The Kill Clause tr-1 Read online

  He timed two deep breaths, then thundered into his run. The trunk brushed his shoulder as he leaped, shoving off the platform hard and flying across a five-foot break of open air. Beneath him the drop stretched down seventy feet, broken only by metal branches and wooden crossbeams.

  He hit the edge of the opposing platform and rolled evenly across his back, popping to a high-kneel shooting stance, one knee down, one up, the thrust of the gun an extension of both elbow-locked arms.

  About six feet off the platform, dangling from a noose looped over the scaffolding above, was Robert’s Nextel. Ringing. It swayed gently, rocked by Tim’s hard landing on the platform.

  He felt his insides go slack, the rush of panic. Keeping both hands firmly on the. 357, he shuffled two steps, careful not to trip over a stray two-by-four, and peered over the platform’s edge. On the ground Robert sprinted across the plateau, directly at the monument, sliding a curved Gurkha knife back into a hip sheath. He was coming from the direction of the parked car and the stacks of metal. Tim knew before he raised his eyes that next he’d see Mitchell, staggering twenty yards behind Robert, working the freshly cut cord from around his wrists. Though Mitchell moved unevenly, dizzied from Tim’s blows, his shoulders were firmed with rage, his legs moving in short, punching steps.

  What alarmed Tim even more was that Mitchell had his black det bag looped over one shoulder.

  Tim glanced down, trying to spot Robert again, but he had already disappeared underfoot. Before he had time to formulate a single coherent thought aside from the slapping awareness of how badly he’d been fooled, a reverberating clank announced the spotlight’s activation. Blinding light filled the core of the tree, shot in thin beams from the holes of the trunk and branches. A gap between metal plates below threw light up against the bottom of the platform; it streamed around the sides like a gold, twinkling river.

  Squinting against the brightness, Tim glanced over the edge of the platform and saw Robert stepping slowly backward, peering up at him through the scope of a McMillan. 308.

  A bullet cracked through wood, zinging past Tim’s head and embedding in a beam overhead. Tim threw himself flat against the platform. A second bullet punched through the platform inches from his face, throwing a spray of splinters past his cheek. He rolled toward the trunk, splitting beams of light. Two more shots penetrated the platform inches from his spinning body and ricocheted off wood and metal. Tim froze near the trunk.

  The ping of metal and then the slapped-meat sound of slug smacking skin. Tim’s leg jerked as he heard the delayed report, and he cried out, more from shock than pain. His mouth cottoned instantly. Beams of light shot out from the tree branches all around him and through the bullet-riddled platform, one ray an inch off his nose, another just in front of the bend of his elbow; two he sensed rising between the split of his legs. He lay still, realizing that his movement made him detectable as he crossed over the fingers of light, making them blink out.

  His thigh throbbed, numb and painless. He estimated that the bullet had entered just north of his right knee. When he heard movement down below, he risked rolling his head over to glance through one of the platform holes.

  Robert, head down, chambered another round. In a clear stretch of plateau about twenty yards from the monument, Mitchell was on a knee, pulling blocks of C4 from his det bag. From this distance the blood staining his face looked like oil.

  Tim strained his eye back to where Robert had been, found him missing, and jerked away just as another bullet split the wood where his head had been, enlarging the hole he’d been looking through. A remarkable shot, particularly given the angle.

  Tim froze.

  The silence was nearly unbearable.

  Another bullet broke through the wood; another beam of light sprang up like a fast-growing vine between his neck and shoulder.

  The stray two-by-four, about five feet long, was just within reach of his right hand. With a grunt he shoved it a few inches forward. The far end of the board crossed a hole in the platform, quashing the thin beam of light, and quickly two bullets hammered through the wood on either side of the existing hole. Tim covered his head, waiting for the ricochets to stop.

  What Tim had gleaned at Rhythm’s indicated that Robert preferred a sitting shooting posture, an elevated tactical advantage, and a position offset right from a frontal view. Right now he was shooting from a standing position at a target directly overhead, and-despite those hindrances-firing with astounding accuracy. If Tim didn’t get off this platform, he was going to get picked apart piece by piece.

