17
Bruno was grumpy the following
morning, speaking only
in imperative grunts. Get dressed. Eat
this. Drink the coffee. Hurry up. He kept peering out
a tiny crack in the cabin’s curtain, gun in hand.
She heard the murmur of a car engine,
the crunch of a car pulling to a stop, and suddenly, his battle
tension relaxed.
So. It was the right car. The right
visitor.
She followed Bruno out into t icy
cold, conifer-perfumed half-light of dawn. A tall, brawny guy
wearing a long sheepskin coat stood next to a red Jeep Wrangler. A
wool watch cap was pulled low over his forehead. His face was
lean—sharp cheekbones, hawk nose, grim mouth. His jaw was covered
with glittering gold and silver beard stubble. His pale eyes
fastened on hers, bright with curiosity. “Morning,” he
said.
She gave him a cautious smile. “Thanks
for coming all this way to pick us up,” she offered.
He slanted a glance at Bruno. “No
problem. Thanks for the pretty manners. Guess I didn’t drive all
night for nothing.”
Bruno grunted. The wind swirled bits
of snow around them. The tension made the hairs on Lily’s nape
prickle.
“Talked to Kev a couple hours ago,”
Sean McCloud said.
“Good for you,” was Bruno’s
rejoinder.
“He called from Christchurch,” McCloud
went on. “He and Edie were looking for the first flight they could
find for Portland or Seattle.”
Bruno cleared his throat. “That’s
nice.”
“You think?” Sean’s voice hardened.
“He said you didn’t call.”
Bruno shrugged. “You know there’s no
cell coverage here.”
“He was scared shitless for
you.”
“What’s between me and Kev is
private,” Bruno said.
Sean’s eyes flickered. “Whatever. But
I think you should get that bug out of your ass before you start
walking funny.”
Bruno stuck the gun inside his jacket.
“Let’s get going.”
“Anytime, man,” McCloud murmured.
“Anytime.”
Bruno walked to the edge of the ravine
and raised a pair of binoculars to his eyes. He stared down at the
mountainside. When he lowered the binoculars, his face had changed.
“They’re coming.”
The dead-calm quality of his voice
made Lily shiver.
McCloud looked startled. “Who’s
coming?”
“You were followed,” Bruno stated.
“They’ve got us. Pinned.”
“No way. That’s not possible. This car
is clean. We talked about this business over encrypted phones. I
went to insane lengths to make sure that nobody tagged Miles’ rig.
Give me those things!” Sean snatched the binoculars away and peered
down at the road. “I don’t see anything,” he complained.
“Where?”
“Look where the creek curves at the
level of that spur on the bluff over there,” Bruno directed. “Now
follow it up to the second switchback from the bottom. No
headlights. Look for movement. They just turned the hairpin.
Heading back up in this direction. See it?”
Sean McCloud was silent for a moment
as he searched, and then he sucked in air. “Son of a bitch. How the
hell did they know—”
“Because they know everything,” Lily
blurted, feeling sick.
There was a brief moment of blank
dismay, and then Sean McCloud seemed to shake himself, as if
throwing off a spell. “Come on, then.” He sounded so casual, it was
almost bizarre. “Let’s get to it.”
“To what?” Lily demanded.
“Our plan. How long you figure it’ll
take them to get up here?”
Bruno peered down, calculating. “At
that speed, twenty-five minutes, maybe. I’ve got some pistols and
ammo Aaro lent me. A Glock 19, a Beretta 92, an H&K USP. Got
anything with youan>
“Hell, yeah,” McCloud said absently.
He crossed his arms again, tapping his fingers. “Only one vehicle,”
he murmured. “Arrogant sons of bitches. Who the fuck do they think
they’re dealing with?” He stared down the hill, eyes slitted. “You
got that little bridge down there, at two hundred meters. That’s
the best place to rig it. Got a chain?”
“Best place to rig what?” Lily
demanded.
“The bomb,” McCloud said, as if it
were obvious. “We could go with ammonium nitrate and fuel oil.
