Read Online Father Night by Eric Van Lustbader - Free Book Online Page A

driver’s thick, muscular arm shot out, his fingers gripping her throat. He began to shake her head back and forth, harder and harder. She lost her sense of balance first, then her vision, which became nothing more than a smeared blur.
    Jack, approaching, tried to get a sense of what was happening inside the forklift’s cab.
    For Annika worse was to come. The driver slammed the side of her head against the cab door. Stars exploded behind her eyes and she felt her gorge rise. He knocked the gun out of her hand and slammed her head into the metal with even more force. A warmth trickled into her mouth, and the taste of copper told her she was bleeding. If he managed to slam her again she felt certain she would lose consciousness. Then she surely would be done for.
    Jack raised the Magnum, but Annika and the driver were too closely entwined for him to have a clear shot. He sprinted toward the forklift.
    As the driver shook her a third time, Annika managed to raise her arm up as protection, buffering the blow. Then, straining, she leaned in, plunging her forefinger into his right eye. He screamed, and she dug it in farther. His grip on her throat loosened, and she gasped in air, wrenched his hand away.
    Jack leapt up onto the forklift, but, clinging with one hand and with the Desert Eagle in the other, he had no leverage. He tried to climb higher to gain better purchase.
    Annika saw the gun as the driver brought it to bear on her and knocked it sideways. She had blinded him on her side, forcing him to turn his head full on to her. She smashed his nose with the heel of her hand, and she was totally free. Swinging away, she wrenched open the cab door and kicked him in the face. As he fell back, she grabbed hold of the edge of the roof and wrapped her legs around his neck. His meat-hook hands tore at her, frantically trying to free himself and, at the same time, gouge her. Feeling him prying apart her legs, she locked her ankles behind his ears and exerted as much force as she could muster. For what seemed like endless moments, they were locked in a struggle as much of will as of strength and endurance. Then Annika, using her advantage of leverage, squeezed her thigh muscles with all her force. Still, she was losing the battle; his superior strength was a heartbeat from overwhelming her, freeing himself from her vise.
    Leaning in, she smashed her hand into his throat. He coughed, then gagged. Jack, having gained the cab from the other side, jerked open the door and hauled the driver out, dropping him to the concrete floor
    Annika, her breathing labored, her heart racing, went slack. “Shit,” she said, slipping backward in exhaustion.
    *   *   *
    J ACK CARRIED her down off the forklift. The moment he set her down he got a good look at her face.
    “I’m fine,” she said.
    He took her around the front of the forklift to where the driver, semiconscious, lay on his back.
    Jack hauled him into a sitting position, slapped him hard on both cheeks. “Who hired you?”
    The driver’s eyes fluttered and he sucked in air. Jack repeated the question.
    The driver shook his head.
    Jack hit him on his right ear.
    “Damnit,” the driver said, cowed. “I don’t know.”
    Jack slammed him again, this time with the barrel of the Magnum. “Don’t fuck with me, I don’t have the time.”
    “Don’t kill me.”
    Jack pressed the muzzle of the Desert Eagle against the driver’s right nostril. “I’m not going to kill you,” Jack said, “but I will rob you of all your five senses, one at a time, unless you talk.”
    Jack ripped the gun’s muzzle through flesh and skin. The driver cradled his ruined nose with both hands. His eyes were rolling manically. “I was con-contacted by someone who said he worked for the old man. I believed him.”
    “What did he tell you to do?”
    “Just what I did. Take Gourdjiev to this warehouse.”
    “And then what?”
    “Drive the van inside.”
    “That’s it?”
    The driver nodded. “Then