Fade (2005) (7 page)

As expected, bullets began tearing through the ceiling, shattering woo d and plaster, and filling the air to the point that he had to touch hi s nose to the monitors to see them.

The man in the living room was in a half crouch, spraying bullet s wildly upward while the other man moved into the bedroom, firing a t what was left of the attic door. Their teammates outside were yellin g on their throat mikes but seemed less than eager to get any mor e involved than that.

Fade watched as the man in the living room walked more or less directl y beneath him, still firing upward. The sound of his rounds hitting th e steel tub was deafening even through the fingers he had in his ears an d he could feel the vibration as bullets struck. Then, suddenly the ma n was down. It took Fade a moment to figure out that he'd been hit b y one of his own ricochets.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," he said aloud, though h e couldn't hear himself over the soldier still shooting from the bedroom.

Despite the size of the monitor, Fade could see that the man's mout h was wide open and he seemed to be screaming as he fired. He'd know fo r sure before long, because at this rate, he had only a few more second s of ammunition.

One of the monitors captured three men bursting from the trees an d sprinting across his yard. When they came up alongside the house, on e of them produced a set of bolt cutters and, predictably, cut power t o the building. Fade hit a switch and started the generator in hi s basement, rerouting the power to his new toys. The screens restarte d but after about five seconds they died again. He played with th e toggle a few more times, but nothing happened. Hard to complain; i t had held together a lot longer than he'd ever expected.

When the gun in the bedroom went silent, Fade slipped on a pair o f night vision goggles he'd found at Sharper Image, hung the mode l airplane controller across his bare chest, and dropped into the livin g room through the panel he'd cut.

The house was old, but surprisingly solid and that, combined with a n old area rug, made his landing nearly silent. He held his knife in hi s teeth as he crawled up to the man lying on the floor, but it was clea r he was dead. His own bullet had taken a downward trajectory an d penetrated his neck just above his flak jacket. Bad piece of luck , that.

Fade continued to crawl forward, finally coming alongside the open doo r to his bedroom. A quick glance behind him and he rolled inside , sweeping his rifle across the room and finding the man who had bee n shooting at him standing in the exact same place he'd been before. H
e turned, a fresh magazine in his left hand, an expression of confusio n on his face as Fade raised his rifle and avoided the man's body armo r by putting a round into his face.

No wonder Strand wanted him so bad. Where had he found these guys? Th e local Quaker meeting?

When Fade crawled back out into the living room, the house seemed to b e empty and he used the opportunity to take the radio off the bod y bleeding all over his genuine faux Oriental rug. He shoved th e earpiece in his ear before sliding across the floor toward th e fireplace.

"Entering through the kitchen!" the radio crackled.

That wasn't good.

He rolled right just in time to avoid the automatic rifle fire tha t suddenly erupted and fired blindly back at the kitchen as he continue d to slither toward the fireplace.

"We have a man down in the living room! I can see at least one ma n down in the bedroom!" he heard over the radio. "The suspect is movin g toward the south corner of the living room!"

It seemed likely that the guys outside were moving around to th e windows and if they made it before he could get to his enormou s fireplace, he was going to find himself at the center of a nast y crossfire. Time to take a calculated risk. He jumped to his feet an d dove over the sofa, hitting the floor on the back of his neck an d rolling onto all fours. The sound of breaking glass behind hi m prompted another burst of speed that sent him sliding across a floor h e now wished he'd spent more time polishing just as a volley bega n chipping away the brickwork in front of him. He felt a slight sting i n his hip as he crammed himself into the fireplace and grabbed the handl e on the back of the steel plate on the floor. Pulling it up, he covere d the fireplace hole in time to hear the now unmistakable ring of bullet s against metal instead of the equally familiar sound of bullets thuddin g into his flesh.

Reaching above him, he found the small penlight he'd taped to the flu e damper handle and used it to illuminate the miraculously undamage d remote control hanging around his neck. He rubbed his fingers togethe r for a moment and then ceremoniously pressed the buttons labeled kitche n and living room.

Nothing happened.

Frowning deeply, he looked around him in the darkness and then ease d his grip on the chunk of steel blocking the fireplace opening. Slidin g the remote's antenna through the narrow crack, he pressed the button s again this time with a more satisfying result. The plate was slamme d back toward him hard enough to sever the antenna and slam him hard int o the back of the fireplace.

He waited a few seconds, feeling the heat begin to creep into th e handle he was gripping and listening to the ringing in his ears, the n lowered the makeshift shield just long enough to take in the conditio n of the house.

The entire north wall was gone and he assumed most of the kitchen was , too, though he couldn't see it from his position. There were numerou s small fires burning on the floor, and on what used to be his furniture.

The smoke was on his side thick enough to obscure movement but no t thick enough to asphyxiate him. Yet.

"Report!" came a woman's voice over his commandeered radio. He ease d his grip on the steel plate again to improve reception.

"Tom's down," a slightly shaky male voice responded. "I can see hi m from my position. I can't see Jim. He was in the kitchen and th e kitchen's fucking gone."

"Maintain your position and stay cool! Any sign of the suspect?"

"No, but he's gotta be dead. Practically the whole house blew up."

"Craig! What have you got?"

"The south side of the house is pretty much intact, but the fire look s like it's getting worse. I have no movement, but there's a lot o f smoke. If he is alive in there, he isn't going to last long."

Probably true, Fade knew. But, assuming that his remote would stil l carry with a broken antenna, he'd be around longer than they would.

Fade let the steel plate fall and laid himself out flat on the floor , holding the remote as high as he could to get maximum range.

"I think I've got movement!"

