Desperate Measures (37 page)

“You don’t understand,” Mrs. Page said. “It’s in the basement.”

Shoulders kept slamming against the front door.

“What are you talking about? The basement?” Jill sounded hoarse, her throat dry from fear. “What’s a car doing in the basement?
What good would—?”

From a room at the back of the house, Pittman heard footsteps scraping on broken glass. He clutched his pistol tighter, aiming.

“The
garage
is down there,” Mrs. Page said. “The garage is under the house. If we get to the car, we’ll be safe.”

“No!” Jill said. “We’ll be
trapped
. If we try to drive away, they’ll shoot through the windows and doors and—”

“Why must you be so stupid? Listen to me. Listen to what I’m telling you.”

Pittman heard Mrs. Page’s high-heeled shoes on the vestibule’s hardwood floor. A door opened, echoing.

“Stop,” Jill said.

“Down here,” Mrs. Page insisted.

“I’m going with you,” Denning said.

A man’s footsteps scurried across the vestibule, joining the urgent rapping sound of high-heeled shoes descending stairs.

“Wait for me!” The servant quickly followed.

“Matt!” Jill shouted.

From the back of the mansion, Pittman heard other footsteps scraping on broken glass. A shadow moved. Pittman fired, his ears
ringing from the .45’s fierce blast. The recoil threw him off balance. From the darkness at the back of the house, he saw
what seemed to be a spark. Simultaneously he felt more than heard a bullet strike the wall next to him. For a frenzied moment,
he feared that the blast from his .45 had deafened him. In a greater frenzy, he realized that he hadn’t heard the shot from
the back of the house because the gunman had used a silencer. The ringing in Pittman’s ears had obscured the muffled spit.
He fired again, squirming backward, flinching from the impact of four soundless bullets striking the wall where he’d been
crouching.

“Matt!” Jill screamed.

We don’t have a chance, Pittman thought, scurrying faster backward. We can’t possibly kill all six of them.

“Jill, come on!”

“Where!”

“The basement!”

As Jill rushed past him, hurrying down the stairs that the others had used, Pittman fired once more toward the back of the
house, spun and fired toward the front door, then charged into the stairwell and slammed the door shut.

Not that the closed door would do him any good, he suddenly realized. It did have a lock, but the knob for the bolt was on
the opposite side. He couldn’t possibly keep the gunmen from coming through.

Fear made him nauseous. Lights in the stairwell revealed stone steps that led to a concrete floor. Jill had already reached
the bottom. Pittman backed down, aiming toward the closed door. He saw the knob being turned and fired, his ears ringing worse
as the powerful bullet splintered the door, walloping through, a man on the other side screaming.

The two men at the front door had been a diversion, Pittman thought. They had pounded on the door to drive everyone toward
the back of the house, where the men who’d broken in waited with silenced pistols. The slight commotion at the front probably
hadn’t attracted much attention from the street. The silenced pistols couldn’t be heard outside the mansion.

No one knows what’s happening in here! Pittman thought. The servant was supposed to have phoned the police, but Pittman hadn’t
seen him do it. Had the servant been distracted by fear? Nobody realizes we need help! We’re trapped down here! The only way
someone outside can know we’re in danger is…

The blast from Pittman’s .45.
That
could be heard outside. As he continued to stare up toward the door to the basement, he saw the knob being turned, and he
fired again, his ears suffering from the pistol’s torturous blast, the confines of the basement magnifying the roar.

Someone outside is bound to hear, Pittman told himself. Although the ringing in his ears was excruciating, he prepared to
fire yet again. But suddenly a warning instinct told him that he was almost out of ammunition. How many times had he fired?
He strained to remember. Six. He had only one round left. If they try to rush us…

Jill, he thought. She hasn’t fired yet. Her pistol’s still fully loaded. He spun toward her, wanting to trade weapons, and
froze in surprise at the sight of the car in the basement. Its length and height were totally unexpected. It was a silver
Rolls-Royce, its paint and chrome gleaming from obvious daily care. Someone had backed it in. A pulley in the ceiling led
to a garage door that could be raised electronically.

Pittman’s surprise was offset by dismay when he saw how panicked Mrs. Page, Denning, and the servant were. They had scurried
into the car, slamming the doors, evidently locking them. Jill was straining to open the driver’s door while Mrs. Page struggled
to shove a key into the car’s ignition switch.