  The mouth of a tube, about three feet in diameter, faced him across the length of the platform. Designed as a flexible safety trash chute for workers to clear scraps of material, the tube wormed over the edge of the scaffolding and dropped to the ground. The sturdy canvas would never hold Tim’s weight, and even if it could, the nearly free-fall seventy-foot drop would spit him out almost directly at Robert’s and Mitchell’s feet.

  Blood soaked his jeans around the bullet wound; it was only a matter of time before a few crimson drops made their way down one of the holes near his right leg and gave away his position.

  Even if his leg wasn’t injured, the tree trunk’s diameter was too wide for him to James Bond down the interior, spread-eagling to slow the fall. He couldn’t count on a rapid police response to such a remote site; even if the gunshots were audible over the rush of the freeway, at that distance they’d probably sound like little more than firecrackers. The only way off the monument was a tedious climb.

  Tim shoved the two-by-four again to disrupt the light flow farther down the platform and risked a look through the hole near his head. Robert was repositioning himself. Mitchell had finished laying C4 around the tree trunk’s base and was storming back to his det bag.

  To buy a few seconds, Tim pressed his gun barrel to a hole near his hand and fired four times, blindly. Then he rolled to his back and shot once at the rope tying Robert’s dangling Nextel to the scaffolding above. He hit the rope near the wood, pinching it off and causing the phone to drop straight down rather than swing off the platform’s edge.

  He timed a lunge, grabbing the phone and landing flat, arms and legs spread, barely missing the bullet holes in the platform, the loose two-by-four pressing hard into his shin. Two more shots hammered through the wood precisely where he’d been. Robert had now all but ventilated the platform; there was very little unpenetrated wood left on which Tim could lie without giving away his position. He removed the coarse rope from the phone and used it as a tourniquet for his leg. Another shot broke the wood beside him, forcing him to flatten against the platform again.

  Breathing hard, his elbow bent to dodge the new beam of light, Tim lowered his hand and worked the Stork’s phone from his pocket. With excruciating slowness he brought the two phones up to his chest, holding them side by side. Bullets continued to punch through the floor at intervals, pinging around the small cross-section of scaffolding.

  He worked his foot over the two-by-four, pressing his toe against its end, then snapped his foot out. Right when the board slid off the platform’s edge, drawing Robert’s attention-Tim hoped-at least for a moment, he glanced through the hole to his right.

  As he’d anticipated, Mitchell was still coming strong, the det bag looped over his shoulder and bouncing musically against his hip. He was heading for the C4 he’d left at the tree trunk’s base, a coil of wire in one hand, a razor knife in the other, an electric blasting cap in his mouth.

  Tim hit “redial” on the Stork’s phone and tossed Robert’s Nextel into the canvas tube. He heard it ring once on its way down. It whistled along the canvas as it fell, guided in toward the trash heap at the base of the monument.

  A sharp crack as the electric blasting cap detonated, triggered by the ringing phone’s RF pulse. A moment of perfect stillness, nothing but the wind whipping through the scaffolding, then a gut-wrenching wail.

  Robert.

  Tim rolled twice, sticking his head
over the platform’s edge. Directly below, Robert was genuflecting beside his brother’s body. A spray of matter above the shoulders confirmed that Mitchell’s head had been blown apart by the electric blasting cap.

  Tim swung over the platform, gripping the edge to aid his swing, and dropped ten feet to the one below. His right leg, weak and slick with blood, gave out, and he collapsed.

  Robert roared down below, then bullets started hammering through the platform, sending chunks of wood flying. The gap between the metal plates in the trunk made the lower platform blindingly bright. Tim dragged himself to the visible section of trunk, lead flying up all around him, plunged his arm into the gap, and fired once, directly down the core of the tree.

  A blast rocked the monument as the spotlight lamp exploded. The sharp flare of light disappeared at once, plunging everything into darkness.

  Tim worked his way swiftly around to the far side of the tree. Smoke was seeping from the holes in the metal, the sluggish discharge recalling blood from wounds.

  Robert continued to bellow down in the dark, firing randomly up at the branches and sky.

  Tim hooked a toe on an opposing branch and pulled himself onto the far wall of scaffolding, then half fell, half slid down, catching splinters, moving quickly while the rifle reports covered the sound of his plunge and marked Robert’s place across the monument.

