Desperate Measures

13

A noise made Pittman stiffen. Despite the whir of the fan on the microfilm machine, he heard footsteps on the stairs beyond the door. Angry voices rapidly approached.

Startled, he shut off the machine.

“… can’t believe you didn’t leave someone on guard.”

“But the two of them left. I made sure.”

The voices became louder.

“Were they followed?”

“To the edge of campus.”

“Stupid…”

“It’s a good thing we flew up here.”

“The outside door was still locked. That proves the records are safe.”

“It proves nothing.”

Lights came on in the hallway outside the door. Their illumination glowed through the opaque window. The shadows of men loomed beyond it.

“I took the yearbooks they were looking at.”

“But what else might they have come back to look at?”

Someone tried to turn the knob on the door.

“It’s locked.”

“Yes, I secured that door, as well. I told you no one’s been here.”

“Just get out your key and unlock the damned door.”

Pittman’s chest cramped. He couldn’t get enough air. In desperation, he swung toward the murky room, trying to figure out where he could hide, how he could stop the men from finding him.

But he remembered how the room had looked during daylight. There’d been no other door. There was nothing to hide behind. If he tried to conceal himself beneath a table, he’d be found at once.

The only option was…

The windows. As he heard a key scraping in the lock, a voice saying, “Come on, hurry,” Pittman rushed to a window, raised its blind, freed its lock, and shoved the window upward.

“Stop,” one of the voices in the hallway said. “I heard something.”

” Somebody’s in there.”

Bennett’s unmistakable nasally voice said, “What are you doing with those guns?”

“Get out of the way.”

Pittman shoved his head out the window, staring down. He had hoped that there might be something beneath the window to break his fall, but at the bottom of the two-story drop, there was nothing except a flower garden.

“When I throw the door open, you go first. Duck to the left. Pete’ll go straight ahead. I’ll take the right.”

Pittman studied the leafless ivy that clung to the side of the building. The vines felt dry and brittle. Nonetheless, he had to take the chance. He squirmed out the window, clung to the ivy, and began to climb down, hoping that there weren’t other men outside in the darkness.

“On three.”

Pittman climbed down faster. The ivy to which he clung made a crunching noise and began to separate from the bricks and mortar.

Above him, he heard a crash, the door being thrust open. Simultaneously the ivy fully separated from the wall. As Pittman dropped, his stomach soaring, his hands scrabbled against the wall, clawing for a grip on other strands of ivy. The fingers on his bandaged left hand were awkward, but those on his right hand snagged onto vines. At once those strands snapped free from the wall, and he dropped farther, grabbing still other ivy, jolting onto the ground, falling backward, desperately bending his knees, rolling.

“There!” a man yelled from the window above him.

Pittman scrambled to his feet and raced toward the cover of the rear of the next building. Something kicked up grass next to him. He heard the muffled, fist-into-a-pillow report from a sound-suppressed gunshot.

Adrenaline made his stomach seem on fire. Needing to discourage them from shooting again, he spun, raised his.45, and fired. In the silence of the night, the roar of the shot was deafening. His bullet struck the upper part of the window, shattering glass.

“Jesus!”

“Get down!”

“Outside! He can’t go far on foot! Stop him!”

Pittman fired again, not expecting to hit anybody but wanting anxiously to make a commotion. The more confusion, the better. Already lights were going on in dormitory windows.

He raced past bushes, rounded the back corner of the next building, and tried to orient himself in the darkness. How the hell do I get out of here? He left the cover of the building, running toward the murky open meadow. A bullet whizzed past him from behind. He ran harder. Suddenly a shadow darted to his left, someone running parallel to him. He fired. In response, another bullet whizzed past, from his left. A car engine roared. Headlights gleamed, speeding toward the meadow ahead of him.

With no other direction available, Pittman veered sharply to his right. He zigzagged and veered again as a third bullet parted air near his head. In the darkness, he’d become disoriented. Dismayed, he found that he was running back toward the school. The rear of the buildings was still in shadow, but the commotion was causing more lights to come on all the time. Feeling boxed in, he took the only course available, charged up to the back door of the nearest building, prayed that its lock hadn’t been engaged, yanked at the door, and felt a surge of hope as it opened. He darted in, shut and locked the door, felt the impact of a bullet against it, and turned to sprint along a hallway.

But he’d bought only a few moments of protection. When he showed himself outside the front of the building…

Can’t hide in here. They’ll search until they…

What am I going to do?

This building was evidently a dormitory. He heard students on the upper floors, their voices distressed.

Witnesses. Need more witnesses. Need more commotion.

He swung toward a fire-alarm switch behind a glass plate and hammered the butt of his.45 against the glass. The plate shattered with surprising ease. Trembling, he reached in past shards and pulled the switch.

