In the heart of the colony, he felt safely screened by the white feathery panicles that rose higher than his head. He remained on his feet and, through gaps between the plumes, he peered back the way that he had come.
The ghostly light did not reveal a pursuer. Mitch shifted his position, gently pushed aside a panicle, and another, surveying the edge of the roadway at the top of the slope. He didn't see anyone up there.
He did not intend to hide in the pampas for long. He had fled his vulnerable position at the car only to gain a couple of minutes to think.
He wasn't concerned that the remaining gunman would drive away in the Chrysler. Julian Campbell wasn't the kind of boss to whom you could report failure with the confidence that you would keep either your job or your head.
Besides, to the guy out there on the hunt, this was sport, and Mitch was the most dangerous game of all. The hunter was motivated by vengeance, by pride, and by the taste for violence that had led him into this kind of work in the first place.
Had he been able to hide until dawn or slip away, Mitch would not have done so. He wasn't boiling over with macho enthusiasm for a confrontation with this second professional killer, but he understood too well the consequences of avoiding it altogether.
If the remaining gunman lived and reported back to Campbell, Anson would know sooner rather than later that his fratello piccolo, his little brother, was alive and free. Mitch would lose his ease of movement and the advantage of surprise.
Most likely, Campbell didn't expect a report from his pair of executioners until morning. Perhaps he would not even seek them out until the following afternoon.
Indeed, Campbell might miss the Chrysler Windsor before he missed the men. That depended on which of his machines he most valued.
Mitch needed to be able to catch Anson by surprise, and he needed to be in his brother's house at noon to take the call from the kidnappers. Holly was on a higher and narrower ledge than ever.
He could not hide, and his enemy would not. For predator and prey — whoever might be which — this had to be a fight to the death.
Chapter 31
Surrounded by noble white plumes that suggested an encircling protectorate of helmeted knights, Mitch in the pampas grass recalled the hard crack of the two shots that had almost drilled him as he had been taking the pistol from the dead gunman.
If his adversary's weapon had been equipped with a sound suppressor, as it had been in the library, the reports would not have been so loud. He might not have heard them.
In this desolate place, the gunman had not been concerned about attracting unwanted attention, but he had not removed the silencer just for the satisfaction of a louder bang. He must have had another reason.
Sound suppressors were most likely illegal. They facilitated quiet murder. They were meant for use in close quarters — as in a mansion where the household staff was not reliably corrupt.
Logic led Mitch quickly to conclude that a sound suppressor was useful only in discreet situations because it diminished the accuracy of the weapon.
" When you were standing over your captive in a library or when you forced him to kneel before you on a lonely desert road, a pistol with a sound suppressor might serve you well. But at a distance of twenty feet, or thirty, perhaps it reduced the accuracy to such a degree that you were more certain to hit your target by throwing the pistol than by shooting it.
Small stones rattled like tumbling dice.
The sound seemed to have arisen west of him. He turned in that direction. With caution, he parted the pampas panicles.
Fifty feet away, the gunman crouched like a hunchback troll. He was waiting for any repercussions of the noise that he had made.
Even when still, the man could not be mistaken for a thrust of rock or for desert flora, because he'd drawn attention to himself in the process of crossing a long barren swath of alkaline soil. That patch of ground appeared not merely reflective but luminous.
If Mitch had not paused here, if he had continued west, he would have encountered the killer in the open, perhaps coming face-to-face as in a Western-movie showdown.
He considered lying in wait, letting his stalker draw closer before firing.
Then instinct suggested that the colony of pampas grass and similar features of the landscape were exactly the places that would most interest the gunman. He expected Mitch to hide; and he would regard the pampas with suspicion.
Mitch hesitated, for the advantage still seemed to be his. He could fire from cover, while the troll stood in the open. He had not yet squeezed off a shot with this pistol, while his adversary had expended two.
A spare magazine. Given that mayhem was the gunman's business, he probably carried a spare magazine, maybe two.
He would approach the pampas colony cautiously. He would not make an easy target of himself
When Mitch fired and missed because of distance, angle, distorting light, and lack of experience, the gunman would return fire. Vigorously.
The pampas offered visual cover, not protection. A barrage of eight rounds followed at least by another volley often would not be survivable.
Still crouching, the trollish figure took two tentative steps forward. He paused again.
Inspiration came to Mitch, a bold idea that for a moment he considered discarding as reckless but then embraced as his best chance.
He let the panicles ease into their natural positions. He slipped out of the colony opposite from the point at which the gunman approached it, hoping to keep it between them as long as possible.
To a choir of crickets and the more sinister clicking-shrilling of the unknown insect musician, Mitch hurried eastward, along the route that he had taken earlier. He passed the point at which he had descended the embankment; that unscreened ascent would leave him too exposed if he failed to reach the top before the gunman rounded the pampas colony.
About sixty feet farther, he arrived at a wide shallow swale in the otherwise uniform face of the slope. Chaparral thrived in this depression and spilled up over the edges of it.
In need of his cuffed hands to climb, Mitch jammed the pistol under his belt. Previously, moonlight had shown him the way, but now moonshadows obscured and deceived. Always conscious that quiet was as important as swift progress, he insinuated himself upward through the chaparral.
He stirred up a musky scent that might have had a plant source but that suggested he was trespassing in one kind of animal habitat or another. Brush snared, poked, scratched.
He thought of snakes, and then he refused to think of them.
When he reached the top without drawing gunfire, he eeled out of the swale, onto the shoulder of the road. He crawled to the center of the dirt lane before standing.
If he attempted to circle behind where he thought the gunman might be headed, he would find that meanwhile the gunman would have done some anticipating of his own, would have changed course in hope of surprising his quarry even as his quarry schemed to surprise him. Stalking and counter-stalking, they could spend a lot of precious time wandering the wilderness, now and then finding each other's spoor, until one of them made a mistake.
If that was the game, the fatal mistake would be Mitch's, for he was the less experienced player. As had been true thus far, his hope lay in not fulfilling his enemy's expectations.
Because Mitch had surprised them with the revolver, the gunman would expect him to have as savage an instinct for self-preservation as any cornered animal. He had proved, after all, not to be paralyzed by fear, self-pity, and self-loathing.
But the gunman might not expect a cornered animal, once having broken free, to return voluntarily to the corner that it had recently escaped.