Diesel or kerosene. I’ve got some Tovex in the truck to boost it.
Did Kev ever store any fertilizer up here?”
Bruno looked bemused. “Uh . . . uh . .
.”
“Never mind, forget it. Flame
fougasse, then.” McCloud pushed on. “We dig a hole on the road,
hide a container of fuel wired to some explosives. Boom, problem
solved. Until the next dickheads find you.”
“You can rig it that fast?” Bruno
said.
“If you stop jerking
off.”
“Wait!” Lily yelled as the men leaped
into action. “One quick second. Please.”
The men lurched to a stop and spun,
with identical what-thefuck-is-your-problem-lady looks on their
faces.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” McCloud
said. “Make it fast.”
“What if the people in that vehicle
are not our bad guys? What if they’re, you know, just innocent
passersby?”
Bruno and Sean exchanged glances.
“Lily,” Bruno said, as if speaking to a slow-witted child. “People
do not innocently pass by this place at dawn with their headlights
turned off. It’s the last property on the road. The road runs out
into a deer track three hundred meters farther on. This is the
furry, pimply ass-end of fucking nowhere.”
She gestured at McCloud. “He said
himself it would have been impossible for them to follow him! You
can’t risk killing innocent people!”
“You want to go wait by the road?”
Sean McCloud’s voice sounded only mildly curious. “Offer them
coffee and Danish?”
She waved her hands. “I just don’t
want people to die because they’re on the wrong road at the wrong
time! That would suck!”
Sean shrugged. “OK. Plan B,” he said.
“I dig in up the hill at a hundred meters with my M21, check them
out with my scope. It’ll magnify the ambient light enough to see
inside. If it’s Great-aunt Betty, we give her coffee and Danish. If
they’re the bad guys, we fuck them up, take one of them alive, and
interrogate the living shit out of him.”
Bruno’s face cleared. “Sounds
good.”
“Plus, we can deliver our survivors to
the cops afterward,” Sean went on. “A blood gift to appease their
wrath.”
“Even better,” Bruno said, with
growing enthusiasm.
Sean McCloud gave her a hard look. “If
there’s more than two, I’m capping them, straight off,” he said
flatly. “This is too fucking risky as it is. I don’t want to die
today. I’ve got a kid.”
Lily gulped and nodded. No arguing
with that position.
“So, how about that chain?” McCloud
was all business again.
“Down by the bridge,” Bruno said.
“Tony always used to chain the road when he left.”
“String it. I’ll gather
supplies.”
Bruno loped off down the road. Lily
watched him go and aimed tnervous question at Sean McCloud’s back
as he rummaged through the back of the Jeep for supplies. “How do
you intend to, ah, take some of them prisoner without killing
them?”
McCloud flashed a grin over his
shoulder. He held up handfuls of small, dark cylindrical objects.
“Watch and learn,” he said. “This is gonna be fun. Promise you
won’t tell my wife. She’s funny that way.”
She studied them in trepidation. “What
the hell are those?”
“Flashbangs. Stun grenades. Now be
quiet and let me work.”
There was an art to feigning sleep.
Aaro was good at it. His standard method of not dealing with
whatever female he’d just had sex with. Breathing was key. Deep,
slow, and steady. Mouth slack, open, face relaxed. And calm. No
mental buzz, no static. Chicks picked up on that. Bright ones,
anyhow, and this one was bright. He could tell in spite of their
deliberate dearth of conversation.
He was justified in the sleep he was
feigning, after the fuck marathon she’d put him through. Not that
he’d complained. He’d been fine with the hard, uncomplicated
pounding that she’d wanted. Up, down, backward, forward, bring it
on, he wasn’t fussy. She liked it rough; she came easily and often.
But she kept wanting more.
After six bouts, he caught on. She was
a sexual black hole. A guy could kill himself trying to satisfy
her. But it had been a long time, so what the fuck, he put out. She
was gorgeous. High, bouncing tits. Ass taut and perfect. Snug, hot
pink pussy, waxed and plucked and groomed. A walking wet dream. His
dick stiffened thinking of it. So why was he feigning sleep instead
of mounting back up, giving her more?
