Eric Lustbader - Last Snow

“Back!” he said. “Back inside the house!”

Floodlights snapped on from the tree line on either side of the driveway, blinding them. Then came the furious shouts, followed by gunfire.

TEN

“SBU,” ANNIKA shouted over the hail of gunfire as they retreated into the dacha. Ukrainian Security Service. “Shoot first, ask questions afterward. This is their method of operation.”

“They were waiting for someone to show up,” Jack said, “and we obliged them.”

Annika slammed the door shut and locked it. Jack was holding on to Alli, shielding her from the possibility of a bullet that might find its way through the wooden door. Handing a reluctant Alli off to Annika, he ran to the hearth. Grabbing fire tongs, he picked a burning log off the fire, brought it back to the entryway, where he kicked over the side table. The ceramic vase crashed to the floor, spilling its contents. The hail of bullets had ceased, but the shouts of the SBU operatives were growing louder as they ventured nearer the veranda. Jack kicked the dried flowers up against the front door, making sure the pinecones were visible.

Jack dropped the burning log onto the highly flammable pile. With a whoosh, the pine pitch in the cones ignited and flames exploded. Almost immediately, the paint started to peel off the door, smoldering, catching fire itself. Soon enough, the wood was starting to burn. Jack ripped the curtains off the nearest window and threw them onto the pyre.

“Annika, your lighter,” he said. “The fluid.”

She nodded, fished in her handbag, and drew out the lighter. Unscrewing a knob on the bottom, she emptied the lighter fluid onto the curtains, then stepped back as the flames roared upward so intensely they began to lick the ceiling. The heat was fierce; paint was peeling and melting everywhere. The side table was afire.

“Let’s go!” he said, grabbing Alli’s hand and, with Annika on his heels, ran through the house. In the darkened kitchen, he said to Annika, “Take Alli into the pantry and open the window. The high hedge will protect you.”

Annika nodded in understanding. “What about you?”

“I’ll follow you,” he said. He gave Alli a smile of encouragement. “Get going. Now!”

He waited, watching through the open pantry door as Annika opened the window and climbed through, then turned back, helping Alli over the sill. Then he went through the drawers until he found a flashlight and a roll of black electrician’s tape. The flashlight was military issue, large and heavy, with a thick waterproof coating. He attached it to the end of a broom handle with a length of the tape. Then he positioned two chairs in front of the door and rested his makeshift contraption on the top slat of the chair backs at a height that he estimated was the one at which he would hold the flashlight if he were coming through the door. He unplugged the toaster, then carefully crept to the door and tied the end of the toaster’s cord to the knob, then unlocked and unlatched the door. He crept back to the flashlight, paying out the cord as he went.

He could hear crashes from the front of the dacha. Either the SBU men were attempting to knock down the fiery front door or trying to gain entrance through the same open window he’d used. Either way, he’d run out of time.

He pulled on the cord attached to the knob. The door opened inward, and as he switched on the flashlight, the beam shot out into the night. Immediately, shots were fired by the men who, as he surmised, were stationed at the rear of the dacha.

He dropped the cord and, scuttling across the kitchen into the pantry, climbed through the open window to the area behind the hedge where Annika and Alli waited, crouched over. Even from behind this screening they could smell the fire and, if they craned their necks, see the lick of flames shooting up into the darkened sky.

Jack led them out through the side of the hedge furthest from the back of the dacha and the men who must already be rushing, guns blazing, through the back door. On this side of the house, there was only a narrow expanse until the tree line rose up, black and solid-seeming as a stone wall. Jack took Alli against his shoulder, ran crouched over across the open space and into the evergreens. Behind him, Annika kept pace.

She was almost into the first pines when a black shape shot across the open space and slammed her to the ground. In the lurid, inconstant light of the growing blaze Jack saw the man claw his way on top of her. He had a handgun out, but Annika batted it away with the edge of one hand. He was bent low over her, panting like a bloodhound. The firelight illuminated his long, lupine face, lips pulled back from teeth clamped tight in his effort to subdue her.

Annika kicked upward, managing to upend his balance for just a moment, but she was unable to overcome his superior weight, and he struck her a hard blow on her cheek. Jack saw droplets of blood, black as tar in the light.

“Stay put,” he whispered to Alli.

Her eyes were wide and staring. “Jack!”

He squeezed her shoulder briefly. “No matter what happens, don’t leave the protection of the trees.”

The SBU goon had drawn his fist back to deliver another heavy blow and Jack was already outside the tree line, moving toward him, when Annika drove the arrow or spear or whatever it was that Karl Rochev had used to murder his mistress deep into the man’s chest. His eyes opened wide in shock and pain, his cocked fist went slack. Then Jack was on him, pulling him off Annika, giving her a hand up.

“Come on,” he urged as she bent over the body. He saw her pocket his pistol and then her hands were busy with another task. “What the hell are you doing?”

She had one shoe on the man’s chest, her hand gripping the shaft of the weapon.

“For God’s sake, leave it!”

“No,” she said. “We have to take it with us.” With a great heave, she ripped the diamond-shaped point out of the flesh and fabric.

Then, regaining the dense shadows of the forest, they were off and running from the burning dacha and its complement of Security Service agents.

IT WAS Jack’s dyslexia that allowed him to lead them unerringly through the maze. As they had walked down the driveway on the way in, his mind had formed a three-dimensional map of the area surrounding the dacha. Their car lay just as they had left it, hidden beneath the screen of intertwined hemlock branches. He motioned them down and they sat on their hams while he listened and looked for anything out of the ordinary. It had been the crow’s absence that had warned him of people in the area. The bird would never have abandoned guarding its nest had it not been scared away by the surreptitious creep of huge creatures on the ground.

Still, he had them hang back while he moved cautiously forward, crouched and tense, his Mauser at the ready. Moving against the car, he pulled open the rear door, stuck the muzzle of the Mauser inside, but there was nothing to see. Climbing in, he stuck it over the driver’s seat back. The car was deserted. Checking the gearshift, he found the toothpick just as he’d left it. He let out a breath. No one had been in the car. Still, he checked the trunk before he signaled Alli and Annika that it was safe to approach.

Gathering Alli to him, he put her into the car. He turned, scanning the woods again as Annika rose and ran toward them. He saw a dim glint in the trees at the same instant a shot spun Annika around. She fell, and Jack, pumping off three shots on the run, grabbed her, hauled her to her feet and, one arm wrapped around her slim waist, brought her back to the car. As he maneuvered her into the backseat he could see the wound, which by its size looked like it had been made by a rifle bullet. He slid behind the wheel as floodlights began to appear through the narrow gaps in the hemlocks and pines.