Choke Point (23 page)

“Now!” Chricher shouted. “Light him up!”

Slow squeeze…

Beyond the thumping sound and swirling spray, Simon could see the man’s shaved head and pale blue eyes…could see the short hollow tube aimed at his head…and realized they would be the last things he would ever see unless this crazy idea worked. Ignoring the burning pain in his arm, he ducked beneath the case just as the bullet hit, the force of the blow driving him to his knees.

“He’s down,” Chricher shouted, and immediately began to pull back from the overhang.

“No, wait!” Mawl tried to squeeze off another round before he lost the target, but the helicopter was already moving and the bullet ricocheted harmlessly off the rocks. “The sonofabitch is getting up!” He snapped the fire-selector to full-auto. “Hold it steady!”

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WENTY-EIGHT

An Island in the South China Sea

Tuesday, 10 July 09:58:41 GMT +0800

Still holding the security case over his head, the sand sucking at his waterlogged shoes and the surf pounding at his legs, Simon struggled to regain his footing. Mentally bracing himself for the next impact, he finally managed to stand, to turn, to orient himself. Only a couple more steps, but his legs felt heavy as lead, and the harder he pushed, the deeper his feet sank into the sand, and the more the surf seemed to hold him back.

Thwack-thwack-thwack
: three more bullets slammed into the case as a burst of shots pelted the water around him, but he somehow managed to keep his feet, to take one more step before diving beneath the protection of the rocks.

“Simon, are you hit! You okay?!”

Her voice was loud and desperate, but he had no idea if he was hit, and didn’t have the strength to answer. Given a choice, he would have closed his eyes and slept, just a two-minute nap, but he knew it wasn’t over despite the fading sound of the helicopter.

“Talk to me, dammit!” She grabbed his shirt and pulled him onto his back. “Are you hit?”

“Stop screaming, Rynerson. I’m not deaf.”

She sighed, clearly relieved. “You’re okay?”

“I think so. Where’s Jim?”

She cocked her head to one side. “He’s keeping an eye on the chopper.”

“Good.” He pushed himself into a sitting position. “What about you? You all right?”

“I’m fine,” she answered. “What the hell were you thinking? That damn artifact isn’t worth your life!”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

She opened her mouth, clearly intending to attack that foolishness, but Atherton suddenly popped into view. “They disappeared around the point,” he said, his words coming in a rush. “It’s obvious they’re looking for a place to land.” He squatted down, staring at Simon with an expression of disbelief. “You’ve gotta be the dumbest, luckiest bastard that’s ever walked the earth. How the hell did you—”

“Dumb maybe,” Simon interrupted, “but it wasn’t luck. That case is lined with aramid fiber. The same material used in body armor.”

Kyra hooted. “Leonidovich, you are too much! I should have known you wouldn’t have done something that crazy without an edge.”

Atherton reached over, grabbed the case, and flipped it over, revealing four distinct indentations along the side. “I’ll be damned to hell.”

“Sooner than you think,” Simon said, “if we don’t get off this beach. They’re going to be coming.”

The man leaped to his feet. “You’re right. We need to—”

“We’re not going anywhere,” Kyra broke in, “until I do something with Simon’s arm.”

“No need,” Simon said, struggling to get his feet under him. “I can manage.”

“Obviously,” she said, her voice flat with sarcasm. “Jim, you keep an eye on the shoreline. That’s the only way they can get back here. I’ll see what I can do with this idiot’s arm.”

Atherton frowned, clearly unhappy with the idea of delay. “Okay, but Simon’s right. You need to hurry.”

Kyra nodded and turned back to Simon. “Let’s get that shirt off.” She helped him up, unbuttoned his shirt, then gently peeled the wet material away from his skin. She lifted and turned and probed the puffy area between his elbow and wrist. “Does that hurt?”

Like a kick in the testes!
“Not much.”

“It doesn’t look too bad.”

“That’s what I said.” He really didn’t like the thought of her playing twisty-pretzel with his arm. “No reason to worry about it now. Let’s get moving.”

She continued to probe. “At least it didn’t break the skin.”

