Read The Bannerman Effect (The Bannerman Series) for Free Online

the van had dropped farther back, the driver biding time. Now, gradually, it closed the distance, ready to ease off if the Mercedes, which could easily outrun the van, accelerated. If it did, they would wait. It did not.
    They were near the town of Sargans, where the autobahn would soon branch off toward Austria, and where the morning fog had begun to thicken, when the killers made their move. The Mercedes had remained in the right-hand lane, the van in the center. Now it moved up, slowly, until it had drawn abreast.
    Elena Bragg saw the shape. She raised her eyes. The van's driver, a young man, no, a woman, thin, bad skin, was looking back at her. Shouting something. Not watching the road. What is it, she wondered. A low tire?
    But then she knew. Even before the side door of the van swung open, she knew. She called a warning to Josef. But the door sprang back. Two men. One was tall, fair skinned. The other was short, dark, with a cigar between bared teeth. That was all she had time to see. Except for the weapons now appearing from behind their backs. The dark one fired first, at Josef.
    One short burst, then a longer one. She saw his body shudder under the impact but still he tried to fight. She could see him groping for his weapon as he steered the big Mercedes into the open side of the van in an effort to block its line of fire. But the van swung wide and accelerated. She could see the two gunmen again.
    They seemed to hesitate. They had clear shots at Russo and yet they were looking beyond him. They shifted their sights. It was then that Elena knew that she, not Dr. Russo, was their target. As Josef slumped forward, and as the slowing Mercedes drifted onto the soft shoulder of the road, they emptied their clips at her.
    Flying glass ripped her scalp. One bullet shattered the forearm that held Russo. Another found her right shoulder, slamming her backward onto the seat. Russo, his last breath a scream of rage, his body jerking wildly under the impact of two dozen slugs, seemed to turn, deliberately, and hurl himself across her body.
    She could see nothing. But she felt the bouncing of the Mercedes as it crossed the shoulder and tore through a signpost. It was in a field now, a plowed field, pitching over furrows, turning, tilting, then rolling, so slowly, onto its side. The Mercedes’ engine coughed and quit. Now she could hear the screech of brakes, and then running feet as the two from the van rushed to finish their work.
    But suddenly, new gunfire. This from a distance. She felt a thrill of hope as, in her mind, she saw her cousin Willem racing up the road from Landquart, his own machine pistol spewing bursts of fire out the window of his car. The running feet stopped, then turned away. Doors slammed. Tires squealed.
    Soon there was only Willem. His manner anguished but efficient, feeling the throats of first Russo, then Josef, nodding to her as if to say they were alive although the pain in his eyes told her that his brother, at least, was dead. Then there were sirens. Policemen. Paramedics dressed in orange jumpsuits. Men tugging at her, their voices distant. Then only dreams.
     
     
     
     
    -4-
    The nuns had told her, when she was a girl, that one's life passed in review at the moment of death. This was God's mercy, they said. He permitted his children that brief instant in which to remember all their sins, the better to make a good act of contrition.
    That had not happened. It was probably for the best. Her thoughts at that time might not have been pleasing to God. The first was of revenge.
    Even as the bullets screamed through glass and flesh, she knew who had sent these men. It seemed to her that she had prayed. That she had asked God to spare her long enough to send them to hell.
    There were other thoughts, astonishing in their variety and clarity for so short a time. Two seconds. Three at the most. Perhaps the nuns were correct after all.
    There were regrets. But more a sense of resignation. She could hardly