The Altar Of Bones Part 32

He grinned at her. "f.u.c.king A, you did."

He dug the Beamer's keys out of the pocket of his cargo pants and put them in her hand. He didn't want to tell her how badly he couldn't see because he was afraid she wouldn't leave him then. "You go get the car while I-"

Ragged coughs ripped through his chest, stopping him, but Zoe nodded to show she got it. He watched her take off across the cemetery, running at a crouch, weaving among the tombstones, satchel banging against her hip.

He took another look over the wall, still not seeing worth a d.a.m.n, but he didn't need a dead-eye aim to buy Zoe the time she needed.

He thought about the guy who'd thrown the grenade, then rushed the library from the garden. That guy had fired his Uzi at them, but he'd aimed high, well above their heads. And the other guy, the one who'd been sent into the kitchen to cut off their retreat-he'd hesitated that split second at the door, long enough for Zoe put a bullet between his eyes.

And that meant Yasmine Poole wanted them alive. Probably because she didn't dare risk killing them only to find out too late that they no longer had the film on them, that they'd stashed it away somewhere between that apartment on the ile St.-Louis and here.

Ry smiled to himself because she wanted him alive, and he wanted her very dead. It wouldn't be enough, never enough, but killing her was the only thing he could do to avenge Dom.

He ejected the almost spent clip and slapped a fresh one into the b.u.t.t. He gripped the gun with both hands, then pushed up far enough to brace his forearms on the wall. He waited until he saw another flash of movement, still in the trees, but closer now. He pulled and held the trigger, laying down a stream of fire, kicking up dirt and rocks, and shredding the weeds that lined the lane.

The sudden silence when he stopped was like the pall of a funeral home. Maybe five seconds went by, then he got a short burst of return fire. But it was just token fire, reminding him they had guns, too.

He laid down more fire, keeping them back in the orchard and out of the lane. He figured it would take Zoe three or four minutes to get down the steps and back up here with the car, but she beat his expectations because just then he heard the roar of the Beamer's engine.

Two seconds later it came whipping around the other side of the church, spewing dirt and gravel. Ry was over the wall just as it slammed to a stop. He yanked open the pa.s.senger-side door and dove in. Zoe gunned the motor. The Beamer's tires spun, then bit, and they sprang forward so fast the back of Ry's head smacked against the headrest.

He looked back through the rear window. He saw a blurred figure in black run out of the orchard into the lane, drop onto one knee, and shoot uselessly at the Beamer's disappearing tires.

THE LANE DEAD-ENDED not much farther on, at the front gate of a gray stone manor house. A small road that led up into the mountains fed in from the left, and Zoe took it, taking the ninety-degree turn so fast the Beamer's back end fishtailed and the steering wheel shuddered in her hands. not much farther on, at the front gate of a gray stone manor house. A small road that led up into the mountains fed in from the left, and Zoe took it, taking the ninety-degree turn so fast the Beamer's back end fishtailed and the steering wheel shuddered in her hands.

Ry fumbled with his seat belt, taking two stabs to get it fastened because he could still barely see. The road they were on wasn't even two lanes wide, a backcountry road that hadn't been paved in decades. Trees whipped by the windows, then they hit a gap and Ry saw the river far below them.

Zoe braked a little to negotiate a hairpin curve, and Ry heard a slos.h.i.+ng noise, then felt something roll around on the floor at his feet.

Oh, sweet mercy. A water bottle.

He bent over, groped around, found it. It was nearly half-empty, but half was better than nothing. He straightened, twisted off the cap, then leaned his head back and poured the water into his eyes.

"Ah, G.o.d," he said at the soft, cool feel of it.

He looked over at Zoe, already seeing her a little better now. Her own eyes were puffy and bloodshot, and the skin on her face and hands was red, like a sunburn, but the tear gas hadn't seemed to hit her as hard as it had him. Funny thing was, although he'd been in a lot of hairy situations in his life, none of them had ever involved tear gas, and that was a really good thing because his corneal nerves and mucous membranes had reacted so badly to the lachrymal agent, he'd almost been blinded by it.

He opened his mouth to tell her he probably wouldn't have come even close to making it this far without her, when he heard the squeal of tires. He whipped his head around to look in the side-view mirror and saw a black Mercedes bearing down on them fast.

"We've got company," Ry said, just as an arm with an Uzi at the end of it popped out the pa.s.senger-side window, and the ack ack ack ack patter of automatic gunfire split the air. Ry saw bullets. .h.i.t the tarmac behind them, felt one punch into the Beamer's undercarriage. patter of automatic gunfire split the air. Ry saw bullets. .h.i.t the tarmac behind them, felt one punch into the Beamer's undercarriage.

