Springboard

24

Colonel Abe Kent glanced at his watch. It was pushing midnight, and Natadze was buttoned up tight. The motel room he was in had no rear exit, and there was no reason for him to be crawling out through a window — assuming he hadn’t spotted Kent tailing him.

From his rented van, thirty yards away and parked facing Natadze’s door, Kent considered his strategy and tactics. Natadze wasn’t going to step out into the parking lot with his eyes closed — he’d be wary, looking for anything unusual. He knew Kent by sight, so there was no way he could just stroll in the killer’s direction and make it close enough to get the drop on him. He could park his vehicle a bit nearer, but even so, opening a car door would draw Natadze’s attention in a hurry.

Yes, Kent had the advantage, but it wasn’t so great as all that. Taking down an alert and cautious enemy wasn’t as easy as they made it look in the movies.

A smart man would have called in the experts — SWAT, SERT, FBI Tactical — and let them deal with the situation. Kent was a man of war; he knew battlefield tactics, he could shoot and hit his target, and you could call this war on a small scale. Still, there were people better equipped for this particular scenario. He knew it.

He also knew that, smart or not, this was a personal thing. Him against Natadze, however wise that might be. There were some things a man took care of on his own, if he wanted to keep looking at his face in the mirror when he shaved.

Kent was adept at what he did, and his luck was better than average — at least it had been so far — but even so, a plan of action would be a good idea.

Of course, everybody knew it was better to be lucky than good.

Kent smiled. That brought another old memory up. That seemed to be happening to him more and more these days. Maybe it was a product of age. The older you got, the more you had to look at behind you than ahead of you.

This particular echo involved a conversation he’d had with John Howard, as they’d sat in a camper waiting for Natadze at Cox’s estate — when they’d lost him. They’d been yakking about growing up, and about luck, the kind of thing you did when you had time on your hands and nothing pressing to fill it.

Howard had told a story about his first serious girlfriend, and how they had missed by seconds being caught by her father in a compromising position, and how a stuck hook or zipper would have made the difference. Could have short-stopped his entire career.

Kent had laughed, then told his story: He had an older brother he’d spent a summer with when he was twelve. Martin was married, going to school at LSU, down in Baton Rouge, where it was hot, damp, and rained a lot. Must have been around 1965 or ’66. Martin had lived just off campus in an apartment with his wife, a gorgeous redhead with whom Kent had fallen in love at first sight.

Howard had smiled, one old soldier to another. The joy of older women.

“Anyway,” Kent had continued, “my brother gave me the full campus tour. The school’s mascot was a Royal Bengal tiger, traditionally named Mike. The first tiger arrived in the forties, and there have been five or six since. When I visited my brother, they were up to Mike III, I think. The cat lived in a cage just outside the football stadium, next to the parade grounds where the ROTC marched. You could walk right up to it.”

Kent smiled again, picturing the scene. “LSU was a land-grant college, so all male students who were physically able had to do two years of Army or Air Force ROTC. They had classes, even in the summer, and they marched early, before the heat got too oppressive. Bright and early, there would be hundreds, sometimes thousands of male students in their ROTC summer khaki uniforms at attention out there, yelling ‘Good morning, Mike the Tiger, sir!’ ”

Howard smiled, too, and Kent continued. “The tiger used to be pulled in a cage around the stadium before football games. The story was, every time he roared, that meant the team would score one touchdown. They called the stadium Death Valley. Loudest place in the city on a Saturday night during football season. The police would one-way streets heading toward the campus before the game, one-way them in the other direction afterward.”

“A tiger’s hard to keep in a cage,” Howard said.

Kent nodded. “Every now and then, Mike would somehow get out of his cage. Pranksters broke the locks off once, or somebody forgot to shut the cage. Mike got out, and naturally, he went exploring. Imagine how you’d feel if you were walking to the local market for a carton of milk and you looked up to see a four-hundred-pound Bengal tiger padding down the sidewalk toward you.”

Howard laughed. “I’d need new underwear.”

“Me, too. Luckily, nobody ever got eaten when the various Mikes took their strolls. Good thing, because if the cops or animal control people had ever had to shoot the big cat, the city would probably have lynched whoever pulled the trigger. Everybody loved Mike. The first one? After he died of old age, twenty-something, they stuffed and mounted him in the school museum, and you could listen to a tape recording of his roar. My brother took me to see him. Kind of spooky, that old stuffed tiger standing there.”

He paused for a moment, remembering. “The point is, when you have a wild animal, he’s only safe to be around as long as he’s under control. And it’s real easy to lose control of such a creature. One small slip, he gets you. Remember that magician who got attacked onstage in Las Vegas ten or twelve years ago? By a cat he had raised and trained?”

