Celtic Empire (Dirk Pitt 25)

6

Pitt had lunged into a showroom lined with high wooden shelves, each overflowing with glass objects: vases, dishware, drinking glasses. The Fábrica de Vidrio was a factory that produced colorful tableware for local use and souvenirs for the tourist trade.

The showroom was empty, save for a young girl cowering behind a counter, staring at Pitt through frightened brown eyes.

“¿El hombre?” Pitt asked.

She pointed at an opening that led to the factory area. Pitt slipped around the corner and was instantly met by a gust of hot air. The back of the building was a high-roofed production bay, constructed around a mixing furnace, an open-air reheating pit, and a drying kiln. More shelves of glassware filled the sides, with stores of sand, soda ash, and limestone.

Two workmen sat on stools beside the open-air firepit, shaping balls of molten glass on the ends of blowpipes into small vases. They stood and shouted as the fleeing gunman sprinted past, kicking over a rack of animal figurines. The assailant ignored the workers and weaved his way to a heavy metal door at the rear.

Pitt entered the bay as the man reached the back door and twisted the handle. He got no farther. Giordino had just made it to the other side and rammed the door into him as it opened. The unexpected blow flung the gunman backward onto the concrete floor. Recovering quickly, he thrust the gun forward and fired two shots at Giordino while climbing to his feet. Both shots went high, but forced Giordino to duck behind the door. Pitt intervened before the man could fire again.

From across the bay, he wound up the claw hammer he’d taken from the truck and flung it. The tool spun through the air and struck the gunman’s back shoulder. Dropping to one knee, the man gasped in pain, but only for a moment. Then he was up, backtracking across the bay.

Pitt was still on the move. Approaching one of the glassblowers, he plucked the blowpipe from the worker’s hand and hurled it like a javelin at the gunman. The spear struck

the assailant’s outstretched arm, enveloping his hand in a glowing blob of molten glass. The man screamed as it torched his flesh. Shaking his arm, he flung the gun and most of the glass off his hand and onto the floor. Then he staggered toward the entrance, avoiding Pitt by skirting the far side of the reheating pit.

The second glassblower decided to follow Pitt’s lead. He stood and with a strong arm flung his glasswork at the fleeing man. It struck him on the hip, but glanced off and fell to the ground.

Disoriented, the gunman wobbled into a storage rack of glass goblets, which showered onto him. He staggered to the side, tripped, and fell into the open firepit. Surprisingly, he didn’t scream.

Pitt and the workmen rushed over and pulled him from the burning embers before his skin was charred. He didn’t move a muscle as Pitt rolled him onto his back. His head and torso were covered in white ash.

“Está muerto,” one of the glassblowers whispered.

Pitt, too, saw that the man was dead.

“One of the glass goblets.” Giordino approached and pointed to a gash in the dead man’s neck.

Pitt saw it now, a short but deep gash below his ear that had been cauterized in the firepit. Beneath the ashes, a thick layer of dried blood streaked across his back.

“A shard struck him in the carotid artery,” Pitt said. “He must have fallen into the pit unconscious and died before the fire got to him.”

“¡Un accidente!” shouted the worker who’d pitched the blow. “Un accidente.”

“Sí,” Pitt said, “un accidente.”

Giordino scanned the dead man. “Who do you think he is?”

Pitt searched the man’s pockets. “No wallet or identification, but plenty of cash.” He produced a thick fold of U.S. dollars, used as currency in El Salvador. He threw it to the ground beside the body.

“All the markings of a professional,” Giordino said.

“One who probably isn’t working alone.” Pitt gazed at Giordino with concern.

“You think someone else is still after Elise?”

Pitt nodded.

“Let’s go.”

Pitt told the workers to call the police, then sprinted out of the building with Giordino at his side, hoping that his gut instinct was wrong.

7

The black Jeep had kept its distance behind the ambulance, then stopped a block from the medical clinic at the edge of town. The driver, an athletically built woman with dark red hair and an angular face, watched as Elise was hurried into the building on a stretcher. She drove casually past the entrance, then continued toward the main road to San Salvador.