Primary Valor Jack Mars (miss read books TXT) 📖

of him, butBowles was strong. He pushed Luke off and scrabbled backwards and away on hishands and feet.

He was going for the gun.

Luke couldn’t let that happen.

He jumped up, took two steps,leapt, and landed on Bowles. Bowles reached at his waist for something, a knifein a sheath, but Luke locked up his arm with his own. They wrestled on theground, arms and legs grasping and clawing. There was no sound but their heavybreathing.

Bowles was strong. Strong. Lukereached to Bowles’s waist and pulled the knife. Bowles knocked it out of Luke’shand. It flew away off the cliff.

They fought on, rolling on theloose dirt and rock. Bowles punched Luke in the side of the head. Luke’s earstarted ringing. He slipped behind Bowles and pushed his face again the ground.Bowles spun and rolled over. Luke continued the spin and now he was on top. Theywere face to face, very close to the edge. Bowles grunted like a pig.

“Huh! Hnh!”

The sound was barely more than acroak.

Luke covered Bowles’s mouth withthe blade of his hand. No one could know they were here. More than anything,this had to be quiet.

Bowles bit down on Luke’s hand. Hard.

Luke’s first urge was to pull hishand away, but he drove it in deeper instead. He pushed Bowles’s head backwardsagainst the ground with it, exposing the throat. Bowles’s hands reached forLuke’s face. Luke slapped those hands away. He punched Bowles in the Adam’sapple.

“Guuh!” Bowles said. It was asound that was barely a sound.

Luke reared back and hit him againin the same place. And again. And again.

Four punches to the windpipe, andBowles stopped fighting. He just lay there, making strangling noises. Lukerolled over and lay next to him on the ground at the edge of the cliff.

Luke stared straight up at thesky. His heart was pumping. His brain was thudding. He took a moment to composehimself. Skidding clouds flew by over his head, just as they had done before. Butnow they seemed malevolent, like something from a horror movie. He glanced atBowles.

“If you’re going to kill somebody,”Luke said. He could barely get the words out. “You should just do it. Don’ttalk about it.”

It was too late for advice. Bowles’seyes were wide open. His breathing was rapid, shallow and high-pitched, likesteam escaping from a ruptured pipe. His hands grasped at his own throat,trying to do the impossible, which was reopen a crushed breathing passage.

Luke waited while his ownbreathing and heartbeat slowed down. He listened to the wind rushing along thecliff face. He felt the throb of pain where Bowles had bitten his hand. If hethought about, it seemed he could feel where the bite marks were swelling withblood.

A whole series of assumptions camecrashing apart. Bowles had been assigned to them, yes. It had seemed that theBureau had wanted to rein them in. And maybe that’s all it was at first. Runthe case into the ground, block it, make it go away. But now it was more thanthat. Bowles had tried to kill him.

This entire mission was adisaster. And Luke had turned this part of it, this incursion onto the island,into an even worse disaster. He had called off Ed and sent him packing, when Edwas the exact person he needed right now. Luke was here by himself, faced withinfiltrating a compound full of soldiers and bodyguards.

Bowles had killed BuzzMacDonald.

Luke had a moment then. It was amoment of despair so profound he might never be able to describe it to anotherhuman being. It was more than disappointment. It was heartbreak. This cipher,this zero, this corrupt cop currently suffering through his last breaths, hadkilled THE Buzz MacDonald.

It made Luke so angry that hewished Bowles could heal, just so he could kill him again. He kneeled overBowles and looked at him.

Bowles lay on his back, rasping,gasping, eyes staring up at Luke.

“Who were you working for?” Lukesaid.

Bowles was choking. He was barelygetting any air at all. He would never be able to answer any questions now, orever.

Luke went cold in a way he did notremember going before. He reached down and unclipped the strap holding Bowles’sMP5. He took the gun away. He reached in various pockets of Bowles’s vest, andpants. He took the three extra magazines for the gun. He took three grenadesoff of Bowles’s vest. He laid them all aside.

The merciful thing would be tosimply kill Bowles now. He couldn’t be trusted, and there was nowhere to gethim emergency medical attention anyway. His throat was crushed. Maybe DarwinKing had a doctor working here, but Luke doubted he was a trauma surgeon.

Bowles’s pistol was along thecliff’s edge. Luke went over and picked it up. It was a Ruger P90. Might aswell take that, too.

He looked at Bowles again. The manhad stopped moving. His eyes were wide open and staring.

Luke took a deep breath, and thenexhaled all the way. It was like the air going out of a tire. He kneeled downnext to Bowles again, and pushed the man’s heavy body to the very edge of thecliff. Then he rolled it over the edge. Seconds later, he heard it crash intothe trees and underbrush four stories below. If he hadn’t been quite deadbefore, that had finished the job.

Luke shook his head. He steeledhimself. It was going to be a hard night. He felt something settling over him,a feeling of anger, but even more than anger. It was a feeling of murderousrage. These people, Darwin King and whoever was protecting him, thought theycould act with impunity, steal children, do whatever they wanted, kill whoeverthey wanted. But they couldn’t.

He looked over the edge. In thedarkness, he fancied he could just make out Bowles’s body down there, limbsspread at strange, broken angles. Like a matchstick man whose little woodenarms and legs had been snapped.

“Goodbye, Bowles,” Luke said.

* * *

There was nothing to do but goforward.

Luke moved higher through anenormous boulder field. The stones formed a winding stairway. Someone had puteffort into this, in the days when this was a hotel. It had all been fornothing.

Ahead, the trail meandered up asteep switchback. He followed it. He climbed another ladder of iron rungs,