“Yes.”

“So, you always have to be careful.”

Howard said, “I hear that.”

And yet, here was Kent, three thousand miles away from that camper and conversation, being reckless. Waiting for a wild animal — one that could shoot back, no less — to emerge from his lair.

Killing Natadze would be easy: He steps out the door, you line your sights up, don’t say squat, and cook off two.45 auto rounds into the man’s heart, bam, bam, end of story. But that wasn’t how he wanted it to go down. He wanted the man alive and talking. It wasn’t about killing him, it was about defeating him—

Natadze’s door opened. There was no light behind him to silhouette him, but enough illumination from the parking lot and outside lamps to get a good view. He had the guitar case in one hand — his left — with his other hand free.

Kent frowned, liking this less and less. He couldn’t let the man get into his car, not and risk losing him. Where was he going at this hour?

Never mind that, Abe. Go!

He pulled his Colt and thumbed the safety off — he was already cocked and locked — put his trigger finger outside the guard, took a deep breath, and opened the van’s door.

Natadze spotted the motion immediately. He had taken several steps toward his car, was almost there, although he hadn’t dug his keys out yet. Kent would have been happier if the man had both hands occupied.

Kent kept his pistol behind his leg as he started toward Natadze. Still far enough away so the man might not make him—

At the back of his car, Natadze set the guitar case down, as if he was going to put it into the trunk, then straightened and suddenly broke into a sprint at a right angle to Kent, heading toward the open hallway to the north where the ice and soda machines were.

Kent snapped his pistol up, but Natadze was already ten feet farther away pumping fast and gaining speed. He hadn’t gone for his gun, and Kent didn’t want to shoot him. Plus a miss would put a round through a motel door or wall, and maybe hit somebody sleeping inside.

“Stop!” Kent yelled.

That was a waste of breath. Natadze sped up.

Kent ran, chasing the fleeing man.

The corridor opened up into another section of parking lot, around which there was a short chain-link fence. Too short a fence to slow Natadze down. He vaulted it, hit on the other side — another parking lot, for a fast-food place — and kept running.

All that training on the obstacle course paid off as Kent sailed over the fence without catching or breaking anything.

Natadze had twenty yards on him and was gaining more. Even full-out, Kent wasn’t as fast. If this kept up, Natadze would run away from him in a few minutes. He might have to shoot the guy anyway.

But Natadze doglegged to his left, into the parking lot of a small strip mall. Thirty yards back, Kent watched his quarry make a mistake. He rounded a corner, and when Kent reached it and glanced after the runner, he realized it was a dead end — windowless buildings on either side and a brick wall of a third building at the end.

Natdaze spun, and came up with a handgun—

Kent dodged to his left and took three steps, out of Natadze’s line of fire, behind the corner of the building. He didn’t want to shoot the man, but neither did he want to get shot himself—

Cover, he needed cover—!

Behind him was parked a pickup truck with a florist’s logo on the door. Kent backpedaled toward it, keeping the mouth of the alley covered.

Game over, Natadze. I have you now!

“It doesn’t have to be this way!” Kent yelled.

They were only half a block away from the motel where Natadze had been staying. Kent was behind solid cover, since even the cab of a full-size pickup truck was proof against most handgun rounds, to say nothing of the engine compartment. It was possible that Natadze might skip a round low, off the concrete, but a standard pistol bullet wasn’t going to have much steam — if any — after it ricocheted off the parking lot and went through two steel-belted truck tires, especially if it was a hollow-point, even semi-jacketed. But to try a shot that risky, he’d have to show himself, and Kent was ready for that.

“I’m afraid it does have to be this way!” Natadze called back.

He was behind the corner of the building, and Kent didn’t know what the walls were made of. It looked like adobe, but that could be a thin layer over concrete block, or styrofoam panels. The difference was concealment versus cover — you could shoot through the former but not the latter. Since Kent wasn’t sure exactly where the other man was, he wasn’t going to try and perforate a wall and hope that he hit the bad guy — and maybe generate a ricochet into some little old man five blocks away walking his Pomeranian.

Besides which, he wanted the man alive. There were a lot of questions still hanging, and Natadze knew the answers. Dead men told no tales.

More than that, dead was too easy.

Kent shifted his grip on his pistol. He was lined up, aiming over the hood of the truck, covering the corner of the building. There was one in the tube and seven in the magazine. He had two more full magazines, and if he needed more than two dozen rounds, he was gonna be in deep trouble anyhow.

