the balconies. With this tactical advantage they were quickly winning
the shoot-out. Two of the mercenaries were dead already.
Another was about to expire with a bullet wound in his leg that had
severed the femoral artery. Two of the state troopers had been shot,
one seriously. Two of the HRT members had taken hits but were still
participating in the gun battle.
Stopping to reload, Jackson looked across the room and saw Scales get to
his feet, knife raised, and sprint toward the very broad back of Lee
Sawyer as the FBI agent again tried to pull Sidney to safety.
There was no time for Jackson to reload his rifle, his 9mm was empty and
he was out of clips. If he tried to yell, Sawyer would be unable to
hear him over the barrage of gunfire. Jackson jumped to his feet. As a
star member of the University of Michigan Wolverines football team, he
had rushed for thousands of hard-fought yards on the gridiron. Now he
was about to make the run of his life. His thick legs exploded under
him, and with bullets splattering all around Jackson reached maximum
speed three steps into his sprint.
Scales was solid bone and muscle, but he carried about fifty fewer
pounds on his frame than did the two-hundred-pound battering ram of an
FBI agent. And despite being a very dangerous individual, Kenneth
Scales had never experienced the brutally violent world of Big Ten
football.
Scales’s blade was barely a foot from Sawyer’s back when Jackson’s iron
shoulder collided with his breastbone. The resulting crack as Scales’s
chest collapsed could almost be heard over the gunfire.
Scales’s body was lifted cleanly off the ground and it didn’t stop
moving until it slammed against the solid oak wall almost four feet
away. The second crack, while not as loud as the first, heralded
Kenneth Scales’s exit from the living as his neck snapped neatly in
half.
As he slumped to the floor and came to rest on his back, it was finally
Scales’s turn to stare blankly upward with a pair of dead eyes.
By any yardstick, it was a long-overdue event.
Jackson paid a price for his heroics as he took a slug in his arm and
another in his leg before Sawyer was able to ward off the shooter with
multiple bursts from his 10mm. Sawyer grabbed Sidney’s arm and hauled
her to a corner behind a heavy table he had flipped on its side. He
then raced over to Jackson, who was slumped against a wall breathing
hard, and proceeded to drag him toward safety. A shot thudded against
the wall within an inch of Sawyer’s head. Then another hit him squarely
in the rib cage. His pistol flew from his hand and slid across the
floor as he slumped back against the wall, coughing up blood. The vest
had done its job again, but he had heard the crack of some ribs upon
impact. He started to pull himself up, but now he was very much a
sitting duck.
Suddenly a string of shots erupted from near the overturned table.
An abrupt scream from the direction of the shot that had hit Sawyer
followed the lead barrage. Sawyer looked over at the table and his eyes
widened in amazement as he saw Sidney Archer jam the still smoking 10mm
pistol in her waistband. She raced out from behind the protective
cover, and together she and Sawyer pulled Jackson safely behind the
table.
They sat Jackson up against the wall.
“Damn, Ray, you shouldn’t have done that, man.” Sawyer’s eyes quickly
examined his partner, confirming that there were two wounds and no more.
“Right, and let you give me hell from the grave for the rest of my life?
No way, Lee.” Jackson bit his lip hard as Sawyer ripped off his tie and,
using Scales’s stiletto blade, made a crude tourniquet above the wound
on Jackson’s leg.
“Keep your hand right there, Ray.” Sawyer guided his hand to the handle
of the knife, pressing his fingers tightly against it.
He next tore his coat off, balled it up and stanched the bleeding on
Jackson’s arm wound. “Slug went right through, Ray. You’re gonna be