Zhukov moved with the taut, coiled grace of a cat. His eyes scanned the room, up and then down, ticking slowly and methodically in a grid.
I breathed noiselessly in and out on the other side of the heavy wooden door. Watching through the keyhole.
I’d come to rescue Alexa. But now it was a simple matter of survival.
The hollow-point ammo I was using might have had unequaled stopping power, but the rounds wouldn’t penetrate the thick old wooden door between us. The instant they hit wood they’d start to fragment. If they actually passed through the door, they’d be traveling at such a reduced velocity that they’d no longer kill.
I was all but defenseless.
Nor was my body armor meant to stop the.50 caliber Magnum rounds fired by the Desert Eagle. I didn’t know whether the rounds would penetrate the ballistic vest; they might. But even if they didn’t, the blunt-force trauma alone would probably kill me.
So I watched him through the keyhole and held my breath and waited for him to move on to another part of the house.
Zhukov scanned the room again. He seemed to be satisfied I wasn’t hiding here. I saw his eyes shift toward the kitchen. He took a few steps in that direction.
Slowly I let out my breath. As soon as I was sure he’d moved into the kitchen, I’d turn the knob silently, and step out as noiselessly as I could.
If I got the jump on him I might be able to drop him with one well-aimed shot.
Reaching out slowly, I placed my left hand on the doorknob. Ready to turn it once he was safely out of the room.
I continued watching.
Drew breath. Waited patiently. A few seconds more.
Then he swiveled around, back toward me. His gaze dropped to the floor, as if he’d just discovered something. I saw what he was looking at.
The railback chair I’d just moved out of the way of the basement door.
It was out of place. Not exactly where he’d left it.
His gaze rose slowly. He smiled, baring teeth that were brown and belonged in a beaver’s mouth.
He raised the Desert Eagle and pointed it right at the basement door, directly at me, as if he had X-ray vision and could see through the wood, and he squeezed the trigger-
blam blam blam
– and I lurched out of the way and everything was happening in slow motion, the thunderous explosions and the muzzle flash, fireballs that lit up the entire room, the splintering of the door, and as I let go of the doorknob and the banister and leaped backward I felt a bullet slam into my chest, the pain staggering, and everything went black.
104.
When I came to, a few seconds later, my body was wracked with excruciating pain. Like something had exploded inside my chest while my rib cage was being crushed in some enormous vise. The pain in my left leg was even worse, sharp and throbbing, the nerve endings shrieking and juddering. Everything moved in a sort of stroboscopic motion, like a rapid series of still images.
Where was I?
On my back, I knew, sprawled on a hard cold floor in the near darkness, surrounded by the dank odor of mold and old concrete and the stench of urine. As my eyes adjusted, I saw snowdrifts of what looked like shredded newspaper all around me, and a lot of rat droppings.
Something scurried by, made a scree sound, and I lurched.
A large shaggy Brown Norway rat, its long scaly tail writhing, stopped a few feet away. It gazed with beady brown eyes, maybe curious, or maybe resentful that I’d disturbed its den. It twitched its whiskers and scuttled away into the darkness.
Pale moonlight filtered in from above, through a gaping hole in the underside of a wooden staircase.
In an instant I realized what had just happened.
A bullet had struck me, slamming into the left side of my ballistic vest, but it hadn’t penetrated my body. I was alive only because two inches of solid oak had slowed the round’s velocity. But I’d been knocked off balance, shoved backward down the stairs. Then I’d crashed feet first through the termite-damaged, rotten planks and broken through, landing on the concrete floor below.
I tried to breathe, but each time I inhaled it felt like daggers piercing my lungs. I sensed warm blood seeping down my left leg. I reached down to feel the bullet wound.
But there wasn’t any.
Instead, the jagged end of a broken plank a foot long was sunk several inches into my left calf, through tough denim.
I grabbed the board and wrenched it out of my flesh. A couple of long rusty nails protruded from the wood. As painful as it had been lodged in my calf, it was far worse coming out.
I tried to recall the number of shots he’d fired at me. The.50 caliber Desert Eagle’s magazine held only seven rounds. Had he fired four or five? Maybe even six.
Maybe he didn’t have any rounds left. Maybe he had one.
I was short of breath and dazed and numb. A creak somewhere overhead, then heavy footsteps on the top steps. Zhukov was coming down the stairs.
Maybe he thought he’d killed me but wanted to make sure. Maybe he thought he could just finish me off. I had to move before he fired straight down as I lay here gasping.
I felt for my weapon but it wasn’t in the holster. I’d been holding it when the bullets struck me. Maybe I’d dropped it when I took a tumble. Now I felt for it on the cold floor, my hands sweeping over the concrete and the debris and the rat droppings. But it was nowhere within reach.
A light came on: a bare bulb mounted to one of the rafters about ten feet away. The ceiling was low. The basement was smalclass="underline" maybe thirty feet by twenty.
Wooden shelves were screwed on to the cinder-block walls, lined with old canning jars. Rickety children’s bookcases, painted with clowns and dancers, were heaped with newspapers and magazines that had been chewed through, cobwebbed, littered with rat droppings. In one corner, in a square hole cut into the concrete floor, a rusty sump pump was planted in gravel, collecting dust and cobwebs. Here and there were folding tables stacked with old toasters and kitchen implements and assorted junk.
He took another step. I lay absolutely still, held my breath. Lay flat, looking up.
If I made a sound, he’d locate me, and he’d get a direct, unimpeded shot straight down. The vest wouldn’t protect me.
He knew I was here. He’d heard me stumble down the steps. Surely he’d seen the broken boards, the gaping hole, the missing treads. But did he know I was directly below him?
As soon as he looked down, he’d know. Once he did, it was all over.
I looked over at the bare lightbulb again, and then I noticed the splintered two-by-four on the ground, the blood-spattered plank whose jagged end had sunk into my leg.
I grabbed it, and in one hard swift throw I hurled it, smashing the bare lightbulb, and everything went dark again.
In the dark I stood a chance.
But a few seconds later, a flashlight beam shone down the stairs. The cone of light swept slowly back and forth over the floor and the walls, into the dark corners. I could hear him coming down the stairs, slowly and deliberately.
Then the beam went off. The only light was the faint trapezoid cast by the open door above. Maybe he’d stuffed the flashlight in a pocket. He needed two hands to hold the Desert Eagle.
Now it was all a matter of seconds. I had to get to my feet to be ready to pounce, but do it silently. The slightest scrape would announce my location like a beacon.
The timing was crucial. I could move only when he did, when the sound of his tread and the creaking and groaning of the old wood masked whatever slight noise I made getting up.
Lying flat, I listened.
A dry whisking. The rat had come out of its hiding place, alarmed by yet another disturbance, maybe fearful that a second human being was about to come crashing down into its nest. It pattered across the floor toward me. Paused to make a decision, surveying the terrain with shrewd eyes.