The alarm was shrill, reverberating off walls, causing picture frames to tremble. Despite its intensity, Pittman sensed the greater commotion on the floors above him, urgent footsteps, frightened voices, a lot of them. A welter of shadows in the stairway became students in pajamas scurrying to get outside.

Pittman hid his weapon and waved his right arm in fierce encouragement, as if he was their benefactor, his only interest their safety.

“Hurry up! The place is on fire!”

The students surged past, and Pittman went with them, storming into the arc lights that blazed in the night. He saw gunmen to his right but knew that they didn’t dare shoot with so many students in the way, and as the students dispersed in turmoil, Pittman darted toward the next building on the left, lunging inside.

There, he again broke the glass that shielded the fire-alarm switch. Activating the alarm, wincing from the ferocity of the noise, he rushed back in the direction he had come, toward the front door.

They’ll expect me to go out the back. They’ll try to cut me off, some of them coming through here while the others wait in the darkness behind the building.

He pressed himself against the wall next to the front door, and at once it was banged open, gunmen charging into the building. In the same instant, students came scurrying down the stairwell. Amid the confusion as the gunmen and the students collided and tried to pass one another, Pittman scrambled out the front door, students swirling around him. But instead of continuing the pattern he’d established to race toward the next building on this side of the square, he took what he felt was his best chance and sprinted directly across the square, veering among students who milled sleepily, their bare feet obviously cold, frost coming out of their mouths in the glare from the arc lights. He heard the fire alarms and students swarming out of adjacent buildings and gunmen shouting, chasing him.

Even allowing for his being out of condition, he didn’t think he’d ever run so fast. His jogging shoes hit the ground perfectly, his legs stretched, his sweat suit clung to his movements as it had so many mornings when he had gone jogging before heading to work-before Jeremy had gotten sick. He felt as if his increasing effort was the distillation of every race he had ever entered, every marathon he had ever endured. Inhaling deep lungfuls of air, pumping his legs faster, stretching them farther, he surged between buildings on the opposite side of the square and kept racing into the darkness behind them.

This was the direction from which he had initially come down off the ridge and across the meadow, approaching the campus. In a frenzy of exertion, he managed to increase speed, spurred by the buzz of another bullet parting air near his side. They’ve crossed the square, he thought. They saw where I went and followed me.

From the square, he heard the roar of cars. They’ll soon drive behind these buildings. There’s no way I can outrun…

He changed direction just in time, almost banging into the side of a building. His eyes, stung by the glare of the arc lights in the square, were only now adjusting to the darkness, and in confusion, he took a moment to realize that he’d reached the stables.

Men shouted behind him. A bullet struck the stone side of the building. Pittman whirled, went down on his left knee, propped his right arm on his other knee to steady his trembling aim, and fired toward the men pursuing him. They cursed and dove to the ground. A car fishtailed around a building, its headlights blazing, and Pittman fired toward them, missing the headlights but shattering the windshield.

Immediately he ducked back, knowing that the muzzle flashes from his pistol had made him a target. More bullets struck the side of the building, splintering stone. From somewhere on the other side, horses whinnied in panic. Pittman swung around a corner, approaching them. He reached a fence and opened its gate, scrambling back as horses charged through, escaping into the night. The more confusion, the better. He had to keep distracting his pursuers.

Then racing across the horse pen toward the opposite fence, he heard the roar of the cars speeding toward the stables. Have to get ahead of them.

A horse had stopped on the other side of the fence. With no other choice, Pittman clambered onto the rails. He’d once written a story about the stables near Central Park. He’d taken a few lessons. His instructor had emphasized: “When afraid of falling, keep your legs squeezed as tightly as you can around the horse’s sides and clamp your arms around the horse’s neck.”

Pittman did exactly that now, leaping off the fence, landing on the horse, startling it, clinging as it reared, but he was prepared and the horse wasn’t. Compacting his muscles in desperation, he managed to stay on, and now the horse wasn’t rearing. It was galloping, hoping to throw off its burden. Pittman clung harder, jolted by the horse’s rapid hoofbeats. He leaned so severely forward, clutching the horse’s bobbing neck, that he didn’t think he provided a silhouette for the gunmen.

From behind, the headlights of several rapidly approaching cars lit up the meadow around and ahead of him. The roar of the engines and the noise of the galloping horse were too great for Pittman to be able to hear if bullets whizzed past him, but he had to assume that his pursuers were shooting at him, and he furiously hoped that the uneven meadow, its bumps and rises and dips, would throw off the gunmen’s aim in the darkness.

Without warning, the horse changed direction. Unprepared, Pittman felt his grip slipping, his body shifting to the right. About to topple, he clamped his legs so tightly around the horse that the pain of the effort made him wince. His rigid arms completely encircled the horse’s neck. The cars sped nearer, bumping across the meadow, their headlights bobbing, gleaming, as the horse changed direction again, but this time Pittman anticipated, and although his body shifted, he felt in control.

