"You son of a-!" Baker said.
Suddenly the muzzle was gone from her temple, and the pistol was extended before her, firing at Jack. The reports were deafening.
Jack ducked to his left and popped up next to another tree. Baker pumped more rounds at him. But Jack was gone again, only to pop up somewhere else. Baker fired again.
"Your boyfriend thinks he"s smart," Baker whispered. "Know what he"s doing? He"s counting my shots. He knows I"ve got fifteen in the clip. He knows I used one on your brother, one on the gook, and now I"ve knocked off another nine potshotting at him. So he"s thinking, four more shots and-"
Jack popped up again, and Baker fired off a pair of shots.
"There"s two more. Now he"s thinking, two more shots and he"ll charge me while I"m changing the clip. Must think I"m a real jerk. Well, I got news for Mr. Jack. Sam Baker"s changing his clip now now. And won"t Jack-o be surprised when he charges up that rise. Can"t wait to see his face when that slug goes into his chest."
Baker withdrew the pistol behind her. As he let go of her hair, Alicia heard a metallic click, then something hitting the ground. Her mind raced. Was Baker right? Was that Jack"s plan? She had to do something.
Alicia whirled and saw Baker with his pistol in his left hand while his right was reaching into a pocket. The old clip lay at his feet.
Shouting, "Jack! Jack! Now, Jack!" she grabbed the pistol and tried to wrestle it away from him.
Baker"s right hand got caught in his pocket, and it took him a second or two to free it, but even using both her hands, and wrenching with all her strength, Alicia could not break his grip on the pistol.
"f.u.c.king b.i.t.c.h!" he cried.
She put her body into it, twisting so that her back was to him. And this gave her a view of the slope where she saw Jack- Oh, no! He was running toward her, but with a limp! limp! She saw the red splotch on the denim on his left leg. She saw the red splotch on the denim on his left leg.
He"ll never make it!
Just then Baker must have freed his right hand because she felt a rock-hard fist slam against the back of her head. But she held on. And then the edge of his hand cut down on her shoulder. Her left arm went numb, and her grip failed. The gun came free of her grasp as a third blow knocked her to her knees.
And Jack wasn"t anywhere near close enough. He had a wicked-looking knife in his hand, but he wasn"t going to get close enough to use it.
Alicia twisted and saw the fresh clip in Baker"s hand as he fumbled it into the opening in the bottom of the pistol"s grip.
"No!" she cried, and grabbed his arm.
He almost dropped the clip but maintained his grasp by his fingertips. He snarled as he kicked her away.
Alicia landed on her back. Jack was almost here, but through a haze of pain she saw Baker slam the clip home and raise the pistol with both hands. Jack wasn"t going to make it. Baker was going to get a point-blank shot at him. She thought of Thomas"s gun, but it was back inside the cabin, too far away...
Alicia closed her eyes and screamed as she heard three shots in rapid succession... from directly behind her.
She opened her eyes and saw Baker falling away as Jack slammed into the place where he"d been standing. She turned and saw someone crouched in the cabin doorway, leaning on the door frame.
Thomas.
He looked ghastly. The doughy white of his face made the blood trickling from both corners of his mouth seem so much redder. The pistol hung loosely at the end of his limp arm.
As she watched, he seemed to deflate, seemed to shrink within his clothes as he slumped to the floor.
Baffled, Alicia crawled over to him.
"Oh, Thomas. Thank you, Thomas. But..." She had to ask. She"d never known him to do anything for anyone. "Thomas, why?"
"Don"t you know?" he said in a voice bubbling wet with blood. "You"re supposed to be so smart. Don"t you know?"
"Know what?" She was almost afraid that she did.
"Those were the worst years of your life. But they were the best of mine."
He coughed up a dark red clot, and then his body stiffened as the light went out of his eyes.
Alicia reached a hand toward him. She"d never thought she could touch him, but now she had to.
She smoothed his hair and began to cry.
Jack bounced off the door and dropped to Baker"s side. He held Barlowe"s Special Forces knife to his throat as he pulled the pistol from his limp fingers. He saw Baker"s glazed, staring eyes, checked his throat for a pulse. Dead. Three .32s to the side of his chest had done it.
Jack knelt there and sucked air deep into his blazing lungs, then he stood and leaned against the door. His left thigh flamed and throbbed with pain, more so when he bent it.
He watched Alicia crouch over her brother in the doorway, and heard her sobs. He wasn"t crazy about the idea, but he probably owed Thomas his life. And it didn"t look like a debt he was going to get a chance to repay.
That had been close...
He heard a groan from inside. He stepped past Alicia and found Kemel writhing on the floor.
"A doctor," he moaned. "Please... get me to a hospital."
"The only place you"re going is outside," Jack said.
He grabbed the back of Kemel"s collar and dragged him toward the door. The Arab howled as he pa.s.sed Alicia.
"Really, Jack," she said, straightening up and wiping her eyes. "Is that necessary? Can"t you just leave him there?"
The adrenaline was still shooting through his arteries, his heart still pounding, his lungs still afire. He looked down at his free hand and saw the fine tremor. The fight was over but his body hadn"t got the message yet. He"d come this this close to buying it and was still shaking from the sight of Baker"s pistol zeroing in on his chest a few moments ago. close to buying it and was still shaking from the sight of Baker"s pistol zeroing in on his chest a few moments ago.