Zoe was already going too fast for the road, but she gripped the steering wheel tighter and poured even more gas into the Beamer's roaring engine.

Ry braced his shoulder against the back of his seat as they whipped around another sharp bend in the road. They were still climbing, and the way ahead of them was full of curves and switchbacks. There was no guardrail, just two feet of shoulder and then a plunge straight down in places, to rocks and thickets of trees, and far, far below them, the river.

Zoe took a blind curve at seventy miles an hour with a wing and a prayer, and suddenly the road ahead of them was filled with a giant hay wagon. Ry instinctively braced his hands on the dashboard and slammed his right foot onto a pa.s.senger-side brake that wasn't there.

Zoe didn't even slow. She jerked the steering wheel hard left, squeezing the Beamer between the hay wagon and a tangle of trees and boulders. One of them knocked off the side-view mirror, and something sc.r.a.ped the car's side with a shower of sparks. Ry caught a glimpse of the wagon's driver as they roared past-gaping mouth and wide, white eyes.

They went into another blind curve before Zoe could get back over to their own side of the road, and Ry prayed they wouldn't meet another car coming at them head-on.

He twisted around to look behind them, but the road was too curvy-he couldn't even see the hay wagon anymore, let alone the Mercedes.

Suddenly Zoe slammed on the brakes so hard Ry thought his brain had slammed against the side of his skull. He whipped back around and saw the big, black Mercedes blocking the entire road in front of them.

They screeched to stop, and for the length two heartbeats it seemed to Ry to grow eerily quiet, and the cloud of dust they'd stirred up settled back down like fine ash over the Beamer's hood.

Then Ry saw the barrel of an Uzi come up over the Mercedes's trunk, and bullets suddenly peppered the cracked tarmac around them and pinged off their front b.u.mper and grill.

"Back up! Back up!" he yelled, but Zoe already had the Beamer in reverse.

She accelerated, going backward, until she got their speed up. Then she took her foot off the gas and jerked the steering wheel hard left. The car spun, tires squealed, grinding into the dirt and gravel, and the jagged slope of the mountain loomed up in front of them.

Now, now, now, Ry was shouting in his head, then she threw the Beamer back into drive, hit the gas, and straightened out the steering wheel.

They shot forward, and Ry looked back over his shoulder to see the maroon jacket come running around from the other side of the Mercedes and jump into the driver's seat.

"How in h.e.l.l did they get ahead of us like that?" he shouted. "There must've been a small cut-though, a shortcut, we didn't see."

They were going back down the mountain now, back toward town, only way, way too fast. They headed into a curve, hit a gravel patch, and went into a wild, hard slide. Zoe turned into the skid, but it felt as if their rear wheels were just spinning on air. They kept sliding sideways, getting closer and closer to the edge of the road, onto the shoulder now, and Ry saw trees and rocks and then nothing but wide-open sky and certain death ahead of them.

Then at last the tires got traction. Zoe pulled the steering wheel hard right, and the Beamer's front end swung around, back onto the road where it was supposed to be, and all was right with the world again.

"Jesus G.o.d," Ry said.

He saw her glance in the rearview mirror, and she said in voice that was crazily calm, "They're back." Then she said, "Hang on."

They blew through a switchback, an S-shaped set of curves. As soon as they were out of it, Zoe took her foot off the gas, turned the steering wheel a quarter, and at the same time pulled up hard on the emergency brake. The Beamer spun around, tires shrieking and grinding, sending up a cloud of dust. She released the emergency brake and stepped on the gas as she straightened out the wheel, and they were headed up the mountain again just as the Mercedes came down it, whipping through the last curve in the switchback, going so fast it swung out wide, toward the edge of the drop-off.

Zoe took the inside lane, and the instant they were beside the Mercedes, she twisted the Beamer's wheel to the right and they rammed it hard.

The impact sounded like an empty metal drum thrown from a rooftop. The back end of the Mercedes skidded past them, spinning out of control toward the edge of the embankment, and Ry saw a flash of red hair in the driver's-side window.

For a single breathless moment, the Mercedes hung suspended, its back end on the road, it's front end out over thin air. Then it began to fall, almost in slow motion, tumbling end over end over end down the mountainside in a terrible noise of grinding metal, smas.h.i.+ng gla.s.s, and human screams.

42.

