light beams bouncing a little as the car moved from flat road to uneven
ground. Lee took another few strides, hit the tree line and dove under
cover.
The red dot had lingered for a few moments on Lee’s chest. Serov could
have taken the man so easily. But that would warn the people in the
car. The former KGB man aimed the rifle at the driver’s-side door. He
hoped the man who had now made it to the woods would not be stupid
enough to try anything. He had been very lucky up until now. He had
escaped death not once, but twice. One should not waste that much
luck. It would be in such poor taste, Serov thought as he once more
sighted through the laser scope.
Lee should have kept running, but he stopped, his chest heaving, and
crept back to the tree line. His curiosity had always been his
strongest trait, sometimes too strong. Besides, the people behind all
the electronic equipment probably had already identified him. Hell,
they probably knew the dentist he used and his preference for Coke over
Pepsi, so he might as well stick around and see what was coming next.
If the people in the car started for the woods, he would do his best
impersonation of an Olympic marathoner, shoeless feet and all, and dare
anyone to catch him.
He crouched down and took out his night-vision monocular. It utilized
forward-looking infrared, or FLIR, technology, which was a vast
improvement over the ambient light intensifier, or 1-square ds Lee had
used in the past. FLIR worked by detecting, in essence, heat. It
needed no light to operate, and unlike the 1-square ds it could
distinguish dark images against dark backgrounds, with the heat
transferred into crystal-clear video images.
As Lee focused the contraption, his field of vision was now a green
screen with red images. The car appeared so close that Lee had the
sense that he could reach out and touch it. The engine area glowed
particularly brightly, since it was still very hot. He watched the man
as he climbed out of the driver’s side. Lee didn’t recognize him, but
the private investigator tensed as he watched Faith Lockhart climb out
of the car and join the man. They were side by side at this point. The
man hesitated as though he had forgotten something.
“Damn,” Lee hissed between clenched teeth. “The door.” Lee focused
for a moment on the back door to the cottage. It was standing wide
open.
The man had obviously seen this. He turned, facing the woman, and
reached inside his coat.
In the woods, Serov fixed his laser point on the base of the man’s
neck. He smiled contentedly. The man and woman were lined up nicely.
The ammo the Russian was chambering was highly customized,
military-style ordnance with full metal jackets. Serov was a careful
student of both weapons and the wounds they caused. With its high
velocity, the bullet would have minimal projectile deformity as it
passed through its target. However, it would still cause devastating
injury when the kinetic energy the bullet carried was released and then
rapidly lost in the body. The initial wound track and cavity would be
many times larger than the size of the bullet before it partially
closed. And the destruction to tissue and bone would occur radially,
akin to the epicenter of an earthquake, with terrible damage resulting
a great distance away. It was quite beautiful, in its own way, Serov
felt.
Velocity was the key to kinetic energy levels-the Russian was well
aware-which, in turn, determined damage force on the target. Double
the weight of a bullet and it doubled the kinetic energy. However,
Serov had long ago learned that when you doubled the velocity at which
the bullet was fired, the kinetic energy was quadrupled. And Serov’s
weapon and ammo were at the top end of the scale on velocity. Yes,
beautiful indeed.
However, because of its full metal jacket, the bullet could also easily
pass through one person and then strike and kill another. This was not
an unpopular result for soldiers who were going at it in combat. And
for hired killers with two targets. However, if another bullet was