ADAM HALL - The Scorpion Signal

If I went underneath the car I'd be a sitting duck so I feinted to the right with my head and shoulders visible to him through the shattered window and dropped and span the other way with the sickening rush of a close shot fanning my temple. There was a row of cars immediately behind the Syrena and I went hard for cover and slipped on the snow and crashed down and dug my heels in and went forward again and reached the front end of a snow-covered Pobeda before he loosed the third shot and hit a headlamp and sprayed me with glass and fired again and hit my shoulder before I could use full cover. The 9 mm. Smith and Wesson had eight shots in the magazine and he'd used four and I'd have to remember to go on counting because that could become critical if I lived through the next few minutes.

He was taking it badly. He was a family man and too well fed and I'd been picking away at his nerves ever since I'd got him alone in the underground car park, threatening to pitch him out of the Syrena on our way here, so forth. The work I'd done on his carotid and medial nerves had worried him and the strike I'd used on him in Schrenk's apartment must still be giving him pain. He knew me well enough to realize that if he slipped on the snow and I got to him before he could aim and fire I might kill him out of hand. A professional hunter would have used this experience to his own advantage and move well away from the quarry and take careful aim before putting in the final accurate shot. This man was not a professional hunter: he was afraid of the creature he had to exterminate and his fear confused him. He'd already wasted four shots: half the entire magazine.

But of course he only needed one, even a lucky one, to drop me cold.

I'd lost sight of him and that was dangerous but he wouldn't know that. I was crouched under cover of the Pobeda and all he had to do was lie flat and take aim and smash one of my ankles to subdue me and stop me running but he hadn't thought of that: because of his fear he was thinking more about being attacked than attacking me. I was beginning to know him.

Then I saw his face and as the gun flashed my shoes slipped and dug in and I went sideways and then forwards, hurling myself towards the car immediately behind and feeling the bite as a bullet scored a neck muscle and smashed into the bodywork of the car alongside. I ran hard but it was open ground and my feet were slipping as the cold air pumped into my lungs and froze the neck wound as I lunged for the pickup truck in the corner and slipped again and hit the front wing and went down with one foot dragging and my back exposed. I could hear him following and I think he slipped once and went down because his breath grunted out and there was a scuffling sound; then I was behind the truck and moving towards its rear, backing and facing the way I'd come.

I couldn't hear him now.

Blood was seeping into the collar of my coat from the neck wound. The shoulder had been oozing and filling the sleeve but there was no artery hit or I would have weakened by this time; my left arm was still usable and there was no other damage. I stood in a half crouch, listening to the silence. He would be dose to the truck, on the other side: from here I could see the open ground I'd run across and he wasn't there. He had two more shots left in the magazine and he might be aware of that: he wouldn't like it but he'd now have to stalk me at close range and make sure of a lethal hit when he fired next. I didn't want to lie flat and sight for his feet underneath the truck because I'd be too vulnerable if he rushed me; I had to rely on auditory cues alone for information but they wouldn't be very strong: his breathing and the brittle sound of the snow when he moved. For the moment I heard nothing; the night was grave quiet.

The snow was fresh in the lee of the truck and I scooped it into my hands and compressed it, making a snowball, kneading it until it was heavy and iron-hard. I would need to blind him or hit the wound on his temple if I were going to do any good but there'd be no time to aim before he fired and he wouldn't fire until I was securely in his sights: he had learned from the uselessness of those six shots. I waited, with the snowball gradually melting through my fingers.

He was moving now: I heard the faint crunching of snow from the front of the truck. It was a risk but I dropped flat and sighted along the underside of the truck and saw his face and the blossoming flash of the shot and heard the fluting rush of air against my jaw as I twisted over and reached for the tailboard and pulled myself up with my left hand slipping because of the blood, my shoulder flaring with sudden pain as I flexed it: the bullet had lodged there close to the bone.

Seven. But I was scared now because he was getting close and he knew he'd have to make it for certain with the last shot. I lowered my feet to the snow again because he wouldn't shoot to maim at this stage. The snowball was resting on the surface and I picked it up and pressed it harder and put it on the metal footrest below the tailboard and stopped and made another one and held it ready, listening.

He didn't move. I thought I could see the top of his head, a dark patch in the corner of the truck's windscreen; but I was sighting through the rear window of the cab and the image was indistinct: it could be the driving mirror or the corner of a roof in the distance. The whole truck was sliding to one side and then lifting silently — watch it — and I fell forward against the tailboard and took a deep breath until the scene steadied, losing more blood than I'd thought, getting light-headed. I tried to drop flat again to see where his feet were but the scene started rocking badly and I straightened up and held the snowball against the neck wound to slow the bleeding.

Something below me and I looked down. Blood on the snow, black in the acid light of the street lamps. Nothing else to attract the attention, no sound from him. He mustn't know. He mustn't know about the blood because I couldn't do much to stop it until I was out of range and all he'd have to do was to wait it out until it left my brain, quietly draining, while the scene shifted and swung and turned over on me and I hit the snow and he came to stand over me, phutt… finis.

I would have to make him fire again for the last time. He hadn't moved yet, or I would have heard his shoes on the dry snow; he would be waiting for me to move first, waiting and listening. He was right-handed and if he moved he would circle the truck anticlockwise with his gun-hand leading; but he didn't move. It worried me. I made another snowball, a bigger one, black and white in the green unearthly glow of the street lamps, blood and snow, pressing it harder, the dark stain spreading across its surface as the truck tilted and went down, dipping and rising and oh Christ I'm leaving it too late, steadying, a deep breath, I would have to find him in the next sixty seconds while there was enough blood left to feed the brain, Ignatov where are you, the pain flaring again in the shoulder as I fell flat and stared into the narrow gap between the truck's chassis and the snow.

He wasn't there.

The ball of ice freezing my hand, the scene shifting again as I got to my knees and then to my feet. He wasn't there, that was all right, I could go now and try to get someone to look at my — watch what you're doing and think for God's sake think because he's -

Towering over me, stark against the street lamps with his feet on the step of the cab and the gun coming into the aim a short range, snowball, all the strength I had left and it flew upwards against the flash and struck his face but I was spinning round and going down again hitting the snow and bouncing with the pain bursting in the shoulder and the truck's angular shape rocking against the sky and the blood coming into my head again and bringing consciousness back, scaring me because there were sudden intervals of amnesia and I couldn't remember if that was the seventh or the eighth shot, but he didn't fire again and I managed to grab his foot as he dropped from the metal step and tried to start running. He came down full length and I put him out with a neck strike that would leave him alive because all I had to do was to stop him going to the nearest telephone before I could get clear.