Page 83 of Crosshairs

“Do you promise?”

“Swear to God.”

I did a quick peek over the top of the container. I didn’t see anything except running construction workers. I stuck my head up a second time to get a better look. It was about then that Robert Lincoln jumped up on the other side of the site and waved his arms.

I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Then another shot rang out from the far end of the construction site. Lincoln went down. It looked like he’d been hit. I shook my head, wondering what had just happened. But he’d bought me two seconds to scramble up and start running again.

I made it another thirty yards down the sidewalk. Now I could look to my left and see the area where Nash was hiding. I saw the flash from the barrel of his rifle. But he was shooting downrange.

Then I heard another rifle shot. It had a different sound. I looked over my shoulder in time to see Trilling fire the AR-15 a second time. Whatever he was doing to make Darnell Nash keep his head down was working. I decided to grab a lot of real estate with an all-out sprint.

By now, most of the workers were either off-site or hiding in safe positions. That might make my job a little easier.

I stopped behind a post a little wider than a telephone pole. It looked like the post was used to guide the big trucks as they backed into the site. As I took a second big gulp of air, a bullet struck the post just above my head.

Instinctively, I dropped to the ground. Not that it did me any good. The next shot hit the ground only an inch from my right leg. Dirt and debris flew up onto my chest and face.

I didn’t need a third shot to tell me this wasn’t the place to take a break. I did a burpee back onto my feet like an Olympic athlete and continued to run hard to the end of the construction site.

Now it was Trilling’s turn to fire again.

CHAPTER 105

I’D MADE IT all the way to the far corner of the construction site when Rob Trilling fired again twice. Not quite a double tap but two shots in quick succession. I saw them both impact a pile of rubble in front of Darnell Nash.

I could only see Nash intermittently. Occasionally his head popped up or he moved back enough that I could see him behind the pile of debris. He was a little farther from me than what I’d originally thought. And it was all open space between us. As soon as I started moving in Nash’s direction, all it would take would be a casual turn of his head and I’d be in deep shit.

Trilling took another shot, which made Nash duck down and cover his head. I realized it was time.

I couldn’t afford to hesitate. I just started running hard. And I meanhard. My long legs covered a lot of ground, but it didn’t mean I wasn’t terrified the whole time. I wonderedwhether I could cover the distance before I took a .308 round in the face.

As I got closer, I could see around the beam that had blocked my view before. Nash had his rifle up, resting on a wooden truss. He was focusing through the rifle’s scope and didn’t notice me racing toward him until the last second.

For the record, the last second is always the most important one in a situation like this.

As soon as Nash noticed me, he turned to point his rifle, but I was already leaping off my feet and sailing through the air. My shoulder knocked the barrel of the rifle before he could point it at me. I hit him with the full force of my body weight. We slammed backward into a fifty-five-gallon drum filled with something liquid. We hit the sealed barrel hard enough to make the liquid slosh inside.

Now we were in a close-quarters scrum. It felt like we were in a pit even though we were just on the shale-and-gravel ground. Somehow the rifle ended up between us, pointing almost straight up in the air. It was wedged between a couple of boards, and we both reached for it at about the same time.

Nash got his hand around the trigger guard, so I wrapped my arm around his. I’d rather have him locked against the rifle than punching me in the face. As we wrestled, the rifle went off. It was shocking to hear the sound of the high-powered rifle so close to my head.

I raised myself off the ground into a squat. Now I had my hand around the barrel of the gun and ripped it from Nash’s grasp. I let the momentum carry me and tossed the rifle twenty feet away.

Then I squared off against Nash.

CHAPTER 106

I WASN’T PARTICULARLY happy about fighting a younger man, a former Marine who looked like he’d stayed in pretty good shape despite his titanium leg. The way Darnell Nash had his body turned told me he understood the basics of a fistfight.

But I had experience. I’d been in actual street fights. People had tried to stab me, hit me with pipes, slash me with broken bottles, and once someone even tried to choke me with a garden hose. Nash had learned to shoot in the military and worked a desk job at the FBI.

We circled each other for a moment. I’d gotten the rifle out of Nash’s hands. That was the most important thing. Now it was more of a waiting game until someone came to help.

Then I realized the mistake I’d made. Nash had maneuvered so that he was now between me and his rifle. I couldn’t waste anytime. I reached for my Glock, locked in the holster on my right hip.

Before I even had the pistol fully clear of the holster, Nash lunged toward me and slapped it away. Somehow I initially managed to hold on to the gun. Then his punch to my solar plexus knocked me for a loop and I let the pistol drop out of my hand.

It hit several empty fifty-five-gallon drums and disappeared between them. When I looked up, Nash was smiling. He knew he had the advantage now.