It was the clenched feeling in his
belly. Like a tiny fist. After ejaculating that many times, he
should be comatose, but her febrile desperation made him nervous.
Even while she was climaxing, she was always clawing for something
more. Something she just couldn’t have.
Maybe it had to do with the asshole
husband screwing the slut sister. In any case, it was depressing,
and he was depressed all on his own, thanks. He’d avoid the whole
sticky mess of sex altogether, if he could. Steer clear of females,
with their incomprehensible demands. Live the life of a monk,
tranquil, solitary. But he had a functioning dick that wanted what
it wanted, and it had to be periodically appeased, or he got
testosterone backup. Toxic. Very bad scene.
So he was good at feigning sleep.
Biofeedback training helped. He had control over his heartbeat,
blood pressure. He projected the vibe sleeping, sleeping, while following her
every move. The rustle of sheets, the roll and dip of the bed. Feet
padding toward the bathroom. Water running. Click, a beam of light,
a cloud of steam. He listened to her dressing, relief warring with
caution. She was bailing for real. Yes.
She rummaged in her purse for a
moment. A few beats of pure silence. His small hairs prickled. What
was up? She was just standing there, staring? Wondering if she
should wake him, say good-bye?
Please,
don’t. Just go. Take your problems and vanish. Write a note if you
have to. And then . . . just . . . go.
She was tiptoeing closer. The balls of
her feet shushed against the carpet fibers. Next to the bed. He
felt her body heat, smelled her shower gel, her shoe leather. But
no breathing. She was holding her breath.
He almost twitched with the need to
open his eyes, but then he’d have to talk to her. Even fuck her
again, may.
The silence was strange. It quivered
in the air. Like indecision.
Or . . . anticipation.
His heart sped up. He’d have to drag
in air soon. Something was off. Either she’d lean over, kiss him
good-bye, God forbid . . . or else . . .
Or else she
was holding a knife to his throat.
His body contracted. He jerked,
knocked whatever she was holding away from his face. It went
flying.
She landed a punch to his jaw. Her
elbow stabbed his ribs. Fuck. He barely blocked the knee to his
balls. Lunged for her as she scuttled back. She was fast, but he
had the weight and reach. He blocked her punch, seized her arm,
flipped her. Landed on top of her, all two hundred and forty pounds
of him. Knocked out her air. Felt no remorse.
She bucked, choked for air. He pinned
her wrists, looked around. He was naked, and a hotel room didn’t
have much in the way of ligature lying around, so he groped under
her top with one hand, unhooked her bra. He ripped the straps
loose, yanked the lacy garment off her torso. Used it to bind her
wrists. Twisting hard, knotting tight. No mercy.
He rolled her onto her back, on top of
her bound hands, and leaned until her face paled and sweat popped
out on her forehead.
“I’ve rethought this no-names rule,”
he remarked. “Considering this development, I think you should tell
me who you are.”
Her eyes glittered, her chest heaved.
“Fuck you.”
He leaned harder, forcing a
high-pitched wheeze out of her, and without taking his eyes off
hers, snagged the object he’d batted out of her hand. A little
spray bottle. Son of a bitch.
“What’s this? A knock-out drug?” he
asked. “What’s it for?”
She shook her head.
He studied her. “I have a hundred and
eighty bucks on me in cash,” he said. “Bet you spent five times
that amount on those shoes alone. If you want money, you should be
cruising the casinos on the Indian reservations. Not slumming in
roadhouses with losers like me.”
She stared back, defiant. She was no
junkie in search of a quick fix. She glowed with health. And with a
face and body like that, she could bilk men out of all their money
without having to resort to knock-out drugs. So what the fuck? If
she hadn’t picked him for money, she’d picked him for some other
reason. Two things came to mind.
Neither of them were
good.
