Red Right Hand

30.

HENDRICKS SPRINTED ACROSS the Presidio’s grounds, vaulting fences, cutting through backyards, pushing through dense stands of trees. His lungs burned. His muscles ached. His stitches tugged uncomfortably. Blood oozed from his wound whenever his midsection flexed.

At least the fog provided cover. It began to blow in, cold and clammy, shortly after he fled the bridge pavilion. Gray-white tendrils reached inland, smelling of low tide and swallowing everything they touched. Shadows vanished as the fog blocked out the setting sun.

The temperature-low seventies when the sky was cloudless-plummeted. Hendricks’s world shrank as the fog narrowed the margins all around. Distant landmarks became ghosts, fading into the swirling mist. Man-made objects dissolved into the scenery as edges dulled and angles softened. Sounds reverberated oddly, sometimes muffled, sometimes accentuated. His own footfalls sounded dull to his ears, like the idle tapping of an eraser against a desk, but more than once he heard a conversation or an engine’s roar so loud that he assumed he was right on top of it, only to discover it was blocks away or more.

He crossed a street and plunged into a forest, branches lashing. A footpath ran parallel to his route, eastward, ever eastward, and he zigged toward it, picking up speed once he left the underbrush behind. Then, at once, the forest fell away and he was running through a rolling field of grass, the blades slickened by the moisture-laden air, the footing treacherous. A cemetery, he realized. Headstones, low and regular, dotted the field, and threatened to take his legs out from under him. Larger monuments loomed in the mist. A soldier. A cross. An angel. Each a blur as Hendricks ran past. Then the cemetery vanished as the woods enveloped him once more.

This time when he emerged, he found himself on a paved road at the edge of the Main Post. In the dim half-light, the place could be confused for a particularly quaint small town-the streets winding, the sidewalks broad, the houses tidy and attractive, the lawns well tended. Residential and commercial buildings mixed, the former Spanish single-family dwellings, the latter everything from clapboard to red brick. The streetlights flickered to life one by one and cast halos in the fog. Since there was no civilian traffic on the streets, the glow of headlights warned him of approaching Park Police patrols and afforded him a chance to hide, to duck behind a building or a parked car or merely linger in an entryway, face averted, pretending he belonged.

At one such stop, outside the old officers’ club, he checked his phone. According to the map, his destination was just around the corner.

He tried not to think too much about what he was walking into or what might happen to Cameron in his absence. The U.S. government had trained Hendricks and his unit to operate autonomously behind enemy lines, and it had trained them well. What he needed now was to trust in his abilities, his instincts, his muscle memory. Overthinking led to distraction, doubt, and failure.

His muscles twitched from the sudden stillness. His breath plumed with every ragged exhalation. Blood roared in his ears. He willed his heart to slow. Felt the wound in his side throb in time. He moved the gun to his right jacket pocket. Thumbed the safety off and kept his hand around the grip.

And then rounded the corner, headed toward Segreti.