The Devil's Code

CHAPTER 27

Fifteen minutes later, I'd crawled and pulled myself through the ground cover to a spot fifty feet behind the garage, in the deep shadow cast by the fire. For the moment, I was safe. But you win a little, and you lose a little. Halfway through the crawl, I lost Corbeil. He'd been looking up the hill, toward the satellite dish in the gully, when I'd last checked.

I checked again from the shadow, and he was gone. Had he seen me? But if he'd seen me crawling, why couldn't I see him stalking me? He couldn't have seen me using the night glasses, so he wouldn't have known that he needed concealment. If he were walking anywhere, up to four or five hundred yards or so, I should have been able to see him.

Unless he'd moved opposite of the fire. When I turned so that my line of sight crossed too close to the fire, the glasses whited out. But if he were on the opposite side of the house, I was good for a few minutes, anyway.

Staying in the shadow cast by the fire, I edged closer to the garage. Fifteen feet out, I had to commit. I took one last look around, stood up, and trotted to a back window and looked in. A car squatted inside. I punched the glass out with the butt of the pistol, unlocked the window, lifted it, and crawled through into the utter darkness inside.

Waited, listened. Corbeil couldn't be inside, I thought: I'd have seen him coming. If I moved quickly, I'd be okay. Went to the car: Mercedes-Benz S430. Looked in the front seat with the needle-beam flash, saw nothing. And in the backseat, behind the passenger seat, a briefcase. The car doors were looked. I looked around the garage, which also served to hold yard gear, and found an axe.

I was going to make some noise, here. A car this expensive had an alarm, for sure. I put the flashlight back in the pack, put the gun in my pants pocket, where I could feel it if it began to slip outI'd seen one too many of those TV shows where the good guy loses his gun at a critical momenttook a breath, and swung the ax. It went through the window like a spoon through whipped cream. The alarm went and I used the ax handle to smash the rest of the glass out, grabbed the briefcase, and went out the window.

Nothing subtle about this: I ran as hard as I could, fifty yards, a hundred. Out of the deepest shadow, out into the dark, and then flat on the ground.

Listening. The garage was suddenly full of firelight: somebody on the fire side had gone into the garage and pushed the door up. I took the moment to run another fifty yards; and dropped.

A human head appeared in the garage window, silhouetted by the firelight. Another head appeared in a moment, then a third. Looking out the window, toward me. Dressed as I was, I was almost certainly invisible. But the car alarm was going, and Corbeil, wherever he was, would be hunting me in the dark.

I scanned the hillside, saw nothing. Thought about it for a moment. Corbeil was between me and my car. I might be able to slip around himthat would certainly be the most direct routebut if I headed south instead, crossed the highway, and stayed to the roadside ditch, or on the other side of the fence on the far side of the highway, I could make a circle away from him and get back to the car.

If I could only see him.

But sooner or later, it would occur to the cops who were with the firemen that anyone who broke into the garage would have to be somewhere in these surrounding fields. If they started crawling through the fields in their squads, with searchlights, I'd be cooked.

I started crawling toward the highway, moving slowly, stopping to scan, then moving on. At the fence line along the highway I paused, scanning. And saw him coming. He was jogging straight down toward me, carrying a gun across his chest. He stopped and scanned for me. He was too far away for a quick shot, so I crawled to a fence post, tossed the briefcase over, stood up, put my hand on the post, and vaulted over into the ditch.

In the ditch, I recovered the briefcase after a moment of panicit wasn't exactly where I thought I'd thrown itpivoted, turned, looked up the hill. He was coming, running as hard as he could.

I went left, running hard for five seconds, paused, scanned, saw him still coming, put a hand on another fence post and vaulted back over and got the glasses out again, scanning. He ran to the fence, stopped, scanned. Waited. He knew I was on the other side. When he hadn't seen me in fifteen seconds, he stood up and clambered over the fence, knelt, and scanned up and down the ditch. Then he went left, as I had: passed me not fifteen feet away.

