David Baldacci - Deliver Us From Evil

Shaw said, “This is our last chance, Reggie. The only way we get out of this is to smoke him out.”

“How?”

“Muzzle flash. We haven’t seen one yet, but it’s still dark enough for the light to be clearly visible when it comes.”

“How are you going to manage that?”

“By making him fire again.”

“I know that, but how!” she said fiercely.

He pointed up ahead. “I’m going to run in a straight line directly in front of you from right to left. You keep your eyes up there. The flash will come from that direction. He’s close. I could tell from the sound of the discharge. It wasn’t fired from a distance.”

“Shaw, you-”

He looked over at Whit moaning on the ground. “When the muzzle flash comes-”

“Shaw, I can’t-”

He slapped her in the face so hard it left her cheek red and raw. “Don’t tell me what you can’t do. You will do this.”

She looked stunned from his strike but her eyes didn’t water. They appeared to harden. He seemed to notice this and his voice softened a notch. “You can make this shot, Reggie. I’ve seen you do it on the firing range. Six inches below the muzzle flash. Place a triple tap right there, grouped close. He won’t be wearing body armor because he doesn’t know we have a gun. As soon as you do it, you and Katie help Whit back to the coastline, and wait for Frank there.” He handed her the cell phone. “Keep calling him to check his progress and that way he should be able to link on the GPS chip in the phone.”

Reggie licked her lips. “Shaw?” she began.

“Just do it, Reggie. Just finish it. For me.”

She finally nodded dumbly and he immediately turned from her and stood half bent over.

“Shaw,” screamed Katie as she rose from the dirt and moved toward him. “Look out.”

Shaw glanced to his left. The son of a bitch had changed positions somehow, with the silence of a ghost. And he looked ghostly too, through the cover of fog. There was Kuchin, rifle already raised and ready to fire. With a weapon like that it was really point-blank. He couldn’t miss.

Shaw threw out his arms a split second before the shot. He felt the bullet burn across the surface of his right limb. As he lowered his arms, he wondered how the man could have missed that badly at this range. Then, like an avalanche, the truth came and crushed him.

“Katie!”

He turned in time to see Katie James toppling backward from the force of the ordnance that had just blown through her. The wisps of her blonde hair flew outward as the round exited her back and splattered into a rock behind her. She hit the ground, bounced slightly, and lay still.

Kuchin stood there, barely forty feet away. He looked down at the fallen woman and then up at Shaw, who could not draw his gaze from her.

Kuchin said, “I told you if you followed my instructions to the letter she would be released unharmed. Instead, you disobeyed me. You went back to the house and took her. You broke our compact. You are actually the reason for her death, my friend.”

By millimeter increments Shaw pulled his gaze from Katie to Kuchin. From the look in the man’s eyes, he realized that this had all been planned. No guards at the house, Katie all alone. A truck coming in at the end and a handful of shots fired to make it look good. It hadn’t been a planned ambush. He’d wanted Shaw to rescue Katie. Break the agreement. And he’d walked right into the trap. Fallen for it like the greenest sucker on earth.

With a blur of motion fueled by a level of rage he’d only felt one other time in his life, Shaw exploded forward and within four seconds had covered nearly all the ground between him and Kuchin, his knife raised in a killing position. But it had taken Kuchin less time than that to raise his rifle once more and take careful aim. Shaw’s brain was sighted clearly on his American-made reticle that had never missed its target. Right before he fired a swirl of fog covered Kuchin completely.

The shot came. Then another. And then a final one.

Kuchin lowered the rifle even as Shaw leapt. Then the rifle fell to the dirt as the Ukrainian’s grip weakened and blood started to spurt out of the three holes in his chest. The shots were so closely grouped that all three bullets had smashed into his heart.

Reggie lowered the pistol. The smoky firing range had paid off. She had just memorized where he was behind the fog. And this time the target hadn’t moved.

Kuchin dropped to his knees, his eyes wide with disbelief about what had just happened. This was so even though the man was already medically dead. Scientists sometimes referred to this as the “technical soul,” the last synaptic firing from a dead brain that left some trace of reason despite physical life already having come to an end.

An instant later, Shaw collided with Kuchin and drove the knife right through his skull with such force that it broke off at the handle. Fedir Kuchin fell backwards with Shaw on top of him. And he hit him, once, twice, the blows accelerating, raining down on the dead man until there was no face left, only tissue that had been turned to pulp as Shaw’s knuckles cracked and his hands bled.

“Shaw! He’s dead. He’s dead.”

Reggie tried to pull him off, but he used one big arm to knock her off her feet. Then, seeming to realize what had happened, Shaw jumped up and raced to Katie. He checked her pulse but couldn’t find one. He straddled her, pumped her chest, then pinched her nose and blew air into her mouth. He pumped and blew. Pushing down on her chest, forcing air into lungs that refused to expand. But then she finally gave a moan, her body jerked, and she took an enormous breath.

Shaw looked up at Reggie, who’d raced over next to him. “Help me. Please.”

While Shaw cradled Katie’s head in his arms, Reggie opened her shirt and checked the wound.

“It went through her,” she said. “But it entered very close to her heart.” She dressed the wound and stopped the bleeding as best as she could. Shaw called Frank and told him what had happened. They were bringing a medical team with them, he told Shaw.

As Katie slowly breathed in and out, Reggie sat back on her haunches, looked over at Whit, who lay on the dirt clutching his leg and quietly moaning. Next, she stared over at Kuchin’s battered body and she remembered something. “May God understand why I do this,” she mumbled, then crossed herself.

When Reggie noticed that Shaw’s arm was bleeding she pulled up his sleeve, saw the bullet track scored into his skin.

“You fouled his shot,” she said.

“What?” said Shaw.

“His shot hit your arm before it hit her. You screwed the trajectory. He was probably aiming for her head. From what he said, he thought it was a kill shot for certain.”

Shaw looked at Katie, clearly not interested in this. “I’m the reason she got shot in the first place.”

“Shaw, you saved her life.”

“Not yet,” he said, a sob escaping his lips. “Not yet.” He held Katie as tightly as he could, as though that would prevent life from leaving her. And from the woman leaving him.

KATIE AND WHIT were treated on the plane by a medical team Frank had brought. When they landed in Boston they were both rushed to a trauma hospital. Shaw, Reggie, and Frank sat in the waiting room for hours, Frank drinking cup after cup of bad vending-machine coffee while Shaw just stared at the floor. The doctors came out to tell them that Whit was fine and would fully recover. Then more hours passed.

Shaw stirred when a tall man and woman walked past the waiting room. It was Katie’s parents. He recognized them from a photo she’d once shown him. They looked both exhausted and frantic. They were with their daughter for an hour before they came back out and into the waiting room.