Finger unsteady, Coltrane held down the talk button. “Can anybody hear me? Please, if you hear me, answer! This is a police emergency! An FBI agent has been shot! We need help!”
Shaking, Coltrane took his finger off the talk button, the release automatically switching the unit to its receive mode. He pressed the unit tensely against his ears. His spirit sank when he heard only static.
“Lousy…” McCoy murmured.
“What?”
“… technique… Supposed to say, ‘Do you read me?’” McCoy groaned. “And ‘Over.’” His face was alarmingly pale.
“And you’re supposed to save your strength.” Coltrane again pressed the talk button. “Does anybody read me? This is an emergency! An FBI agent has been shot! We need help! Over!”
“There you go,” McCoy murmured.
“But nobody’s answering.” Disheartened, Coltrane listened to the relentless static. “Maybe we’re too far into the hills. Maybe those bluffs cut off the signal to-”
“Photographer, I can barely hear you.” A guttural voice crackled faintly from the walkie-talkie.
Coltrane felt as if a fist was squeezing his heart.
“There must be something wrong with your radio,” the faint, deep Slavic voice said. “Your signal’s so weak, no one outside this valley will receive it.”
“How the hell-” Coltrane’s voice dropped. Immediately he knew the answer. “He must have a police scanner in the car he’s using!”
“I warned you, photographer.” The gravelly voice was almost a whisper. Coltrane had to press the walkie-talkie hard against his ear. “What I did to your doctor friend… what I did to your grandparents… that was quick compared to what I’m going to do to you.”
“Listen to me, you bastard.” But Coltrane had forgotten to press the talk button. Ilkovic couldn’t hear him.
Besides, Ilkovic had not yet released the talk button on his own unit. His gruff voice continued to whisper. “I’ve been promising myself this pleasure for a long time. I’ll be sure to take pictures.”
Furious, Coltrane pressed the transmit button. “My friends didn’t do anything to you! My grandparents didn’t! You didn’t need to kill them!”
Suddenly his voice box didn’t want to work. He seemed to have been struck mute, straining to listen for Ilkovic’s response.
Nothing.
“The button.” McCoy groaned. “You’ve still got your finger on…”
As if the button was on fire, Coltrane released it.
“Photographer, you didn’t say ‘Over,’” Ilkovic taunted.
You son of a bitch, Coltrane thought.
“No, your friends didn’t do anything to hurt me,” Ilkovic said. “Your grandparents didn’t. But you did, didn’t you? It’s your fault for prying and meddling and taking pictures of things that aren’t your concern.”
“His voice sounds…” McCoy took a painful breath, struggling to complete his agitated thought.
“Louder. My God, he must be coming closer.” Coltrane glanced frantically around the car. “We can’t stay here. We’re protected only on one side. We have to…”
His vision focused on the charred ruins down the road behind him. He had intended to drive past them and up into the hills on the valley’s far side. The road continued beyond them – to where, Coltrane had no idea, but he had hoped to find a town or a highway. Now the only town available to him was a jumble of fallen burned-out timbers.
Fifty yards away. The distance could as easily have been fifty miles.
“McCoy, do you think you can stand again?”
“No choice.”
In alarm, Coltrane saw a pool of blood when he gripped McCoy’s uninjured left shoulder and worked to lift him. Despite his trim body, McCoy seemed heavier, his body less responsive.
“Here.” Coltrane shoved the walkie-talkie into a pocket in McCoy’s suit coat. “Hang on.” Coltrane grabbed the shotgun. “I hope you’re good at the fifty-yard dash.”
It was more like a fifty-yard crawl. McCoy wavered. Coltrane lost his balance under McCoy’s awkward weight. The two of them collapsed on their knees, the sudden awkward movement preventing one of them from getting hit as a bullet zipped past at shoulder level, sounding like a bumblebee, the gunshot echoing. But Coltrane was absolutely certain that whomever the bullet would have struck would not have been killed. Ilkovic had been vividly clear about his determination to prolong this.
That might work in our favor, Coltrane thought.
“Leave me,” McCoy said.
“No.”
“Save yourself.”
“Not without you,” Coltrane said.
Their first effort had taken them about ten yards. They staggered another five before McCoy collapsed again. Sprawling onto the ashy road, Coltrane tried his best to absorb McCoy’s fall. Another bullet zipped over their heads.
“Photographer.” The guttural voice came faintly, eerily, from the walkie-talkie in McCoy’s pocket. “I see you.”
“Come on,” Coltrane urged McCoy, dragging him to his feet. “He can’t aim a rifle if he’s holding a radio.”
Staggering, they managed another ten yards before a bullet nicked the left elbow of Coltrane’s denim shirt. He felt its hot tug and pushed McCoy flat.
“He’s shooting lower,” Coltrane said.
“Photographer,” the gravelly voice said in a singsong imitation of a child playing a game of hide-and-seek. “I see you. I aimed slightly to your left, but you twisted in that direction. I hope I didn’t hit you. Did I? Is it serious? I don’t want to spoil this.”
Coltrane groped along his left arm, feeling the nick in his shirt, fearing he would touch blood. He became weak with relief when he didn’t find any. The weakness lasted barely a second – only until Ilkovic’s deep voice again sounded from the walkie-talkie in McCoy’s pocket.
“Answer me, photographer! How bad are you hit? Describe the pain!”
Coltrane tugged McCoy forward, urged him upright, and lurched forward with him. They were halfway to the jumble of scorched timbers. Two-thirds. Closer. The collapsed buildings loomed, filling Coltrane’s frantic vision. He had the disorienting sensation of seeing them through a lens. The illusion ended when McCoy stumbled and took Coltrane with him. Toppling forward, Coltrane tried to cushion McCoy as they fell over a tangle of blackened beams and crashed among scorched boards. He feared he would cough his lungs out from the thick layer of ash into which he landed. Feeling smothered, he thrashed to get onto his back. He coughed deeper. His eyes stung, watering.
Panicked, he saw McCoy facedown in a pile of ash and grabbed him, twisting him, directing his soot-covered face to the sky. Each time McCoy coughed, he groaned, shuddering from pain. His blood was stark against the blackness.
13
THEY WERE IN A CHARCOAL- FILLED CRATER that was formed by the collapsed walls of an incinerated building.
The shotgun, Coltrane thought. Where is it? I dropped it.
Groping among the brittle burnt ruins, he saw an unscorched chunk of wood protruding from a blackened pile and grabbed the shotgun’s stock, tugging it free. He squirmed in a frenzy toward the crater’s rim, peering warily above it, ready to shoot if he saw Ilkovic coming.
McCoy coughed behind him, straining to say something. “… arrel.”
“What?”
“Barrel. Ash in it.”
Coltrane’s stomach convulsed when he realized what McCoy was trying to tell him. The shotgun had fallen barrel-first among the burnt timbers. Ash and chunks of grit would have been wedged up the barrel. If Coltrane pulled the trigger, the plug might be tight enough to make the weapon backfire. Imagining an explosion of buckshot into his face, he hurriedly reversed the weapon and tensed when he saw that the barrel was indeed jammed.