“You realize, Rynerson, those funny initials after your name…they’re for zoology? You do understand the difference? I’m one of those Homo sapiens you might have heard about, the kind of animal that walks upright and has opposable thumbs.”

She cocked her head to one side, giving him the fisheye. “Are you afraid, Leonidovich?”

“Absolutely not! Concerned…maybe…a little.”

“What is it with men? You stand out there playing Roger Dodger with a machine gun, then you wimp out when it comes to a little pain.”

“Define ‘little.’”

“You won’t even feel it…once you pass out.”

“That’s what I thought. And then you expect me to outrun the bad guys?”

She hesitated, staring intently into his eyes. “Okay, you have a point, I won’t set it, but we can’t leave it like that, you could end up with nerve damage. We’ll have to immobilize it.”

Immobilize,
that didn’t sound too excruciating. “Okay. There might be something in the survival bag we could use.”

She glanced toward the water. “Afraid we lost it. But—” She squeezed a hand into the wet pocket of her slacks and pulled out the Swiss Army knife. “I’ve still got this.” She lowered herself onto a rock, and quickly began cutting his shirt into strips. “This should do the trick.”

“In the movies, the heroine always cuts up her own shirt.”

She didn’t look up, but smiled and shook her head in mock disgust. “You’re a real piece of work, Leonidovich.”

“At least I won’t freeze. It’s like a steam bath out here.”

She glanced toward the east, and the towering range of sullen and bruised clouds. “It’s about to get a whole lot worse.”

“Let’s hope. They won’t be able to use that chopper in a typhoon.”

She nodded. “If we can avoid them for a couple more hours, we should be okay.”

He knew better. The storm might buy them time, but people with helicopters and machine guns would not give up quite so easily. “Maybe.”

She stood up, his shirt laying in two-inch strips across her arm. “Okay, just relax and let me do this.”

Like he had a choice? “I hear that from a lot of women.”

“Ha! You should be so lucky.”

“What’s with all the chitchat,” Atherton yelled. “We need to get out of here.”

“Two minutes,” Kyra answered, as she began wrapping and tying the strips to Simon’s arm. “You really think Robbie had a part in this?” It was obvious from her tone, she didn’t want to believe it.

“I wasn’t sure,” Simon answered. “Not until those propellers stopped spinning. Now I’m sure.”

She nodded slowly, reluctantly accepting the idea. “He’s just a kid. He probably didn’t know what he was getting into.”

“I’m sure you’re right.” He wasn’t, but she obviously felt hurt and betrayed, and he saw no reason to pour salt into that wound.

She tied two of the strips behind his neck, then wound the others around his back, tightly securing his arm across the center of his chest. “He did try to talk me out of going.”

“Yes he did.” Which only proved how much he knew, but she would realize that soon enough. On some level, she probably did, but had set up some kind of mental block to avoid the reality. He couldn’t really blame her; she had tried so hard to separate herself from the Rynerson juggernaut, only to find herself once again the target of people she didn’t know, with an agenda she didn’t understand.

“How does it feel?” She looked up at him, her eyes moist, a doe in the juggernaut’s headlights.

“Great.” He wouldn’t have told her otherwise.

Chricher, who was in the lead, suddenly stopped. “We need to go back.”

Mawl, who had his head down, trying to avoid the whiplash of branches, nearly ran his Uzi up the man’s ass. “Five more minutes, Chrich. We’re catching them.”

“Yeah,” Chricher agreed, “we’re catching them all right, but they’ve still got a thirty-minute lead, and if we don’t start back now, we’re going to be stuck out here.”

Mawl hesitated, reluctant to give up the chase before he had that case in his hands. He couldn’t imagine what could be so valuable…so valuable Leonidovich would risk his life to save it…it had to be worth millions…a lifetime pass on the good-time train. He looked up, the thick vegetation reminding him of Cambodia, and tried to catch a glimpse of sky.

“It’s coming,” Chricher said, as if reading his mind.

“We might be closer than you think. I must have hit the bastard. You saw him go down.”

“Yeah, I saw it,” Chricher admitted, “but we should have seen some blood by now. He must have stumbled.”

Mawl nodded, though he didn’t understand how he could have missed the shot. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“It’s coming,” Chricher repeated.

