CHAPTER 56

What happened next, happened like it was in slow motion, between the beats of a heart.

I told Kate to jump off the boulder. I jumped, but she was a half second behind

I never heard the crack of the silenced rifle, but I knew the shot came from the nearby treeline because I could hear the bullet, buzzing like a bee over my head-where I had stood on the boulder a half second before.

Kate seemed to stumble on the boulder and let out a soft cry of pain, as though she'd twisted her ankle. In an instant, I realized I'd gotten the sequence of events wrong-she'd cried out in pain first, then stumbled. Again, as if it was slow motion, I saw her fall off the side of the boulder near the trail.

I dove on top of her, wrapped my arms around her, and rolled away from the trail, down a shallow slope and into some thin bushes as another bullet slammed into a rock near our heads, sending splinters of stone and steel into my neck.

I rolled again, Kate still in my arms, but we were stopped by a thicket of brush. I held her tightly and said, "Don't move."

We were side by side, my back to the direction of the fire, and I craned my head over my shoulder to try to see what Khalil could see from the treeline, which was less than a hundred yards away.

There were some bushes and low rocks between us and Khalil's line of fire, but depending on where he was in those trees, he might still have a clear shot.

I was aware that my suit, dark though it was, did not blend well with the surroundings, and neither did Kate's bright red jacket, but since there was no more firing, I was fairly certain that Khalil had lost us for the time being. Either that, or he was savoring the moment until he fired again.

I turned and looked into Kate's eyes. They were squinting with pain, and she was starting to writhe in my arms. I said, "Don't move. Kate-talk to me."

She was breathing hard now, and I couldn't tell where or how badly she'd been hit, but I could feel warm blood now, seeping through my shirt and onto my cold skin. Damn it. "Kate. Talk to me. Talk to me."

"Oh… I'm… I'm hit."

"Okay… take it easy. Stay still. Let me check it out…" I moved my right arm between us and felt around under her blouse, my fingers probing for the entry wound, which I couldn't find, though there was blood all over. Oh, God…

I tilted my head back and looked at her face. There was no blood coming from her mouth or nose, which was hopeful, and her eyes looked clear.

"Oh… John… damn it… it hurts.'

Finally, I found the entry wound, a hole just below the bottom of her left rib cage. I quickly ran my hand around the back and found the exit wound just above her buttocks. It seemed to be no more than a deep flesh wound, and there was no spurting blood, but I worried about internal bleeding. I said to her, as you're supposed to do with injured people, "Kate, it's okay. You'll be fine."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

She took a deep breath and moved her own hand to the wound, exploring the entry and exit wounds.

I got a handkerchief out of my pocket and pushed it in her hand. "Hold it there."

We lay motionless again, side by side, and waited.

That bullet had been meant for me, of course, but fate, ballistics, trajectories, and timing are what make the difference between a wound that you can show off and a wound that the undertaker has to fill with putty. I said again, "You're okay… it's just a little scratch…"

Kate put her mouth to my ear, and I could feel her breath on my skin. She said, "John…"

"Yes?"

"You're a fucking idiot."

"Huh…?"

"But I love you anyway. Now let's get the hell out of here."

"No. Just stay still. He can't see us, and he can't hit what he can't see."

I spoke too soon because all of a sudden dirt and rocks started erupting around us, and branches snapped over our heads. I knew Khalil had a general idea of where we were, and he was firing the rest of the fourteen-round magazine at our suspected location. Jesus H. I thought the firing was never going to stop. It's worse when they use a silencer, and all you can hear are the rounds hitting without hearing the crack of the rifle.

On what must have been his last round, I felt a sharp pain on my hip, and my hand flew back to where I'd been hit. I'd caught a grazing wound across my pelvis, and I could sense that it was deep enough to have chipped the pelvic bone. "Damn it!"

"John, are you all right?"

"Yeah."

"We have to get out of here."

"Okay, I'll count to three, and we'll run in a crouch through these bushes, but not for more than three seconds, then we dive and roll. Okay?"

"Okay."

"One, two-"

"Hold on! Why don't we go back to that boulder we were standing on?"

I turned my head and looked back at the boulder. It was less than four feet high, and not even that wide. The rocks around it where we'd been sitting were no more than large stones. But if we could crouch behind the boulder, we'd be safe from direct fire coming from the treeline. I said, "Okay, but it's a little tight behind there."

"Let's go before he fires again. One, two, three-"

We sprang up into a crouch and ran toward the boulder-which was also toward Khalil.

About halfway there, I heard that familiar buzzing over my head, but Khalil had to fire above the boulder we were running for, and he wasn't sitting high enough in the tree to get a steep enough angle to pick us off.

Kate and I hit the rock, spun around, and sat side by side very close together, our knees up to our chests. She pressed the bloody handkerchief to her left side.

We sat there a second and caught our breath. I didn't hear any buzzing overhead, and I wondered if the bastard had the balls to leave the cover of the trees and was coming toward us. I pulled my Clock, took a deep breath, poked my head around the rock, and scanned the open space very quickly before pulling my head back in, just in time to avoid having it blown off by a well-placed shot that chipped the side of the boulder. "This guy knows how to shoot."

"What the fuck are you doing? Just sit here."

"Where did you learn to swear like that?"

"I have never sworn so much in my life till I met you."

"Really?"

"Sit and shut up."

"Okay."

So, we sat there, oozing blood, but not enough to attract sharks, or whatever they had around there. Asad Khalil was strangely quiet and I was getting nervous about what he was up to. I mean, the asshole could be twenty feet away, slithering through the bush.

I said, "I'm going to fire a few shots in the air to attract attention and to keep Khalil away."

"No. If you attract some Secret Service people here, Khalil will pick them off. I don't want that on my conscience. We're not in any danger. Just sit."

I wasn't sure that we weren't in any danger, but the rest of it made sense. So, John Corey, man of action, just sat. After a minute, I said, "Maybe I can attract Ted's attention, then he and Khalil can have a shooting contest."

"Sit and be quiet. Listen for any sounds in the bush."

"Good idea."

Kate shimmied out of her red jacket, which was nearly the same color as the blood that soaked it. She tied the sleeves around her waist, fashioning a pressure tourniquet over the wounds.

Kate reached into one of her jacket pockets and said, "I'll call the Sea Scape Motel and advise them of our situation so they can alert the Secret Service here and…"

She kept searching through her pockets, then said, "I can't find my cell phone."

Uh-oh.

We both felt around on the ground. Kate reached too far to her left side, and the ground exploded inches from her hand. She pulled her hand in, like she'd touched a hot stove, and stared at the back of it. She said, "My, God, I felt that round brush my knuckle… but… I'm not actually hit… I felt the heat or something…"