Day of Wrath

Slowly, still shaking, she eased up on the trigger, staring over the muzzle at the carnage her bullets had created. Her first shot had caught Mcdowell low — well below the stomach. Each successive 9mm round had climbed higher — ending in one that blew his face apart.

Helen sank to her hands and knees, retching uncontrollably.

She felt icecold now, too cold ever to be warm again.

When she was done, she rose to her feet, still shivering. She slipped the Beretta back in her holster — succeeding on the second try — and fished out the cellular phone they’d taken off Mcdowell back at the bed-and-breakfast. In a daze, she punched in a number she’d memorized and then heard the phone connect.

“Farrell.”

“Sam,” Helen heard herself say weakly. “I need your help, Sam. Things have gone terribly wrong …”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN SHOCK WAVE

JUNE 18

_{Super 6 Motor Lodge, Near Falls Church, Virginia}

Helen Gray blotted away some dried blood and dirt with a cotton ball soaked in iodine, finished taping down the gauze pad, and then stepped back to admire her handiwork. “How’s it feel?”

“Ouch,” Thorn said. He raised his bruised right arm, winced, and then gingerly touched the bandaged side of his head. “I’ll live, I guess, but I have a feeling I’m not going to win any beauty contests this year.”

“You’ve got that right, mister,” Helen said — working very hard to keep the same light, cheerful tone.

She was still grappling with the emotional trauma of their bloody early morning gun battle. Losing Heinrich Wolf, their only solid witness to the Caraco-run smuggling operation, was bad. Killing Mcdowell was worse. She was also uncomfortably aware that she’d carried out something very close to an execution on Mcdowell. Once she’d fired that first shot, she’d never even considered trying to take him alive.

But the biggest nightmare of all had been the sudden, blinding fear that Peter Thorn might be dead — torn forever out of her life. They’d faced death twice before in the past couple of weeks, but always together — never apart and alone.

After Helen had made that frantic phone call to Farrell, she’d held herself together just long enough to search Wolf’s and Mcdowell’s bodies for any possible evidence. Then, with tears staining her cheeks, she’d stumbled back through the pitchblack woods to where they’d left the two cars. And there she’d found Peter sitting by the side of the road with his injured head in his hands — blood-spattered, dazed, and furiously angry at himself, but alive.

Mcdowell had hit him over the head with a rock — clearly intending to kill him. Only the fact that he’d reacted fast enough to ward off some of the impact with his arm had saved his life.

That and the fact that the traitorous FBI agent must have rushed off to chase down Wolf without making sure he was dead.

Still tearful, though with relief now and not sorrow, she’d managed to bundle Peter into the back seat of Wolf’s Chrysler, pat down the body of the driver for any more evidence, and then head back to pick up Farrell outside Caraco’s Chantilly complex.

Pressed for time, she’d been forced to leave Mcdowell’s bulletriddled Ford parked out in the open on the shoulder.

Helen had hated to do that. The abandoned car would act as a beacon to the next passing patrol can-signaling that something very wrong had happened along that isolated stretch of road. More to the point, their fingerprints were all over the car, and even a cursory check of the government-issue plates would reveal it had been signed out to FBI Deputy Assistant Director Lawrence Mcdowell — now missing.

Not good, she thought grimly. Not good at all.

Helen checked her watch. It was after eleven in the morning.

By now, there might very easily be an APB out for the three of them.

And the charges against them could range from kidnapping to murder.

Somehow, in the space of just a few days, she and Peter had managed to push the punishments they were facing from likely administrative reprimands to possible imprisonment, and now maybe even the death penalty.

She shook her head in dismay. It was best to focus on the immediate future. For the moment they were free and still in a position to try something — anything — to stop whatever Heinrich Wolf and his employer, Ibrahim, had planned.

The hours since their abortive attempt to capture Wolf had passed in a dizzying blur. After a quick cleanup in the rest room of a large, busy gas station, she, Peter, and Farrell had found an out-of-the way residential street and abandoned the Chrysler.

With luck, it might be days before the neighbors compared notes and discovered it didn’t belong to a visitor or anyone local.