“Excuse me?”
Something was different. It was the silence, the kind you hear when every major appliance or system in the house shuts down at once. “The power’s off.”
“What?” I heard her racing down the stairs, and then she was right next to me. “What’s going on?”
I saw what I thought was a shadow moving outside one of the low windows in the dining room. I went to the wall next to it and mashed my face so I could see around the blinds without moving them.
“What is it? What is going on? What are you looking at?”
Someone in a low crouch, moving along the side of the house, toward the back. Moving fast. I moved pretty fast myself back across the room toward Rachel. I could see her silhouette. When I got closer, I could see how wide her eyes were open. She was staring at my Glock, which was up and cocked and ready to go. When had I even pulled it out? I tried to keep my voice steady.
“Go upstairs. Get that.45 out of the sink, and bring it down here.”
“It doesn’t have any bullets,” she hissed. “You have them.”
I thought about it. If something happened to me, it wouldn’t be fair to leave her with an empty revolver. I dug the cartridges out of my pocket and put them into her hand. “Load it upstairs, and bring it down. Go toward the front. I’ll go to the back. Shoot anyone you see. If you get in trouble, go to…”
“The office,” she said. “It has a door that locks and windows.” She was scared but still thinking. That was good. “Who are they?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Go now, Rachel.”
Good question. Who were these people? They had to be Russians. What had Bo said about Drazen? He had former KGB…Soviet Army…Russian police. Had Drazen lost patience this quickly? Maybe he had found out about Rachel. Maybe he had found out she killed Vladi. Maybe he had just decided to wipe us all out, and maybe I should stop thinking so much, because I was getting shaky.
I had to talk myself through it, to slow everything down. I had a flashlight. This was why I carried it. I held it to the side, away from my body, but didn’t turn it on. With my shoulder to the wall, I felt my way toward the kitchen. I didn’t know the layout of the house, but I knew the back better than the front. I moved the way I had been trained-both arms up, one shoulder back, my gun hand resting in the other, both thumbs pointed down the barrel. Like holding a golf club with a trigger, one of my instructors had said. What my instructor could not have explained, and what I could never have experienced in a thousand simulations, was the roar of adrenaline that practically had me levitating.
My whole body was like one big sensory receptor. I felt the darkness against my skin. When the latch on the back door began to rattle, the sound came into my body through every pore. I started to back up, but it was too late. The door opened, someone stepped through it, and my entire world telescoped down to the assault rifle in his hands. He saw me and raised the rifle to shoot. I held the light out, pointed it at the intruder, and flashed it on. The high-intensity beam hit his face. He flinched but still fired…and missed. I didn’t. I put two rounds into his chest. He yelled and fell back. The second man came in firing right behind him. I ducked, killed the flashlight, and hauled ass the other way. Red beams from their weapons wheeled around the dark hallway, and I knew I was in someone’s line of fire, and I knew I had to get out, so I fell through the next doorway I found. I landed on the floor inside. The door slammed shut right behind me. I used my flashlight and found Rachel, which meant I had found my way to the office. She threw her arm over her eyes. “Get that out of my face.” The.45 was in her other hand.
“How many did you see?” I asked her.
“I just heard shooting and came in here.”
There were boots on the floor outside the door, more than one pair. If the first guy hadn’t gone down, it was because they had on body armor. I had definitely hit him twice in the chest. A scarier possibility was that there were more than the two I’d seen.
Then came the unmistakable cha-chink of someone chambering a round in a pump-action shotgun. I grabbed Rachel, pulled her behind the desk, and covered my ears against the mighty roar of the blast. Another cha-chink. They were blowing the hinges and would follow that by blowing out the dead bolt, and then there would be nothing standing between them and us.
Somewhere it had registered that they were wearing night-vision goggles, which explained why the first guy had reacted as he had to the high-intensity beam. I reached for Rachel’s hand and put the flashlight in it.
“When they come through the door, flash this at them, but move it around, like this.” I showed her. Keep it away from your head, because they’ll shoot at it.” Her hand was shaking. “It’ll be all right. We’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”
I left her there and scrambled across the floor. There wasn’t any better cover than the furniture, so I crouched behind the couch. When the third shot went off, I felt the reverb in my chest. The door crashed in. The red beams came first. I got flat on my belly, aimed for knees and feet, just in case they did have armor on, and fired. One of them went down. I fired at his head until he stopped moving. I popped the clip-I knew I was out-and reached into my pocket for the second one. The shotgun roared again, and a substantial chunk of the back of the couch blew out over my head. Rachel screamed. When I looked up for her, a loud crack sounded. My head snapped back. A stingingly bright light erupted behind my eyes, and I fell backward. The light ruptured, and the pain came with the darkness. I covered my face with my hands and rolled over onto my stomach, wondering in some detached part of myself if I’d been shot through the head.
When I opened my eyes, a figure dressed all in black hovered over me. He wore a black mask and all the gear. He flashed a light in my face, then at a picture in his hand. I was apparently not the one he was looking for, because he took a step back and started to raise his assault rifle. Before he could get his shot off, his body began to convulse. He tried to turn around, but the convulsions began again. When he started to go down, I rolled out of the way. He fell next to me like a redwood.
I felt around for the Glock and found it behind me, but I didn’t need it. Rachel jumped down from the desk and leaned over her prey. I heard a buzz, like a mosquito zapper, and he seized again. She was holding a Taser against his neck. She’d Tasered him.
“Come on,” she said. “Come on. Get up.”
I was wobbly, but I wanted to live. We stepped over the body in the doorway, the one I had shot. On the way by, I reached down for his shotgun. It was a pistol-grip Mossberg. There were a bunch of shells in a pouch Velcroed to his belt. I grabbed it, too.
Out in the hall, I lurched instinctively toward the basement, but Rachel dragged me in the opposite direction to another doorway that led to the garage. When she pulled the door open, I was staring at a monster, a huge black Humvee. Either she had planned for a quick exit, or someone didn’t like backing the thing out of the garage, because it was facing out. She circled around to the driver’s side. The passenger-side door was so close to the wall on my side I could have practically climbed in from inside the house. She started the engine and then must have stepped down on the accelerator by accident. The engine roared in that dark, close space.
“I’m putting up the door. Ready?”
“Wait until I get this thing loaded,” I said, struggling with the Mossberg. “There might be more of them.” My fingers were shaking so badly I kept dropping the big cartridges on the floor in front of me.
“Hurry up!”
It was a nine-shot. I got six in and pumped one into the chamber. Then I powered down the window and braced the barrel on the door ledge, facing forward.
“Go.”
She punched the opener. The door started to lift immediately, and an overhead light snapped on. She put both hands on the wheel and leaned forward. She could barely see over the dashboard, but she had the focus of a pointer ready to go get her bird.