David Morrell - Desperate Measures

But he’d bought only a few moments of protection. When he showed himself outside the front of the building…

Can’t hide in here. They’ll search until they…

What am I going to do?

This building was evidently a dormitory. He heard students on the upper floors, their voices distressed.

Witnesses. Need more witnesses. Need more commotion.

He swung toward a fire-alarm switch behind a glass plate and hammered the butt of his.45 against the glass. The plate shattered with surprising ease. Trembling, he reached in past shards and pulled the switch.

The alarm was shrill, reverberating off walls, causing picture frames to tremble. Despite its intensity, Pittman sensed the greater commotion on the floors above him, urgent footsteps, frightened voices, a lot of them. A welter of shadows in the stairway became students in pajamas scurrying to get outside.

Pittman hid his weapon and waved his right arm in fierce encouragement, as if he was their benefactor, his only interest their safety.

“Hurry up! The place is on fire!”

The students surged past, and Pittman went with them, storming into the arc lights that blazed in the night. He saw gunmen to his right but knew that they didn’t dare shoot with so many students in the way, and as the students dispersed in turmoil, Pittman darted toward the next building on the left, lunging inside.

There, he again broke the glass that shielded the fire-alarm switch. Activating the alarm, wincing from the ferocity of the noise, he rushed back in the direction he had come, toward the front door.

They’ll expect me to go out the back. They’ll try to cut me off, some of them coming through here while the others wait in the darkness behind the building.

He pressed himself against the wall next to the front door, and at once it was banged open, gunmen charging into the building. In the same instant, students came scurrying down the stairwell. Amid the confusion as the gunmen and the students collided and tried to pass one another, Pittman scrambled out the front door, students swirling around him. But instead of continuing the pattern he’d established to race toward the next building on this side of the square, he took what he felt was his best chance and sprinted directly across the square, veering among students who milled sleepily, their bare feet obviously cold, frost coming out of their mouths in the glare from the arc lights. He heard the fire alarms and students swarming out of adjacent buildings and gunmen shouting, chasing him.

Even allowing for his being out of condition, he didn’t think he’d ever run so fast. His jogging shoes hit the ground perfectly, his legs stretched, his sweat suit clung to his movements as it had so many mornings when he had gone jogging before heading to work-before Jeremy had gotten sick. He felt as if his increasing effort was the distillation of every race he had ever entered, every marathon he had ever endured. Inhaling deep lungfuls of air, pumping his legs faster, stretching them farther, he surged between buildings on the opposite side of the square and kept racing into the darkness behind them.

This was the direction from which he had initially come down off the ridge and across the meadow, approaching the campus. In a frenzy of exertion, he managed to increase speed, spurred by the buzz of another bullet parting air near his side. They’ve crossed the square, he thought. They saw where I went and followed me.

From the square, he heard the roar of cars. They’ll soon drive behind these buildings. There’s no way I can outrun…

He changed direction just in time, almost banging into the side of a building. His eyes, stung by the glare of the arc lights in the square, were only now adjusting to the darkness, and in confusion, he took a moment to realize that he’d reached the stables.

Men shouted behind him. A bullet struck the stone side of the building. Pittman whirled, went down on his left knee, propped his right arm on his other knee to steady his trembling aim, and fired toward the men pursuing him. They cursed and dove to the ground. A car fishtailed around a building, its headlights blazing, and Pittman fired toward them, missing the headlights but shattering the windshield.

Immediately he ducked back, knowing that the muzzle flashes from his pistol had made him a target. More bullets struck the side of the building, splintering stone. From somewhere on the other side, horses whinnied in panic. Pittman swung around a corner, approaching them. He reached a fence and opened its gate, scrambling back as horses charged through, escaping into the night. The more confusion, the better. He had to keep distracting his pursuers.

Then racing across the horse pen toward the opposite fence, he heard the roar of the cars speeding toward the stables. Have to get ahead of them.

A horse had stopped on the other side of the fence. With no other choice, Pittman clambered onto the rails. He’d once written a story about the stables near Central Park. He’d taken a few lessons. His instructor had emphasized: “When afraid of falling, keep your legs squeezed as tightly as you can around the horse’s sides and clamp your arms around the horse’s neck.”

Pittman did exactly that now, leaping off the fence, landing on the horse, startling it, clinging as it reared, but he was prepared and the horse wasn’t. Compacting his muscles in desperation, he managed to stay on, and now the horse wasn’t rearing. It was galloping, hoping to throw off its burden. Pittman clung harder, jolted by the horse’s rapid hoofbeats. He leaned so severely forward, clutching the horse’s bobbing neck, that he didn’t think he provided a silhouette for the gunmen.

From behind, the headlights of several rapidly approaching cars lit up the meadow around and ahead of him. The roar of the engines and the noise of the galloping horse were too great for Pittman to be able to hear if bullets whizzed past him, but he had to assume that his pursuers were shooting at him, and he furiously hoped that the uneven meadow, its bumps and rises and dips, would throw off the gunmen’s aim in the darkness.

Without warning, the horse changed direction. Unprepared, Pittman felt his grip slipping, his body shifting to the right. About to topple, he clamped his legs so tightly around the horse that the pain of the effort made him wince. His rigid arms completely encircled the horse’s neck. The cars sped nearer, bumping across the meadow, their headlights bobbing, gleaming, as the horse changed direction again, but this time Pittman anticipated, and although his body shifted, he felt in control.

He was wrong. Deeper shadows loomed before him, suddenly illuminated by the headlights. The forest seemed to materialize out of nothing, a wall of trees and bushes forming an apparently unbreachable barrier that so startled the horse, it reared up, at the same time twisting sideways, and Pittman’s grip was finally jerked free. As the horse’s front hoofs landed heavily and the animal twisted again, more sharply, to avoid colliding with the trees, Pittman flew in the opposite direction. Frantically praying that the horse wouldn’t kick backward, he struck the ground, flipped, and rolled, the wind knocked out of him, the pistol in his jacket pocket slamming against his ribs.

He rolled farther, urgently trying to avoid the panicked horse, to save himself from being trampled. Immediately the horse galloped away, and Pittman faced the headlights speeding toward him. He stumbled to his feet, struggled to breathe, and lurched toward bushes, stooping to conceal himself. Bullets snapped twigs and shredded bark from trees. He crouched lower, hurrying among the thickly needled branches of pine trees. Bullets walloped into trees and sliced needles that fell upon him. Hearing car doors being opened, he spun, saw the headlights through the trees, and fired, surprising himself that he actually shattered one of the lights.