Peter Kirsanow - Second Strike

Garin had begun to turn before Bulkvadze was able to close the choke hold, but not fast enough. Garin could feel his windpipe cinch, cutting off the air to his lungs. Blood rushed to his skull with such force that his eyes bulged from their sockets and his eardrums felt as if they would burst. His chest heaved as his lungs tried to suck in any available oxygen, but there was none. Garin sensed the cartilage in his neck compress and heard the internal acoustics of bone beginning to separate from bone.

Garin frantically pumped his right leg backward—as if kickstarting a motorbike—in search of his attacker’s knee. His aim was off-center, the heel of his shoe catching the outer portion of the man’s kneecap—not nearly enough force to collapse the huge joint, but enough to cause acute pain.

Yet it wasn’t enough to cause the giant to release his choke hold. It was only enough to cause a slight and momentary relaxation of the muscles in the man’s arm. Garin twisted hard to his right with his elbow raised, striking his attacker in the ribs, but he wasn’t able to generate sufficient torque for the blow to be of consequence. He immediately whipped his body in the other direction, other elbow raised, and struck the attacker’s left side. This time he was able to generate a bit more force and felt his attacker cave slightly to the left. Once more Garin spun to his right and dug the sharp point of his elbow into the man’s ribs.

The choke hold loosened, not much, but enough for Garin to make a quarter turn and jam the heel of his right hand under the man’s chin, snapping his head backward and causing him to bite off the tip of his tongue.

Blood spurted from the man’s mouth, but he refused to release his grip. It did, however, loosen. Just a few millimeters, but enough for Garin to twist and thrust the heel of his right hand once more, this time catching Bulkvadze under the nose and driving upward into his skull.

Garin had once killed a man with a similar blow, driving bone and cartilage into his brain. It merely stunned Bulkvadze.

But that gave Garin an opening. The choke hold loosened a bit more, allowing Garin to turn his head sideways, drop under the man’s arm, and collapse to the ground. Garin crabbed backward out of reach but butted up against the wooden fence. He began to raise himself upright when Bulkvadze’s left forearm slammed into Garin’s chest, knocking what little wind he had out of him and driving him against the fence.

Time then inched to a crawl.

Garin could feel the fence give and bend slightly against his back and he caught the scent of linseed oil covering its wood. As the fence bucked and rebounded, Garin used its force to propel himself, head cast slightly downward, toward the big man.

The top of Garin’s head struck Bulkvadze midway between his throat and chin, crushing both. Still, it wasn’t enough to drop him. Bulkvadze staggered backward two steps before regaining his balance and pulled his right hand back to throw a roundhouse.

Garin was quicker. He threw a right hook to Bulkvadze’s left temple, followed by a left cross to Bulkvadze’s right temple, followed by a knee to Bulkvadze’s groin.

Bulkvadze’s head whipsawed right and left from the punches and he doubled over as the air was forced from his lungs.

Though hunched over, he remained on his feet, almost as an act of defiance. Garin could hear his own gasps for air, rapid from exertion and ragged from the choke hold. He heard similar sounds from Bulkvadze, blood now gushing from his nose as well as his mouth. There was a glazed look in his eyes, and a ropelike artery pulsed in his right temple. In one motion, Garin spun behind the big man and with his right arm enveloped Bulkvadze’s neck and fell backward to the ground, using both of their body weights to violently snap the big man’s head backward at its base. The sound was that of a dry tree branch breaking. Garin lay on the ground with Bulkvadze on top of him and with all of his strength continued to apply pressure to the man’s neck. It was unnecessary. All of the tension in the giant’s body was gone. There was no beat against Garin’s arm from the pulse in the man’s neck. No breathing. Nothing.

Speed beats size. Speed kills.

Garin lay on the ground with Bulkvadze on top of him for several seconds, trying to catch his breath. Then he squirmed and shoved and pulled himself from under the corpse, got to one knee, and stood erect.

Garin took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He could feel the endorphin rush of extreme exertion begin to flow through his body. The twin exhilarations of victory and narrowly escaping death washed over him.

And then everything went black.

QUANTICO, VIRGINIA,

AUGUST 17, 7:59 A.M. EDT

You have an outside call, Mr. Colton,” the DGT operator said. “Mrs. Ruth Ponder.”

“I don’t know a Ruth Ponder. Who is she?”

“She says she’s from Catoosa County, Georgia, and that she thinks you’re looking for the same person. She has information about him.”

Matt sat straight in his chair. “Connect her.”

A second later Ruth Ponder said, “Hello? Mr. Colton?”

“This is Matt Colton. How may I help you?”

“I thought we might help each other, Mr. Colton. My husband, Amos, was killed in that mass shooting you may have heard about? It was on all the news channels?”

Ruth Ponder had Matt’s undivided attention.

“Yes, Mrs. Ponder, I’m aware of the shooting. I’m very sorry to hear about your husband.”

“Well, thank you, sir. I’ll try to make this simple, Mr. Colton, since I believe I can anticipate most of your questions.”

Matt was anxious to get to the point, but Ruth Ponder’s gracious manner and deliberate cadence reminded him of his maternal grandmother. Urgency did not trump courtesy. “Go ahead, ma’am.”

“I’ve been trying to find the man or men who killed Amos and those other unfortunate individuals. So, along with several friends, we’ve spent some time calling around. Now, please understand, I’ve got no complaint against the law enforcement folks. They’ve got a tough job and their hands are full. We just thought we could help a bit.”

“Yes, ma’am. I understand.”

“Well, two of my friends noticed that the name ‘DGT’ had come up more than a few times in our conversations with law enforcement and the like. And then we realized that we were asking some of the same questions as DGT. That got me curious, so my friend Amy was kind enough to look you folks up and she found your website. Am I right that you’re military contractors?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And you sometimes help the government or military when they’re stretched kind of thin?”

“That’s correct.”

“Now, I’ve been told that folks like you all sometimes can move faster and can find out things that maybe the police can’t find out, because of the way they have to do things.”

“On occasion that may be true.”

“We understand you were asking about a scary-looking man who had with him some foreigners or some foreign-looking people who got in a vehicle at a truck stop near Albemarle.”

“We were indeed.”

“And you were very interested in a green vehicle that looked like it was made by Ford because—and here I may be jumping to conclusions—the scary-looking guy had abandoned Amos’s LaCrosse.”

“Yes, Mrs. Ponder. We are looking for a green vehicle, but so far we haven’t been able to identify it. The video we have is inconclusive and from what we understand the FBI hasn’t been able to make much progress yet either.”

“Well, that’s where we maybe can help each other out, Mr. Colton. We figured the scary man with the foreign-looking friends wasn’t from around there. So if he just dropped off Amos’s LaCrosse, he would’ve had to steal another car—meaning the green vehicle—or he had to have bought or rented that car, right?”