“Mrs. Page, unlock the door! Let me in!” Jill’s shout was muffled by the ringing in Pittman’s ears.

Pittman redirected his attention toward the door at the top of the stairs. Again the knob turned. Again he fired. The ejection
slide on top of his pistol stayed back, indicating that the weapon was empty.

No! He shoved the .45 into his coat pocket and ran toward Jill. “I need your gun!”

She was so preoccupied, pounding on the driver’s door, trying to get into the Rolls-Royce, that she didn’t seem to notice
when Pittman took the pistol.

It held more ammunition than the .45. As a consequence, Pittman felt briefly confident. But then he realized that he was still
trapped. If Mrs. Page started the car, opened the automatic garage door, and sped away, it wasn’t possible for Jill and himself
to defend themselves against six gunmen.

The door at the top of the stairs opened slightly. Pittman fired, the recoil from the 9 mm less violent than that from the
.45. It was obvious what the gunmen were doing—holding back, staying on either side of the door, taunting Pittman by moving
it, trying to entice him into wasting all his ammunition.

Sickeningly, his heartbeat surged as he wondered why the police hadn’t arrived. Surely a neighbor must have heard the shots
and phoned for help. Why were the police taking so long?

Jill kept pounding on the driver’s door. “Let me in!”

Abruptly Mrs. Page pushed a button that caused the locks to disengage, making a thunking sound. She opened the door. “I can’t
get the car to start!”

“My father owns one of these! Let
me
try! Move over!” Jill shoved at her, squirming behind the steering wheel.

Pittman ran to the car and saw that Denning was scrunched next to Mrs. Page and Jill. He yanked opened the passenger door,
dragged Denning out, and shoved him into the backseat with the servant.

As Pittman dove into the back with them, he yelled to Jill, “Let’s get the hell out of here!”

Jill slammed her door and turned the ignition key. “It doesn’t work!”

“Try again!”

“It doesn’t want to turn all the way!”

Pittman scurried from the car and aimed toward the stairs. “Hurry!”

“The key!” Jill said. “This isn’t the right key!” Hands shaking, she sorted through other keys on a ring.

Even with his protesting ears, Pittman heard sounds on the stairs. Shadows, then shoes came rapidly into view. He fired. Splinters
from concrete spattered the shoes. The gunmen scrambled back out of sight.

Jill shouted, “Got it!”

The Rolls-Royce’s engine roared.

“Hurry!” Pittman fired once more at the stairs and dove back into the car. “Lock all the doors!”

Jill pressed a button that engaged the locks. She pressed another button. With a rumble, the garage door began to rise.

Pittman glanced in dismay through the car’s rear window. The gunmen were charging down the stairs.

“They’ll shoot out the windows!” Pittman yelled. “Stay down!”

“They can’t!” Mrs. Page shouted.

A bullet struck the rear window, ricocheting.

“My husband was afraid of terrorists!”

“What?”

Jill revved the Rolls-Royce, speeding forward as the garage door rose above the hood. With a crunch, the car’s roof struck
the rising garage door. But the Rolls kept hurtling from the garage. It soared up an incline and jounced down onto ground
level. Through the windshield, Pittman saw three of the gunmen crouched in a shadowy lane behind the house. They were waiting,
aiming toward the car. He couldn’t hear the shots from their silenced weapons, but the upward jerk of the pistols showed that
the gunmen were firing. Bullets struck and deflected off the hood and the windshield.

“What the—?”

“The windows are bulletproof!” Mrs. Page said. “The whole car is! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!”

Jill swerved, increasing speed, veering past the gunmen, who now fired at the side of the car.

Pittman felt the vibrating impact of the eerily muffled bullets hitting the Rolls.

Jill struggled with the steering wheel. “This thing handles like it’s a tank!”

“At the time, I thought my late husband was insane to want an armored car!”

A gunman appeared ahead of them, firing directly at the windshield, diving for cover as Jill sped past. She swerved from the
narrow tree-lined lane and reached the side of the house, aiming the Rolls along the brick driveway toward the street. There
hadn’t been time to turn on the headlights, but the glare of lights in the shubbery at the front combined with the glow of
streetlights, showing that the dark Oldsmobile the gunmen had arrived in was parked directly in front of the exit from the
driveway. There wasn’t any way past it. Other cars were parked everywhere along the curb, preventing the Rolls from veering
off the driveway, across the sidewalk, and onto the street.

