Joe muttered, “It wasn’t supposed to go down like this.”
As I understood it, the original plan was to surround Muller’s safe house, call her out, and bring her in. This situation had no boundaries. Not even the sky was the limit.
Joe slowed the Audi, and a handful of people exited the cars parked by the hangar. For a moment, they were frozen in our high beams: four Asian men, a hulking white man, and the woman who had to be Alison Muller. She and the hulk ran toward one of the planes, which looked to be a de Havilland Beaver. I knew it to be a sturdy bush plane.
At the same time, the Asians, now positioned behind their vehicles, opened fire.
Joe wrenched the wheel hard to the left and stepped on the brakes, and the Audi skidded in the grass before coming to a stop in the midst of the small trailers. I had my 9mm Glock in my hand, a solid and dependable service gun but no match for the automatic-weapon fire ripping across the meadow, pinging like a hailstorm into the trailers’ aluminum hulls.
It was riskier to turn and run than it was to stand our ground and fight. I’m a good shot, even under pressure.
I was ready.
CHAPTER 92
I FELT UNREASONABLY invincible.
Even then, I knew that what felt like courage was an adrenaline surge fueled by present danger and all of the fear, confusion, and rage I’d repressed over the last weeks.
Joe yelled at me, “Stay in the car!”
Too late for that. My loaded gun was in my hand and my feet were on the ground. I crouched behind a trailer, which was all that stood between me and the people who were strafing us with automatic-weapon fire.
I didn’t have a death wish. I just didn’t expect to die. I was rationalizing. We were thirty yards from the shooters. Everyone was firing into the dark.
Joe said, “I don’t like our odds.”
Then he bounded out of his side of the car and took a position at the butt end of the trailer I was using as a barrier at the front. We aimed and fired on the shooters and reloaded.
When there was a momentary break in the gunfire, Joe yelled, “Alison, give it up! The cops are on the way. No one needs to die. Put down your gun.”
Muller laughed. It was a lovely laugh, both throaty and merry.
“You’re too funny,” she called back.
I saw the flash of Muller’s blond hair as she sprang out from behind a car in a crouch. Her bodyguard followed, the two of them running for the open hatch of the closest plane. My attention was on Muller, but there was something about that bodyguard that rang a tinny bell. I knew him, but I couldn’t place him at all.
And I didn’t have time to think about it.
We had to stop Muller from boarding that plane.
Joe fired into the narrowing space between Muller and the aircraft, and her bodyguard pulled her back into cover behind a car. Joe yelled, “This is a mistake, Alison!”
And then the leading character in this long-running nightmare leaned over the top of her vehicle and fired a long burst of bullets, spraying left, then right across the trailers.
There was a split-second pause in the gunfire, and Muller and the big man made another dash toward the plane. Sighting her, I took aim, followed her with my muzzle, and fired.
Muller jerked and flailed before she fell to the ground.
Her bodyguard called her name and went to her, frantically trying to help her up. But she got to her knees and shook him off as she struggled to her feet.
My shot had gotten her in the back. She could only be alive if she was wearing a vest, and even then, given the angle of my shot, she was lucky to have survived.
Part of me was relieved that I hadn’t killed her.
I wanted to talk to her, and I wanted to throw her in jail. But at the moment, Muller was armed and at large and bullets were flying at us again from her direction.
CHAPTER 93