Джеффри Дивер - The Goodbye Man

“Yessir,” Gray wheezed, still not recovered from Shaw’s love tap. He and Squat turned and hurried south.

Hugh noted his boss’s dismay. He touched Eli’s arm and repeated softly, “We’ll find something else, David.”

“Something good,” the cult leader muttered absently. He was still numb.

“Yes. It’ll be good. Overseas. Somewhere. Just as good as this.”

His eyes wet with tears, Eli glanced at Shaw once more. His bewildered gaze was perhaps more chilling than the livid hatred of moments earlier.

Eli gestured to Timothy, the Journeyman who had accompanied Shaw to the Square, who stepped close. They had a brief conversation. The man nodded. Eli and Hugh walked into the woods to the hidden path to go to the Administration building and collect any incriminating evidence and either destroy it or escape with it and dump it later.

Shaw turned toward Thomas, still holding the gun. “I need that weapon.”

“What you need doesn’t matter to us.” He put his arm around Carole’s shoulders. He gestured at the gun. “Don’t try to take it.”

Shaw didn’t try to take it.

He jogged into the forest and turned up the trail after Eli and Hugh. In a few minutes they would pass Building C, behind which his war club was hidden. That — and the element of surprise — would give him some advantage.

“David!” a woman’s voice behind him called. Shaw glanced back. It was Anja. “Please, David. Let me explain!”

Eli stopped. His face was emotionless as he looked back, seeing both Shaw and, about thirty feet behind, Anja. Eli’s eyes cut to the other side of a row of brush — where Timothy had been walking parallel. He was about even with Anja.

It was at that moment that Shaw noted that Timothy had removed his sweater. He was not wearing an amulet.

He was a Select, a suicide killer.

Master Eli’s training me himself...

The man nodded to his boss, pulled a box cutter from beneath his tunic and charged into the brush.

“Anja!” Shaw sprinted toward her too.

Before he got close, Timothy was on her, grabbing the woman by the hair.

She gasped, “No... Please, Timothy.”

Without hesitating, he drew the knife across the pale flesh of her throat. Blood cascaded and the woman dropped to her knees, then onto her side, her voice keening in horror.

Timothy glanced toward Shaw. Then the man who laughed at sitcoms and who loved to hum and was perhaps hoping for a spot on a choir in Omaha come the advent of autumn took a deep breath and gave the farewell salute — the double-arm cross. He called, “Goodbye... until tomorrow.” And slashed his own jugular.

With a perfunctory look back at the woman who had been his longtime lover, Eli turned and hurried north, accompanied by Hugh.

Shaw sprinted to Anja. He’d been trained in the procedure for combat neck trauma. The classic treatment formula of “ABC” — airway, breathing, circulation — went out the window. There’s no point in clearing an airway if there’s no blood getting to the brain because it’s flowing onto the sidewalk. This procedure was HABC. Hemorrhage , airway, breathing, circulation. The only way to save a victim of a wound like this is pressure, a lot of pressure, which was what Shaw dropped to his knees and applied now.

“Please,” she gasped.

“Shhhh, I’ve seen worse. You’ll be okay.”

He hadn’t, and she probably wouldn’t.

She grew more ashen yet beneath her carefully painted-on makeup.

Shaw glanced up the trail and saw Eli and Hugh disappear toward the Administration building. He could only watch them hurry away.

Goddamn.

A voice called, “I’ll do it. You go after him.”

It was Steve.

“Get down here,” Shaw instructed.

The man crouched.

“No. You need to be on your knees or sitting. This could be a while.”

The slim young man did as instructed.

Shaw said, “Follow my fingers.”

This he did too, tentatively, as the blood coursed rich and red over his skin. Then with more confidence.

“He...” Steve was whispering. “Master Eli. He...”

“I know. It’s tough. But you need to concentrate.”

“Okay.”

“Feel the flaps of skin?”

“There? Yes.”

Anja started to speak, then fell silent. Her eyes closed.

Shaw said to Steve, “It’s not severed all the way. We can keep her alive. Clamp the slash. It’ll be slippery but you’ll have to do it. Use your nails for a grip. As hard as you can.”

“All right.”

“There.”

“I’ve got it.”

Shaw looked over the wound. “Good.”

He rose, wiping blood from his hands, and saw movement nearby, a couple. Apprentices. Shaw called them over.

“We need help,” he said.

“My God, what happened?” the man asked, as they joined him.

“Get somebody from the clinic here. Now.”

“We will,” the woman said. They turned and jogged away quickly.

To Shaw, Steve said, “Go. Stop him.”

Sprinting.

Shaw couldn’t see Eli and Hugh ahead, though the two couldn’t be far. If he was lucky he’d catch up to the men near Shaw’s dorm, where the war club still lay.

Then: a flash of white. Yes, up ahead, there they were, Hugh and Eli, still alone, moving north toward the Administration building. Shaw slipped off the path into the forest to the east, where he could use trees and brush for cover as he closed the distance to his targets.

Hugh was right. The Foundation was over. Even if some still desired to believe, the precarious fantasy Eli had spun was shattered. That Eli had a go-bag in his basement meant he had an escape plan. He and Hugh would get away, leaving the remaining AUs to barricade the camp. When the police arrived, they would buy time for their boss by telling the tactical forces and negotiators that he was still here. Maybe one would pretend to be him. This would keep the authorities tied up for hours, days maybe, while the cult leader fled the country. With his resources, Eli surely had access to a private jet.

Shaw was sticking to the thickets of brush along the hidden path. He realized he’d intercept them just before they made it to the Assistance Unit. Eli and Hugh were looking back occasionally and, not seeing Shaw, would assume he was still with Anja, trying to keep her alive. Eli had probably ordered Timothy to attack the woman partially to keep Shaw occupied while they made their escape.

Shaw decided he would have to forgo the club; he couldn’t afford the time it would take to grab it. He’d continue after the two men, come up quietly, then attack. Hugh would have to go down first, of course; a hard tackle, a paralyzing knee to the solar plexus, then a frisk for a gun. He guessed that wouldn’t stop Eli, who would, in an instant, leave his friend behind and run. Shaw would have to pursue on foot and disable him too. Hugh would have zip ties; Shaw would use those to bind both men and drag them in the woods until he could get a phone.

He gave the plan a seventy percent chance of working. He hurried through the brush until he was only about thirty feet from the men, who seemed wholly unaware of his presence.

He felt confident he could take them by surprise. Make it eighty percent.

And those odds held right up to the instant two AUs from the front and two from behind rushed him.

Shaw understood why the foursome had gotten so close without his seeing. He’d been looking for gray tunics; these men were in the camo that Frederick had mentioned. Those from the rear slammed into Shaw hard. He went down, flat, breath kicked from his lungs. Before he could struggle upright, his hands were zip-tied behind him and he was being pulled to his feet.

“Jesus. What’s with the blood? Is he dying?”