  The shooting stopped, either because the ammo had run out or because Robert was circling to Tim; either way the silence sat thick in the air like an unvented smell. Tim slid from the lowest metal branch, dropping six feet to the ground and bearing his weight on his left leg.

  Fumbling out a speedloader, he refilled the wheel of his gun. Despite the makeshift tourniquet, blood had twisted down his jeans, engulfing his knee. His head swam for a moment, static obscuring his vision; he’d lost a lot of blood. He tried to run, but his right leg had gone numb, and he fell over, catching a mouthful of dirt. With the help of a sawhorse, he pulled himself back to his feet.

  Robert broke into view, one-handing the. 45 as it kicked and bucked, cording his forearm with muscle, muzzle flare lighting his face. His eyes showed too much white. Sheets of flesh pulled down from his jaw on either side, tight against twine-split muscle. He was roaring something, his lips loose and wet, his mustache a red slash above his stretching mouth.

  Tim ran as best he could, threading through the scaffolding around the trunk’s base, putting metal and wood between him and Robert. Robert was firing wildly; he was less skilled with a handgun. Tim could barely run with his bad leg; boards were flying past him on either side and overhead. He ducked and jumped and dodged. Lead sparked off metal, always just behind him, always just around the turn. He’d sprinted nearly 180 degrees around the trunk when he swung wide and turned, lining the sights. Robert appeared, gun leading around the curved turn and, still in dead sprint, Tim squeezed off a round.

  Robert’s. 45, raised in front of his upper chest, caught the bullet with a clang of lead meeting steel. The barrel sparked, and Robert cried out as the gun tore from his hand.

  Tim swung back just in time to see the thigh-high mound of refuse before him, and he ran into it full bore, nails and dust exploding. Shaving through the left side of the heap, he hit ground hard and slid a few feet, landing on his back with a brick pinching into his left hip. He looked up through the thickening cloud of stirred debris and saw, ten feet above him, the open bottom of the canvas tube staring down at him like a curious eye.

  He sat up,. 357 leveled. Despite his fall, he had the advantage now; his bullet had to have ruined Robert’s. 45.

  Robert was standing perfectly still, about fifteen yards off, partly shielded by a stack of metal plates. Just watching him.

  Tim’s glance dropped from Robert’s pink eyes, to his confident mouth-too confident for an unarmed man being gun-faced-to the rising globe of his biceps as his hand turned over, revealing the end of a remote detonator. Shifting farther behind the stack of plates so he was only a half man peering out, he nodded once at Tim, indicating something. Tim glanced down and realized that the brick pinching his hip was not a brick at all but a block of C4, the first of many spread around the monument’s base at four-foot intervals.

  Mitchell’s body lay sprawled about ten feet to Tim’s left, his det bag several feet closer where Robert had pulled it when he’d prepped the C4. Of course Robert would have primed the explosives-he’d still thought Tim was up in the monument.

  Tim’s head snapped up, and he fired once, but Robert anticipated his move, ducking behind the metal stack. The shot sparked off the steel. Tim braced himself for the explosion, but none came.

  Instead came Robert’s rough voice. “You took Mitch’s head, you motherfucker. Took it clean off.” The words wavered and blurred.

  Tim glanced at Mitchell’s body, a blur above the neck. Next to it lay Robert’s rifle, partially buried in red dirt. A scattering of tools had fallen from Mitchell’s bag. Spray-on glue. Needlenose wire clippers. The tiny shining cylinder of a nonelectric blasting cap, pushed into the earth. Tim picked up the blasting cap, rubbing its smooth side with his thumb.

  LAPD would be here soon-the lit tree had to have been visible for miles-but Tim heard no sirens.

  Robert’s rifle-no bullets. The. 45-out of commission.

  He doesn’t want to detonate the whole hundred-foot monument, Tim realized. He wants to shoot me, but he doesn’t have any bullets left.

