Breaking point

38
Wednesday, June 15th
Port Townsend, Washington


Michaels was watching the house when the whole situation suddenly changed. Whatever Ventura had gone into the house for, either he knew where it was, or he’d changed his mind, Michaels thought. He was in and out in maybe two minutes. And the cavalry was still at least three minutes away.
Michaels watched as the man did something one-handed with the dead bolt lock. Save for a quick glance, he did it without looking at the door—instead he scanned the yard, his gaze sweeping back and forth, seeking. His other hand was hidden behind his leg.
Even though he knew he was pretty much invisible on the ground under the bushes across the street, Michaels froze. His pucker factor went right off the scale.
Ventura finished his manipulation with the door’s lock, glanced around again, and started across the backyard.
Michaels gathered himself to get up. He was going to follow Ventura, come hell or high water, but he was going to be real careful doing it. His hand hovered over the call button on his virgil, but he didn’t press it. Hitting the distress signal now would bring the cavalry with full lights and sirens, and he still couldn’t risk alerting Ventura.
He was on his hands and knees about to crawl out from under the evergreen when two men stepped out from behind the shed and pointed guns at Ventura.
“Hold it right—!” one of them began.
He never finished the sentence. There were several bright flashes and terrific explosions, and all three men went down. But Ventura rolled up, hardly even slowing, ran to the two fallen men, and fired his pistol twice more.
It all happened so fast and unexpectedly Michaels wasn’t sure what he had seen, but his brain raced to fill it in: Two men with guns braced Ventura, who was either the fastest draw who ever lived or already had his own gun out. One, two, three shots, yes, three, two from Ventura, one from one of the dead guys—and they were surely dead because Ventura sprinted over and put one more round into each one, looked like the heads, but it was hard to be sure about that, the after-images from the first shots had washed out Michaels’s vision some, and—
Ventura didn’t stop to examine the pair he’d shot; he took off at a run, straight to the street.
Michaels scrambled from under the bushes and followed, but he stayed crouched, using cover. He did not want Ventura to look back and see him, no, not after that display. Not only was the man a killer, he was expert at it. To take out two men with guns already pointed at you? That was either great skill or great luck, and Michaels didn’t want to test either.
Lights started to go on in houses along the street. They probably didn’t get a lot of gunfire up here on a week-night. No, probably not.
Michaels ran on the darker side of the street, and he had his taser in his hand. He hoped he wouldn’t have to get close enough to Ventura to have to use it.

