"I ought to say something, but I don't think I have anything to say to you," he said.
"That's fine by me," Salander said. "I don't have much to say to you either." She gave him a lopsided smile.
"Let's get it over with," Zalachenko said.
"I'm glad that my very last act was to have you locked away forever," Salander said. "The police will be here tonight."
"Bullshit. I was expecting you to try a bluff. You came here to kill me and nothing else. You didn't say anything to anybody."
Salander's smile broadened. She suddenly looked malevolent.
"May I show you something, Pappa?"
Slowly she reached into her left-hand pants pocket and took out a rectangular object. Niedermann watched her every move.
"Every word you've said in the past hour has been broadcast over Internet radio."
She held up her Palm Tungsten T3 computer.
Zalachenko's brow furrowed where his eyebrows should have been.
"Let's see that," he said, holding out his good hand.
Salander lobbed the PDA to him. He caught it in midair.
"Bullshit," Zalachenko said. "This is an ordinary Palm."
As Niedermann bent to look at her computer, Salander flung a fistful of sand right into his eyes. He was blinded, but instinctively fired a round from his pistol. Salander had already moved two steps to one side and the bullet only tore a hole through the air where she had been standing. She grabbed the spade and swung it at his gun hand. She hit him with the sharp edge full force across the knuckles and saw his Sig Sauer fly in a wide arc away from them and into some bushes. Blood spurted from a gash above his index finger.
He should be screaming with pain.
Niedermann fumbled with his wounded hand as he desperately tried to rub his eyes with the other. Her only chance to win this fight was to cause him massive damage, and as quickly as possible. If it came down to a physical contest she was hopelessly lost. She needed five seconds to make it into the woods. She swung the spade back over her shoulder and tried to twist the handle so that the edge would hit first, but she was in the wrong position. The flat side of the spade smacked into Niedermann's face.
Niedermann grunted as his nose broke for the second time in a matter of days. He was still blinded by the sand, but he swung his right arm and managed to shove Salander away from him. She stumbled over a tree root. For a second she was down on the ground but sprang instantly to her feet. Niedermann was briefly out of action.
I'm going to make it.
She took two steps towards the undergrowth when out of the corner of her eye-click-she saw Zalachenko raise his arm.
The fucking old man has a gun too.
The realization cracked like a whip through her mind.
She changed direction in the same instant the shot was fired. The bullet struck the outside of her hip and made her spin off balance.
She felt no pain.
The second bullet hit her in the back and stopped against her left shoulder blade. A paralyzing pain sliced through her body.
She went down on her knees. For a few seconds she could not move. She was conscious that Zalachenko was behind her, about twenty feet away. With one last surge of energy she stubbornly hurled herself to her feet and took a wobbly step towards the cover of the bushes.
Zalachenko had time to aim.
The third bullet caught her about an inch below the top of her left ear. It penetrated her skull and caused a spiderweb of radial cracks in her cranium. The lead came to rest in the grey matter about two inches beneath the cerebral cortex, by the cerebrum.
For Salander the medical detail was academic. The bullet caused immediate massive trauma. Her last sensation was a glowing red shock that turned into a white light.
Then darkness.
Click.
Zalachenko tried to fire one more round, but his hands were shaking so hard that he couldn't aim. She almost got away. And then he realized that she was dead and he lowered his weapon, shivering as the adrenaline flowed through his body. He looked down at his gun. He had considered leaving it behind, but had gone to get it and put it in his jacket pocket as though he needed a mascot. A monster. They were two fully grown men, and one of them was Ronald Niedermann, who had been armed with his Sig Sauer. And that fucking whore almost got away.