He leaned on her again and gave
Hypothesis Number One a spin.
“My father sent you, ney?” he asked in
Ukrainian.
Her eyelids fluttered, but he saw no
comprehension. He had a lifetime of practice reading fleeting
expressions of stone-faced people. A family survival skill. He got
nothing from her. Not a twinge, not a flash, not a flicker. He
swatted her face, made his voice even harsher. “Talk, you stupid
whore,” he snarled in the same language. “My father? My uncle? Tell
me, or I’ll rip your tongue right out of your head!”
She spat at him, but that was payback
for the slap.
He could be wrong, had been often, but
he had to call it. She didn’t understand Ukrainian. She wasn’t sent
by his family. So much for Hypothesis One. Sending a beautiful
woman to fuck his brains out was hardly Oleg Arbatov’s style,
anyhow. The way the old man hated his firstborn, he’d be more
likely to send six big guys with blackjacks.
He jerked ohundred anher fallen purse.
Makeup, wallet, two blister packs of tiny pills, distinguished only
by colored dots on the foil. A phone, some sleek design he didn’t
recognize. He flipped through the wallet. A driver’s license made
out to Naomi Hillier of Bellingham, Washington. Credit cars,
department store cards in the same name. A wad of cash. He leafed
through it. Eight thousand, hoo-hah. The wallet had none of the
detritus of a normal life. No parking tickets, receipts, scribbled
numbers, drycleaning pickup slips. No manila envelope full of
pictures of the cheating husband and the slut sister going at it
doggy style, either.
He brandished the spray bottle in her
face. She bucked like a bronco. Maybe the stuff was lethal. But
Jesus, why? Granted, he tended to piss people off just by existing,
but if someone was that mad at him, one would think he’d have half
a clue. Time for Hypothesis Two.
He lifted himself slowly off her.
“Listen, Naomi,” he said. “You move one millimeter in any direction
I don’t order you to move, and you get a faceful of whatever the
fuck is in this bottle. Got that?”
She nodded.
Pulling clothes on was tricky, one
handed. He didn’t bother with his T-shirt, since it would require a
split second of being blind, which was one split second too long.
He pulled on his jeans, shrugged the jacket over his naked torso,
shoved the shirt into his pocket. Slid his feet into his boots
without bothering to lace them. “On your feet.”
She struggled awkwardly to her feet.
“Where are we going?”
“The police,” he said.
She started to laugh. “Because I’m not
playing nice? Aw! I’m sure they’ll feel sorry for you, after you
tell them how you spent your night.”
He twisted her bound hands up behind
her. “Shut up and move.”
“I’ll tell them I was raped. Why do
you think I wanted it rough, you stupid fuck? I got one of your
condoms out of the trash and put some of your spunk into myself. I
have you cold, asshole.”
Here it was. The money question. “I’m
not taking you to the Sandy cops. I’m taking you to downtown
Portland. To the Justice Center. We’re going to talk to Detective
Petrie.”
It was subtle, but he caught the zing
of tension. The eyelid flutter, her pupils contracting. All he
needed to know. Son of a bitch. Hypothesis Two won, ding, ding, ding.
This was about Bruno and his schizo girlfriend. Hit men jumping out
of cars, dead bodies strewn on the streets of North Portland. Big
trouble, and idiot that he was, he’d stuck his nose right into it.
No, worse. He’d stuck his dick into it. Repeatedly.
He grabbed the girl by the throat and
pushed her onto the bed, pulling his knife out of his pocket. He
snapped it open, twirled it.
Her eyes fixed on the flashing blade,
frozen wide.
“You have a beautiful face,” he said
softly. “You want it to stay beautiful? Tell me what you want from
Bruno Ranieri, bitch.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking
about.”
“We both know that’s a fucking lie,”
he hissed. “Where shall I start?” He caressed her cheek with the
point of the blade. “How about an eyelid? That’s a toughie for the
reconstructive surgeon to fix.” He traced patterns on the skin
under her eye. Smiled evilly, like a guy who actually enjoyed
torturing women. He knew guys like that. He’d seen what their
smiles looked like when they were working on their
victims.