He wasn"t feeling too polite.
"The answers are, in order: Yes...and No. He"s stinking up the place."
Jack dragged him outside, past Baker"s body, and released him in the weeds. "Please... a doctor..."
Jack wanted to kick him but held back.
"Get me to a hospital."
Jack squatted next to Kemel and leaned close, speaking through his teeth. "Guess what, pal? I just polled the pa.s.sengers on JAL 27. I said, "Anyone who thinks Kemel should have a doctor raise your hand." You know what? n.o.body moved. So no doctor for you."
As he rose, he noticed that it was starting to snow. He returned to the cabin. Alicia was leaning against the wall next to the door, her head back, her eyes closed. She looked pale and weak, as if the wall was the only thing keeping her upright. Snowfiakes brushed her face.
"Thanks for the help," he said.
She opened her eyes. "Thanks for coming back."
"I didn"t have much choice."
"You could have kept going."
"No, I couldn"t."
"No, I guess you couldn"t." She gave him half of a very tired smile. "And you know, somehow I knew that." She glanced down at his b.l.o.o.d.y thigh. "Let me check that-"
"I"ll be all right for now. I"ll get it st.i.tched up back in the city."
"It needs more than that strap. Come with me."
Jack followed her into the cabin. Maybe she needed something to do. She pulled the sheet off the cot and began tearing it into long strips.
"Sit and pull your jeans down."
"I told you the other night not to get any ideas."
She didn"t smile. "Just do it."
Jack loosened the strap, then slid his jeans down to his knees.
Alicia inspected the two-inch vertical slit. "That"s a deep one. Did you feel it hit the bone?"
"No. The guy who did it didn"t have much oomph left."
"Luckily it runs in line with the muscle fibers of your quadriceps," she said as she began to wrap the thigh with strips of the sheet. She seemed to have slipped fully into her doctor mode. "The femoral artery and nerve are over here, so it missed them completely. Should heal up pretty well, but you will will need st.i.tches. ERs have to report stab wounds-" need st.i.tches. ERs have to report stab wounds-"
"I know a guy who doesn"t."
"I"m sure you do."
"What"s our next step here?" he said as she continued to bind his leg.
"I was hoping you"d know."
"I can take care of the bodies. Haul them off in whatever they arrived in-a dark van, I"ll bet-and leave them somewhere."
"Not Thomas," she said. "We owe him."
Jack looked over at Thomas"s crumpled, b.l.o.o.d.y corpse. "Yeah, I guess we do. Okay, so I"ll drop the bodies somewhere and place a call, telling the local sheriff or whatever where they can be found. And then let the crime busters have a grand old time figuring out the who, what, where, when, and how."
"Do you think they will-figure this out, I mean?"
"Not if I drop them far enough away. But the other question is... how are you going to handle broadcast power, now that you"re the sole owner?"
"I guess I"m supposed to reveal it to the world. But if what Thomas said about the patents is true, I can plan on a long fight with the patent holders. Frankly, I"ve had enough of lawyers for a long time."
"There"s always the j.a.panese. Yoshio"s people will pay big bucks."
"You sound like you like that one."
"Yeah, well, take the money and run, and let them worry about the lawyers."
"You know," she said, "I don"t care how much anybody wants to pay. The thought of profiting from anything that man touched makes me physically ill."
"So that leaves giving away the technology to everybody. Publishing it on the Internet-"
Her eyes flashed as she looked up at him. "Along with pictures of Thomas and me?"
"Hey, I didn"t mean that. I meant the Internet would allow anybody who wanted to develop the technology to have free access to the plans."
"But what about you?" she said. "A third of nothing is nothing. I hate to see you come out on the short end of this, Jack. I mean, you"ve been stabbed, you almost got killed-"
"Don"t worry about that. I couldn"t take the money anyway."
"Why not?"
"Because I already have pretty much everything I want."
Alicia"s gray eyes softened as she looked at him. "Do you? Do you really?"
"Yeah, well, sort of. And what I don"t have, money can"t buy me, so leave me out of the equation and do what you have to."
And the truth was, Jack couldn"t see any way in the world to hide the kind of windfall that even a tiny share of broadcast power would bring. He"d have to come out from under to claim it, and he wasn"t ready for that just yet. Not even for a couple three billion.
"Jack," she said as she tied the last strip of sheet. And now she sounded so weary. "I don"t know what I have to do. I"ve got to think about it."
"Well," he said, standing and pulling up his jeans, "while you"re thinking, I"m going to start gathering up the casualties."
It took Jack a while to lug all six bodies, especially the two from the woods, to Baker"s panel truck. A quarter inch of snow had collected by the time he arrived with the last-Kemel.
He could leave soon. He wasn"t traveling with this cargo until it was fully dark. The last thing he needed was someone casually glancing into the rear window and seeing half a dozen corpses.
Jack thought Kemel was dead, but he startled Jack by letting out a moan as he was dumped on top of Baker.
"Please. A doctor... the pain..."
This wasn"t good. If Kemel somehow hung oh until he was found, some hero with a scalpel and thread might actually save him. And that wouldn"t do. Wouldn"t do at all.
"Told you," Jack said. "The folks on JAL 27 voted no doctor for Kemel."
The Arab whispered something Jack didn"t catch. He leaned closer to hear.
"Plane... not me."
"But you knew about it, didn"t you, you son of a b.i.t.c.h."