He eased his head around the edge of a rusted metal bulkhead, toward the sound of the gunfire, and his blood ran cold. Tracie lay on her back, blood leaking through her clothes from a shoulder wound. Her gun lay on the roof a few feet away and a man in a baseball cap was walking slowly in her direction, pistol pointed at her. A long, black sound suppressor protruded from the barrel.
Tracie was helpless.
She had seconds to live.
And Shane acted.
He forgot about the pain, forgot about the tumor eating his brain away from the inside, forgot about Ronald Reagan and about the CIA and Soviet assassination plots. Forgot about everything. Only one thing mattered, and that was saving the woman he had fallen so unexpectedly and completely in love with.
Shane rounded the corner of the bulkhead, at full speed in just two steps. He had been an undersized linebacker on the Bangor High football team, the guy on the defense who was considered too small and too slow to be successful, but who had shown the doubters up by being named to the All-Maine defensive team two years running.
Just as the Russian shooter looked up in surprise, he squared his shoulders and lowered his head and hit the assassin in the chest with everything he had. He hadn’t laced on pads since the final game of his senior year a decade ago, but the muscle memory was still there, and he wrapped the shooter up with his arms and churned with his legs and knocked the man down like he was the unluckiest running back ever.
The shooter hit the deck and Shane’s one hundred eighty pounds fell on top of him and Shane heard the “oof” of air being forced out of lungs, a sound he had heard hundreds of times during his football days, and he felt a surge of savage glee, an elation he had never before experienced.
And then the man used Shane’s momentum against him, rolling backward and kicking upward with his legs, and Shane felt himself tumbling head first, feet flying over his head, and he landed on his back with a thud, and then the shooter was on top of him.
The man had dropped his gun when Shane hit him, and now Shane spotted it out of the corner of his eye, on the roof right next to them. Shane grabbed for it and missed, scattering roofing gravel. Grabbed again and watched as the shooter’s hand reached it first, seeing the struggle almost in slow motion.
Shane wrapped his hands together and drove them upward. He was unable to get much force behind the blow, but connected solidly under the shooter’s jaw and felt as much as heard the man’s teeth clatter together. The shooter’s head was knocked backward and he slumped sideways, and Shane bulled his way onto his hands and knees, scrabbling to his feet.
And found himself staring directly into the silenced barrel of the Russian’s gun.
51
Tracie watched helplessly as Shane struggled with the assassin for control of his gun. He had it in his hand for a split second and then he lost it, and in that moment she knew with dread certainty that the KGB agent was about to put a bullet in Shane’s skull.
She turned and scrambled on her knees to her own gun, her right arm numb from shoulder to fingers. She ignored her useless right hand and picked up the weapon in her left and then turned, amazed to see that somehow Shane had fought off the Russian and gotten to his feet.
But so had the assassin. And his weapon was still in his hand.
She raised the Beretta but was powerless to take a shot. Shane stood directly between her and the Russian. If she fired now, she’d put a slug in Shane’s back. Even if he were to move suddenly, with the gun in her unfamiliar left hand, she had no confidence she could hit the assassin.
The Russian raised the gun, angling it at Shane, but then Shane feinted left and surged straight forward, swatting the weapon upward, gaining himself a split-second reprieve. The assassin countered by kicking Shane in the shin, and then pistol-whipping him, slashing the butt of the gun across the side of his face.
Shane went down in a heap and the moment he did, Tracie fired, her weapon trained on the Russian’s chest.
But her target was no longer there. The instant he hit Shane, he leapt back, either in anticipation of Tracie’s move or to get a better angle on the shot he would take to eliminate Shane.
Tracie didn’t know which it was and didn’t care. What mattered was that she had missed, and now the Russian fired, striking Shane, who had hit the deck and rolled, knowing what was coming, but the Russian anticipated that, too, and fired not at the spot where Shane fell, but at the spot he would move to.
Shane took a slug in the chest and lay still.
The Russian moved again and turned his weapon on her.
Tracie pulled herself together and raised her gun again, but too late — the Russian fired. Tracie felt a stab of white-hot pain in her left shoulder and dropped to the roof one last time. Her gun fell next to her but it was useless now. She had no feeling in either arm. She couldn’t move her fingers. She squeezed her eyes closed and waited for the final shot, the one that would end everything.
She could hear chaotic screaming and sirens, and the sound of people running far below. They had heard the gunshots. By now Reagan would be halfway to his armored limo. She would die knowing she had prevented the assassination of the president, but it would be small consolation. Shane Rowley was dead, or would be soon. Shane, whose only sin was to pull her from the wreckage of a burning airplane. Shane, the man who had done much more for her than she could ever repay. Shane, the man she had fallen in love with.
A second that felt like a lifetime passed and when nothing happened, Tracie opened her eyes. She lifted her head toward the KGB assassin and blinked, stunned. Shane had risen to his feet and was barreling across the rooftop at the Russian.
The man turned away from Tracie in surprise and squeezed off a hurried shot. The slug struck Shane somewhere on the right side of his body, but he kept coming, slowing only slightly. He had started out about fifteen feet away from the Russian and had now closed the half the distance. He stumbled, placed a hand on the roof and pushed himself upright and kept coming.
The Russian fired again and this time the bullet hit Shane square in the chest, the second time he had been shot in the same spot. He stopped and staggered and, then, unbelievably, kept coming. He hit the Russian like a freight train and drove him backward. The man windmilled his arms in a desperate attempt to maintain his balance and the gun flew out of his hand, arcing high into the air, then dropping to the roof with a metallic clank.
Shane kept driving with his legs, shoulder planted squarely in the Russian’s chest, moving him backward but unable to take him down. They were running out of room quickly, and Tracie could see what was about to happen. She shouted, “Nooo!” as the pair of fighting men struck the roof’s two-foot-high retaining wall.
They were moving fast, but to Tracie’s horrified eyes the events played out in slow motion, like some awful sports clip being shown on the evening news. The Russian’s legs struck the retaining wall just above the knees and he reached for the wall with both hands in an attempt to avoid tumbling over backward. Shane pumped his legs one last time, churning relentlessly, and the Russian dropped over the edge.
And so did Shane.
He swiveled his head and locked eyes with her, and then he disappeared.