Gone

CHAPTER 94

AS I PLUNGED INTO the pool, I clawed out my right hand and managed to hook Perrine’s belt.

We went under the warm water. I remember thinking vaguely that I would have to get the heavy Kevlar vest off me. But that was for later. As we sank like a stone, the image off to my right was like something out of a Salvador Dalí painting. The horse was thrashing on the floor of the brightly lit pool’s deep end, bubbles exploding from its flared nostrils, blood geysering from its bullet wounds like puffs of red smoke.

Perrine was thrashing, too, scratching back at my face, trying to kick me. But from where I was positioned, behind and beneath him, pulling him down like an anchor, he couldn’t land anything solid. I grabbed his belt with my other hand and pulled with everything I had.

My boots hit the bottom of the pool when he finally caught me good with the heel of his shoe. Its sharp edge opened my face down the left side of my nose to my chin, adding my own spurting blood to the pool. By twisting around, he broke my grip somehow. As he swung toward me, I suddenly remembered from Perrine’s bio that he had been some sort of French frogman commando.

Instead of trying to get to the surface, Perrine reached down and grabbed my head in his enormous hands and tried to snap my neck. Luckily, it didn’t work. Was he too tired? The water pressure too strong? I don’t know. It hurt like hell. He’d definitely pulled some muscles, but my neck stayed intact.

Still, he wasn’t done. Perrine thumbed one of my eyes, and then his hands were wrapped around my throat. The half of his face that wasn’t smashed up grinned at me as he throttled me. I kicked off the pool floor and lurched forward, head-butting him, but still he held on.

Struggling to break his grip, I finally spotted the tactical survival knife strapped to my leg. I ripped it out and stabbed upward at Perrine for all I was worth.

The knife was ripped from my hand as I hit something good. The pressure on my neck disappeared as Perrine let go of me and went up. Watching him go, I could see the handle of the knife buried to its hilt above his left knee.

There were cries of “Freeze! Freeze! Freeze!” when I exploded onto the surface. It was the FBI hostage rescue team I’d flown in with. Half of them were crouched in a defensive perimeter ten feet away from the pool’s edge. The other half were facing the pool itself, the laser sights of their H amp;K MP7s dancing on the drenched chest of Perrine, who had somehow yanked himself out of the drink and now was lying on his back beside an overturned tray of hors d’oeuvres.

My strained neck started killing me as I doggy-paddled to the pool’s edge and grabbed the ladder. In the distance by the house, there was still gunfire, but it was becoming sporadic.

I looked to my right as I heard a bomblike splash of water. It was the horse. It had somehow made its way to the surface. I watched as it splashed to the shallow end and leaped out, clicking over the tiles before it disappeared into the darkness.