  Tim turned the blasting cap in his hand and slid it down the bore of his. 357, leading with the well end. It fitted barely, touching the metal on all sides. He needed something to jam it in place. He looked frantically around him for an appropriate-size object, knowing it was only a matter of seconds before Robert made his final demands. Nothing in the dirt around him. He leaned forward to dig through the mound of debris, and a spasm of pain racked his stomach.

  The slug.

  Tim’s fingers scurried over the front of his bulletproof vest, finding the small mushroom of lead from the Stork’s gun. A jagged little nine-millimeter.

  It went hard down the gun, sharp edges digging grooves in the smooth metal bore. He used the tip of Mitchell’s needlenose wire cutters to snug it in place. He lowered the. 357 into his lap, praying that Robert wouldn’t notice the altered weighting of the spiked barrel, since he was accustomed to a. 45.

  Robert’s face resolved from the shadows on the far side of the stack of metal. “One click of this button and you’re done. The only question is, do you want me to blow up this memorial with you?”

  “No,” Tim said. “I don’t.”

  “Toss me your gun.”

  “Don’t do this.”

  The detonator jerked up, clenched in Robert’s hand beside his face. “Toss me your fucking gun.”

  Tim threw the gun. It landed in the dirt a few feet from Robert’s boots. Robert stepped forward and took it, aiming at Tim with a shaking hand. The portable radio scanner swayed on his belt, long turned off. “Get up.”

  Tim struggled to his feet, favoring his left leg.

  Robert’s eyes pulled back to his brother’s body. A tear gathered on his lower lid but refused to fall. “I have a mind to take some time with you.”

  Tim staggered a bit to keep his balance on his good leg.

  “But I’m not an animal like you. I wouldn’t put your wife through the pain of having nothing left but a mangled corpse.” With the gun Robert gestured to Tim’s torso. “Take off your vest. I don’t want to fuck up your face.”

  Tim pulled off his jacket and unstrapped his vest. The Velcro pulling loose sounded like cloth ripping. He dropped the vest in the dirt and faced the gun. From his angle he could see the scratches in the bore.

  Robert beckoned him forward with the barrel, and Tim stepped from the cover of the monument, weaponless and bleeding and weak. The throw of ground outside the scaffolding seemed desert-barren. There was nothing to cut the wind.

  “Was it you or Mitchell who met Kindell that night at his shack? Gave him t
he intel dump on Ginny…when she walked home, what route she took?” Tim’s throat clogged with disgust. “Told him she was his ‘type’?”

  “Me,” Robert said, his eyes red and morose. “It was me.”

  He pulled the trigger.

  Tim dropped to a crouch, covering his head with his arms.

  The blast was loud and surprisingly sharp, and when Tim looked up, Robert was gazing at him as if nothing had happened, his right arm extended as before, except his hand was blown off.

  Robert’s eyes found the splayed end of his stump, a pulled-weed tangle of roots, and then blood spurted from the left side of his neck where a piece of shrapnel had blazed a groove through his carotid artery. He fastened his good hand over the side of his neck but only succeeded in splitting the stream between his fingers.

  Tim rose slowly and approached him.

  Robert raised his injured arm again and stared at the wound, its gaping permanence, as if he still couldn’t believe it. Blood streamed from his neck down his good hand, dripping from his elbow now. His eyes were wide and child-vulnerable, and Tim felt his breath catch in his throat.

  Robert staggered back a step, his arm flaring for balance, and Tim took it and eased him to the ground. He stood over him, gazing down. Robert’s legs and arms started jerking, and quickly he couldn’t keep his hand pressed over the hole in his neck.

  He bled out in the dirt.

  Tim stood for a moment in the space between the sprawled bodies of the twins. His voice was steady by the time he called Bowrick. “It’s clear. Come get me.”

  He pulled the Gurkha blade from Robert’s sheath. As the Lincoln made its way up the hill, headlights glaring intrusively and throwing the bloody tableau into shadowy relief, Tim left Robert’s body and limped over to meet it. Bowrick pulled to a stop, his elbow resting half out the window like a trucker’s. He killed the engine, and the car sat dense and immobile in a swirl of reddish dust.

  “Pop the trunk,” Tim said.

  Kindell had gone quiet, but at Tim’s voice he started shifting again. The trunk yawned open, and there he was, curled between an empty gasoline can and the spare.