Cavanaugh heard several more thumps above him. The crackle became louder. Smoke appeared at the head of the stairs.
"Because he's shooting through the upstairs windows now!" Cavanaugh charged up. "Get the extinguishers! The bedrooms are on fire!"
Sweating, he heard the horses galloping out of control past the front of the house. They snorted in terror. He raced to the top of the stairs and saw smoke drifting from the four bedrooms along the eastern side of the house.
A frenzied sound on the staircase came from William charging onto the landing with two fire extinguishers. The attorney's perfect shoes, suit, teeth, and hair looked absurd amid the chaos.
"We'll each take a bedroom!" Cavanaugh set down his rifle and grabbed one of the extinguishers.
To the right, debris burst from a wall at the end of the corridor. A tracer bullet had come through a bedroom's window, hit the inside wall (which was of ordinary construction, unlike the log exterior), and rammed through into the corridor, bringing wood and plaster with it, striking a farther wall.
Another bullet burst through a closer wall.
"Jesus, we'll be hit!" William said.
"Get down!" Cavanaugh warned.
As they sprawled on the floor, a bullet slammed through the wall above them, plaster and splinters spraying them.
"Something's burning me!" William said.
Cavanaugh saw an ember on the back of William's neck, another in his hair, smoke starting to dance. He flicked them off as a bullet hit the bedroom to their left, sending debris through the wall into the corridor.
"He's moving his aim back and forth along the side of the building," Cavanaugh said.
Whack! Another bullet erupted through the wall above them. The smoke thickened.
The moment a bullet burst through a wall to the right, Cavanaugh scrambled to his feet. "Hurry before his shots come back in this direction!"
As William took the bedroom on the left, Cavanaugh ducked into the one in front of him. Choking from the smoke, he pushed the trigger on the extinguisher. With a hiss, the retardant's haze surrounded the fire. He saw the flames weaken and kept squeezing the extinguisher's trigger. He heard a bullet wallop into the farthest bedroom on the right. Continuing to spray the retardant, he heard the next bullet hit the bedroom immediately to the right. He released the trigger, shouted to the bedroom on the left, "William, get down!" and dove to the floor. A tracer cracked through the air above his head.
"William!"
"I'm down! I'm down!" came the reply as an incendiary hit the bedroom on the left.
Cavanaugh tensed, waiting for more bullets to march back and forth along the building. But what had been a steady sequence faltered. One second became two, then three, the pause lengthening. Four. Five.
"Maybe he's out of ammunition," William said.
"Or else he hopes we'll get careless."
Cavanaugh sprayed retardant against the wall, then coughed so hard that he needed to get away from the smoke. He staggered into the corridor, where he was stunned to see William, his hair mussed, his face smudged, his suit rumpled, spraying retardant into the bedroom on the left.
"What are you staring at?" William wanted to know. "Don't you realize attorneys feel at home in hell?"
Cavanaugh started to grin, but the impulse faded as he glanced up toward the ceiling and noticed smoke seeping from it.
"No."
"What's wrong?" William aimed his fire extinguisher.
"The attic's on fire!"
He raced to a trap door in the ceiling, reached for a short rope dangling from it, and pulled. As stairs unfolded, he lurched back from flames that blocked the entrance to the attic. Coughing, he and William sprayed retardant. For a moment, through a gap in the haze, he saw the flames retreating. Yelling, he started up the steps, aiming the extinguisher. The flames kept retreating.
He climbed higher, straining to ignore the heat as he spewed retardant.
Abruptly the extinguisher quit hissing. With a curse, he threw the empty tank at the flames and turned to William. "Give me yours!"
"It's empty!"
"No!" Cavanaugh's smoke-seared throat felt as if it would burst.
The flames regrouped. Roaring, they advanced.
Now the situation was reversed-William was tugging at him.
Pushed by the growing heat from the attic, Cavanaugh took an angry step downward.
"We can't stay!" William tugged him harder.
Cavanaugh reached the landing and stared desperately at the fires in the bedrooms.
Amid the din of the flames, William said something about "other fire extinguishers."
"We don't have enough."
"You're going to need this."
"Need…?"
"This. You set it down."
Through raw eyes, Cavanaugh blinked at the rifle William handed him.
"Yes," he vowed. "I'm going to need this."
22
In the pines to the south, a man wearing a baseball cap gazed through shielded binoculars toward the smoke and flames spreading from the lodge's upper windows. "Cooking nicely, Alpha," he said into a microphone on his shirt collar. "Won't be long now."
"Beta, is your team in place?" the spotter's voice asked.
"On every side."
"They know they're to stay within cover?"
"Affirmative. No need to advance when the target'll do us the favor of leaving his cover. In the confusion, it might be hard to distinguish him from the people with him, though."
"Don't even try. Do them all."
"Repeat, Alpha."
"All. Kill them all," the spotter's voice commanded.
Across the meadow, on the eastern part of the roof, the parched wooden shingles of the lodge exploded into flames.
23
Cavanaugh's face was streaked with soot and sweat as he and William hurried down the staircase.
Angelo remained by the front door, peering out. "No sign of them."
Cavanaugh pulled his walkie-talkie from his belt. "Jamie? Mrs. Patterson?"
The staticky voices quickly responded that they didn't see anyone.
"What about the security monitors?"
"They're not working now," Mrs. Patterson's voice reported.
"What?" Angelo flicked a light switch on the wall. Nothing happened. The electricity had been cut.
"The fire's spreading too quickly," Cavanaugh said. "We'll soon need to leave."
"But they'll pick us off," William objected. "The basement. Can we hide down there?"
"No. The fire would suck out the oxygen. We'd suffocate. Or the building would collapse and crush us."
"The helicopter."
"Too far," Cavanaugh said.
"Hey, I'm doing my best!" William complained. "If you don't like my ideas, come up with one of your own."
At the back of the hall, Jamie heard parts of what they said. Her voice came from the walkie-talkie. "The car's closer. It's armored."
"There," William said. "What do you think of that idea?"
Smoke came down the staircase, the fire crackling on the upper level.
"If we stay here much longer," Cavanaugh decided, "we'll need to soak our hair and clothes and breathe through wet towels."
Mrs. Patterson heard in the kitchen. From the walkie-talkie, she said, "Without electricity, the pump for the well won't work. We can't get water from the taps."
William moaned.
Mrs. Patterson's sixty-year-old voice continued unsteadily from the walkie-talkie. "The toilet tanks. The only place there'll be water is in the toilets."
"Where are they?" William asked.
"One off the kitchen," Cavanaugh explained. "Another next to my office. Angelo, I'll watch the front. Go with him. Bring me a vest from the munitions closet when you come back."
Braced behind the log wall next to the front door, Cavanaugh saw the Taurus parked in front of the lodge. The passenger side was toward him. It was only twenty feet away. If he kept low…
Angelo returned with a soaked towel wrapped around his neck. Water dripped onto his clothes. "Here's the vest. I assumed you wanted body armor, not Kevlar."
Cavanaugh understood. Kevlar fibers were designed to block pistol bullets but were useless against high-powered rifles. Only the metal plates of true body armor could stop the latter.