THEY STOOD at the top of the embankment together and looked down. at the top of the embankment together and looked down.

The guy in the pa.s.senger seat must not have been wearing a seat belt. He lay like a broken doll on a pile of boulders, his neck c.o.c.ked at an impossible angle. Oddly, he still had the Uzi clutched in his hand.

The Mercedes had been stopped in its downward plunge by a thick grove of live oaks. Its front end was completely buried in leaves and branches, its roof nearly flattened. The stench of burnt rubber and hot metal drifted in the air.

Ry stared at the wreck for a long moment, looking for red hair and not seeing any. He walked down the road a few yards, until he found a place that wasn't so steep, then he headed down the embankment, half-jogging, half-sliding.

"Ry, wait," Zoe called after him. "Where are you going?"

"To make sure she's dead."

SHE WASN'T DEAD, but she would be soon. One of the oak branches had broken off and driven downward, through the winds.h.i.+eld, impaling her through the chest.

Her eyes were glazed, emptying, and then they focused on Ry. She smiled, drooling blood. He saw her lips form the words before he heard them.

"Your brother, the priest ... he died begging ..." She made a gargling noise, as if she were trying to laugh only the blood was choking her. "Died begging ..."

Ry's world blurred red around the edges, and he felt the blood shooting though the veins in his arms like tiny electrical currents. "Die, b.i.t.c.h," he said. "Die now."

She died. He watched the life go out of her and he wanted to pull the tree branch out of her heart so that he could ram it back into her again. Kill her all over again.

From a long way away he could hear Zoe calling his name. "Ry, stop. You can let go now, okay. Let go."

He looked down and saw that he was gripping the frame of the winds.h.i.+eld, and it was buckled and jagged, and although he couldn't feel it, he thought he must be cutting himself because he could see blood running out from between his fingers.

Zoe wrapped her hand around his wrist. She didn't try to pull him loose, just gently held his wrist. "Ry, let go."

He let go, but only so that he could reach down inside the car. He searched through the pockets of Yasmine Poole's bloodied maroon suede jacket and found her cell, an iPhone.

He straightened and backed up a couple of steps. He scanned through the phone's history and saw that she'd called only one number during the last couple of days. He clicked on it, pressed send. The line, cell phone, whatever it was at the other end, rang just once before it was picked up.

"Yasmine?"

A deep male voice. Tough, but also anxious, and something else in there, too. Something s.e.xual, maybe, but more than that. Tender?

"She's dead," Ry said. "So f.u.c.k you, Taylor. We're bringing you down."

Ry punched off and pulled back his arm to hurl the phone down into the river, then stopped himself.

He went around to the front of the car, pointed the phone at Yasmine Poole's impaled and bloodied body and snapped a picture. He found the e-mail address that went with the number he'd just called and sent the son of a b.i.t.c.h a little present.

Ry felt something touch his back. He whirled, his fist balled up around the cell phone, his arm half-c.o.c.ked, ready to slam it into some-body's head, and he looked down into Zoe's face.

She was pale, her eyes dark with worry. "Ry? What are you doing?"

He drew in a deep breath, then another. The redness was starting to fade a little from the edges of his vision. "Miles Taylor. I heard something just now in the way he said her name. He cared for her. He-" Ry cut himself off, drew in another deep breath. "I'm okay. I'm going to be okay."

A smudge of dirt was on her cheek and he reached up to brush it off with his thumb, only he made it worse, because now there was blood on her cheek, blood all over ...

"When I ... Back in Galveston, in the church, you could still see Dom's blood. It was all over, and there was a chalk outline on the floor, where his body had fallen." Ry swallowed, closed his eyes, but he saw blood. Blood everywhere.

"I want that b.a.s.t.a.r.d to know how it feels, Zoe. I want him to hurt hurt."

Ry realized he was still touching her and started to let his hand fall, but she wrapped her fingers around his wrist and held his hand against her cheek. Then she turned her head just a little, until the ends of his fingers were on her lips, and she kissed them softly.

"He will, Ry. He will."

BACK AT THE car, he said, "I can drive. You're probably exhausted, and my eyes are fine now." car, he said, "I can drive. You're probably exhausted, and my eyes are fine now."

She searched his face as she gave him the keys, but he was back off the ledge now, not so crazy anymore. Or at least no more crazy than usual. "I'm okay," he said. "Really."

She stared at him a moment longer, then she smiled and said, "I know." He felt that smile, felt the force of it, like a hot, wet gust blowing through him.