It didn’t feel good on his own
face.
He put his knife down, like the limp
dick his father had always mocked him for being. He couldn’t
convince her that he was capable of cutting her. He had no
credibility. In some circles, he’d been told, this failure would be
to his credit. Right now, it was fucking inconvenient.
He jabbed the spray bottle under her
chin, but she didn’t react this time. “Let’s go,” he growled. “If I
hear you inhale, I spray you.”
She stumbled beside him, stiff but
unresisting. Into the cinder block stairwell. Out into the hotel
parking lot, where dawn was threatening the horizon. She was
shaking, hard, by the time he shoved her into the passenger seat of
his Chevy and strapped her in.
He stopped, took a second to yank on
his shirt, since it didn’t look like she was going to attack him.
Those racking shudders did not look like an act. She’d forgotten
that he existed. She was fucked up.
He cut off the bra knotted around her
hands. Draped his jacket over her, tucking it under her chin. Thus
thoroughly shoring up his persona as a real badass motherfucker. He
blasted heat on her as they drove. He’d expected a shrill scolding,
a string of inventive lies, or at least some slick, jive-ass rant.
All he heard was teeth chattering.
He went back and forth in his head on
what to do with Naomi about a thousand times as he drove. The more
miles that went by, the worse she looked. And the more his options
narrowed.
He hated sticking his neck out,
getting squashed onto an examining glass under blazing light and
powerful lenses. He’d rather lose a limb. But what the fuck else
could he do right now? With her? He couldn’t just dump her by the
side of the road somewhere. Particularly now with his genetic
material inside her bodily orifices.
He clenched his jaw, grabbed his cell
phone, dialed the number he’d found for Detective Sam Petrie the
day before.
The guy picked up quickly, considering
that it wasn’t quite eight o’clock yet. “Detective Sam Petrie
here,” he said.
“Detective Petrie, my name is Alex
Aaro,” he said. “I have with me a person of interest in your case,
involving the three dead guys that turned up behind Tony’s Diner
yesterday.”
“Ah.” Petrie paused expectantly. “And?
Why is this person interesting?”
“She just tried to kill me,” he
blurted.
Petrie made an encouraging sound.
“Tell me more.”
“I will, but I’ve got to take this
girl somewhere. Are you at the Justice Center now?”
“Ah, almost,” the guy replied. “Just
have to park. Where are you?”
“About ten minutes away. Look, could
you meet me right out front, or in the lobby? I don’t want to have
to look for parking with her.”
“Ah . . .” Petrie hesitated, sensing
the swiftly rising level of weirdness. “What’s wrong with this
girl? Is she hurt?”
“Just get her some coffee, would you?
Or a pastry.” Aaro stared at Naomi’s grayish face, her chattering
teeth. “Something with lots of sugar.”
“Mr. Aaro, do you—”
Aaro cut the connection and thumbed
off the phone. His jacket had slid off her again and hit the floor.
She vibrated against the seat belt. Maybe she actually was a
junkie, and she’d mixed her fix.
He picked uped, racing through red
lights. God, how he wanted this to be over. He hoped Petrie would
show up on time.
He jerked to a stop on SW Third, right
outside the imposing main entrance of the Justice Center, figuring
he’d unload the girl and leave her with Petrie while he re-parked.
Please, God. He took her purse for Petrie’s benefit, but the phone
he wanted to look at himself, so he tossed it into the front seat
for future study.
He hustled her up the broad stairs of
the entryway, through the bank of glass doors. She weaved and
wobbled, dangerously unsteady.
He glanced wildly around the place,
trying not to look as desperate and harried as he felt, scanning
for someone whose body type fit the voice from the phone
conversation. There. Tall guy, thirtyish, big jaw, tousled hair.
Lots of stubble. He held a paper coffee cup, a white paper bag.
Good man. He’d brought sugar. His eyes asked Aaro the question.
