Doc Ford 19 - Chasing Midnight (26 page)

I rocked back to reduce the pressure on his knee. At the same instant, I snared the rifle from beneath his belly and got my first good look at the thing. Even though it was dark and we were in the shadows of a gumbo-limbo tree, I recognized the weapon. It was a shortened carbine version of some kind of sniper rifle, judging from the scope; a precision shooting instrument. There was no way to be sure how close the slug had come to hitting me, but it had slammed into the sailboat’s cabin more than a foot from my head. How had a trained bodyguard missed a man-sized target only a hundred yards away?

I pressed the rifle’s magazine release, ejected the chambered round, then placed the weapon nearby before cradling the man’s throat in my hands. As I applied pressure to his jugular vein, I whispered, “You shot at me tonight and missed intentionally. Why?”

When he refused to answer with a shake of his head, I stopped the flow of blood to his brain until he tapped my arm frantically, telling me he’d had enough.

“You were on sailboat?” he croaked after taking several breaths. “Abdul say kill you, but why go to prison for murder? So I missed. Abdul is lying bitch, don’t care nothing what happens to me. He tells me I’m fired, I tell him, ‘Lying bitch, I quit.’” Then the bodyguard grunted and said, “My leg… my leg is broken. Need doctor—son-bitch hurts!”

I released the guard’s throat and reduced the pressure on his back by getting to my knees. “Did you see a man with long hair go into the house? Maybe five minutes ago, he just got here.”

The bodyguard shook his head—
No
—and said, “Need ice for leg. Drugs for pain—son-bitch, this is bad! Don’t tell Abdul, maybe he kill me and blame you to police. He most total lying bitch ever. Seen him kill two men, always blame someone else.”

It was useful information, but I didn’t have time to pursue it. I swung off the bodyguard and checked his feet because I needed something to restrain the guy. He was wearing running shoes, which was good enough. As I removed his shoelaces, I said, “There’s another man inside with your boss. Who is it?”

“You have pills?”

“I’ll give you an injection for the pain. But later.”

The man swore softly in Russian as he rolled onto his side and explored his shattered knee with his hand. I was about to repeat my question when he said, “Mr. Kazlov is in house. Soon after lights go out, he escape from lodge. He show up asking for help because he afraid they find him on his boat. The hippies, they shoot him, but not too bad. Shoot him in ass, lots of blood, though. Too much blood, I think. Abdul think that very funny. But tell him, ‘Sure, come in, I protect you from crazy hippies.’ The woman bring him.”

Geness Neinabor
hadn’t
missed, apparently. I had the shoelaces out and was deciding whether to trust the bodyguard or tie his hands as a precaution. I could guess who the woman was but I asked, anyway.

The injured man told me, “Beautiful Chinese girl, she married to Mr. Bohai. Girl with big”—the bodyguard held a cupped hand to his chest to illustrate breasts—“and long hair. Not very good wife, that woman, because sometimes she in Abdul’s bed. Many times with Mr. Kazlov, too, I think. Every meeting with Mr. Bohai, those two fight over who be with her when old man sleeping.”

I nodded and knelt to retrieve the rifle and magazine. I hadn’t seen Bohai’s young wife through the thermal monocular. She would have been unmistakable because the guard had described her physical attributes accurately, which meant she had been in another room. Otherwise, the tally was right. Three men: Armanie, Kazlov and Tomlinson,
although it seemed odd that Kazlov was still on his feet after being shot.

I checked the shadows around our perimeter, still wary of Geness Neinabor, and asked, “Did your boss care enough about Bohai’s wife to kill the old man?”

“Old Mr. Bohai was shot tonight?” The bodyguard’s surprise sounded genuine. “Abdul, he maybe kill because he hate, but not because he love. Mr. Kazlov, though, I think he care for the bad woman. His boat captain, we good friends, and he tell me Mr. Kazlov will do any stupid thing for that bitch.”

“Vladimir?”

