“Dammit!” Cooper bellowed. The bullet had penetrated both his arm and his lower chest. His gun fell to the ground and he retreated, in agony, behind a row of steel drums near the side entrance.

“You OK, Barry?” Janson called out, stepping behind another stanchion.

There was a moment of silence. “I dunno, Paul,” he replied weakly. “Hurts like a motherfucker. Plus, I feel like I’ve fallen off the whole Gandhian-pacifist wagon. I’m probably going to have to become a vegan just to get my karma straightened out.”

“Nice shooting, though. Weather Underground experience?”

“YMCA summer camp,” Cooper said, sheepish. “BB guns.”

“Can you drive?”

“Not the Indy 500 or anything, but, yeah, I guess.”

“Keep calm and listen to me. Get into the car and drive yourself to a hospital. Now!”

“But what about …?”

“Don’t worry about me! Just haul ass.”

A bullet from the giant’s .45 echoed loudly through the steel enclosure, and a piece of concrete landed near Janson’s feet.

It was a standoff now, between the two of them.

Two men, with nothing to lose but their lives.

Janson did not dare shoot blindly, for risk of hitting the man’s captive. He took a few steps back until he could make out his target clearly. Ratko, steadying his gun hand with his other hand for precision shooting, had his back to her. A glint of steel told him that the woman was not as helpless as he imagined.

With her one free arm, she had reached down, stretching farther than seemed possible, and grabbed the hilt of the knife, which through extraordinary contortions she had managed to raise to mid-thigh level. Now she was raising it high, keeping the blade horizontal, the better to avoid the ribs, and—

Plunged it into the giant’s back.

Shock wiped out the menacing expression on his hideously scarred face. As Janson stepped forward, the giant squeezed off another shot, but it went high. Janson had one more bullet left in his magazine: he could not miss.

He assumed the standard Weaver stance and squeezed off his sole remaining shot, aiming for the man’s heart.

“I fuck your mother,” the Serb rumbled, and then, like falling timber, he pitched forward, dead.

Now Janson strode over to the woman captive. He felt a surge of fury and revulsion as he took in the tattered clothes, the bruised flesh, the red marks left by hands that had groped and grasped her flesh like so much modeling clay.

Wordlessly, Janson withdrew the knife from the Serb’s back and sliced through the hawser, freeing her.

She slid to the floor, her back resting against the pillar, seemingly unable to stand. She curled herself up, putting her arms around her knees, drawing them toward her, and resting her head on her forearm.

He disappeared for a moment, returning with the white shirt and khaki trousers that had been worn by the man with the gold-rimmed glasses.