Evil Deeds (Bob Danforth 1) by Joseph Badal Page A

let’s go! We’ve got to get out of here.”
    “Hold on,” Bob hissed. He checked the boy’s body. One round from Bob’s .45 had impacted the kid’s chest; another round had torn his throat. He pocketed the boy’s pistol. Stupid kid, Bob thought.
    Bob ran from the lobby into the hallway. On the floor in the first empty room on the left, he found the infant the boy had been holding. He stuck his .45 in his jacket pocket, scooped her up, and moved back toward the lobby. But, after just four steps, he heard a door opening at the end of the corridor. He turned at the moment muzzle flashes sparked from a weapon.
    Bob dove to the marble floor, landing on his side to protect the baby. There was a sharp, prickling feeling in his right calf. He reached down, touched the spot, and jerked his hand away when shards of pain shot through his lower leg. He touched his fingers to his tongue and tasted the sweetness of blood. He crawled to the covering shadows of the side wall. He adjusted his hold on the baby and fumbled for his pistol. It was wedged inside his jacket pocket. Two more shots came from the end of the hall. Then he heard approaching footsteps.
    Bob knew time was running out. He could make out the outline of the man down the hall – now only a few yards away. Then shots exploded from the lobby.
    “Get out of there,” George yelled.
    Bob scrambled to his feet and, in a crouching run, made it to the lobby. He leaped behind the side wall and ripped the pistol from his jacket pocket.
    George moved sideways toward him. But the whining echo of a gunshot filled the lobby and George grunted and dropped to the floor.
    Bob fired two shots down the hall and heard the clatter of what sounded like a pistol hitting the marble floor. Then the man there said something sounding like a curse. Bob laid the baby on the floor and reached out with his free hand for the neck of George’s jacket. He pulled him toward him, out of the line of fire.
    “Shit!” George groaned.
    Bob unsnapped George’s jacket. Blood already saturated the lower left side of George’s shirt and dripped onto the floor, pooling and moving in a slow, inexorable flow toward the screaming baby.
    Bob sloughed off his pack and opened it. He searched blindly with his hand for the first-aid kit, while peeking around the corner. He could hear someone moving around, but couldn’t see a thing.
    “Go!” George whispered. “If you don’t get away quickly, either that guy’s going to shoot you or the local police are going to show up. Either way, you’ll be finished. You’ll never have the chance to find your son.”
    “Shut up, George,” Bob replied.
    “Think of Michael,” George gasped.
    Bob knew his odds of getting out of this building and out of Bulgaria, and of ever seeing his wife and son again, were worsening by the second. But he wouldn’t abandon George. He hadn’t left his dead and wounded behind in Vietnam – no matter the risk, no matter the consequences – and he wouldn’t do it now. Despite the pain he felt in his heart as he conjured up images of Liz and Michael.
    Bob removed George’s pack and found the first aid kit Liz had packed there.
    “You’ve got to stop exposing your chest,” he said. “First a knife wound and now a gun shot.”
    George groaned. “I’ll try to remember that.”
    Bob dressed the wound in George’s side with wads of cotton and then pressed an adhesive dressing over the wound. Pulling up George’s shirt in back, he saw an exit wound and hoped the bullet hadn’t passed through any organs. He guessed it had not based on the little amount of blood seeping from the wound. He glanced once more around the corner. For good measure, he picked up the .45 from the floor and fired a shot into the dark corridor. He heard running footsteps recede down the corridor and a door slam shut. Then he stuck the pistol in his jacket pocket and patched up the exit wound in George’s side.
    Bob swung George’s pack over a shoulder