Ventura smiled to himself as he ran. He did a tactical reload, changing magazines, dropping the one missing three shots into his windbreaker pocket. Those had probably been Chinese agents—feds would have yelled out their ID, and there would have been more of them.
Speed was the most important thing now. Gunfire in a quiet neighborhood would wake people up, somebody’d call the police, and even if they were slow, it would only be a few minutes before cops got here. He’d have a little while longer before the locals unraveled things, enough time to get clear of the city, but he had to figure they might have spotted him earlier, noticed his car, so a different vehicle was going to be necessary. The sooner he found one, the better.
He was going to have to get rid of this Coonan, too—he hadn’t had time to stop and pick up his expended brass here, and this gun already had two shootings on it, in Alaska and in California. Under better circumstances, he would have dropped the pistol into a lake or ocean after the first time he’d used it, but there simply hadn’t been time. Only a fool would hold on to something that would get him the death penalty if he was caught with it. He had other guns, and as soon as he could get to them, he’d lose this one.
There was an old pickup truck parked on the street half a block ahead of him. That would do. He could break the window, get inside, crack the ignition for a hot-wire, be gone in another two minutes.
He glanced behind him. No sign of pursuit, no men chasing him with guns. Maybe those were the only two. Maybe.
But even as he ran, that part of him that feasted on danger grinned and smacked its chops, looking for more. There was nothing like an adrenaline rush, the immediate sense of danger and possible death. He should be afraid, but what he felt was closer to orgasm than fear. He had the prize, he was on his way, enemies were down. All around him, life was crystalline, razor-sharp, throbbing with triumph.
He lived, they died.
It didn’t get any better than this.
Here was the truck. Try the door—hah! not even locked! He reached up over the visor, just in case—and lo! the keys!
He laughed aloud. No. It couldn’t get any better than this!
He put the gun down on the seat and shoved the key into the ignition slot—
“Going somewhere, Colonel?”
Surprised, Ventura jumped, started to grab the Coonan—
“Don’t! You won’t make it!”
Ventura froze. He looked up.
Standing six feet away, a shotgun aimed at Ventura’s head, was General Jackson “Bull” Smith. Smiling.
This was not in Ventura’s game plan. “General. Odd running into you here.”
“Not odd at all, Luther. Me and a few of the boys have been waiting for you to show up.”
“Those two were yours?”
“They were.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. They deserved what they got—it was a bonehead move, going at you face-on.”
Smith smiled again, and the shotgun didn’t waver a hair. Ventura was looking right down the muzzle. Twelve-gauge, he noted. Modified choke.
“There was a pair of other guys here before us, commie agents, near as we could tell, but they ... went away.”
“I thought there might be. Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me yet. I had a couple other boys tailing you, but you lost ’em after that mess in Los Angeles. Lost your client, too, that’s a real shame. Figured you’d show up here sooner or later.”
“You continue to surprise me, General. How?’
“Because there are better surveillance gadgets than the ones you had in your car at the compound, that’s how. You think because we live up in the woods and stomp around in the bear shit we don’t have access to modem technology? You get a flunking grade for underestimating folks, Luther. Especially your friends. You should have cut me in, instead of trying to bullshit me with that story of yours.”
Ventura smiled and shook his head. “I sit corrected, General. Real impressive work. Not too late to make amends, is it?”
“I’m afraid it is, Colonel, I’m afraid it is.”
When he saw the man with the shotgun point the weapon at Ventura where he sat in the truck he was presumably going to steal, Michaels slid into a front yard and behind a thick-boled Douglas fir tree. He was across the street and they were busy enough with each other that they hadn’t noticed him. Reaching down, he hit the alarm button on his virgil. It would take them a minute or two to react, but he was no longer worried about alerting Ventura.
Now what? Who was this guy? Was he connected to the two dead men at Morrison’s? What the hell was going on?
Michaels was sixty, seventy feet away, and the taser was accurate for fifteen or twenty feet, if you were lucky. But he’d only get one shot and then he’d have to reload, and as John Howard and Julio Fernandez had pointed out to him, the fastest taser reloader in the world could not outpace a handgun with multiple rounds. Net Force computer and management people were supposed to be desk jockeys, they didn’t need guns, that’s what the military arm was for.
If he got out of this alive, Michaels planned to start carrying a real gun.
Yeah. Unfortunately, the military arm was not here, he didn’t have a real gun, and a taser was what he did have. So—who to shoot?—assuming he could get close enough to shoot either one of them?
He couldn’t hear what they were saying to each other, but he was able to hear what the shotgunner said next, because he said it loudly: “Bubba!”
A shaven-headed bodybuilder in dark camo approached the truck from the passenger side, a long-barreled pistol in his hands. He was careful not to come in straight on, but angled slightly from the back. Good move—that would keep him out of the shotgunner’s line of fire if things started cooking.
Nothing like another little complication to make his life harder.
Even if he’d had an assault rifle instead of the taser, Michaels didn’t like those odds. And he didn’t know who these new players were—in theory, they might even be on his side.
Maybe he should wait a second and see what happened before he stood up and commanded everybody to drop their weapons. Maybe a couple of seconds.

Ventura felt the adrenaline pop and bubble in him, heard its siren song calling him to action. You’re invincible, it said. Nobody has ever been able to beat you. You’re the best there ever was! Kill them!
“All right,” Smith said. “Here is how it is gonna go. You give me whatever it was you came here to collect. Then you can be on your way, your life for the data. I figure that’s an even trade. If anything that looks like a weapon comes out of your pocket, we take what we want off your body. This pump’s carrying eight rounds of number 4 buckshot. I don’t have to tell you what that will do to your face at this range.”
“No.”
Smith might not be a real general, but he had been a real soldier, and he did have a shotgun pointed at Ventura. Bubba, on the other side of the truck, had a handgun. But if Bubba fired first, he would have to shoot through the glass, and his angle might partially deflect the bullet. If Ventura ducked suddenly, Smith would probably pull the trigger, and with any luck, the charge of BBs would go right over his head and through the passenger window. It would take half a second for Smith to rack the slide for a second shot, and while a full-sized American pickup truck’s door would not stop a deer or sabot slug from a twelve-gauge, it would stop a load of number 4 buck, or most of it.
Ventura weighed his chances. This was it. He had assessed the situation as best he could. As soon as he handed over the disk, he was a dead man anyway. Smith couldn’t let him walk away and expect to sleep nights, because sooner or later, he’d know that Ventura would come for him. And a wire enclosure full of men playing soldier wouldn’t be enough protection, Smith knew that. The only reason he didn’t shoot him now was to make sure he had the data, and to find out what he could about it.
Here was the moment. No past. No future. Be here now.
He smiled and made his decision. The only one he could make.
“All right, General. We’ll play it your way—”
—but as fast as he could move, Ventura ducked and grabbed for his pistol—



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