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In the same instantaneous movement, he released Pitt, who fell in a heap onto the carpet, took two steps and swept Giordino up off the floor in a great bear hug and held him with his feet in the air. Instead of Darfur towering above his opponent, they stared face-to-face, no more than inches apart. Darfur's lips were drawn back in an evil leer while Giordino's face was expressionless, with a complete absence of fear.
When Darfur had grasped him around the back above the waist and locked his arms like a vise, Giordino had lifted his arms so that they were free and stretched in the air above the giant's head. Darfur ignored Giordino's raised arms and used every ounce of his enormous strength to constrict the life out of the short Italian.
Pitt, still dazed and in extreme pain, crawled across the room, drawing in great breaths, gasping in agony from his bruised chest and head. Kelly leaped onto Darfur's back with her hands around his face again, covering his eyes and wrestling with him, twisting his head back and forth. Darfur easily broke her hold with one hand and tossed her away as if she were a show window mannequin, sending her sprawling onto the sofa before he resumed his constricting grip around Giordino.
But Giordino didn't need saving. He lowered his arms and tightened his fingers around Darfur's throat. The giant suddenly realized that he was the one who was staring death in the eye. The leer on his face turned to contorted fear as the air was cut off from his lungs and he tried to beat desperately at Giordino's chest with his fists one moment and pry the steel fingers from his throat the next. But Giordino was remorseless. He gave no sign of yielding. He hung on like a relentless bulldog as Darfur thrashed around the room like a madman.
There was a horrible gasping wail as Darfur suddenly went limp and crashed to the floor like a timbered oak tree, with Giordino on top of him. At that instant, a fleet of sheriff's patrol cars and SWAT vans slid to a stop on the gravel driveway. Uniformed men with heavy weapons began dispersing around the house. The sound of approaching helicopters also came through the windows.
"Out the back!" Kanai shouted to his men. He clutched Kelly around the waist and began dragging her from the room.
"You harm her," Pitt said, his voice like cold stone, "and I'll blow you to pieces bit by bit."
He saw Kanai quickly calculating the odds of escaping with a struggling prisoner.
"Not to worry," Kanai replied derisively, as he threw her across the room at Pitt. "She's yours for now. That is, until we meet again, and we will."
Pitt tried to follow, but he was in no condition for a footrace and he stumbled to a stop, leaning on a credenza, waiting for the cobwebs to clear and the pain to subside. After a minute, he returned to the living room and found Giordino cutting away the ropes that bound Thomas, while Kelly dabbed a cloth soaked with Jack Daniel's sour-mash whiskey at the wounds on the scientist's face.
Pitt glanced down at Darfur on the floor. "He dead?"
Giordino shook his head. "Not quite. I thought it best if he lives. Maybe he can be persuaded to tell the police and FBI what he knows."
"You cut it a bit thin, didn't you?" Pitt said, with a tight grin.
Giordino looked at him and shrugged. "I was on my way two seconds after I saw you get sandbagged, but I had to stop and take care of the guard outside the barn."
"I'm grateful," said Pitt genuinely. "If not for you, I wouldn't be standing."
"Yes, my intervention is getting monotonous."
There was no getting the last word with Giordino. Pitt went over and helped Thomas to his feet. "How are you doing, old-timer?"
Thomas smiled bravely. "I'll be good as new after a few stitches."
Kelly gazed at Pitt as he put his arm around her and said, "You're one tough little lady."
"Did he get away?"
"Kanai?"
"I'm afraid so, unless the sheriff's deputies can chase him down."
"Not him," she said uneasily. "They won't find him. He'll come back to kill with a vengeance. His bosses at Cerberus won't rest until they have Dad's formula."
Pitt stared out the window, as if searching for something in the distance beyond the horizon. When finally he spoke, it was in a quiet voice, as if he was dwelling on each syllable. "I have a strange feeling that the oil formula is not the only thing they're after."
35
It was late in the afternoon. Darfur and the two Vipers that Pitt and Giordino had subdued were handcuffed and driven away in patrol cars to the Sheriff's Department and booked for the murder of Egan's security guards. Kelly and Thomas gave their statements to the sheriff's homicide investigators, followed by Pitt and Giordino. Kelly was correct in saying the deputies would never catch Ono Kanai. Pitt traced the killer's tracks to the high cliffs above the Hudson River, where he found a rope leading down to the water.
"They must have escaped in a waiting boat," observed Giordino.
Pitt stood with his friend in a gazebo at the edge of the palisade and stared down at the water. He lifted his gaze across the river to the green hills and forests. Small villages strayed along the New York shore in the part of the Hudson Valley made famous by Washington Irving. "Amazing how Kanai covers every bet, every contingency."
"Do you think the Vipers will talk under interrogation?"
"It really wouldn't make much difference if they did," said Pitt slowly. "The Viper organization probably works in cells, each ignorant of the other, under the command of Kanai. As far as they know, the chain of command stops with him. I'll bet none of them are aware their true bosses sit in the corporate offices of Cerberus."
