The Hunters (Presidential Agent 3)

If the clicker didn’t work, you had to get out of the car and open the door with a key.

The clicker didn’t work.

Shit!

He turned the ignition off, took the keys from the ignition, and opened the Blazer’s door.

As he squeezed past the front fender, he noticed two things. First, the floodlight that went on when you pushed the clicker—even if the goddamned door didn’t open—hadn’t come on.

What the hell!

And then he noticed that a bag, a cloth—something—was covering the clicker receiver.

What the hell!

And then in the same split second, he saw that a man was coming quickly down the driveway and that a car was entering the drive.

Backward! What the hell?

He pushed his jacket aside and took out his pistol.

There was a sudden burst of light, from a large handheld floodlight.

“Policía!” a voice shouted.

The car—he saw now that it was a small Fiat van—started up the driveway, its tires squealing.

The man coming down the driveway shielded his eyes from the floodlight. Then he put his other hand to his eyes. That hand held a pistol.

“Don’t shoot him!” Yung screamed, in Spanish.

There came three shots—booms rather than cracks, telling Yung they were from a shotgun and not a pistol—and the man who had been shielding his eyes looked as if something had shoved him hard against the concrete driveway wall. He slid down it.

Yung dropped his pistol and raised his hands over his head. He started screaming, “Policía! Policía! Policía!”

Something warm dripped onto his face.

In a moment, he realized that he was bleeding.

A Uruguayan policeman, a sergeant with his pistol drawn, came down the driveway.

“Are you all right, Señor Yung?”

How the hell did he know my name?

“May I put my hands down?”

“Of course, Señor,” the sergeant said, then added, “You’ve been hit, Señor Yung!”

Yung looked at his left hand. It looked as if someone had gouged a two-inch-long, quarter-inch-deep channel across it. It was starting to bleed profusely.

Yung thought: There are usually twelve pellets, with a total weight of 1.5 ounces, in a 00-Buckshot cartridge. Each pellet has roughly the knockdown power of a .32 ACP bullet.

Wyatt Earp fired three times. That translated to thirty-six pellets, each with roughly the knockdown power of a .32 ACP slug bouncing around in the OK Corral here. I guess I’m lucky I got only one of them.

He leaned against the wall and t

ook out his handkerchief.