MAHONEY AND I WANTED Sphinx, and it was personal with me, maybe with both of us. I let our sedan roll another fifty or sixty yards. Then I braked and the car stopped. Mahoney and I jumped out. We almost slid down the steep hill, which was slippery with mud.
“Crazy son of a bitch!” Ned Mahoney shouted, as we stumbled ahead.
“What choice did he have? He had to run.”
“I mean you. You’re crazy! What a ride.”
We saw Brendan Connolly lurch out of the damaged Porsche. He held a handgun aimed our way. Connolly fired off two quick shots. He wasn’t good with a gun, but he was shooting real bullets.
“Son of a bitch!” Mahoney fired a shot and hit the Porsche—just to show Connolly that we could shoot him if we wanted to.
“Put the gun down,” Mahoney shouted. “Put the gun down!”
Brendan Connolly started to run down the hill, but he was stumbling a lot. Mahoney and I kept gaining on him until we were only thirty yards or so behind.
“Let me,” I said.
Brendan Connolly looked back over his shoulder just then. I could tell he was tired, scared, or both. His legs and arms were pumping in a disjointed rhythm. He might work out in some gym, but he wasn’t ready for this.
“Get back! I’ll shoot!” he shouted—almost right into my face.
I hit him, and it was like a speeding tractor-trailer back-ending a barely moving compact. Connolly went down, rolling crazily. I stayed upright. Didn’t even lose my balance. This was the good part. It almost made up for some of our misses and failures.
Connolly’s ignominious roll finally stopped after twenty feet, but then he made his biggest mistake—he got back up.
I was on him in a second. I was all over Sphinx, and it was where I wanted to be. Mano a mano with this bastard. He had sold his own wife—the mother of his children.
I threw a hard right-handed shot into the bridge of Connolly’s nose. The perfect shot, or close to it. Probably broke it, from the crunch I heard. He went down on one knee—but he got up again. Former college jock. Former tough guy. Current asshole.
His nose was hanging to one side. Good deal. I threw an uppercut into the pit of Connolly’s stomach and liked the feeling so much I threw another. I crunched another right into his gut, which was softening to the touch. Then a quick, hard hook to his cheek. I was getting stronger.
I jabbed his broken nose and Connolly moaned. I jabbed again. I looped a roundhouse at his chin, connected, bull’s-eye. Brendan Connolly’s blue eyes rolled back into his forehead. The lights went out and he dropped into the mud and stayed there, where he belonged.
I heard a voice behind me. “That how it’s done in D.C.?” Mahoney asked from a few yards up the hill.
I looked up at him. “That’s how it’s done, Natty Bumppo. Hope you took notes.”