Hot Ice

16

Jason stood by as the police commissioner extended the phone and the two other items. He watched the man with the gun stuff the cell phone, the twig, and the piece of metal into the pocket of his jacket.

“Who hired you?” Jason asked.

He didn’t expect an answer. The question was simply a play for time, something he had absorbed long ago from the psychological training to which every Delta Force member was subjected. The more desperate the situation, the greater the need to start a conversation or do anything that served the purpose of delay. The longer disaster could be postponed, the more likely it could be averted.

The man looked at Jason, surprised. Men like this one rarely revealed their employers if, in fact, they even knew who was really paying them. “You don’t need to know.”

Jason’s back was against one of the stone walls. He was moving his shoulder back and forth as though scratching an itch he couldn’t quite reach. “Oh, but I do! You know who I am, you know I’m not without means. I’m sure whatever your employers want, I can provide in a much more, er, civil, manner.”

The man grinned. He had heard pleas like this before and obviously enjoyed them. “They are not interested in your money, Mr. Peters. Or should I say, the money of the company for which you work.”

Jason was reaching a hand behind his back, trying to scratch a really pesky itch, when Harvor broke in. “Surely you do not mean to kill us? You will certainly be caught and imprisoned.”

Again, the shark’s smile. “I will take that chance. Now, if …”

He never finished. Harvor began to tremble, tears in his eyes. “I have done you no harm. I have a wife, a family who will suffer if anything happens to me….”

The pudgy policeman was either terrified or an extraordinary actor. Jason really did not care which. What mattered was the gunman’s attention was riveted on the weeping, pleading Harvor, allowing Jason to use his shoulder more freely to work the stone he had felt at his back, a loose bit of rock he hoped to wiggle free.

Harvor was making what Jason guessed was a final plea for his life and it was clear the man with gun was enjoying it. Some men he had known received an almost sexual pleasure from wielding extreme power over others. The power to take a life was the ultimate form.

Jason felt the piece of rock come free. He grasped it with his right hand as he fixed his gaze on a point behind the man with the gun as if seeing something of interest there. Far too much the professional to be taken in by such a basic trick, the lunar-faced man ignored the ploy, listening to Harvor’s seemingly terrified babble. Jason guessed he had only seconds before the commissioner was a dead man.

He worked a smaller piece of stone free with his left hand.

He was going to get a single chance.

Better than none at all.

Moving his left arm slowly from behind him, Jason tossed the smaller rock, a pebble really, onto the stone on which the men stood. It make a plink, hardly audible but enough to make the gunman move. Or more accurately, merely flinch, his gun swinging away from Harvor.

Better yet, he took his eyes from his prisoners for an instant.

Jason came over the man’s shoulder with the larger rock, his version of a Major League fastball. But he had no intention of it catching the plate.

The man with the gun caught the movement with the corner of his eye.

The gun swiveled toward Jason and went off an instant before the rock knocked it from his hand.

Jason felt as though he had been bludgeoned in the left shoulder with a club. His back struck the rock hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs. He fought knees no longer willing to bear his weight.

Through vision blurred by shock or tears or both, he saw the weapon spin across the rocky floor. By reflex, he made a dive for it just as his antagonist did the same.

The other man had the shorter route. He had his fingers closing around the grip of the automatic when Jason, prostrate on the stone, saw a booted foot come out of nowhere and stamp the other man’s hand. In spite of the howl of pain, he could hear the bones snap, shattered between the boot and the unforgiving rock.

Jason had the gun in his hand now, rolling quickly onto his back to grasp the weapon in both hands. “Hold it right there!”

The other man either didn’t hear or didn’t care. He was half standing when he sprang, arms outreached.

Jason could hardly miss. Still, he made himself center the white forward sight before he squeezed the trigger. The sound of the GSh-18 bounced off the rock walls and the weapon jumped in Jason’s hand. He brought it to bear for a second shot.

He never got it off.

The man’s leap carried him onto Jason with a force that sent a shockwave of pain radiating from his wounded shoulder through his entire upper body. Gritting his teeth, Jason tried to wrench the gun free before he realized there was no resistance.

The weight lifted as Harvor tugged the inert form away.

“Are you all right, Mr. Peters?”

The gun still in his hand, Jason struggled to his feet, leaning against a rock wall for support. “I’m alive, thanks to your stomping the bastard’s hand at just the right moment.”

Harvor was staring. “You’ve been hit!”

No shit!

Jason stuffed the automatic into a trouser pocket, using the other hand to grip his wounded shoulder. “I’ll be OK if you can get help here soon.”

Harvor took one last look at Jason, then at the body of their former assailant. There was a bloody foam on his lips and each shallow breath seemed an effort.

“Our friend there isn’t going to make it without medical attention pretty quick. Looks like a lung shot. He’ll either suffocate or bleed out.”

Harvor still wasn’t moving. “You hit his gun hand with that rock.”

“I sure as hell wasn’t aiming for the strike zone.”

“The what?”

“Never mind. How quick can you get help?”

“The radio in the car. I’ll call for a helicopter.”

“You don’t have a cell phone?”

Harvor shook his head. “At these latitudes, anything that operates from a satellite is, how do you say it? Unreliable. Besides, it would be very expensive to equip every police officer.”

From what Jason had seen of this thrifty country, the second explanation outweighed the first, as evidenced by the anonymous call he had received on Boris’s hidden phone. “Whatever. You really need to get help here.”

He watched the rotund policeman head off in the direction of the Range Rover before making a closer examination of his damaged left shoulder. Hurt like hell and was bleeding like a fountain but didn’t look like anything vital had been damaged. Now, if he could find something to slow the loss of blood before he became dizzy….

The man was sprawled across the rocky floor of the open chamber. The flannel of the shirt under his jacket would be perfect: soft and absorbent. And its present owner wasn’t going to have much use for it, not with the front soaked in blood.

Only when Jason reached the shallowly breathing body did he remember. A quick search of the pockets retrieved phone, twig, and scrap of metal.

“Peters …”

A whisper.

Jason looked down at the man he had shot. Pale, eyes sunken back into his head. One hand feebly motioned Jason closer. He put his ear next to the mouth, still bubbling blood.

“If you’re smart …” There was a spasm of coughing and a spray of blood. “You’ll leave here and forget …”

Jason was tearing a strip from the shirt. “You’d better worry about yourself. We need …”

There was a grunt that Jason guessed was meant to be a laugh. “Me? I failed. I’m good as dead. You still … you still have a chance.”

Jason was holding the man’s head in his hands, trying to make him comfortable. “Who sent you?”

Blood-smeared teeth showed in the rictus of a smile. “For me to know, you to find out” was only partially audible.

Jason shook him. “Who?”

There was no reply.

Jason looked down into eyes staring into eternity.