“I keep my hand in it,” said Leon, and was careful to keep his hands in sight. Coulter and his thugs had stupidly not bothered to search him for a weapon. If Coulter had the slightest bit of trust in him right now, it was the only card Leon had to play.
Coulter opened a cabinet door and saw six pistols hanging on hooks there. He selected one, a Sig forty-five, checked the chamber and magazine to be sure it was unloaded, and handed the weapon to Leon.
“What’s this for?”
“You’re going to lead us through the tunnel and knock politely on the door at the other end. If nobody answers you’ll open the door with that gun in your hand. If somebody does answer you’ll be standing right there, ready to shoot, but of course you won’t be able to do that. You might get lucky. Price might be able to control his instincts, and not shoot you, or, anyone guarding him might be smart enough to see what’s going on before they blow you to pieces. Either way, we’re coming out that door right behind you, and Price is going to be a dead man.”
“And if I get through this alive, can I anticipate any kind of a reward for my participation?”
Coulter’s smile was more of a sneer. “You’ll get to live, for starters, and just maybe there’ll be another donation to your retirement fund.”
Leon paused a moment to let Coulter believe he was thinking about it, then, “Okay, let’s get it over with. But I still think you’re wrong about Price.”
“Yet you’ll still help us kill him,” said Coulter. “Your loyalty is outstanding.”
“I’m loyal to one person,” said Leon, “and that person is me.”
Coulter waved his pistol towards the tunnel door. “Then by all means, let’s proceed.”
Leon stepped up to the door and opened it. The tunnel lights flickered, and then came to full brilliance. The air smelled of paint and oil and something sharp, like a solvent. The vent pumps came on almost immediately, and the walls vibrated with a dull throbbing.
Coulter’s men bunched up behind Leon, and Coulter trailed behind them. After a few steps he ordered his men to form a widely spaced line behind Leon. “Watch for tripwires. Stay on the catwalk, and don’t touch anything else.”
“That sounds like you’ve been in here before,” said Leon.
“Shut up,” snarled Coulter. “No talking the rest of the way.”
The tunnel ran straight for fifty yards, and then curved slightly to the left. There were no buttresses or cutouts where Leon could jump to and pull out the weapon strapped to his ankle, but he was looking for them, anything he’d forgotten. He was searching the walls as he came around the curve in the tunnel. For one instant he thought he detected movement at the edge of his vision, but when he looked ahead nothing was there, just another hundreds of yards of tunnel and the door at the end of it.
The nearest man was only a few feet behind him. Leon glanced over his shoulder, was surprised to see that Coulter was now several yards behind them, his forehead glistening with sweat. The man looked scared. He looked ready to run.
Eric was armed. If Leon could warn him, the attackers could be shot down one by one as they went up the basement stairs. That meant getting the door open. But what if Eric was right there, waiting for them? A single, lucky shot and Leon could be dead.
The tunnel was nearly soundproof, but not perfectly so. Gunshots would certainly be heard in the basement, and maybe upstairs. If Leon could start and maintain a firefight in the tunnel for even a few seconds, it might be warning enough. He thought about it, watched the tunnel exit coming closer and closer. He looked back again; saw Coulter twenty yards behind, and slowing. What the hell? Leon looked forward again, lost some balance and stepped off the catwalk. As he did it he felt something heavy and sticky brush up against his left side. It shocked him, and his heart pounded hard. He stepped back on the catwalk. The man behind him had closed up, was within arm’s reach. And Leon suddenly knew what he had to do.
It was five yards to the door, and Eric’s basement. Leon slowed, felt a man’s body and the hard muzzle of a weapon press against the back of his head. He reached out to the door, turned the lock, the doorknob, and pulled back hard.
“Eric! Watch out!”
Leon slammed back against the man behind him, and twisted. There was a muffled explosion, and he felt searing pain in his right side. He got his arm around the man’s neck, as there were two more explosions, then a staccato of gunfire down the tunnel. Leon pulled up under the man’s chin, then jerked to the right and heard a satisfying snap. The man slumped. Leon went down with him, scrabbling for the gun strapped to his ankle.
Leon’s gun came loose from his holster and he thumbed the safety without thinking. Coulter’s men charged as Leon twisted around his human shield and emptied the magazine of his pistol as fast as he could pull the trigger. One man staggered and went down, but the other three kept coming, and Leon felt the terrible impact of three bullets in his chest. He watched his pistol fall from his hand, and slumped against the doorway as the three men trampled on his legs getting past him. Down the tunnel, Coulter had disappeared, and two other men were still struggling.
There was a long burst of gunfire from behind him, and then Leon’s hearing failed as he plunged into cold oblivion.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
FIREFIGHT
On the drive home, Eric realized why he’d been short with Leon. The guy really did care about Nataly, and was being protective of her for good cause. Who am I kidding? he thought. A paid killer with my track record can never give her a happy life. Divorced over neglect, estranged from a daughter for the same reason, I’m a poster child for government slavery. Be honest with yourself, for once. You’ve hated your job for years, but are afraid of doing anything else. The idea of doing something in the private sector terrifies you.
Terrific. Having thought all that, he was still crazy to see Nataly, touch her, even hear the sound her voice. And he really did have other things to worry about.
His plan was to throw a pizza in the oven, boil some peas, and have some ice cream after. Nothing cerebral in the evening, some junk TV, a beer, and bed early. There was no preparation to worry about. The entire startup sequence was clear in his mind—up to a point. That point was when the green light lit up on that third panel by his right knee. Up to that point his instinct was telling him that Sparrow was going to go very fast and very high.
And then what?
Eric thought about Nataly getting ready to close her shop. She was so meticulous about everything, always ended up staying open longer than planned. It was about that time when he pulled into his driveway. He garaged the car and went in the house through the side door. He turned on the oven and left it to heat while he went downstairs to scan the surveillance videos for the day, and checked the little string still lodged safely at the top of his front door.
In fifteen minutes the oven was properly heated. Suddenly weary of pizza, Eric took two potpies out of the freezer, put them on a tray in the oven. A handful of peas and some water in a pot, and dinner was on its way. He got a beer from the fridge, opened it, and walked to the front room to turn on the TV. Just as he got there he saw Leon’s Humvee rush by the house, followed seconds later by a black van. Unusual. There were few houses beyond his, and it was getting late for hiking in the canyons. Or maybe Leon had a guest.
He turned on the television, and sipped his beer. The pies would be ready in twenty minutes. Eric checked his watch, went to the stove and turned on the burner under the peas when the pies were nearly finished.