Merry Christmas, Alex Cross

CHAPTER 108

Our weapons were less than two inches apart. The one-eyed terrorist and I were in a Mexican standoff that looked like a no-winner for me any way it went down. If he pulled the trigger, I was dead. If I pulled the trigger, my barrel would explode and I was dead. Maybe he was dead too, but I was definitely in a black body bag with a grieving wife and family.

The man’s uncovered eye was wide and glistening. “Inshallah!” he whispered to me.

I got it. We were both in the hands of God now, about to discover His will.

The sound of the bulldozer crashing into something was followed by a gunshot that came from behind and above me. Both the driver and I instinctively cringed and ducked, but I recovered much quicker.

My arms were longer than his. I probably had three, four inches of reach on him. My right arm was useless, but my left had been bent as I aimed my plugged gun at him, not extended at all.

My left hand jabbed at him, setting him up for a straight impossible-to-deliver right cross. Instead, I slapped the side of his pistol hard to his left with the barrel of my gun and then stepped into his very, very large blind spot.

The terrorist shot wildly. Sampson fired at virtually the same time, and I heard the sound of a hit and the cry of a wounded man somewhere up on the snowbank before I chopped down with my pistol, hitting the man right in the bandages, right on the bone above the socket of his scalded eye.

His knees left him, and so did everything else. He crashed onto his side, out cold.