Steve Martini - The Rule of Nine

“You got him?” said Thorn.

“He’s mine.” Liquida withdrew the knife from its victim, straightened up, and looked over at Thorn. “Go. I’ll finish up.” Blood dripped off the tip of the stiletto as he stood there like a butcher over his quarry.

“Good work,” said Thorn. He turned and ran toward the exit sign at the back of the building.

Liquida watched him as he went. He stood there, his feet straddling the big, bald black man he had seen in every dark dream since that night in Costa Rica almost a year before. Liquida looked down at him. “I will make it quick, but you must know before you die that I have found the girl. Madriani’s daughter will die next, before he goes into his own grave.”

Liquida leaned down, drew the nine-inch stiletto back for the death plunge into the man’s chest, and felt a searing fire erupt from his right shoulder blade, all the way through to the muscles under his arm. He jumped back quickly, like a man who’s been snake bitten. He reached across his body with his left hand to grip his dead right forearm at the wrist.

The bloody stiletto toppled from his numb fingers and rattled onto the concrete pavement at his feet. His right hand had no feeling. Liquida was unable to grip or even close the fingers of his right hand into a weak fist.

Blood poured from the wound under Liquida’s arm as Herman lay on his back, his head raised up off the pavement. He was smiling. The open four-inch ceramic blade from Thorn’s exotic folding knife was in his right hand as his vision began to blur. He reached out feebly with the blade and drew it across the fading form of Liquida. In his final delirium his sight had lost any sense of depth.

The Mexican was standing three feet away from him, fury in his eyes.

Herman’s head settled back onto the concrete as his vision went dark and what shallow breath was left abandoned his body.

With his right arm hanging limp at his side, Liquida kicked the knife out of Herman’s hand. It skidded across the concrete and under one of the cars.

Liquida was breathing heavily as he heard the pounding of feet on the pavement coming this way. He turned and looked and saw the form of a man running into the dark parking structure from the sunlit outside. He looked down at the dying form at his feet, reached around and felt the warm blood oozing down his own back, and decided that discretion was the better part of valor.

I get only a fleeting glimpse of a running form in the distance as I walk and then run down between the lane of parked cars. I see the spreading pool of blood from under Herman’s body as I jump and curse and pound my hands on my thighs.

“HELP!” I yell at the top of my lungs. “Anybody! I need help now!”

I am down on both knees hovering over Herman, the man who has saved me so many times. There is blood on his chest but I see no wounds, yet the pool on the concrete beneath him is spreading. “Call an ambulance! I need help!”

Herman is trying to say something, but he’s unable to speak. He mouths the word “Liquida” and points with a trembling finger toward the bloody stiletto lying on the concrete. He tries to say something else: “Ssss…Sa…” and loses consciousness.

I roll him over onto his stomach. It takes all my strength. As he goes over I see the wound in his back still oozing blood, then a spurt and bubbles of air.

“That’s good,” I tell him. I get down in Herman’s ear. “Stay with me,” I tell him. I tear off my shirt, pulling it over my head. “Damn it! Can you hear me?” I scream at the guy in the kiosk out front. “There’s a man dying, I need HELP NOW!”

I press my shirt against the open wound to seal it, using my knees to apply as much pressure as I can, then grapple for my phone with a bloody finger. I hit the button and look for a signal. Nothing. The concrete of the garage has my phone sealed off. I drop it onto the concrete and yell for help.

“What’s happened?”

I turn my head. It’s the guy from the kiosk.

“Call 911. Get an ambulance. He’s been stabbed.”

He runs for the door.

I press down on Herman’s back, trying to clear the blood from his lungs while pressing the shirt against the wound with my knee.

I am wondering where the police and the FBI are as I try to stanch the bleeding and get him to breathe. I still see bubbles from the wound as I press down on his back.

“They’re on their way.” The parking attendant from the kiosk is behind me. Then suddenly two or three more people. One of them is a nurse. She grabs her large handbag, reaches inside it, and finds a sandwich in a plastic bag. She opens up the bag, tosses the sandwich, flattens the bag out, and says: “Move that!” She’s talking about my bloody shirt.

She lifts Herman’s blood-soaked shirt, pulling it out of the way, and places the plastic sandwich bag directly over the open wound. “Here, help me get his belt off.”

I roll him up onto his side, reach underneath, and unbuckle it.

She grabs the buckle end and yanks it several times until it comes free from his pants. She puts the belt under his chest, tells me to lay him down flat on his stomach, and fastens the belt directly over the plastic bag and the wound. She runs the open end of the belt through the buckle and pulls it as tight as she can. She puts her knee against the center of his back and pulls harder. “I know this looks bad, but it’s a sucking chest wound and I have to seal it off or else he’ll drown in his own blood.”

I notice that the bubbles stop.

She opens Herman’s mouth, reaches between his teeth with two fingers, and scoops out blood. She does this two or three times, each time reaching back farther toward his throat to clear his airway.

We roll him onto his back and she starts doing heavy compressions on his chest as I open his mouth, move his tongue out of the way, and try to blow air into his lungs.

Zeb Thorpe had been in the command center at FBI headquarters since shortly after six that morning. He was called in early on an emergency in New York and was busy watching live images on a screen as transit authorities, police in New York, and construction workers tried to stabilize a cement truck and pull it away from an open cavern over the Fulton Street subway station.

Transit police had managed to stop the truck, but four of the eight rear wheels on the dual doubles were already over the edge of the hole.

Thorpe believed he already knew what was on board the truck, and it wasn’t cement. Victor Soyev, the Russian arms merchant, had given them leads, all of them pointing to New York as the target. Thorpe’s people had turned over every rock until they found the garage in upstate New York where the work had been done. From there they were within hours of running the thing down when the cement truck turned up at the building site.

The bomb squad had already confirmed that the mixing drum on the back of the truck was welded into position so that it couldn’t turn. And there were wires leading from the drum through holes in the cab to a metal box that appeared to be a triggering device. Transit police had shot the driver dead before his hands could reach the trigger.

But if the rear wheels slid a few more inches, the front end of the truck would lift up and the entire vehicle would tumble into the open cavern below. The bomb squad was concerned that a trembler switch might be connected to the detonator. If so, any sudden jarring would set it off.

Authorities were desperately trying to clear the subway below, to get everyone out, as workers used a heavy cable from one of the construction cranes and a D9 Caterpillar bulldozer to try to stabilize the truck and pull it back from the opening. The question was whether the bulldozer was heavy enough, or if the weight of the truck and the mammoth air-fuel bomb might pull the entire truck down into the hole.