Cold Vengeance - Lincoln Child [141]
“Lovely boat,” he said, pausing. “Sloop or ketch?”
“Well,” said the man with a sheepish look, “I’m rather new to this, couldn’t tell you the difference.”
With a fast, easy movement Pendergast pulled his .45 and drew down on the man. “Stand up,” he said, “slowly. Keep your hands where I can see them.”
The man looked up at him with a curiously blank expression. “Are you crazy?”
“Do it.”
The yachtsman started to rise. Then, with a lightning movement, he yanked a gun from beneath his jacket. Pendergast dropped him with a single shot, the roar of the .45 ripping across the silence of the evening.
“Run!” he cried to Esterhazy and Helen.
Instantly, all hell broke loose. The two lovers on the bench leapt to their feet, pulling TEC-9s from their backpacks and firing at Esterhazy, who had taken off at a run, pulling Helen along by the hand. The automatic fire cut him down, Esterhazy clawing the air with a scream as he fell.
Helen stopped and turned. “Judson!” she cried over the commotion.
“Keep running!” Esterhazy half choked, half coughed, writhing in the grass. “Keep—”
Another clatter of gunfire raked Esterhazy, flipping him over onto his back.
People were running everywhere, crying and screaming. Pendergast dropped one of the lovers with a shot from his .45 as he raced toward Helen; Proctor had leapt to his feet and, with a Beretta 93R that suddenly appeared in his hand, fired at the other lover, who had dropped down behind the bench, using her fallen companion as cover. As Pendergast tried to get a bead on her as well, out of the corner of his eye he saw the bum rise from his cardboard bed, extracting a shotgun from the bushes as he did so.
“Proctor!” Pendergast cried, “the homeless man—!”
But even as he spoke, the shotgun roared. Proctor, in the act of pivoting, was physically lifted off his feet by the impact and slammed backward, his Beretta clattering to the ground; he fell heavily, twitched, then went still.
As the homeless man turned to fire at Pendergast, the agent brought him down with a round to the chest, punching the man backward into the bushes.
Pendergast turned to see Helen, a hundred yards off, a low figure surrounded by fleeing people. She was still bending over her fallen brother, crying out in despair, cradling his head in her good hand.
“Helen!” he shouted, sprinting toward her once again. “Fifth Avenue! Head for Fifth Avenue—!”
The sound of a gunshot came from behind the bench and Pendergast felt a terrible blow to his back. The heavy-caliber round punched him to the ground, stunning him with its impact; his bulletproof vest stopped it but the wind had been knocked from him. He rolled over, coughing, and from a prone position returned fire at the shooter behind the bench. Helen had finally risen and was running toward the avenue. If he could cover her, suppress fire, she might just make it.
The bench shooter fired and a bullet kicked up a clout of dirt inches from Pendergast’s face. He returned fire, heard the shot ricochet off the metal frame of the bench. Another shot came from between the slats; he felt a puff of air on his cheek as the bullet whined past his head and buried itself in his calf. Ignoring the fiery pain, Pendergast collected himself, emptied his lungs of air, and squeezed off another round; it passed between the slats this time, striking the shooter full in the face; she jerked backward, arms flinging out in surprise, and fell.
The shooting stopped.
Pendergast swept the scene of carnage with his eyes. Six bodies lay motionless around him: the two lovers, the would-be yachtsman, the homeless man, Proctor, Esterhazy. Everyone else had fled the vicinity, shrieking and crying. In the distance, he could make out Helen, still running, heading for a stone entrance leading