Aaro’s feet answered it, forcefully steering Naomi’s body toward
the other man. “Detective Petrie?” he asked.
The guy’s eyes flicked over Naomi, who
was breathing with a strange, audible wheezing sound now. “Yeah,
that’s me. Hey, looks like your friend there needs the emergency
room.”
“She’s not my friend,” Aaro snapped.
“She just tried to kill me.”
Suddenly, Naomi jerked, so violently
she wrenched herself out of his grip. She vomited, a projectile
fountain that rose into the air and spewed around in a nasty arc as
she twisted, flailing her arms, her body jackknifing. The people
nearby leaped back from the splatter with shouts of disgust. She
thudded heavily to her knees, and then fell flat, her body
twitching.
Aaro knelt next to her, placed his
finger on her carotid artery. He saw Petrie in his peripheral
vision, crouched on the other side. He felt an irregular flutter .
. . and then nothing. For many long seconds. Dead.
The convulsions had snapped her
spine.
Someone elbowed him roughly aside as
people gathered around Naomi’s curled-up body. Someone was pumping
on her chest. Others were shouting instructions, suggestions. One
guy was calling for EMTs on his cell. A woman was crying,
noisily.
Boom. The sound jolted him. From outside.
Shouts, screams. Alarms began to squeal, at every pitch, a crazy,
cacophonous chorus.
Aaro staggered to his feet with the
others and went to look out the door. He stared, barely surprised
at what he saw, right outside, in the street. His Chevy. Windows
blown out. Smoke pouring. Blown up.
A hand touched his shoulder. He
turned, looked into Petrie’s bloodshot eyes.
“Is that your vehicle?” Petrie
asked.
Aaro nodded. “Second time in six
months,” he said, for no reason that he could fathom. Like it was
any of Petrie’s goddamn business.
A short, fat guy who’d come to the
door to gawk whistled appreciatively. “Oh, man. That’s gotta hurt.
You must have an exciting life.”
Aaro let out a long sigh. “You have no
idea,” he muttered.
“They are going to fuck you up the ass
on the insurance now, you know that?” the short guy informed him,
with unseemly relish.
“Yeah,” murmured Aaro, bleakly. “I do
know that.”
“Let’s go have a talk while the EMT
people come for your friend,” Petrie suggested.
“She’s not my friend,” he said again.
“She just tried to kill me.”
s bloodshozed at him. “OK,” he said.
“Let’s go discuss how this relates to my case, then. You might as
well take this coffee.” He held out the paper cup. “You’re going to
be here for a while.”
Bruno huddled in the brush, ears
straining for the hum of the engine on the switchback. Sean McCloud
hadn’t said much once they’d established radio communication. The
guy was in his hiding place up the hill, in the zone, peering
through his scope. Soon the purported bad guys would turn the
hairpin and make the last pass to the bridge. And then,
showtime.
Stay up
there. Be good. Do as you’re told for once in your
life. Bruno punched the telepathic message toward the
place where he’d left Lily, swathed in the smallest body armor that
Sean had, which still swamped her, and a big camo poncho draped
over it. He’d given Lily the Glock 19, with a full magazine and a
chambered round, and strict instructions to hightail it up the
mountain, and put distance between herself and the stunt that he
and Sean were about to pull.
She was supposed to wait on the bluff.
If they didn’t come collect her, well, that was a real shame. In
that sad case, she kept her head down and called Sean’s brothers on
Bruno’s encrypted, dedicated cell.
It comforted him, that she had on some
Dragon Skin body armor.
Lily didn’t like being stashed. Too
bad. She was the one who’d nixed the flame fougasse option. He’d
liked that scenario, the finality of it. Watching the full vehicle
rise up into the air and gracefully explode, ah. Take that, you
fuckers. But no. Couldn’t be that simple.
The motor rumbled. He heard tires
crunch. He gathered himself into a state of focused calm. He had a
sense that Sean was in that state naturally. That part of his brain
was permanently switched on, like Kev’s was. One of those weird
McCloud things. Like being able to rig an ANFO bomb or a fougasse
in fifteen minutes. Crazy shit.
