A Knife Edge

FIFTY-TWO

I didn't have much time. Rossi was working with the dark. I had to get to her before the sunlight did if I was to stop her killing Boyle. I wanted him arrested and behind bars, not dead. The bush was coming alive with the sound of various unseen animals sparking up to embrace the new day. I noticed when Rossi had assembled the rifle that it was suppressed. Even so, it would still make a muffled crack when she sent a round humming toward Boyle's skull. So far, I'd heard nothing of that nature.

As I moved, I thought about where Rossi might set up. Logically, she'd take a position that'd provide an unobstructed view of the villa, as well as cover. That meant the high side of the valley. I had nothing else to go on. I worked my way around, climbing, hoping to stumble across her, wrestling the headboard through what was mostly scrub, alternately dragging, ripping, and carrying it through the dense foliage.

After fifteen minutes of this, through a small clearing up ahead I saw a ledge formed by an old fallen tree. I scoped the area down to the villa. It was an obvious hide for a sniper, providing a clear, unobstructed line of fire to the target 2300 feet across the valley. Fish-in-the-barrel distance for a trained sniper like Rossi. I took the last hundred and fifty feet slowly and quietly, coaxing some cooperation from the hundred pounds of steel pipes tucked under my arm. What I found when I finally arrived at the ledge didn't make my list of ten-things-most-likely.

Two Koreans — one I recognized, one I didn't — were standing in the small clearing. They'd swapped their suits for Adidas warm-up pants and T-shirts. I thought maybe they were out for their morning jog or something. I wondered where Rossi was. Perhaps this wasn't such a great hide for a sniper after all and she was elsewhere lining up Boyle in her crosshairs.

Then one of the Koreans, the one I recognized, did something that seemed odd. He took a turnip out of his pants. At least I thought it was a turnip — it was long, pale, and thin. That's when I saw Rossi. She was lying at his feet, the rifle kicked off its bipod. The other Korean rolled her over onto her stomach with his toe like she was roadkill. Her head lolled to one side. She was unconscious. The Korean kneeled and began cutting off her jumpsuit with a pocketknife, slitting the seams up the inside of her legs.

The Korean holding his turnip glanced over his shoulder and spotted me even before I began to move. There was no time to consider strategy. I charged forward out of the bush into the clearing, dragging the headboard. The man on the ground kneeling over Rossi went for a gun I saw tucked in the small of his back. I spun around like a discus thrower as I stumbled forward, and swung the headboard. It strained at the Smith & Wessons as it accelerated through the arc, rapidly gaining speed and momentum. Perhaps they'd never been assaulted by a man wielding half a bed before, because both men were standing openmouthed with surprise when the collection of rusting steel piping caught them full in their faces. The crunch of breaking teeth and bone was underpinned, if I wasn't mistaken, by an almost perfect middle C.