He was moving slowly, but not as slowly as he should have, and a hundred feet down the highway, suddenly crossed the two-lane strip of blacktop into the opposite ditch. I started moving away, crawling again, dragging the briefcase, trying to keep track of him. When he got far enough down the highway, and I got far enough up the hill, I was covered by a line of brush. I turned and started jogging up the hill, breathing hard. Running through the tall, clinging pasturage, whatever it was, was tough.

I reached the ridge without knowing it, really, and dropped. I must've been silhouetted against the sky, for anyone using glasses. But now I was so far ahead of him.

I stopped and looked back, the house fire had passed its peak, but the house was still burning fiercely There were now forty or fifty people gathered around the place, firemen, cops, and probably neighbors. I sat catching my breath for a moment or two, then started back toward the car. Taking it slow, now, stopping to listen and scan.

I crossed his eastern fence line, into his neighbor's pasture, then moved slowly down the fence to the north road. Once on the gravel, I could jog back to the car in a hurry.

At the fence, I threw the briefcase over, then stepped to the left and knelt, scanning back up the hill. Caught a spark of light straight up the hill, maybe a hundred yards away, and then the fence post faltered, and a split second later, the sound of a shot banged down the hill.

I rolled left and kept rolling, into a little depression, and froze. He was out there, and he'd seen me, but he didn't have an exact fix. He probably couldn't fire accurately and scan at the same time.

He couldn't afford a whole burst of gunfire, I thought. One or two shots probably wouldn't be a problem, but a burst of full-auto would be a definite cop magnet.

If they knew where the gunfire was coming from. There were a couple of hills between us and the house. With all the racket of the fire and the fire equipment, the sound of gunfire might not be all that easy to pick out: not a single shot, anyway.

When the first shot was not repeated, I slowly, a quarter-inch at a time, lifted my head with the glasses to my eyes. Corbeil was fifty yards away, standing in the dark, looking through his glasses. Then he took them away from his face and groped forward, and I eased further left. When he stopped again, to scan, I ducked, but still watched him.

He scanned for a moment, then moved forward again, in what to him must have seemed like absolute silence. When he was twenty yards out, he stopped, looked through his glasses. I reached back, got a good grip on the fence, and when he was looking to my right, about where the fence post should have been, I gave it a hard tug

He dropped the glasses and the gun came up. And then he said, speaking softly, "If you give yourself up, I'll just take you in. There's no point in dying."

Like Br'er Rabbit, I said nothing, but just laid low.

"I can see in the dark," he said. "I've got starlights, and there's plenty of light. I'm looking right at you."

Like Br'er Rabbit.

He moved forward, still scanning, I was pressed against the fence, with no way to make a major move. He had the glasses in one hand, and the rifle in the other. The rifle had a pistol grip, like an AK. The barrel tracked along the fence, then back, then my way

Had he seen me? The muzzle tracked past me, then swung back. I flinched.

"I can see you," he said, confidently "Lift up your hands. If you don't, I'm gonna have to shoot you; I can't get any closer without giving you a chance with that pistol of yours. C'mon, man, I don't want to hurt you."

Then he did see me. I don't know what it wasmaybe I rolled my foot, or he caught a starlight reflection off the glasses, whatever, he dropped his glasses and the muzzle snapped round and was aimed right at my head.

I hadn't wanted to shoot him. He was twenty feet away and I was rolling, the muzzle of my pistol aimed more or less at the extra-dark piece of sky that was Corbeil, and his rifle popped and in the muzzle flash I saw him, pointed the pistol and.

Click.

The click was inaudible, but I knew nothing had happened; I could now see Corbeil only as a blinding afterimage that moved when my eyes moved. I pointed the gun at where I thought he might be and pulled the trigger again. This time it bucked in my hand; I heard a grunt, saw him in the muzzle flash, the barrel of his rifle pointed more or less at my head, fired again, and rolled.

And that was it; I had no more shells.

I didn't need any. The next sound from Corbeil was a rapid thrashing, followed by a low, everlasting moan, as the breath flowed out of his now dead body.