The last quarter hour had been a
whirlwind tutorial in do-ityourself explosives. Under Sean’s
direction, he’d feverishly taped and wired a stack of nine-volt
batteries together in a series to multiply their voltage, rigged
stun grenades with blasting caps, daisy-chained them with telephone
wire to the battery and the cell phone. They’d duct taped the
packed batteries and Sean’s doctored cell phone under the bridge,
which spanned a dried-up torrent that splashed down the hill in the
springtime, two hundred meters from the cabin. The flashbangs were
hidden in dirt on the section of road between the bridge and the
chain. A drift of pine needles barely covered them and the
wire.
Wheels crunched on rock. An engine
revved, lifting the loaded vehicle over bumps, wells, and ruts. The
vehicle appeared, a dark SUV, easing around the last narrow turn.
It slowed, steering onto the narrow bridge, which consisted only of
thick planks laid long-wise, just wide enough to perch the wheels
of a vehicle upon them. The wood groaned at the weight, bowing and
creaking as if the four-by-sixes would snap.
The SUV cleared the bridge and slowed
to a stop, blocked by the heavy chain, thick as a man’s wrist, that
Bruno had strung across the road.
The chain was attached to rings driven
into two big posts made from creosote-soaked railroad ties. They’d
been sunk into wells of cement, and over the years the ground had
eroded around the wells so that they stuck out like grubby, warty
pedestals. A gate had once hung upon them, but the hinges had
rusted off long ago. Tony hadn’t bothered with a gate. He’d just
strung the chain when he left. It wasn’t like there was anything to
defend. Just the humble cabin.
Bruno’s cell phone was in his hand,
which was cold, shaking. Sean’s number glowed on the screen. The
guy had contributed his cell to the cause, cutting a hole right
over the vibrating device to insert the wires. When he pushed
“call,” the tumblers would turn, the wires would make contact . . .
boom. And the dance
began.
Even without a scope, he saw through
the tinted windows that the SUV was full of people, heatedly
conferring. The chain made them nervous. They didn’t like the road,
either. The only spot on the road wide enough to turn was beyond
that chain. Behind was just a narrow, crumbling track barely as
wide as the SUV’s axel, and sheer drop-offs all the way down to the
switchback. They had to go forward or else back all the way down in
reverse. The rear driver’s side door popped open. A guy got out,
wearing camo. Definitely not Great-aunt Betty out for a
picnic.
The radio crackled. “He’s packing an
M4.” Sean’s voice was calm. “Three more inside. I’m taking the
driver. Ready?”
“Yes,” Bruno said.
“On my signal,” Sean
said.
One second. Two. Three—
Bam. A bullet punched through the
windshield. Red spattered the windows. Bruno hit “call,” covered
his ears.
The vehicle doors burst open. Armed
assholes came boiling out.
Bam, one of them slammed hard against the
SUV, bouncing—
Boom-boom-boom. The stun grenades went off.
Blinding flashes.
The guy who’d fallen against the SUV
stumbled and pitched into the ravine, sprawling against the tumbled
boulders. Bam, the guy who
had investigated the chain was suddenly flat on the ground at the
roadside, clutching his leg.
“Body armor,” Sean said tersely into
his ear. “Go for the thigh.”
Bam.
Bam. Sean kept firing, but Bruno couldn’t tell at
who.
He stared at the wounded guys on his
side of the vehicle. The guy who’d checked the chain was clutching
a wet red wound in his thigh. The other was trying to climb up to
the roadway. Bruno took a breath, let it out, aiming for the
climbing guy’s leg . . . squeezed the trigger. Bam. The guy shrieked. He’d hit his target,
amazingly.
Now the hard part. “Going to cuff
them,” he muttered.
He hauled the plastic cuffs out and
burst out of his hiding place, leaping, skidding, and sliding down
the slope toward the fallen men.