Target: Alex Cross (Alex Cross #26) - James Patterson Page 0,26

up near the base of a low hill of firewood. The logger had his back to Franks and was lopping fifteen-inch sections off a stripped tree trunk braced and strapped between two sawhorses.

He had on an orange helmet with a visor and ear protectors, and he wore thick leather chaps and gauntlet gloves over a quilted canvas coverall. By the ease with which the man wielded the twenty-four-inch Stihl saw, Franks understood that beneath all that heavy gear, there was someone of formidable strength and power.

That thrilled Franks. He forced himself to breathe deeply for a count of three before stepping from the pines, plucking up a short length of discarded tree limb about the thickness of his fist, and running right at the logger.

He slowed at ten yards, glanced toward the road, saw nothing, and then threw the piece of wood at the man’s back.

It smacked him. The logger started. The Stihl chain saw bucked and jumped, almost coming free of his grasp.

He released the throttle. The saw idled. The blade stopped cutting a quarter of the way through the log. Only then did the logger look over his shoulder.

Franks was in a fighting crouch not six yards away. He showed the sawyer the eight-inch blade of the Buck hunting knife in his right hand before lunging toward him.

Franks slashed at the logger’s left upper arm, felt the razor-sharp blade slice through the canvas jacket and several layers beneath. The sawyer screamed out in pain. Franks leaped back into that fighting crouch, the Buck knife weaving in the cold air, the blade showing a film of bright blood.

The logger let loose a bellow of rage then. He hit the gas on the chain saw and wrenched it free of the log. He swung it sideways and moved toward Franks, who jumped away nimbly, just out of reach of the chain saw’s ripping blade.

Franks grinned at the logger, who’d swung too hard with the heavy saw and staggered left in the mud before regaining his balance. Now he squared off as he faced him, the cutting machine growling in his hands.

Franks looked the sawyer in the eye then and saw no fear. That made Franks even happier. Somehow, somewhere in the past, in the military, perhaps, the logger had faced death, and with that two-foot chain saw in hand now, he had the confidence of a warrior who knows his enemy holds an inferior weapon.

“I’ll cut you in half, shit-brains,” the logger shouted from behind his helmet’s visor. “I’ll put you in two pieces.”

“Do it, then,” Franks said calmly. “You can claim self-defense.”

The logger thought about that, smiled, and pulled the butt end of the saw tight to his pelvis so the blade stuck out in front of him like some motorized sword. The logger charged at Franks, feinting this way and that with the spinning head of the saw.

At each feint, Franks stepped back, one foot, then the other, and then again, staying just inches from the whirling teeth and seeing his enemy grow more and more frustrated at not being able to cut him to pieces.

The logger took his finger off the gas. His shoulders and chest were heaving from the exertion of flinging the heavy saw around.

Franks stood his ground, watching everything about the man, trying to see him as a whole enemy rather than just eyes or legs or arms, and definitely not as just that saw.

“What the hell are you doing this for?” the logger yelled.

“Practice,” Franks yelled back.

“Practice? You insane?”

“Just hungry.”

“Hungry? Hungry?”

The logger’s expression turned murderous. He exploded then and charged forward, wielding the saw like a bayonet that he intended to drive straight through Franks.

Franks stood his ground. At the last second, he flung his body sideways and sprang at the logger. The chain saw’s teeth passed inches from his belly before he drove the Buck knife up under the visor and deep into the logger’s neck.

The logger dropped the chain saw, which bit into the mud and flipped away from them, sputtering, coughing, and then dying.

Franks was barely aware of the sounds. He was watching and feeling the logger’s quivers and shakes as more of his blood spurted against the inside of the visor. He grabbed the knife handle with his other hand just before the logger died and sagged against the blade and hilt.

Franks used all of his strength to heft the dead man’s weight, then pushed hard against it and yanked back on the knife handle. The blade came free.