"Stay where "

This time the explosions weren't as loud but the bright flashes briefl y turned the smoke from black to gray as the model airplane servos pulle d the pins from grenades he'd buried beneath the two men's exterio r positions.

"Fuck!" he heard over the radio. "I'm hit. I'm hit!" The statemen t was followed by a less than encouraging fit of wet-sounding coughing.

Obviously, the guy hadn't been where he was supposed to be. He shoul d have been lying right on top of that grenade.

An unfortunate complication. Was it the guy on the north or the guy o n the south? And was he still intact enough to shoot?

"Hold on, I'm coming." That woman's voice again. Where the hell wa s Matt in all this? Since when did he let other people direc t operations? And since when did they put women in charge of things lik e this? You've come a long way, baby.

Fade ripped off his night vision goggles and jumped to his feet , dancing clumsily through the living room as small fires and hot debri s burned his bare feet. North seemed the path of least resistance sinc e there was no wall anymore, so he chose that direction, already startin g to choke on the smoke as he ducked under the partially collapse d roof.

He ran half-crouched toward the low fire that was the last know n position of the sniper who had been posted in his front yard. As i t had been so many times before, luck was on his side and he could se e the man's black-clad body parts strewn across the dirt.

He adjusted his trajectory and ran toward his shop as fast as his bar e feet would carry him, but then spotted a set of headlights coming u p the tree-lined road that served as his driveway.

"Craig! What's your situation?" the woman shouted over hi s earpiece.

No answer.

"Craig! Talk to me!"

It turned out that the headlights belonged to an enormous black va n that was having a fairly hard time holding its speed on th e unmaintained road surface. It bucked and crashed dramatically throug h the ruts, but probably wasn't going much faster than ten miles pe r hour.

Fade slid behind a tree and lined up his rifle sights on the dar k figure driving, but then changed his mind. His plan to die tonigh t seemed like it wasn't working out. Time for a little improvisation.

He crouched low and tried to arrange a few branches around him t o obscure his white boxers from the truck's high beams as it continued t o bounce up the road.

The driver's side window was open and he could clearly see a n un-helmeted blonde head jerking back and forth inside. When she cam e up even with him, he leaped onto the running board and wrapped his han d around her soft ponytail and then slid back off onto the road.

He hadn't really considered what would have happened if she'd bee n wearing her seat belt apparently an example of the toll his years as a reclusive furniture maker had taken on him. He guessed she would hav e ended up with either a broken neck or a very unattractive bald spot.

Fortunately, she wasn't all that safety conscious and instead wa s dragged through the window relatively unharmed. She clamped her hand s around his forearm as he slammed her to the ground and the van veere d into a tree.

Pulling sideways on her hair, he tried to roll her onto her stomach bu t when he did, she let go of his forearm and grabbed his elbow. H
e didn't really pay much attention until she used some tricky leverage t o nearly dislocate his shoulder. Forced to release her, he found himsel f lying on his back in significant pain, reflecting on the fact that h e probably should have learned about the dangers of women by now.

She managed to fight her way to her knees, then to her feet, an d started to stumble toward her wrecked van. Fade pushed himself uprigh t and rotated his arm experimentally. No serious damage done.

She made it about twenty feet before she dropped to her knees, fumblin g at the leather strap holding her gun in its holster. He'd heard th e wind go out of her when she'd come down on the surface of the road an d there was just no way she could be getting much air. He jogged forwar d and grabbed her by the hair again and shoved her face-first to th e ground, not bothering to dodge an elbow that looked like it was throw n in slow motion.

Conveniently, she had a pair of handcuffs on her belt and he used the m to secure her hands behind her back while she concentrated o n re-learning how to breathe.

He shoved a hand beneath her waist and unbuckled her gun belt the n pinned the handcuff chain to the small of her back while he performed a quick search that yielded nothing more than a small knife and he r radio.

By the time he'd tossed her gun into the woods and thrown her painfull y over his shoulder, she was getting enough air in to make a feebl e effort to kick him in the groin.

Fade walked back into the woods and grabbed his rifle with the hand h e wasn't using to keep her from squirming off his shoulder. He was abou t to start off toward his car but instead he paused and used his toe t o press the last button on his remote control. A moment later, the to p of a tree about a hundred feet away exploded into flame. He ducke d involuntarily and watched the burning shards of wood fly off into th e night.

"I can't believe you didn't put someone up there," he said to th e weakly struggling woman. "Do you have any idea what a pain in the as s it is to climb a tree with live explosives? I worked really hard o n that."

"Let .. . Let me go," she managed to get out.

"Maybe later. We'll talk."

Chapter
Eight.

It was hard for Fade to shake off the persistent sense o f disorientation buzzing at the back of his mind. It was kind of what h e imagined he'd feel like if someone aimed a gun at his head, pulled th e trigger, and discovered it wasn't loaded. When he'd gone up into hi s attic, he'd been comfortable in the certainty that he wouldn't surviv e the night. Now here he was, cruising up the highway in his underwea r with a woman who wanted to kill him in the passenger seat. Or mor e precisely, kneeling on the floor with her face in the seat and he r bound hands jammed up under the dash.

He slowed and squinted at the exit, searching his memory for a moment , then swerving onto it. The darkness deepened on the narrow rura l highway, broken only occasionally by lonely gas stations and nearl y nonexistent towns. After no less than three wrong turns, he found th e ancient industrial park he'd been searching for and eased along th e dirty, intermittently occupied facades.

The woman tensed visibly when he stopped the car and reached over he r back to pull the glove compartment open and fish out a garage doo r opener. He hadn't used it in almost five years and didn't reall y expect it to work but when he pressed the button the rusted metal doo r in front of him began to grind its way open. His lucky day.