Matt Hilton: Judgement and Wrath

One and a half seconds isn't long in any violent confrontation. Viewed in afterthought it's amazing how rapidly a tableau can change. But there was a third armed agent to deal with.

'Now, Bradley,' I yelled.

Bradley immediately became less than the crippled weight he seemed. He threw his arms round the man supporting him, grappling the agent's rifle so that it was wedged between them. Bradley continued to drive into the man, and they went down on the ground, rolling in spongy earth. I charged over and grabbed the man's rifle away from him. Then I spun so that I was covering them all with the levelled rifle.

'OK, boys,' I yelled. 'The deal's the same. You get Bradley out of here, I go after Dantalion.'

The first agent was the first to recover from our attack. 'You have assaulted FBI agents in the execution of their duties. It is a federal crime, Hunter. You'll be arrested for this.'

'Get a fuckin' life,' I snapped. 'We all know how this is gonna go down. I'm leaving. You lot get the fuck out of here. You tell Kaufman I escaped. I've gone after the demented killer we all want to see dead. Where's the fucking crime in that?'

I threw the gun aside, took out my SIG and raced away. None of them lifted a weapon, so it seemed they'd seen sense in my words.

I'd seen something too. Way ahead of me. A pale blur of a face turned my way. A dark-garbed figure loping across the field towards the huge buildings on the horizon.

The bullet had clipped Dantalion's right shoulder when he was about to shoot Bradley Jorgenson in the face. It had cut away a large chunk of his hide, but had missed anything serious like an artery or bone. The wound was numb, likely very soon screaming in agony, but not totally debilitating. He could still hold his Glock, he could still shoot, and he could still finish his mission.

The force of the bullet had knocked him off balance, but that might prove a boon. It offered him another chance at killing Jorgenson. Next time it would take much, much longer and involve an infinite amount of pain.

The bullet had also thrown him headlong into the putrescent stream, providing salvation. If he'd fallen on the dry ground, Hunter would most definitely have killed him. The murky water had given him cover while he swam away. He was able to surface many yards west of where he'd fallen, concealed from the eyes of Hunter by overhanging foliage. There he'd been able to catch his breath and check the two things most important to him. The Glock was wet, but serviceable. After his last plunge into the Inter-Coastal Waterway, he'd taken care to protect his book in cling film, so it was barely damp when he fished it from inside the jumpsuit. Everything was A-OK.

Then fortune smiled on him again. The FBI helicopters forced Hunter away from the stream, giving him the opportunity to make his own break for freedom. He heard the roar of the choppers, the hard snap of rifles, and knew that the FBI had confused Hunter with him. Maybe they'd kill the bastard and leave the door open for him to get at Bradley a second time. Or maybe not. He couldn't rely on Lady Luck. He had to make his own opportunities.

He scrambled along the stream bed, found a place to climb out and crawled up on to the far side. Lying on the embankment, he watched as a chopper set down three armed agents and witnessed Hunter dispatching all three in the space of seconds. Impressive. Hunter was proving a dangerous enemy. Time, he decided, to finish him off.

Glancing back over his shoulder, he scrutinised again the power station he'd intended taking Bradley to. The buildings had a decrepit look, as if they had not known service in some time. They were bordered by a chain-link fence, but here and there he could make out breaches in it as though vandals had broken into the compound many times over the years. One of the nearer buildings had metal sheets over its windows and doors, but he could also see a gaping doorway where the sheet had been prised loose.

Rising up, he cast a look backwards.

Hunter met his gaze, and he nodded in the direction of the buildings.

Come and get it, asshole.

Then he took off across the field, heedless of the two McDonnell Douglas choppers circling the nearby field. His leg pained him. His arm didn't yet, but it would only be a matter of time. He had to reach the buildings before Hunter could get close enough to shoot. Exposed as he crossed the open space, Hunter would be easy meat for Dantalion's bullets.

A chopper came over the top of the power station, rotors buzzing like an angry hornet. It wasn't one of the black gunships, but the liveried Bell Jet Ranger once piloted by the man whose clothes he now wore.

The sun was behind the chopper, but he could make out a single man on board. One of the agents from back at Eunice Jorgenson's home. Probably the asshole tasked with bringing him down.

Dantalion came to a standstill and lifted the Glock. He saw a widening of the eyes of the man piloting the chopper. Dantalion fired. Three rapid bursts that cut a zigzag pattern across the windshield. Behind the starred glass the cockpit changed colour, scarlet puffing in the air.

Then the chopper was dipping towards him and Dantalion was forced to move as the whirling rotors cleaved air above him as if in a decapitating frenzy. He charged to the left and he felt the displacement of air as the chopper hurtled to the ground. Behind him it sounded as if the earth had exploded. Dirt and dust and grass showered around him. There was the screaming of an engine on overload, the bang! bang! bang! of rotors churning into the ground, followed by shrieks as chunks of hot metal were torn loose and thrown into the air.

He looked back.

The Bell Jet Ranger was reduced to scrap metal. Oily black smoke rose like a funeral pyre from the burnt-out engine components. The rotors had been reduced to gnarly stumps. Still, the dying helicopter was groaning, but only until sparks jumped from the overheated engine into the spilled fuel and it gave out one final roar as the entire craft exploded.

The concussion sent Dantalion sprawling to the ground. Searing heat washed over him and for the briefest of moments he felt as though all life was being sucked from his body. An image flashed through his mind of the petrified victims found in the ashes of Pompeii after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, charred and desiccated corpses twisted into foetal balls. He thought that was how he must look. Except now the heat had gone, the in-gust taking the flames back towards the wreckage of the chopper, and he realised that — apart from singed hair and a throat that felt like it burned — he was unharmed.

He was face down on the ground with his arms over his head. He had no recollection of striking the pose. He quickly snapped to attention, wondering how much time his killing of the chopper pilot had taken, and how much of his advantage had been torn away in doing so.

Rolling to his feet, he looked for Hunter. He was two hundred yards nearer and gaining. Then smoke from the doomed chopper rolled across the intervening space and Hunter's charging form was lost from view. Dantalion broke into an ungainly lope, hand fumbling for his book. The book was there, but it took him a second to register that the hand he'd used should have been holding a Glock. He ground to a halt, turned round, searching for where the explosion had thrown the gun to.

He couldn't see it. Smoking debris lay everywhere. Chunks of hot metal and divots of earth obscured the ground all around where he'd fallen.

'Son of a bitch!'

Hunter burst through the smoke bank, his seething eyes picking out Dantalion like lasers.

He wasn't at an advantage any longer and the nearby building offered only a place to hide.

If he could even get there before Hunter was close enough to use his handgun.