The Devil's bed

Bo eased the bedroll off his back and brought it to where he could reach for his Sig. His fingers touched the grip.

“Someone else now,” Lester said.

“Who?”

Bo inched upward as they talked, and he worked at pulling the weapon free.

“A guy. Secret Service, I’d guess.”

“Issheanywhere?”

“Not yet.”

The rock above Bo dripped with bright light. He glanced at the hilltop and saw the rising moon fragmented through the trees. He looked across the river where the highest branches of the orchard at Wildwood were now gilded in silver. There was no time left. He prepared for a hopeless rush toward the top, bum leg and all.

Before he could move, he heard the muffled report of a silenced gunshot. It came not from the outcropping but from the hillside above. In the next instant came another muffled shot. Bo hesitated, hunkering in the shadow of the ledge. Lester and Curtis were quiet. After a moment, he eased himself up and peered over the lip of the rock.

Because the moonlight was scattered in its passage through the trees, the flat sandstone was a patchwork of shadow and light. Bo could see two prone, unmoving human forms near the far edge. Their outlines were fuzzy, the effect of the Ghillie Suits. Between them was a squat mound Bo supposed was the sniper rifle on its bipod, camouflaged with burlap. Each man lay in a small dark pool that glistened in the moonlight. Bo heard a shiver among the bushes up the hill, and he slid down, hidden behind the outcropping.

The figure came forward, a black shape that had separated itself from the larger black of a tree trunk. It made its way carefully to where the dead men lay. Like the sandstone, the figure had become, in the tattered moonlight, a crazy quilt of shadow and light.

Bo swung his Sig over the top of the rock and used the glowing dots of the tritium sight to level the barrel on the figure’s heart.

“Police,” he shouted. “Drop your weapon.”

The figure made no move to comply, simply turned its head in Bo’s direction.

“Thorsen,” David Moses said, sounding not at all surprised.

“Drop your weapon.”

Moses nodded toward the men at his feet. “NOMan.”

“Drop your weapon now or I’ll shoot.”

Moses looked at him, his face glowing in a shaft of light. He seemed a little bewildered. “Do you think I came to kill her? Then why did I take these two out? Why not just let them go about their business?”

“Because this is your kill.”

“You’re right there. If I still wanted her dead.”

“How’d you know they’d be here?”

“The same way you did, I imagine. Putting two and two and two together. It didn’t take a genius.”

“I’ll say it only once more. Put the weapon down.”

Moses moved very slowly, turning so that all he presented to Bo was a profile, a slender target.

Bo said, “I’m betting you don’t have armor this time. This time you thought you had all the advantage.”

“There’s no reason to shoot me,” Moses said.

“Putting the First Lady aside, there are the four agents you killed at Wildwood.”

“They were soldiers in a war. Their choice.”

“I’m a soldier in the same war. I’ll take you out without a second thought.”

“The world is hard. Be strong. Is that it?”

“Don’t test me.”

For the briefest instant, a smile touched his lips. “How could I not? You’re the best I’ve ever come across.”

Moses stood stiff as a soldier doll. The moon glinted off his face as if his skin were white porcelain. His eyes, too, were like glass, dark and unblinking. His mouth was a fine, thin line that seemed merely painted on.

Yet when he moved, he moved with a speed that was almost more than human.

But this Bo had anticipated, because he’d seen Moses react before, on the bluff at Wildwood. The logical tactic was for Moses to lurch toward the cover of the trees uphill. However, the moment Moses broke from his stance, Bo swung his Sig in the other direction, toward the dark emptiness beyond the edge of the rock. Moses did exactly as Bo had expected. He took a running leap off the sandstone toward the river. As Moses’s airborne body crossed his gun sight, Bo pulled off a round. He followed with two more as Moses arced down toward the slope below, but he had little hope either slug would hit its mark. He heard the heavy thump as the man hit ground, and then the crackle of the underbrush as he rolled toward the river. Or ran. Bo couldn’t be sure which. He dragged himself across the outcropping to the lip and shoved the barrel of his Sig over the edge. The sounds below had stopped. He peered at the patches of moonlight littered among the trees. He scanned the river, but the water remained a broad silver-gray sheet with not even a ripple to warp the surface.

A slice of rock leapt out an inch from his cheek. Bo realized that the moon at his back made him a perfect, silhouetted target for Moses. He slithered back a foot to safety and listened. If Moses were moving among the bushes below him, he did it quiet as an ant.