Page 131 of Tom Clancy Line of Sight
Standing in a half crouch and still tied to the chair, Jack turned sideways and threw his entire body weight against the much smaller man. Emir lost his footing and stumbled to the floor. Jack turned and kicked the pistol, sending it skittering across the rough-hewn boards, then turned back around and kicked as hard as he could at Emir’s head.
The toe of his boot struck home with a nauseating crunch. Emir howled with pain as he clutched his face, balling himself up to prevent another boot strike to his skull.
Just what Jack wanted.
Jack raised his size-fourteen foot as high as he could and stomped the side of Emir’s head, driving it into the floor. He stomped again and again and again.
Emir flailed widely, kicking at Jack but missing, blinded by pain and his own gushing blood slicking the wooden floor like an oil spill.
Emir tucked one arm under his head to cushion it against the floor and the other on top to protect his ear, now partially torn off from the repeated boot strikes.
So Jack kicked him in the face again.
Kicked him so hard that Emir’s head snapped back, collapsing the fragile anterior nasal spine just below his nose and smashing his brain hard against his skull, knocking him out.
Jack raised his foot one more time to deliver a killing blow to Emir’s exposed neck, but he hesitated. He couldn’t kill ahelpless, unconscious man, no matter how miserable a human being he was. Chances were he was going to die anyway.
Emir was God’s problem now.
Jack lowered his foot. He stood in his tortured half crouch over the bleeding figure, gasping for air, the duct tape still tying him to the chair like a crooked crucifix, but he hardly felt it for the adrenaline dump still surging through his blood.
Jack couldn’t believe his luck. Shoving the barrel of the Colt against his skull had pushed the slide back just enough to engage the disconnector, putting the gun out of battery and preventing it from firing. It was a long shot, but the only one he could think of at the time to get out of this jam.
Now he had another problem.
How the hell was he going to get out of this damn chair?
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Jack turned around and scanned the kitchen.
On the counter was a knife block, but he couldn’t stand up tall enough to reach any of the knife handles. He thought about swinging the chair legs up high enough to sweep the knife block off the counter, but chances were he’d only bang into the cabinets. He didn’t see any other sharp surfaces he could use to cut the duct tape with, either.
But then he remembered he really didn’t need any.
Jack sat back down in his chair and steadied himself. He took a deep breath, leaned back as far as he could within the constraints of the duct tape, then jackknifed his upper torso down toward his knees as sharply as he could.
The duct tape split at the chair edges from the force of his thrust as neatly as if he had ripped it with his fingers.
He stood and shook his body to free himself from the remaining strands of tape, toppling the chair to the floor. He then raised his bound wrists high above his head, palmstogether, fingertips touching. He thrust his arms down sharply, driving his elbows hard against his sides for additional leverage. The duct tape around his wrists gave way easily, though it tore away the hair on his arms and left a little bit of sticky goo on the face of his iWatch.
He ripped away the remaining shreds of duct tape from his clothing before dashing over to Emir’s motionless body. He felt for a pulse. He found one, barely. He checked for more weapons but found none, save another loaded magazine for the Colt, which he pocketed, along with a set of keys for the Renault and, most important, his own iPhone, which Emir had lifted from him previously.
Jack ran over to the laptop. Nothing had changed, but the countdown timer read just thirty-eight minutes now. He punched in Gavin Biery’s number on his phone. Two rings and Gavin picked up.
“Hey, Jack, are you okay? I heard about that airplane—”
“I’m fine. Look, I need you to run a search for a Volkswagen van owned by a Bosnian tour company called Happy Times!, based out of Sarajevo. It’s the only Volkswagen T5 van in their fleet.”
“You got a plate number by any chance?”
“Sorry, no.”
“What do I do when I find it?”
“It has a working GPS map guide. I need you to locate its GPS signal and track it for me.”
“On it, Jack. Give me a few.” Keys began clicking instantly over the phone.
