Deadly Pursuit

40

For a confused moment Jack had no idea what was happening.

He’d been about to fire when a sudden impact from behind had hurled him headfirst into the water.

The gun had punched a hole in the creek’s thick sediment and gone off. Recoil and the spray of mud and water kicked up by the shot had shocked him into releasing both pistol and flashlight.

Now he groped for the Beretta, half buried in the mire.

Slam.

Another collision, and he was shoved sideways, out of reach of the gun.

He spun around, twisting free of whatever shapeless thing was trying to get him in its grasp, then surfaced, gasping.

A yard away, Steve surfaced also.

Wet hair was plastered to his forehead. His eyes squinted comically to compensate for the loss of his glasses. In his hand was the Beretta, caked with black muck.

The two men faced each other, hip-deep in the shallows.

“God damn,” Jack breathed. “Thought you’d be out of action by now.”

Steve shook his head. “I’m still in the game.”

Jack glanced toward the thicket of mangroves where Kirstie had been cornered. She was gone.

“Well, congratulations, Stevie. Looks like you rescued your precious wife from certain doom. I wouldn’t have missed her at that range.”

“I know.”

“So what now? You plan to shoot me?”

“Yes.”

“Just like that? In cold blood?” He raised both arms, displaying his empty hands. “When I’m no threat to you?”

“You’re always a threat, Jack. To me and Kirstie and everybody else you come in contact with. Remember that coral snake we found in the bathtub of the plantation house when we were teenagers? It was dead, but it could still bite. That’s you. You never give up.”

“Tough talk.” Jack forced a smile. “But you won’t shoot me. You can’t. Not like this. In a fight, sure; you nearly nailed me back at the house. But now that I’m disarmed and willing to surrender, you’re not going to gun me down. Your conscience won’t let you.”

“Wrong, Jack,” Steve whispered, and looking into his eyes. Jack was suddenly cold, chilled by what he saw there, the pitiless intensity of that gaze. “My conscience won’t allow a thing like you to live.”

The Beretta steadied, its muzzle focusing like a lidless eye on Jack’s chest from three feet away.

Jack gazed into that small black hole and saw eternity.

So this is it, he thought numbly. Well, fuck it. I’ve had my fun.

Steve’s finger flexed, squeezing the trigger.

A dull, muffled click.

Misfire.

Jack allowed himself no time to think or feel. Instinct drove him.

He snapped his leg out, pistoned a kick at Steve’s midsection, felt a thud of solid contact. Steve doubled over, and the gun sailed free, vanishing with a splash.

Instantly the Swiss Army knife was in Jack’s hand, spear blade extracted with a flick of his thumbnail.

Now. Go for the kill.

With a ululant war whoop, the cry of a predatory animal, he flung himself on Steve and thrust the blade between his ribs.

Steve stretched his mouth in the shape of a scream. Only blood came out. It stained the water in coiling purplish swirls.

Jack wrenched the knife free and stabbed again, sticking Steve in the abdomen, then jerked the blade clockwise, turning it like a screwdriver.

“You son of a bitch,” Jack hissed. “Why’d you make me kill you, you stupid son of a bitch?” He rammed the knife in deeper, burying it up to the handle. “We could have been partners if you hadn’t fucked it up!”

Dimly he was aware of an acid burn in his eyes, which might have been tears.

Steve tried once more to release the scream caught inside him. Racking convulsions choked it off.

Jack hung on to the knife, riding Steve in the choppy water as his body bucked and thrashed.

Then abruptly Steve went limp, breath sighing out of him.

Jack thought of Anastasia dying in the radio room just a few hours ago. It seemed strange that this man he had known, this man who had been the best friend of his adolescence, should die no differently from a dog.

He waited, but there was no further movement, no hint of life.

Panting hard, coughing up salt water, Jack dragged Steve’s body onto a mound of mangrove roots and deposited it there like a sack of trash.

His hands closed over the knife handle. He pulled, trying to work the knife loose. The job was unexpectedly difficult. For some reason his strength seemed to have left him, and the burn in his eyes was more painful than before.

In fits and starts the blade inched free. Jack dipped it in the swamp water, then washed his bloody hands.

“Hell, Stevie.” The croak of his own voice surprised him. “You asshole. You stupid fuck. I didn’t really want to. You made me. I had no choice. You stupid, stupid bastard.”

He had never experienced remorse over the other lives he’d taken. Grief and regret were weaknesses. Empathy, personal feelings of any kind toward another human being-a crippling handicap.

Steve, though… Good old Stevie…

He shook his head. There was no point in blaming himself. Steve could have lived if he hadn’t been so obsessively concerned about his wife. He’d let love warp his judgment, jeopardize his own safety. Now he was dead, and soon Kirstie would join him. His quixotic self-sacrifice had accomplished nothing.

Jack squared his shoulders, blinked away the moisture in his eyes.

Strength, cunning, and viciousness ruled this world. Love and loyalty purchased only death. Steve should have learned that lesson. Instead he’d clung to his comforting delusions, his ridiculous romantic self-aggrandizement, and finally paid for his stupidity with his life, as he’d deserved.

Yes. As he had deserved.

Reassured, his personal code reconfirmed, Jack turned his back on the cat’s-cradle webbing of the mangroves’ stiltlike roots and the motionless figure lying there.

Submerging, he recovered the Beretta, then manually retracted the slide. The chamber was clogged with thick, gluey mud; an empty shell casing was lodged inside.

Jack shook his head slowly, a thin smile printed on his lips. Such a little thing, the casing of an expended round, and yet it had saved his life-and ended Steve’s.

Easy enough to see why the gun had misfired. The Beretta had been mired in mud when it accidentally discharged. Recoil had opened the breech, and instantly mud had flooded the chamber, preventing ejection of the shell case. While the casing was still in place, another round could not be fed into the chamber, and no shot could be fired.

Jack dug out the shell case and, after a moment’s hesitation, pocketed it; an ounce of metal that had saved his life ought to serve nicely as a good luck charm.

With a fingernail he scraped the chamber, then closed the breech and cocked the gun.

There was nothing else to salvage. The flashlight was useless now, its internal parts corroded by water, the bulb dead. Well, he could do without it. Dawn was near.

He waded in the direction of the boardwalk, intending to find Kirstie and finish his night’s work.

At a bend in the channel he looked back. Steve was a dark, unmoving shape almost lost amid the meshwork of shadows and the snarled net of roots.

“So long, old buddy,” Jack whispered.

Then he turned away, vaguely annoyed with himself for this last nostalgic indulgence, and moved on, becoming one with the dark.