HE PUSHED THE driver's seat back, buckled up, adjusted the rearview mirror. He turned on some air. driver's seat back, buckled up, adjusted the rearview mirror. He turned on some air. Going through the motions, doing normal things, like a couple of tourists on a little day trip. A quiet, scenic drive along the Danube Bend Going through the motions, doing normal things, like a couple of tourists on a little day trip. A quiet, scenic drive along the Danube Bend.

"It's weird," Zoe said, as if she'd been reading his thoughts. "I was fine during the middle of that wild chase, driving the car. I was in some kind of zone, not thinking or feeling, just doing. But now I can't seem to get my left leg to stop shaking."

She was rubbing her hand up and down her thigh, and Ry could see the tremor in her quad. "It's the adrenaline," he said. "Five minutes from now you're going to want to topple over."

She laughed, or rather tried to. It came out as more of a squeak. "Can't, O'Malley. No time. We got places to go, people to see, things to do.... What exactly are are we going to do?" we going to do?"

Ry tried to think, couldn't, so he started up the car and pulled back out onto the road. "I haven't a clue."

They drove for a couple of miles in silence, then she shocked the h.e.l.l out of him by saying, "I think we should go to St. Petersburg."

The funny thing was, he'd been coming around to the same conclusion. Reluctantly, though, because it was a risk. A big one. "Popov's son is in St. Petersburg."

She nodded slowly. "And that's why we got to go there and settle this. He had my grandmother killed for the altar of bones, and when that didn't work, he sent the ponytailed man after me. He would've got me, too, if you hadn't come back just in time, but that was luck, pure and simple, and we can't count on always being lucky. He's going to keep sending his thugs after me until he gets what he wants. I know guys like him-h.e.l.l, my whole family's made up of guys like him."

"So what are you saying? We give him the icon and the riddle, say this is all we got, so good luck with it, bozo, and wash our hands of it?"

"Not on your life."

He glanced over at her. She had her chin up in the air and a hard look in her eyes, and he couldn't help grinning at her. But he said, "Okay, so say we find a way to get to Popov, or we deliberately let him get to us, and then we see what shakes out. But it's going to be really dangerous, Zoe. The best we can hope for is that we come up with a plan where we control most of the variables, but no way are we going to be able to antic.i.p.ate everything. And as someone once said, it's the unknown unknowns that end up getting you killed."

She flashed a c.o.c.ky grin back at him. "Hey, how about a little confidence here, O'Malley. So far we've got America's Kingmaker and a Russian mafia boss after our a.s.ses, and we've managed to get ourselves branded as international terrorists. I say we're on a roll."

IT FELT GOOD now that they had a plan, even if it was a half-baked, crazy plan, but Ry wasn't ready to stop and turn the car around just yet. now that they had a plan, even if it was a half-baked, crazy plan, but Ry wasn't ready to stop and turn the car around just yet.

It was less than three days since he'd fished her out of the Seine-okay, she'd gotten herself out, but that was only a minor quibble. Three days, and for nearly every minute of it they'd been on the run for their lives. But now, for these few moments at least, the road ahead was empty of enemies.

He looked over at her. She still had that c.o.c.ky tilt to her chin, but this time he didn't smile. He felt tight all over, in his chest and throat, so that for a moment he couldn't breathe. She was so d.a.m.n tough and strong and smart, and he didn't know why, but those very things about her made him want to go out and slay dragons for her. Maybe just to show her that he could do it, that he was worthy of her, and wasn't that a thought?

A strand of hair had come loose from her clip. He reached over and tucked it back behind her ear, just to be touching her. "What are you thinking about?"

"The bone juice," she said. "I like that name you gave it. It fits.... How much of it do you think was real? That story the professor told us."

"I think the part about Nikolai Popov and the Fontanka 16 dossier was true. It's how he learned about the altar of bones in the first place. And we know the icon's real, so it's possible there's an altar made out of human bones in a cave somewhere up in Siberia. The rest, though, is just a myth, something an ancient people who lived a harsh life in a harsh land made up around the campfire one night, because it's hard to face the thought that from the moment we are born, we're already dying."

"I guess," she said, not sounding convinced.

"I'm beginning to wonder, though, if the KGB actually sanctioned the a.s.sa.s.sination, or if it was something Nikolai Popov pulled off all on his own. Think of who was involved: Popov and his two agents, who were both Americans. And Lee Harvey Oswald, their patsy, also an American."

"Uh-huh," Zoe said, but Ry didn't think she'd taken in much of what he'd just said. Her head was still in that cave in Siberia.