Blood Trust - Eric van Lustbader [157]
“Thatë!” Alli cried, bending down to see to his wound.
But he thrust her roughly away. “Upstairs. Find Liridona and get out of here. I’ll keep this fucker out of your way.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“Don’t be stupid.” He glanced up at her. “This is what I’ve trained for, this is my life. Now leave me to it.”
He began to fire again.
“Thatë—”
He shoved her hard. “Go!”
“Run, Alli.”
Tears running down her face, she turned and bolted up the stairs.
* * *
ANNIKA IGNORED the shots and the animal growling that came from the room behind her. This appeared to surprise Xhafa, until he said, “You’re not alone.”
Without a word, she hauled him out of the chair and, spinning him around, slammed him down on the floor.
“You’ll always be mine, you know,” he said. “Whatever you do, until the day you die.”
Annika straddled him. Taking a huge bowie knife out of her backpack, she proceeded to strip off his clothes, baring his back. The muscles rippled in anticipation.
Pressing the blade point to his skin, Annika proceeded to score seven concentric circles into his back, carving each circle deep into the muscles. Blood flowed, Xhafa screamed and kept on screaming.
* * *
CAROLINE WAS sitting in the passenger seat of the Syrian’s car, cradling her laptop, when she heard the volleys of gunshots. The car was parked a block away from the safehouse but the cracks sounded much closer. She turned to look out the side window just as Taroq pulled the door open.
She got out and Taroq embraced her. For all the emotion inside her, she might have been embraced by a boxcar.
“You had no trouble following us?”
He shook his head. “None at all.”
“All right. Let’s go.”
He pointed off to their left. “My car is this way.”
At his side, she walked quickly away from the Syrian’s car and never looked back.
* * *
THE FIRST screams caused the guard to look beyond where Jack lay, buried beneath the attack dog. In that moment, Jack located his Glock, brought it out, and shot the guard in the head. He was taking no chances. Grunting, he began to shrug off the dog’s corpse, when it juddered back into him, struck by two bullets fired from the second guard’s gun. He slumped to the floor as if shot.
Through slitted eyes, he saw the boots of the second guard coming hesitantly toward him. He was taking a calculated risk, he knew, but the dog was so big that it covered all of his torso and head. His hand with the Glock in it was beneath the attack dog’s neck and so able to move.
When he saw the boots close enough, he edged the muzzle of the pistol forward, tilting it up. It was then that the left boot slammed down on the Glock, trapping it.
At once, Jack let it go and, slithering out from under the animal, fired at the guard with the handgun in his left hand. He missed, and the guard slammed the barrel of his pistol into Jack’s cheek. Even as the pain jolted him, Jack stepped forward, inside the guard’s defense, delivering a flurry of vicious blows to his adversary’s head and neck.
Undeterred, the guard drove his fist into Jack’s wounded side, and Jack crumpled in agony. Grinning, the guard stood over him, pointing his pistol at Jack’s head. One instant his finger was about to pull the trigger, the next the blade of a bowie knife was buried hilt-deep in the left side of his chest.
He looked up, past Jack, but he was already arching backward and all his glazing eyes saw was the ceiling before his heart, sliced in two, ceased to beat.
Jack looked back over his shoulder and saw Annika standing in the doorway.
* * *
ALLI HAD just reached the third floor when she heard the pounding of boots. She had just enough time to duck into a room before six or seven armed men came charging down the hall, drawn by the gunfire and the smoke and flames from the ground floor. When they had passed, she darted out,