling with a wake of blood.

He remained upright by grasping Charlie's neck and holding tight. He settled directly behind Charlie, breathing heavily, his chest pressed against Charlie's right shoulder blade*probably to staunch the flow of his blood. He used the crook of Charlie's neck to prop his gun, to get a shot at Drummond. Charlie couldn't so much as flinch without risk of a bullet in his own head.

Scholar's problem was that Cadaret's body shielded Drummond. Also Drummond was trying to shoot him. But Drummond's only shot was directly through Charlie. Charlie had an ugly suspicion that that didn't rule it out. A recent 'interesting piece of information': A bullet pa.s.ses easily through the human diaphragm.

Stuffing the hot muzzle into Charlie's ear, Scholar said, 'Please put the gun down, Mr. Clark.'

Without hesitation, Drummond let Cadaret's pistol fall. And without having to be asked, he tapped it with his sneaker, sending it rasping over the asphalt. It stopped inches from Scholar.

'Thank you, sir,' Scholar said.

His excessive deference was either one of those military things, Charlie thought, or just odd.

Drummond studied Scholar and said, 'I know you, don't I?'

'Possibly.' The young man seemed indisposed to chat.

Drummond persisted. 'You're the kid who speaks ten languages?'

'Only if you include English.'

'Belknapp, right?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Aren't you supposed to be infiltrating Muslim graduate students at Cal Tech?'

'It's holiday break. I'm in Idaho, s...o...b..arding. As it were.'

'So, really you're spending the holiday putting me to pasture. Why?'

'Orders from Hen' himself, sir.'

Charlie couldn't help exclaiming, 'You two work together?'

'Apparently one of us has been made redundant,' Drummond said.

'Why? Are they afraid you might talk about what went down at the office Christmas party?'

Drummond looked at Belknapp. 'I wouldn't imagine the rationale filtered down to your level?'

Belknapp glanced around, as if trying to determine the location of a microphone. In a low voice, though not without conviction, he said, 'The greater good.'

'Hard to fathom,' Drummond said. 'Are you sure your orders came from Hen?' Hen?'

'You're suggesting I was false flagged?'

'That Stop Duck Hunting!' ad could have been placed by anyone with a pa.s.sing knowledge of our simple letter-drop cipher.'

'Yes, sir, it was supposed to be easy for you and your son to find. The minimal code was just to make it seem like an actual covert correspondence. Had you been at the top of your game, you would have gravitated to the ad for Theodore Tepper, our fict.i.tious divorce lawyer. And simple false subtraction of the saddle numbers in the day's first race from the alphabet value of the letters and the digits themselves in his address would have netted you the same Manhattan telephone number.'

Drummond nodded, convinced. 'Well, let's not belabor this, then.'

Belknapp kicked Charlie's shins out from under him. Charlie wound up on smarting knees, on the jagged asphalt. Belknapp's muzzle bit into the base of his head.