“We serve Russian Army together. You know Vladie? When we have enough money, we open a restaurant maybe. Hell with this shit, working for crazy assholes.”

My respect for Russians, already considerable, was growing by the minute. I thought for a moment, then stuffed the shoelaces in my back pocket. “There’s a chair by the pool, I’ll help you. But I want your word you won’t try something stupid. Any other weapons on you?”

The bodyguard shook his head but I frisked him anyway as he asked, “What means, ‘want word’?”

I stood and showed him a switchblade knife, plus a full magazine of .308 cartridges, I’d just found in the cargo pocket of his slacks. “It means don’t lie to me again. Or I’ll tie your hands, leave you out here all night. No pain pills, no doctor. Understand?”

In the man’s pockets, I’d also found a surgical glove stuffed with several more gloves—standard equipment for a professional who might be required to kill without leaving fingerprints. Because I had no idea of what I might be forced to do before the night was over, I snapped on a pair of elastic gloves, then jammed another pair into my pocket.

One arm around my shoulder, I helped the bodyguard hobble toward the pool thirty yards away. It was slow going, which was exasperating because it was 1:30 a.m., only fifteen minutes before the twins executed Sharon. When I realized the time, I dumped the guy over my shoulder and carried him fireman style.

I’d give it five more minutes, I decided. I couldn’t risk waiting any longer to return to the lodge—no matter what.

As I placed the man on a wooden pool lounger, I noticed a balloon of candlelight crossing an upstairs window. Taking a couple of steps back to get a better angle, I got a quick look at Armanie, then possibly Tomlinson and maybe a third person, too, although I couldn’t be sure because the candle vanished into another room.

I told the man, “I don’t want to hear a sound out of you,” then rushed to grab the rifle before using the TAM to search the upstairs of the house.

Nothing.

I changed angles, checked again, then ran to the side of the house, where I got lucky. There were two, maybe three people in a corner room, their body heat no longer shielded by multiple walls. The details were blurred, their facial features impossible to distinguish, but they were all flat-chested, so Bohai’s wife wasn’t among them. Two of the men resembled luminous apparitions, auras glazed with phosphorus. The third man was more difficult to decipher because he remained partially screened by what might have been a wall-mounted television.

Could I be certain one of the men was Tomlinson? I adjusted the monocular’s brightness and contrast, then methodically interpreted the data it provided. The heat variations were subtle, the unit’s learning curve slow, but I was catching on.

Yes, Tomlinson had entered the room, sandwiched by two men.
It was confirmed by a web of hair that collected warmth from my friend’s face and shoulders. I also suspected that he was in trouble. I knew it for sure when, a moment later, I watched him thrust out both arms and crouch into what I would have described as a shooter’s position were it anyone but Tomlinson. Yet, he’d reacted so aggressively, I couldn’t explain the movement any other way.

I took several steps backward to get an unrestricted view as I experimented with the focus. Was the black geometric in Tomlinson’s hands a pistol? It seemed an impossibility, yet the object began to assume shape as heat molecules wicked their way in slow progression from his fingers. A radiating line soon formed that revealed a gun barrel’s precision edge. Then a loop of warming metal appeared that could only be a trigger guard.

When I saw the trigger guard, I knew it was true. Tomlinson had a gun and he was using it to threaten either Abdul Armanie or Viktor Kazlov. Armanie probably, because the host would have entered the room first.

How the hell had Tomlinson gotten his hands on a weapon? Not that there was much chance of him actually using the thing. The man was an apostle of nonviolence; a peacenik who refused to even touch a firearm. The incongruity caused me to lower the thermal monocular and blink my mind clear.

When I looked again, though, I no longer doubted what I was seeing. Tomlinson was still in a shooting stance as if moments from pulling the trigger. He had stopped three paces away from a shorter, thicker man. It definitely wasn’t Kazlov. Kazlov was as tall as Tomlinson and almost as lean. Plus, the Russian had taken a bullet in the buttocks and was bleeding badly, according to the bodyguard. He wouldn’t have stood so erect and unflinching while a gun was aimed at his chest.

