Evan zeroed in on the afterglow of that muzzle flare in the shadows of the thicket. He aimed a hair to the right on the assumption that the sniper was right-handed and lying on the left side of the rifle.
He pulled the trigger.
He never saw the impact, but a pink haze drifted out from the darkness between the trunks.
Evan hopped to his feet and charged upslope.
The shots had announced his presence to Candy and M — and, worse, to the north sniper, who had proved himself to be a serious shooter. Evan had to get to the south sniper’s rifle if he hoped to go head-to-head with him.
He figured the north sniper was already on the move, circling the rim of the valley, crashing through the woods to get within range. And Candy and M were no doubt moving up the mountain at him from below.
Driving up the incline, Evan pistoned between rocks, skimmed through trees, ignoring the pain that was firing the muscles of his legs. His bobbing torso felt exposed, hung out like a paper target. Wind whipped his ears, a whoosh to match the adrenaline surge in his veins. Every step seemed to take an eternity. And yet he hadn’t drawn fire.
The outcrop loomed ahead. For a time it seemed his legs were churning uselessly, bringing him no closer. At last the stone came within reach. Bracing for a bullet to the back, he hurled himself over the stone, rolling into the thicket of pines. He expected hard ground but landed on something soft and yielding.
The body of the south sniper.
Evan’s shot had squarely hit the mark. It occurred to him that he’d never seen the sniper’s face. And never would.
He rolled the body away from the big gun. A Sako TRG-42 in .338 Lapua Mag. A professional-grade platform, still set up for a shot. Evan swung into place next to it.
The crosshairs perfectly marked the spot on the shale where he’d been moments before. Tilting the gun downslope, he scanned across the treetops. Flickering in and out of cover, Candy charged up the mountain, Orphan M at her heels. They’d harvested AKs from the ballroom bloodbath.
Two quick shots and it would be down to Evan and the north sniper, squaring off in the snowy bowl of the valley.
Snugging his cheek to the stock, Evan led Candy slightly, the crosshairs marking the air inches in front of her face. She vanished behind a dense copse of pines, but he kept the rifle on its trajectory, timing her progress, waiting for a break in the trees.
It came, and he was ready for it.
Candy reared into the scope. His finger tightened on the trigger. The crosshairs found their mark.
An instant before he could fire, the air exploded around him. He heard the meaty smack beneath his ear, felt a wrecking ball strike his shoulder, and then all he saw were pine needles and branches blurring by. The earth rushed up to greet him. Dirt in his mouth. Splinters in his cheek. Ice in his ear.
And his own blood puddling on the ground beneath him.
56
Mostly Certain
He was alive. Of that he was mostly certain.
His body was shocked into paralysis. But he could move his eyes. He strained them, trying to piece together what had happened.
If he’d taken a .30-cal to the shoulder, he’d be dead or missing the limb. His hand lay in view in front of his eyes. He believed it was still attached to his body. The fingers were smooth and pale, slightly curled. Concentrating with everything he had, he made them twitch.
Okay, then. Still attached.
His pupils moved to the Lapua and then to the tree beside it. A football-size bite had been taken clean out of the trunk, the raw inner wood exposed. Bits of bark swirled in the air, ignoring gravity.
The north sniper had missed him by inches, the round sending a hunk of tree shrapnel smashing through Evan’s shoulder.
Evan realized, almost secondarily, that he wasn’t breathing. His throat felt snarled, the airway knotted. His stomach lurched a few times as if in anticipation of puking, and then his rib cage released and he drew in oxygen, a primordial sucking sound as though someone had punched holes straight through his lungs. For a time he gasped into the pine needles.
Blood spread out beneath him, sticky on his neck. The warmth reached his cheek. If he didn’t stanch the bleeding — and fast — then this off-kilter view of the forest floor would be his final screen grab before he powered down.
Somehow he sat up, though he might have blacked out once or twice doing it. He found himself gaping down at his torn coat and the ball of his right shoulder, a scramble of pink flesh and shredded muscle. Shards of his clavicle glittered in the wreckage. Bright blood pumped through the wound at intervals, pushing rivulets down his arm and into the matted fabric. When the collarbone shattered, it must have lacerated the subclavian vein, causing a massive hemorrhage.
The damage was too close to his neck to tourniquet.
A wave of light-headedness passed through him, bringing with it the image of—
— arterial blood soaking the shoulder of the blue flannel. Jack’s hand, already wearing a glove of crimson, clamps the wound.
Evan blinked his way back to the present, lifted his left hand, and clamped it over the wound.
He forced breath into his lungs, tried to wrestle his thoughts into place through the swamp of sensations engulfing him. He’d been trained for this, to strategize under extreme stress and pain, to shield the pilot light and keep it from being snuffed out.
Candy and Orphan M were still a good ways downslope with plenty of steep terrain to make up. Since he held high ground, they’d have to move slowly, cautiously. But the north sniper could be anywhere. And he knew precisely where Evan was.
“Draw back from the tree line.” He’d spoken the command, it seemed, rather than thinking it. It was the only way he could make his limbs move.
He scuttled backward, shoving with his heels, before realizing he wasn’t standing up.
Rising without using his arms was difficult, but he managed. He withdrew into the thicket, nearly tripping over his boots. Both rifles were back in the clearing along with the AK, but he couldn’t possibly operate them anyway. Blood snaked down his right arm, dripped from his fingertips.
The pain tasted of—
— wet concrete, the humid air of Parking Level 3 pressing into his pores, the elevator lights casting a red glow and—
— he fastened his left hand tighter over the wound, breathing—
— the all-too-familiar tang of iron, the sickly sweet trace of cherry blossom, which—
— he swore he smelled, but he knew he was here in a snow-layered valley in Maine, stumbling upslope and trying to tamp the blood back into his body. He wondered if it was possible to be in two places at once. Maybe that was what dying was, pulling up the net of time, events and places jumbling together and—
— Jack is clutching his bloody shoulder—
— as Evan was clutching his and—
— Jack says, “I’m already dead. It caught the brachial.”
“You don’t know that. You don’t—”
“I know that.” He lifts a callused hand, lays it against Evan’s cheek, perhaps for the first time ever.
Evan tripped, his knee plowing into a drift. He wobbled for a moment, leaning into the rise. The spill — so bright against the snow, a robin’s red, red breast.
Shoving himself vertical again took several phases. His feet moved, somehow carrying him onward, upward. He pinballed off trees. They proliferated, an endless span of trunks splitting the earth like the bars of a cell.
At last he sensed an openness ahead, the woods giving over to a bare patch of blinding white. Through the last trees ahead, a stretch of uneven powder swept up to the summit fifteen or so meters above.