“Brace yourselves!”

Jill tightened her grip on the steering wheel, directing the Rolls toward the front fender of the Oldsmobile blocking the
driveway. “I hope this
is
a tank!”

In the backseat, preparing himself for the collision, Pittman felt the Rolls increase speed. The Oldsmobile grew alarmingly,
seeming to fill the windshield. The Rolls struck it with such force that the Oldsmobile jerked sideways.

Pittman felt as if his chest had been punched. His head snapped back. Next to him, Denning slammed onto the floor. As the
Rolls kept heaving forward, ramming the Oldsmobile farther sideways, the servant groaned. In the front seat, Mrs. Page shoved
her hands against the dashboard to absorb the shock.

Even though Pittman’s ears kept ringing, he couldn’t help hearing the crunch of metal and the crash of glass. The Oldsmobile
had been jolted sufficiently sideways that the Rolls slammed past it, scraping an Infiniti parked at the curb but hurtling
forward, reaching the street and streaking across it. Jill stamped the brake pedal. But the heavily armored car barely slowed.
Jill swung the steering wheel to avoid the cars parked on the opposite side of the street. But the Rolls—never meant to be
so heavy—responded sluggishly. One of the cars across the street seemed suddenly huge. The Rolls struck it, more glass shattering,
metal crumbling. The Rolls rebounded, its distinctive winged woman hood ornament and thickly slatted, shiny grill falling
onto the pavement.

From the backseat, jolted by the two collisions, Pittman watched Jill in dismay as she tugged the car’s gearshift into reverse
and stared behind her. Working the steering wheel, she tried to maneuver the car so that it wasn’t positioned diagonally across
the street, blocking both lanes. Too late. Pittman was suddenly knocked sideways by the jolt of another collision. A car coming
along the street hadn’t been able to stop in time to avoid hitting the Rolls. Headlights glaring, a car coming in the opposite
direction squealed to a stop before it struck the other side of the Rolls.

No! Pittman thought. We’re boxed in!

Drivers got out of the cars. Alarmed by the din of the multiple collisions, men and women hurried out of houses on both sides
of the street. Pedestrians watched in shock. The sidewalks became rapidly crowded. Horns blaring, cars lined up in each direction,
blocked by the accidents.

“What are we going to do?” Denning whimpered.

“One thing’s sure. We’re not going anywhere in the Rolls,” Jill said.

“Get out of the car,” Pittman said.

“They’ll shoot us,” the servant said.

“We can’t stay here. Hurry. Everybody out.” Pittman helped Denning rise from where he’d been thrown to the floor. “Are you
all right? Mrs. Page, what about you?” Pittman shoved his door open. “
Mrs. Page, I asked if you’re all right
.”

Stunned, slumped in the front seat, Mrs. Page groaned.

Jill leaned over, examining her.

Outside the car, Pittman rushed forward and opened the passenger door. “How is she?”

The drivers of the cars that blocked the Rolls crowded toward Pittman.

“What the hell did you think you were doing?” a man yelled. “You came out of nowhere.”

“She’s shaken up,” Jill said. “But I don’t see any bleeding.”

“We have to get away from here!” Denning wailed.

Pittman spun to study the driveway next to the mansion. Past the commotion of numerous onlookers, he saw solemn-faced men
wearing windbreakers running down the shadowy driveway, dispersing into the crowd.

“Jesus, buddy!” a bystander said, stumbling back in terror, pointing toward Pittman’s right hand.

Pittman didn’t understand why the man behaved as he did. Then, squinting down at his right hand, Pittman saw that he still
clutched the pistol he had taken from Jill.

The panicked man who’d seen the pistol bumped against the driver of one of the cars that had struck the Rolls. Now the driver,
too, saw the pistol and reacted the way the first man had, stumbling to get away.

“Jesus, he’s got a gun!” somebody yelled.

A woman screamed.

The crowd around Pittman bumped into one another in a frenzied effort to get away from the gun.

Pittman kept darting his gaze past them, toward the driveway and sidewalk at Mrs. Page’s mansion. The solemn-faced men wearing
windbreakers were no longer in view. He scanned the panicked bystanders, afraid that the gunmen might be using them for cover,
stalking nearer.