It opened on three dead bodies facedown in a slick of blood.
Maven started running. Up the stairs to the front door. He didn’t bother with the radio. He was yelling, “Get out! GET OUT!”
A volley of gunshots. An abrupt yell in Maven’s ear.
Then return gunfire, and a howl.
Maven’s heel crushed the frame plate, the front door cracking inward.
One time, back in Eden, while on patrol at a traffic-control point in urban Samarra, a buddy of Maven’s loaned him his new Oakleys. The sunglasses had a built-in music player, making Maven’s headspace an oasis in that desert hell. Maven was giving Cal, his buddy, some shit for listening to opera when a sniper round ripped through Cal’s neck. Cal dropped to the sidewalk, dead before he hit the ground.
Maven spotted two fedayeen hustling away from an idling Opal, tucking something under their robes. With Verdi soaring in his head, he chased them through a curtain of smoke, into and out of a marketplace slaughterhouse, ending in a close-quarters firefight in a courtyard.
He heard that same music now as he crashed inside the farmhouse. Time sped up, became fractured into gunfirelike bursts.
Splintering rounds spun him back from the bottom of the stairs. He raced down a narrow hallway, elbows bouncing off the walls.
Glade lay on the kitchen floor, straight out. Head shot.
A barrage from his left drove Maven back into the hall. He returned fire blindly, rounds pummeling his armor like iron knuckles.
He tumbled into a side room and sat back against the dividing wall. The MP5 was hot, smoking. Not empty, but he reloaded anyway, needing a full whack.
He listened. An old house, full of creaks. One loose floorboard groaned on the other side of the wall.
Maven pushed off and spun, firing through the old plaster and wood. He heard a cry and a heavy fall. Return fire rained splinters and dust into the room, and Maven covered his head and ran for the other door. More rounds pelted his back — one penetrating the armor, a hot needle thrust under his shoulder.
Suarez. Termino.
Maven cut out from the wall, riding his open gun across the hallway, galumphing up the carpeted stairs. His left foot was better than his right.
He came upon Suarez at the top landing — slumped against the corner, talking blood.
Rounds stitched Maven’s back, pitching him forward. He turned and fired back down the stairs, clearing some room. From the floor, he ejected his empty and reloaded, grabbing Suarez’s semiauto and slinging it over his shoulder.
Suarez’s eyes followed him. “Get ’em,” he gurgled. “Get ’em.”
With a rush of energy, Maven slid headfirst down the stairs, firing off his right shoulder through the banister. He hit the bottom landing and tumbled away. His gun clicked empty and he reached for his third clip, but it was gone, so he tossed away the MP5 and readied Suarez’s. He could feel warm blood pulsing from his side, running into his underwear. With his free hand, he pushed himself up onto one leg and lurched through the room, firing, circling back to the kitchen.
He looked for Glade’s weapon but it was gone. Another volley erupted, and Maven spun and fired, yelling, slowed by pain. Suarez’s gun jammed, and he dumped it and went into a one-legged run-crawl — hitting the door, finding himself outside on the side porch. Not where he wanted to be.
He dragged his right leg, bumping past an old-fashioned porch swing to the rear. Beyond the railing and the short yard lay the acre of bog shrouded under fog. No way he could make it to the trees, but he had to try.
He pitched himself over the porch railing, dropping to the ground. From his leg strap, he drew his backup, a 9 mm Sig Sauer, and waited.
Blood dripped down the heel of his hand over the textured grip. His right leg was going cold.
Termino carried the out phone for calling Royce. Maven’s only hope. But where was Termino?
One stepped onto the porch. Coming out in a crouch. Maven balanced on his good leg.
Two shots turned the gunman around. Two more shots finished him.
Maven dropped back, counting rounds. Four down, eleven to go. Thinking, Save one for me.
Another gunman edged around the corner, behind the slow-moving porch swing. Maven fired through the railing, pushing him back.
Then two more shots cracked out of a window, and Maven had to retreat.
He dragged himself to the harvesting equipment, stopping behind it, where he had left his empty wet bag. He fell back, dizzy. Too much pain, but he kept going.
He splashed into the bog. He had the crazy idea of submerging himself under the berries, but it was too shallow to hide him. He frogged it out a few yards before falling over.
He turned and saw the gunmen coming for him. His pistol against two full auto fire-barkers.
Maven turned back toward the trees, the floating acre of undulating berries and fog. Looking out at that dreamscape in this last moment, his thoughts went to Danielle. It had all been worth it. Every minute.
He pulled his gun hand from the water, the 9 mm dripping as he pressed it to his temple and squeezed the trigger.
The pistol clicked. Nothing happened. He shook out the wet gun and tried again.
Nothing. He slumped and dropped the weapon into the bog. He turned back to face them as the gunmen advanced to the berm at the edge of the water.
For a moment they hesitated, unsure which one should take the kill.
They looked like soldiers. They looked like him.
Then, an explosion of gunfire, but not from them. From the side of the house, ripping into them from behind. Shredding them before they could even fire back. The gunmen pitched forward, dead.
Maven’s first thought was Termino. But two men came swimming into his vision, advancing to the berm.
Men in street clothes. Two new killers.
Maven slipped back, below the surface of the water. Berries clouded in over his murky vision — then darkness.
Reign’s End
Eleven total homicides, five inside, six outside.
A detective lieutenant of the Massachusetts State Police told Lash, “The homeowners came back a day early from a family wedding down in North Carolina. Found this.”
Lash looked out at the floating berries from the side of the porch, near the swing. “They don’t know these guys? These cars?”
“Only the stiff in the Saab. Their nephew. Saw him twice a year, Thanksgiving and Easter. Quite a shock. He had been invited to the wedding, but declined.”
“Borrowed their house instead.” Geese honked overhead, a phalanx of five flapping toward the trees. “So can you piece together any sort of timeline here?”
“Unofficially, it looks like the guys in the vehicles were done first. No armor on them, and only two pistols, both still with the guys in the van, neither one discharged. Body-armor guys, we’re still sorting that out. Robbery gone bad? Got pills in the back of the Honda, cash in the van.” The detective’s phone beeped, and he silenced it. “We got two guys in masks, the rest without. No ID on anyone. One thing I do know, that sticks out, is that the two down by the bog there, they were killed by different ammo than the others. Found shells there, in the grass, that don’t match any of the recovered weapons. Of which there are plenty.”
“High-action pieces,” said Lash.
“So, what do you think? These your guys?”
Lash looked out at the two staties in hip waders, doing a grid search of the bog. “Two in masks?”
“One upstairs, one downstairs.”
“Let’s take a look.”
Ballistics, Criminalistics, and Crime Scene Services officers were all over the inside. Lash viewed the faces of all the deceased, lingering over the two masked men.