Panic!

And Brackeen’s mind was suddenly filled with a vivid reproduction of the rain-slick fire escape and the frightened white face of Feldman and the heavy automatic leveled upward, the huge black bore of the gun, the explosion and the destructive impact of the bullet which had seemed so real and yet had only been illusion; Coretti’s face, alive and dead, smiling and bloodily pulped, alternating like shuffled Before and After photographs across the surface of his mind. Sweat flowed thickly, hotly over his face and under his arms and into his crotch, and there was fear in the center of his belly now, fear twisting at his vitals, the same kind of fear he had felt staring at Feldman’s gun that night, staring at death and the terrible black void beyond.

I can’t face a gun, he thought. I can’t let it happen again!

And then he thought: But I have to, there’s nobody else, if I back off and radio for Gottlieb and Sanchez, for help, it might be too late by the time they got here and Lennox and the Hennessey girl could still be alive right now, no, I’ve got to see it through, I can’t crap out on them now ...

The back of Brackeen’s neck grew cold and bristling, then, and his thoughts became very clear and sharp. Understanding flowed through him, taking the edge off the building panic in his belly, quieting the stutter of his heart. He had to see it through. That was the way it had to be all right, that was the only way it could be. Because the commitment and the resurrection of Andy Brackeen had to be full and complete or else there was no real commitment and no true resurrection at all. You couldn’t start living again halfway, with half-knowledge, and subconsciously he had known this from the very beginning. He had known there was a good chance it would come to this, to a confrontation, a showdown, and he had wanted it to be that way. Jesus Christ, he wanted to face the gun or guns out there, he had to face them—that was why he had come out alone this morning, that was why he had been so nervous with the waiting last night and today; he wanted it because without it he would still be half a man, and he had to know what Andy Brackeen really was, he had to know.

He caught up the hand mike on the cruiser’s radio and called the substation. Demeter was there. Brackeen gave his position, and what he had heard, and asked for immediate assistance; then he signed out before any questions could be asked; there was no time for questions.

The line of rocks loomed directly ahead. Brackeen replaced the mike and drew the .357 Magnum from the holster at his belt, holding it on the seat beside him, palm sweating on the textured butt. His mind was blank now, relying on instinct and training to dictate his actions, and the fear that was in him was tempered with a kind of anticipation ...

Six

The first bullet cut hot and burning through Lennox’s right side, and the unexpectedness of it, the sudden biting pain, caused him to stagger, to lose his balance. He went down, rolling, his head striking a glancing blow on a rock, thinking fuzzily, My God, my God, what, and then there was billowing sound to take away the early-morning stillness and he knew what it was, he realized he had been shot, he realized that their luck had finally run out.

Panic, the old familiar shrieking panic, clutched at him and he reached out blindly and caught onto a heavily thorned prickly pear, slicing open the heel of his hand, slowing himself. And then Jana screamed, he could hear her screaming, he could hear more echoes of sound, and he managed to check his forward momentum, to twist his body so that he could see upward along the slope.

She was down, she was on her hands and knees and crawling toward him. Lennox felt the added emotions of hatred and rage and futility as he scrambled to his feet, looking up at Jana and beyond her, fighting down the urge to immediate flight, and the two of them were up there, scrambling down the slope, you dirty sons of bitches, why don’t you finish it, why don’t you sit up there and get it over with! He heard Jana cry his name, cry it again, and he ran to her and pulled her to her feet and there was no blood on her, there was only blood on him, blood soaking the remnants of his shirt, blood flowing down from his cut palm to drip thickly crimson from his fingertips. The second shot had missed her, it had been the shock of seeing him fall or the bad footing which had sent her to her knees; her eyes were huge puddles of terror, pleading mutely, and he flung his arm around her shoulders and dragged her with him down the slope.