David Baldacci - Deliver Us From Evil

“Like what?” said Rice.

Shaw said, “I figure we’re in Newfoundland or Labrador.”

“It’s Labrador, right on the edge of the coast.”

“How did you know that?” Reggie asked Shaw.

“I had a lot of time to count seconds,” he answered.

Rice snapped, “There’s nothing out here. We’re screwed. We’re dead.”

They passed a small pond of scummy water. Before Shaw could react, Reggie had grabbed Rice, hauled him over to the pond, and pushed him in. He went under and then came up sputtering. She pushed him under again and held him there for several seconds.

When he came up again he screamed, “What the hell are you doing?”

“Just in case you have an electronic tracker on you,” she said. “Water and electronics don’t play well with each other.”

Shaw glanced over at her. “Nice catch. I should’ve thought of it.”

“Figured it wouldn’t be past Kuchin to plant a spy with us under the pretense of punishing his guy.”

“Let’s keep moving,” said Shaw.

As they jogged along Shaw said, “What else can you tell us?”

“He has hunting dogs too, follow any scent.”

“That’s another reason they took our clothes,” Shaw said. “For the dogs.”

“Has he done this before? Hunted people?”

“Well, I know he doesn’t hunt animals. He told me once he hated it.”

Reggie grimaced. “Well, there’s your answer. He has hunting dogs but doesn’t hunt animals.”

“At least not animals on four legs,” said Shaw.

“He’s cruel and unpredictable,” added Rice.

“The cruel part I get. It’s the unpredictable part I’m worried about.” Shaw looked around. “Are we heading towards the way someone would drive in here?”

“It’s hard to tell in the dark, but I think so.”

“What’s close?”

“Nothing. Well, there’s an airstrip about forty kilometers in the direction we’re heading, but the last time I looked we don’t have a plane. Goose Bay is maybe the closest town, but it’s a long way. Hours by car, days on foot.”

“Does he have weapons here?”

“You’re kidding, right? He has a gun safe in the house full of them.”

“You know the combination to that safe?”

“Oh yeah, I’ve got it right here in my pocket.”

Shaw jerked hard on the man’s arm and stopped, nearly throwing Rice to the ground. “We can just leave your ass back there for Kuchin to chew on first. You want that? Or do you want to stop with the wiseass cracks and try to help us here?”

“I don’t know anything that can help you. I’ve been here before lots of times, but I just fly in and out. I almost never leave the house. Waller, Kuchin, whatever the hell his real name is, he knows this area better than anyone.”

“That’s reassuring,” said Reggie grimly.

“If he has dogs,” Shaw said, “we have to address that.”

They started jogging again.

“How?” asked Reggie.

“Change our scent.”

“How do we do that?” asked Rice as he puffed along beside them. “I thought dogs couldn’t be fooled.”

“Anything can be fooled, even scent dogs. And we have an advantage.”

“What?” asked Reggie.

“Take a whiff.”

“What?”

“Take a deep breath.”

Both she and Rice drew in heavy breaths. Rice almost gagged while Reggie wrinkled her nose. “Rotten eggs,” she said.

“Sulfur dioxide,” amended Shaw. “There’s probably a lot of metamorphic rock around here. That means a lot of sulfur. Probably some sulfur pools too.”

“So you mean?” Reggie began slowly.

“We cover ourselves in the smell. That way we smell like everything around here. It’s not perfect, but we may confuse the dogs just enough. And we don’t have a lot of options. And we need to turn our jumpsuits inside out. The lining color stands out a lot less than the neon yellow.”

He ran ahead to tell Whit this. They reversed their jumpsuits and twenty minutes later, following a stronger odor, they found a shallow pool of water that reeked of the naturally occurring mineral.

“We have to go in that?” exclaimed Rice.

“If you want to live a little longer, yeah,” said Shaw. “Just don’t drink it.”

Drenched, chilled, and smelling horribly, they continued on west for a bit longer before Shaw brought them to a stop, looking frustrated. “This is all wrong.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” demanded Whit, his wet hair down in his eyes. “We’re trying to stay ahead of the guy. He’s back there coming this way. So we have to go that way.” He pointed straight ahead.

“And that’s exactly what he wants. He told us to go this way, Whit. Why do you think that is?”

Reggie answered, “Ambush? Driving us to a perimeter?”

“That’s what I’m thinking. I didn’t actually believe the guy when he said it was just him against us.”

“And so what do we do about it?” asked Whit.

“I’ve always taken it as a good tactic that when your opponent expects you to go left you go right.”

“Meaning?”

Shaw said, “Meaning we skirt the ground we just covered and head back to the house.”

“What if he thought we’d do that and plans to ambush us that way?”

“Then he probably deserves to win.”

“He will win,” whined Rice.

Before Shaw could react, Reggie grabbed Rice by the neck and squeezed. “Tell me something, you bloody piece of shit. Were you cheating him on the shipping costs?”

Rice said nothing. She squeezed harder. “Were you!”

“Yes.”

“And you did try to shoot him?”

Rice nodded, looking miserable.

“Then damn you for missing the bastard. Now let’s go.”

KUCHIN WALKED ALONE, his rifle in his right hand, muzzle down. Up ahead he could hear the baying of the hounds. It really wouldn’t matter, though, whether the animals were able to get on the track or not. Scents up here were problematic because of the terrain and the composition of the underlying rock. He felt certain that a man like Shaw would have experience in dodging even experienced scent hounds. This was a chess match and one had to think of the current and at least four future moves. Kuchin had followed traitors through the muck, mud, ice, and waters of Ukraine as part of his duties with the KGB. He had almost always succeeded, aided by an internal desire never to concede defeat. It was the same attribute that had fueled his swift rise up the security agency’s ladder. Superiors loved men like Kuchin, because they made them look good to their superiors.

He had long debated how to do this. Part of him strongly wanted to tie each of them naked to a table and then pull out his little metal suitcase. He wanted to peel off their skin, cut out their intestines, and put them through torture that Abdul-Majeed, mutilated as he was, could never have imagined. But he had finally decided against that. He had done so principally because unlike Abdul-Majeed they had shown courage. They had confronted him directly, risking their lives. They had not hidden like the Muslim and let a drugged-out lackey attempt to do the killing. For that Kuchin had grudging respect for the group. Rice was another matter. He would die either way, but Kuchin had placed him with the others solely as a matter of convenience. He did not intend on wasting too much time with Alan Rice. The man did not deserve it.

That left only the hunt. Here, on his home turf, Kuchin had given them a sporting chance, if a poor sporting chance. He was not a fool. He would survive this, they would not. But at least they had an opportunity to postpone their deaths a bit. And it wasn’t as though Kuchin would escape either. In a way he’d come full circle. They knew about his little room at his penthouse. Others undoubtedly knew of it too. They were probably there right now gathering all the evidence they needed to send him to Ukraine to stand trial, with his execution the inevitable outcome.