Yes, it was Armanie. Tomlinson had the man cornered and was ready to shoot.

This
couldn’t
be happening.

If it did happen, though, I knew there wasn’t a damn thing in the world I could do to stop it.

I
felt a morbid sense of the inevitable as I watched Tomlinson hold Armanie at gunpoint, and doubly helpless because Kazlov, who was just as dangerous, stood within easy striking distance only a few yards away.

I had to do something, so I reacted without thinking. I swung the monocular away from my eye, unslung the rifle I was carrying and snapped it to my shoulder. For an absurd moment, I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t decipher details through the scope. Before I bothered checking the lens caps, though, I understood the problem.

Idiot.

Problem was, I’d forgotten the obvious: a conventional rifle scope doesn’t read heat signatures through wooden siding. I could guess where my target was standing—a viable option if everyone in the room was a threat. But I couldn’t open fire with Tomlinson in there. In fact, I couldn’t risk squeezing the trigger no matter what happened.

One gunshot and Sharon Farwell dies.

I considered sprinting to the front of the house and kicking in
the door. From what I’d just witnessed, though, the scene upstairs was degrading by microseconds, not minutes. No… I didn’t have time. For now, all I could do was watch the drama play out, then try to provide backup. I thumbed the rifle’s safety and ran to look through a nearby window. A membrane of light showed through the curtains, and I hoped it would provide a cleaner view of what was happening. If Tomlinson pulled the trigger, if anyone fired a shot, I wanted to be in position to take out one or both of the black marketeers. There was no helping Sharon if a shot was fired, but I might still be able to save my friend.

The window was useless, though, so I changed positions. As I moved, I heard voices from inside the house for the first time. Angry voices suddenly loud enough to pierce the walls. I couldn’t distinguish words, but the escalating volume had the flavor of an argument.

I positioned the thermal unit flush over my eye and took a quick look. In the last thirty seconds, the scene had changed in subtle, dangerous ways.

I could see that Tomlinson, gun in hand, had backed Armanie to the wall. The Iranian had his fingers laced behind his head as if he’d just been taken prisoner. Thermal optics add an X-ray starkness when imaging the human body, so the skeletal framework of Armanie’s teeth and jaws scissored with every word as the two men argued. Kazlov was still behind Tomlinson, his face only partially screened. Now, though, he had a shoulder braced against the doorway, probably because his wound had made him too weak to stand.

Good. It made the Russian less of a threat. But where the hell was Bohai’s wife while all of this was going on? Sakura, that was her name. English translation: “wild cherry blossom.” A benign name for a seditious beauty who’d maintained ongoing affairs with her husband’s rivals. Both of her lovers appeared to be in trouble, so where was their mistress now?

Hiding, I hoped. But that seemed out of character for the opportunist that Umeko had described. “Rich men marry their mistresses because they have so much in common,” she had told me. “They are both ruthless and both are whores.”

Bitter words from the bitter daughter of a man who had been murdered tonight. Yet, I couldn’t fault Umeko’s assessment after what I had just learned about the woman.

I was thinking,
Maybe Sakura’s hiding for a reason,
which caused a fresh suspicion to bloom in my brain: if Tomlinson saved himself by shooting Armanie or Kazlov—unlikely in itself—Sakura might be waiting for him somewhere outside the room. The woman had already proven she was ruthless. Maybe she had already proven that she could kill. If Sakura wanted revenge, Tomlinson would be a helpless target.

Instantly, I regretted the seconds I had just wasted by observing, doing nothing. Before sprinting toward the front entrance, though, I took one last look at what was happening upstairs—which is when, abruptly, everything vanished from my mind because of what I saw.

I watched Tomlinson turn to say something to Kazlov… watched my friend slowly pivot and refocus on Armanie… Then, without additional warning, I watched the pistol buck in Tomlinson’s hands as he fired twice, the slugs hammering the Iranian against the wall, then dragging him downward with inexorable weight.