Right now, they were in a standoff. The alley behind Natadze was a dead end; he wasn’t going anywhere unless he came out the way he went in, and that meant he’d have to get past Kent. On the other hand, Kent couldn’t go in after him, because there was no cover between the truck and the building — an animal clinic next to a dog-grooming shop and a Mexican restaurant — no concealment, nothing.

The first man to leave cover would be the first one exposed to the other’s fire. It was about twelve or fifteen meters from the truck to the building, and even a crappy shooter could make a body shot at that range; Kent had to assume that a professional killer knew how to shoot straight — thinking otherwise could get you dead in a hurry.

Time was on Kent’s side, though, and they both knew it. In a neighborhood like this at night, a little strip mall on the edge of a fairly upscale area, somebody probably would have heard the chase and the shouts. The local police would show up eventually, and while they might not be SWAT-grade officers, they would be cops with guns.

He could have called and warned them about how dangerous Natadze was — if he hadn’t left his virgil on the seat in the rented van. He should have had it on his belt.

Yeah. And if he had X-ray vision and superpowers, he could see Natadze and fly over there and capture him, too. No point in going down the “if only” road.

“You could have shot me back in Nebraska,” Kent called. “Why didn’t you?”

“Why would I have done that? All I wanted was my guitar. I got it and left — no reason to kill you.”

Kent nodded to himself. Yes.

“Cops’ll be coming,” he said. “You can’t get out.”

“And what will they see when they arrive? A man crouched behind a truck, holding a pistol. They are just as likely to shoot you as me.”

“I’ll explain it to them.”

“You have command presence, yes. But how long will it take? Once your gun is lowered, then it is me against a local policeman or two. My chances are passable.”

Kent sighed. The man was right. A local cop, even two or three, would show up, see Kent, and immediately order him to drop his weapon — only cops and bad guys had guns in this city, and they couldn’t tell which Kent was at first glance. They’d have to disarm him. Even if he convinced them he was on their side and there was a bad man with a gun hiding behind the veterinarian’s office, Natadze could come out blazing and take them down before the real danger sank in. Kent didn’t want that.

“You could back off. Allow me to leave. Save the lives of those police officers. They could be men with families. A woman officer. Do you want that on your conscience, Colonel?”

Kent almost grinned. Here was a man with brass balls. A killer, attempting to negotiate his way free by threatening to blame his future killings on the man trying to capture him.

“Cops know the risks of their job,” Kent called. “No deal.”

Natadze laughed. “I did not think so. Still, no harm in trying.”

He was going to make a run for it!

Kent knew this — how he could not have said, but he knew it.

He took a deep breath—

Natadze burst from behind his cover much faster than Kent was prepared for — he must have backed up to get a running start — because he was sprinting like a champion. Before Kent could line up his sights, Natadze was halfway to the truck, and firing, one-two-three—!

Kent ducked as the bullets spanged off the truck’s hood. He had maybe a second before Natadze blew past, and even with spray-and-pray, the man could hit him—

He dropped prone, looked under the truck, and saw Natadze’s churning legs. He led the runner and squeezed off four rounds, tracking the movement.

The first two missed. The third bullet hit Natadze’s right leg, just above the ankle — Kent saw the hole appear in the cloth—

Natadze went down, his speed causing him to skid as he hit on his hands and knees. His gun was in his right hand, and he couldn’t get it into shooting position because it was pressed against the concrete, grinding away as he skidded—

— Kent rolled away from the truck, still prone, keeping his own pistol extended as he angled out. Two revolutions and he was clear of cover and lined up for a body shot—

“Let it go! Let it go!”

But Natadze collapsed onto his right side and tried to thrust his handgun out at Kent.

“Don’t do it—!”

Time, already running slow, nearly stopped altogether. He had him, no question, and Natadze had to see that, but he still kept moving, bringing his piece around, a bug mired in molasses—

“DON’T—!” Kent screamed.

In that bullet-time slo-mo, he saw the other man grin, and he read his mind: Shoot me or die, Kent — that’s the choice.

Kent’s breath was already held and his front sight was dead-on Natadze’s center of mass.

He fired twice—

The.45 slugs hit Natadze right over the sternum and the impact was enough so that his muscle spasm curled him into a fetal ball.

The gun fell from his hand. He managed to roll onto his back.

By the time Kent got there, there wasn’t much left in Natadze’s clock.

He had enough air and energy to say, “Good shot. You… you t-t-take the guitar. S-s-souvenir…” He exhaled his last breath. Kent had heard enough death rattles to recognize this one.

He squatted to make sure. No pulse.

He heard the police sirens dopplering in. He stood, tucked his gun into his holster out of sight, and moved away from the dead man. He stood there with his hands held wide, by his shoulders, as the first SFPD car screeched into the parking lot. He stood very still.