Gideon's Sword by Douglas Preston Read Free Book Online Page B

time, Gideon seized Dajkovic’s shirt and pulled him to cover behind the washing machine, then took cover there himself. He thought furiously. What would Tucker do? He couldn’t let them live; couldn’t call the cops; couldn’t run.
    This was a fight to the finish.
    He peered out at the empty doorway where Tucker had been. It led into the dining room, large and dark. Tucker was waiting for them there.
    He heard a cough; Dajkovic suddenly grunted and rose. Almost simultaneously, rapid shots sounded from the doorway; Gideon ducked and two more rounds punched through the washing machine, water suddenly spraying from a cut hose.
    Gideon got off a shot but Tucker had already disappeared back into the dining room.
    “Give me the sidearm,” Dajkovic gasped, but without waiting for a reply his massive fist closed over the .45 in Gideon’s hand and took it. He struggled to rise.
    “Wait,” said Gideon. “I’ll run across the room to the kitchen table, there. He’ll move to the doorway to get off a shot at me. That’ll put him right behind the door frame. Fire through the wall.”
    Dajkovic nodded. Gideon took a deep breath, then jumped from behind the washing machine and darted over behind the table, realizing too late how badly exposed he really was.
    With an inarticulate roar Dajkovic staggered forward like a wounded bear. Blood suddenly came streaming from his mouth, his eyes wild, and he charged the doorway, firing through the wall to the right of the door. He pulled up short in the middle of the kitchen, swaying, still roaring, emptying the magazine into the wall.
    For a moment, there was no movement from the darkened dining room. Then the heavy figure of Tucker, spurting blood from half a dozen gunshot wounds, tumbled across the threshold, landing on the floor like a carcass of meat. And only then did Dajkovic sag to his knees, coughing, and roll to one side.
    Gideon scrambled to his feet and kicked Tucker’s handgun away from his inert form. Then he knelt over Dajkovic. Fumbling in the man’s pockets, he fished out the handcuff key and unlocked the cuffs. “Take it easy,” he said, examining the wound. The bullet had gone through his back, low, evidently piercing a lung but, he hoped, missing other vital organs.
    Suddenly and unexpectedly, Dajkovic smiled, bloody lips stretching into a ghastly grimace. “You get it on tape?”
    Gideon patted his pocket. “All of it.”
    “Great,” Dajkovic gasped. He passed out with a smile on his face.
    Gideon snapped off the digital recorder. He felt faint and the room began to spin as he heard sirens in the distance.

12
    G ideon Crew picked his way down the steep slope toward Chihuahueños Creek, following an old pack trail. He could see the deep pockets and holes of the stream as it wound its way through the meadow at the bottom. At over nine thousand feet, the June air was crisp and fresh, the azure sky piled with cumulus clouds.
    There would be a thunderstorm later, he thought.
    His right shoulder was still a little painful, but the stitches had come out the week before and he could move his arm freely now. The knife wound had been deep but clean. The slight concussion he’d suffered in the tussle with Dajkovic had caused no further problems.
    He came out into the sunlight and paused. It had been a month since he’d fished this little valley—just before going to Washington. He had achieved—spectacularly—the singular, overriding, and obsessive goal of his life. It was over. Tucker dead, disgraced; his father vindicated.
    For the past decade, he had been so fixated on this one thing that he’d neglected everything else—friends, a relationship, career advancement. And now, with his goal realized, he felt an immense sense of release. Freedom. Now he could start living his life like a real person. He was only thirty-three; he had almost his entire life ahead of him. There were so many things he wanted to do.
    Beginning with catching the monster cutthroat trout