Mawl gave him “the look,” letting him know he didn’t need to be reminded. “We stop now, we’ll lose the trail.”

“Will anyway,” Chricher answered. “Once that bleedin’ rain starts, we’ve lost ‘em.”

“There’s no way to secure the chopper?”

“Sure, I can tie it down, but that’s not the problem. There’s no open space on this goddamned rock. Once this shit gets blowin’ around, it’ll—”

“I get the picture,” Mawl interrupted. “Leave, lose the trail. Stay, lose the helicopter.”

“You got it.”

Mawl hesitated, considering a third option. “Or you go and I stay.”

“You think that’s a good idea?” Chricher asked, obviously thinking it wasn’t. “All you got is a rain poncho, and it’s gonna get awful nasty out here.”

Mawl smiled to himself, suddenly convinced it was an excellent idea. If he kept moving, he might get lucky, catch them before the rain hit, and that would give him time to hide whatever was in that case before Chricher got back with the others.
No witnesses.
No arguments over a split. “That’s what we do, Chrich. We do nasty.”

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WENTY-NINE

An Island in the South China Sea

Tuesday, 10 July 14:06:21 GMT +0800

They moved along the coast, toward the southwest, away from where the helicopter had disappeared, then turned north, moving inland through a narrow and rising valley of towering trees and thick vegetation, searching for cover and a good place to hide before the storm hit. In the last few minutes, the earth and plants seemed to have lost their color, everything a gunmetal gray beneath the blanket of trees and dark clouds. Atherton, who was in the lead, using the security case to snowplow his way through the dense foliage, glanced over his shoulder. “We need to find something soon. It’s going to be a real soaker.”

Too late now, Simon thought, as the first drops of rain filtered down through the canopy of trees, a mixture of broadleaf evergreens and palms. A few minutes later he couldn’t see four feet, the rain coming in a torrential rush. Another few seconds and the uneven ground had turned as slippery as warm oil, and with only one arm available for grabbing, he could barely stay on his feet. Kyra stumbled into him from behind.

“You okay?” Her voice barely penetrated the ferocious downpour.

“I’m good. Just lost my footing for a second.”

She stepped around him, shielding her face with both hands, measuring him with those bar-scanner eyes. “How’s your arm?”

“Fine.” It was actually numb, better than his legs, which felt like they belonged to someone else. His upper body—every inch of his stomach, chest, and shoulders—was covered with scratches and welts, but it looked worse than it felt. “What about you?”

She smiled, the effort strained. “I’m okay. Where’s Jim?”

He looked past her, but Atherton had already disappeared beyond the silver-gray curtain of rain. “He was in front of me only a second ago.”

She nodded wearily. “We better wait. He’ll come back when he realizes we’re not behind him.”

“Sounds right,” though he knew if Atherton didn’t look back within the next couple of minutes, there would be little chance of retracing his steps in such a downpour. “You want to sit down?”

Instead of answering, she collapsed right where she was, sitting cross-legged on a patch of wild grass, her head drooping forward against the rain. Simon leaned in, trying to shelter her body from the onslaught.

“Simon,
please!
Sit down! You’re in worse shape than I am.”

Before he could answer, Atherton reappeared through the downpour, his blond hair painted to his skull, his tailored clothes hanging like shammy cloth around his body. “What happened?” he shouted. “Twist an ankle?”

Simon shook his head. “We just lost sight of you. Thought we should wait.”

He nodded and dropped the case. “Can you believe this crap?”

Considering their elephant-sized trail, Simon thought,
this crap
might be the only thing keeping them alive. “At least it’s warm.”

“True enough.” He squatted down next to Kyra. “How you feeling?”

“Waterlogged,” she answered, not looking up.

“You want to rest for a bit?”

“Up to Simon,” she answered. “He’s the one with the broken arm.”

Atherton glanced up. “Simon…?”

As much as he wanted to crawl under a tree and sleep, he realized this was not the place. He dropped to one knee, so they could talk without shouting. “We need to keep moving, but we need to slow down and start being careful where we step and what we grab.”

Kyra squinted at him through the rain. “You really think they could find us in this downpour?”