The Kalispell Run

Chapter Thirteen

The first and second floors of the Kalispell Regional Hospital were uninhabited.

Geronimo, standing in the stairwell between the second and third floors, paused, debating his next move. He’d spent the better part of the afternoon painstakingly searching the first two floors of the hospital, and there was still no sign of whoever was lurking in the upper stories.

Apparently, whoever it was knew they had been spotted and had seen him enter the hospital to investigate. He leaned over the ring and peered up the darkened stairwell. Either his quarry had used another exit, or they had gone higher, believing a lone man wouldn’t be foolish enough to pursue them.

How he missed Blade and Hickok! As Alpha Triad, as a functional fighting unit, they relied on one another for support and assistance. You didn’t worry about covering your back because you knew someone else was doing it, someone who would gladly give his life to defend your own.

Now, alone in hostile territory and probably outnumbered, he considered returning to the SEAL. The further he ascended, the more vulnerable he became.

He didn’t like it one bit.

Something scraped against a metallic object above him, the slight noise the equivalent of a thunderclap in the deathly silence of the musty stairwell.

Someone was on the stairs above him!

Geronimo crouched and slowly climbed the steps, one at a time, his eyes alertly probing the shadows for movement.

The stealthy pad of a foot on concrete reached his ears.

They were close!

Geronimo leaned against the wall, blending his body into the stygian inkiness of a recessed corner.

Was it someone coming down to see if he was still in the building?

The waiting was nerve racking, the seconds seeming like hours.

Geronimo pointed the FNC at a stretch of stairs descending from the third floor. If someone was coming, it would be his first…

A black form materialized on the stairs, the vague shape of a man in discernible contrast to the dusty paleness of the concrete steps.

“Don’t move!” Geronimo shouted.

The figure above him snapped three shots in the direction of the yelled command. One of the bullets struck the wall inches from Geronimo’s head.

Geronimo fired a short burst from the FNC, the slugs ripping into his target and flinging the man to the steps.

The man gasped once, then tumbled down the stairs. A pistol fell from his hand and clattered to the landing.

Geronimo cautiously moved to the body and knelt over it. He could hear the man wheezing.

Was he alone?

Geronimo patiently waited for any reaction to the gunfire: voices, footsteps, anything.

Nothing.

Good.

Geronimo reached into his left front pocket and removed a pack of matches, part of the booty taken from the Watchers in Thief River Falls.

He struck a match and held it over his fallen foe.

The man was a Flathead Indian, in his early or mid-thirties. He wore buckskins and carried a knife and a pouch on a belt around his waist. The slugs from the FNC had perforated his chest and lungs. Blood was oozing from the wounds and staining his shirt. He was still alive, but barely.

Geronimo frowned, unhappy with himself. Maybe he should have let the man come closer and tried to knock him out, to somehow subdue him without using the FNC. A commendable idea, he noted, but not very practical. The Flathead might have seen him, or sensed him, or simply resisted, and at close range one of his shots was bound to find a target.

There was no other way.

Geronimo leaned back on his heels, relieving a slight cramp in his lower left leg, and the motion saved his life.

The blast of the shotgun was deafening in the confines of the stairwell, coming from the landing above.

Geronimo felt a stinging sensation in the hand holding the match, and the wall exploded in a shower of cement and brick.

Unexpectedly, the Flathead Geronimo had shot abruptly opened his eyes and sat up, just as another deafening discharge of the shotgun filled the stairwell.

Geronimo saw the Indian’s face blown apart, the eyes and nose and mouth erupting in a crimson spray of flesh.

The match flickered out, plunging the stairwell into complete gloom.

Geronimo rolled to his feet and ran, pressing his left hand tightly against his side. He had the impression his hand was bleeding, and he didn’t want to leave a trail of blood for his opponents to follow.

“I got him!” someone shouted, elated, from the floor above.

Geronimo reached the door to the second floor and pushed it open, holding it with his right hand so it wouldn’t bang when it swung closed.

He heard feet pounding on the stairs and saw the faint beam of a light.

“You asshole!” another voice snapped. “You shot Spotted Elk!”

Geronimo raced down the hallway, carefully avoiding furniture and equipment left abandoned along the hall. He knew it was only a matter of moments before they came after him. If he could get to the SEAL, he’d be safe inside its protective bulletproof body. He was almost at the end of the hall, yards away from a door leading to another flight of stairs to the first floor, when the men after him, hot on his heels, came through the first door, the one he’d used to reach this floor. The door forcefully’ crashed into the wall behind it.

At the sound, Geronimo glanced over his right shoulder, taking his eyes from the hallway ahead. He failed to see the discarded wheelchair in his path, and he flinched as his knees smashed into the wheelchair, his momentum carrying him forward and lifting him from the floor. He frantically tried to correct his balance, but it was too late. The wheelchair toppled over, Geronimo on top. He landed hard, one arm on the wheelchair gouging him in the ribs.

“Down here!” someone shouted.

His pursuers didn’t seem much concerned with stealth any more.

Geronimo twisted and aimed the FNC at several figures hurrying toward him. He fired and watched them dive for cover.

Keep moving!

Geronimo scrambled to his feet and reached the door. He shoved his way through it and hastened down the stairs, limping now, his left knee throbbing. He could hear a commotion on the floor above him.

They were still coming.

He was three steps from the bottom and the door to the first-floor hall, when the door suddenly opened, framing an armed Flathead with a rifle in his hands.

Geronimo didn’t hesitate. He went for a head shot, as Hickok constantly advocated, the slugs rupturing the Indian’s forehead. The Flathead fell to one side and Geronimo jumped over his body and raced toward the front entrance, a beacon of hope at the far end of the hall. He was going to make it! There was no way they could stop him now!

The bright sunlight caused him to squint as he exited the hospital, and it took him a moment to adjust before he spotted Rainbow.

She was standing at the bottom of the steps in a wide stance, holding the Dan Wesson .44 Magnum, Blade’s revolver, in her hands.

Geronimo started down the stairs, surmising she was there to aid him, that she’d heard the gunfire and grabbed the revolver to help. He was on the third step when a thought struck him. How could she have heard the shooting if she had the windows rolled up as he’d instructed? He glanced at her and noticed her peculiar smile.

“Rainbow…?” he began.

She fired, the .44 Magnum bucking in her slender hands.

Geronimo felt the impact of the slug as it penetrated his left shoulder and jerked him from his feet. He was dimly aware of falling onto the concrete steps, the brutal contact jarring his entire body. In shock, his senses reeling, he raised his head and tried to focus on Rainbow.

She was slowly walking toward him, smiling in triumph.

Geronimo wanted to speak, but couldn’t. His lips twitched and his head dropped, and as his eyes closed his mind was filled with one burning question: Why?