He was wrong. Deeper shadows loomed before him, suddenly illuminated by the headlights. The forest seemed to materialize out of nothing, a wall of trees and bushes forming an apparently unbreachable barrier that so startled the horse, it reared up, at the same time twisting sideways, and Pittman’s grip was finally jerked free. As the horse’s front hoofs landed heavily and the animal twisted again, more sharply, to avoid colliding with the trees, Pittman flew in the opposite direction. Frantically praying that the horse wouldn’t kick backward, he struck the ground, flipped, and rolled, the wind knocked out of him, the pistol in his jacket pocket slamming against his ribs.

He rolled farther, urgently trying to avoid the panicked horse, to save himself from being trampled. Immediately the horse galloped away, and Pittman faced the headlights speeding toward him. He stumbled to his feet, struggled to breathe, and lurched toward bushes, stooping to conceal himself. Bullets snapped twigs and shredded bark from trees. He crouched lower, hurrying among the thickly needled branches of pine trees. Bullets walloped into trees and sliced needles that fell upon him. Hearing car doors being opened, he spun, saw the headlights through the trees, and fired, surprising himself that he actually shattered one of the lights.

At once his pistol no longer worked. In dismay, he pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. The.45 felt off balance in his hand. Its slide remained back, its firing chamber open. Heart sinking, he understood. He had used all his ammunition. He had more in his jacket pocket, but his pursuers were so close that there wasn’t time for him to reload, and he didn’t have confidence in his ability to remove the pistol’s magazine and refill it in the dark.

Not while men were shooting at him.

Not while he was on the run, which he immediately began doing, scurrying uphill through the murky forest. Several times he bumped painfully against trees. In the darkness, he failed to see deadfalls and stumps and tripped, losing his balance, hitting the ground. Each time, he ignored his pain and surged upward, moving faster, harder, spurred by the noises of gunmen chasing him. Flashlights blazed. Men shouted.

Pittman strained to figure out where he was. He had entered on this side of the valley-that much he was sure of. But there the trees had stopped on a ridge, giving way to grassland that sloped toward the meadow. Here the trees were at the bottom of the slope. In which direction was the grassy hill? He had to find it. He had to get to that ridge. Because past the trees and the fence beyond it, Jill was waiting with the car.

“I hear him!”

“Over there!”

“Spread out!”

Pittman raised his right arm to shield his eyes from needled branches. Enveloped by darkness, he climbed with less energy, his legs weary, his lungs protesting. He kept angling to the right, choosing that direction arbitrarily, needing some direction, hoping to reach the grassy slope.

Without warning he broke free, nearly falling on the open hill. Hurry. Got to reach the top before they’re out of the trees, before they see me. His only advantage was that he was no longer making noise, snapping branches, crashing through bushes, scraping past trees. But the gunmen were definitely making noise. Pittman could hear them charging through the underbrush behind him, and responding to an intense flood of adrenaline, he braced his legs, took a deep breath, then struggled up the slope, its incline becoming steeper, its wet grass slippery.

Briefly his senses failed him. The next thing he realized, he was lumbering over the top of the ridge, men were yelling below him, their flashlights silhouetting him, and then he was past the ridgeline, entering more trees, colliding with the fence, clutching it, gasping.

“Here!” a man yelled behind him, flashlight bobbing.

Pittman strained to climb the wooden fence, dropped to the other side, and staggered ahead, enveloped again by trees.

“Jill!” His voice was hoarse, his words forced. “Jill, it’s me! It’s Matt!”

“He’s not far ahead!” a man yelled.

“Jill! Where are you? I can’t see you! It’s me! It’s Matt!”

Flashlights reached the fence, their beams stabbing into the darkness, revealing Pittman among the trees.

A bullet nicked his jacket. Another singed his hair.

Gunshots roared among the trees. Pittman didn’t understand. His pursuers had been using silencers. Why would they have taken them off? Why would they want to make noise?

They didn’t. They hadn’t. The gunshots came from ahead of him. The men were sprawling on the ground behind the fence, yelling to one another to turn off their flashlights, to stop making themselves targets. Bullets struck the fence. The shots continued from ahead of Pittman.

“I’m here!” Jill screamed.

Pittman saw the muzzle flashes from the pistol she fired.

“I see you!”

“Stay down!” she yelled.

Pittman dropped to his hands and knees, scurrying among bushes, reaching her.

“Hurry! Get in the car!”

He opened the passenger door and flinched as the interior light came on, revealing him. After diving in, he slammed the door shut and watched in amazement as Jill-who was already in the car and had been firing through her open window-turned the ignition key, stomped the accelerator, and rocketed from a gap in the trees onto the narrow, winding country road.