Gambit, David Hagberg [most life changing books .TXT] 📗

“Where is he?”

“Headed back toward Volta Place,” Otto said.

“The bastard is big,” McGarvey grunted, and he hauled himself to his feet and stood there for a long moment or two. “See if there are any surveillance cameras. I need to know which way he went and if he has a ride.”

“Stay there. We’re calling the Bureau,” Otto said.

“No time,” Mac said, and he started after the shooter.

Mary was on the phone with one of her contacts at the FBI. “We have a situation,” she said.

McGarvey’s image was finally lost on the low-lux cameras on the hospital’s roof, and Otto was hurriedly scanning for surveillance cameras on Volta Place or anywhere else in the vicinity.

Lou picked up one on the rec center just as the shooter emerged from the woods and turned left toward the university.

“Left,” Otto radioed to Mac.

SEVENTEEN

Keeping to the shadows as much as possible, Hicks made his way down Volta Place toward the university campus less than two blocks away. He had taken one shot to his left side, and although he wasn’t losing too much blood, his rib cage hurt like hell. But he had to get off the street and under cover soon.

At the corner, he glanced over his shoulder, but McGarvey had not yet appeared from the woods. The son of a bitch had gone down, but he had managed to shoot back and was in the act of getting to his feet.

The bastard was tougher than Hicks thought any man could be, especially one who was fifty. He had definitely underestimated the former DCI, and it was a mistake he wasn’t going to make again. If he had another chance.

Just before the corner, a cab cruised by, and Hicks almost hailed it but then shook his head.

“Goddamnit to hell,” he swore softly, watching the cab turn left on Thirty-Fifth Street and disappear.

The fact of the matter was he’d screwed up his last hit, but the op had been contracted under a very strict blanket of secrecy so that his failure had not turned up on anyone’s radar yet. And it was the only reason the Russian operator had recommended him for this assignment.

But sooner or later, the fact he had failed would come to light among the people who knew about these things, and his career would be over. He needed the money to go deep at least for the next few years, to give himself the time to sanitize his profile before he could get back in the game.

Which meant McGarvey had to die.

He turned around and hurried back fifty feet to where the line of trees ended next to an art gallery closed at this hour, and he ducked into the woods just as his quarry came into sight.

McGarvey was just in time to see the figure of a man duck back into the woods about seventy yards away in the direction of the university. He couldn’t be certain that the shooter had spotted him and would be waiting in ambush. But he had to assume the worst.

Keeping his pistol pointed down in his left hand, hiding it from anyone passing on the street, he hurried down Volta, ready at an instant to jog left into the tree line.

“The Bureau is rolling,” Pete said. “You copy?”

“Yes. He just went back into the woods, and it’s possible he spotted me,” McGarvey said.

“Could he be doubling back toward the hospital?”

“Anything’s possible,” McGarvey said. He spotted a small splatter of blood on the sidewalk. “He’s wounded.”

“Badly?”

“No,” McGarvey said. He picked up the pace but moved left so that he was hugging the edge of the woods. To have a clear sight line, the man would have to step out into the open.

“Hold up there until the SWAT team arrives,” Pete said. “Let them handle it.”

“I want him alive.”

“No one’s going to risk their life on this guy. They’ll be on-site in under ten minutes.”

“Let them know I’m here in the mix; I don’t want to get shot in the back,” McGarvey said.

Switching his pistol to his right hand, he stepped off the sidewalk and made his way from tree to tree on a diagonal, which he thought might intercept the shooter if he was doubling back as Pete had suggested.

Hicks waited for a full two minutes before he poked his head out from behind a tree where he had a decent line of sight up the sidewalk to where he’d seen McGarvey come out of the woods. But the tenacious son of a bitch wasn’t there.

From what he’d learned from the dossiers he’d been shown, he didn’t think that the former DCI was the type to call for help. The man had built the rep of working on his own. He was a lone wolf except for his geeky friend who still worked for the Company and his new wife, who’d been a CIA interrogator. The geek wouldn’t be coming out here, nor did he think that McGarvey would want his wife to get involved in a gun battle.

For now, then, it was just him and McGarvey. Exactly the way he liked it.

The former DCI was stalking him, so now it was time to turn the tables again.

McGarvey held up behind a tree and checked the load in his pistol, ejecting the magazine and making sure that when he’d fallen to the ground, the weapon hadn’t been fouled by dirt. It was still clean, and he reinserted the mag into the gun’s handle.

He didn’t think the shooter would be the type to give himself over to the cops when the SWAT team showed up. And he had gone back into the woods because he hadn’t given up on his assignment.

Who had hired the man, and why?

Turning his head to the left to partially mask the direction of his voice, he called out, “I’m ready to make a deal if you’re willing to listen.”

“Terms?” the shooter called. He was perhaps twenty-five yards out and slightly to the left.

“I’ll give