Overfall (38 page)

“We have a problem,” Benoit said when she reached Gaudet.

“Well, I have a few myself. Why are you calling me?”

“Samir Aziz has Jacques at gunpoint in the laboratory and he’s gotten all the hormone he needs to be fearless for the next decade.”

“We’ll deal with it tomorrow. Any more good news?”

“The lawyers are in court. They’re anticipating Anna’s people, and they are filing papers saying that we want an order halting any interference with Jason’s guardianship. Roberto is of course asserting that he is the lawful guardian. What we really need is Jason in our custody back in France. That way we can get someone here appointed even if it isn’t Roberto. Someone with ties to Grace.”

“I know you need Jason back in France, but it will be hard to explain a war over here in Canada, and he is heavily guarded. I’m trying to do it quietly.”

“The lawyers say we need him on French soil now. Do whatever it takes. We’ll explain that some mercenary got out of control if we have to. That’s better than not having him at all.”

“That’s a messy way to handle things. And I’m the one who stands to lose when the authorities decide to hunt this ‘mercenary.’ ”

“We’ll blame DuShane’s men. Or Aziz. But we can’t continue on without Jason. So get him or we’re finished.”

“What do you mean finished? How can one man—”

“His work is worth billions and it’s not complete.”

“This can’t be done ‘now.’ ”

“If you don’t do it we’re beaten.”

“You know what we’re risking if I use maximum force.”

“I know.”

She hung up furious, wondering if Gaudet would get her condemned to a French jail for the rest of her life. She picked up the phone. She had exaggerated Jason’s importance, but not by much.

“Claude. Claude Balford. Head of security. We need to talk about his mental stability.”

“Huh?”

“I think he’s become unstable. He’s off in Canada. I’m worried he’ll do something crazy. We will need evidence of his instability. Do you understand me?”

Sam was sitting on a ridge across the valley from an ancient cave known to the Tiloks as Man Jumps. The cave was in the side of a formidable gray cliff spotted with the green of stubborn trees that had crammed their toes in the rock and made a home of a seeming vertical wasteland. Sun glistened on the mountain’s face and poured down her blue-gray flanks. There was green in the wet algae near seeps as if nature had thrown Irish sparkles. Around him on the ridge it was quiet. Strewn at his feet were wild-flowers whiter than an eagle’s crown spread over grasses lush from spring rain. As he watched the cave a woman, Anna, appeared. She called to him in her trouble and was frantic about the sheer drop and the death awaiting her if she fell. He tried to call to her, to beckon to her, but she did not see his hand or hear his call. He rose, frustrated at the vast gulf that lay between them.

Two men appeared behind her, grabbing her. They fought, and he saw her arms flying as the man tried to draw her away, back into the cave.

The alarm filled Sam’s ears. He grabbed for Anna, who was coiled around him, then jumped at the sounds of automatic rifle fire and nearly threw her from the bed. The shooting was on the perimeter. The digital clock read 4:00 A.M. He had been sleeping in his flak jacket and had made Anna, Grady, and Jason wear them fully clothed to bed.

“Come on,” he said, his head still full of the dream.

“All right. To the safe room?”

“Yes.”

They took Grady and Jason and went toward the living area, then down a narrow hall. The safe room had been built like a bank vault, but with human habitation in mind. It contained air bottles and masks, enough for twelve hours of isolation. Ventilation could be totally sealed. The insulation inside was more than a foot thick. To get somebody out would take a blast that would kill them.

The safe room stood freely except for its back wall, which fit snugly against the back wall of the utility room and its base that was sunk in concrete. Sam had been told that even the utility room walls had been reinforced with multiple layers of plywood to shield the box from external explosions.

“Put them in. I can shoot,” Anna said. Sam just nodded, unwilling to waste critical seconds arguing. They put Jason and Grady through the six-inch steel door and according to instructions it was then locked from the inside.

Before they got to the living room, T.J. had all the lights out inside the house.

They found a man on watch with a radio, and T.J. alternately barking orders into a microphone and nervously chewing on a plastic coffee stir-stick. They had turned the living room into a command center by moving back sofas, storing furnishings, and placing an old dining table from a local furniture store in the center of the room. It struck a discordant note, like discount fiberboard furniture in the lobby of a Four Seasons hotel.

An umbrella rack by the front door held four M4s and on the hat rack above several pairs of night-vision goggles and a half-dozen gas masks. The two-acre grounds were normally lit by hundreds of walkway and shrubbery lights that actually created the feeling of perpetual twilight. Now the outdoor lighting was being knocked out with bullets. They took up night-vision goggles and placed them on their foreheads, ready to use. Each of them, including Anna, held an M4. Sam handed Anna a gas mask.

The weapons fire was deafening. Muzzle blasts flashed everywhere. Men screamed. Men swore. The radio crackled constantly.

“Did you get the Mounties on the phone?” Sam said.

“I’ll do it now,” T.J. said.

Heavy fire poured through the house. All over the groundsmen were shooting, each man with his own personal war.

“They’re everywhere,” a harried voice shouted.

“Roger that.” There was a roar of shots running together.

After a second of fiddling, T.J. shouted: “Lines down. I’ll use the cell.”

After a minute he spoke again. “Nothing.”

“Let me try.” Sam pulled out a cell.

“Hello, hello,” the police dispatcher said.

“We have a firefight up the hill from Ganges,” Sam said.

“Mister, I got a whole war up there.”

“That’s right. Send officers, tell them to be careful.”

“There are three Mounties on the island, a boat at Galliano. Won’t be much. Won’t be fast.”

“We’re losing good guys up here.”

“I know, I know. We’ll do what we can. I’ll have them call you.”

The cell lost the signal before he could give her the number. The place wouldn’t be hard to find.

“These assholes won’t quit,” somebody shouted.

“Just blow them to pieces,” another man replied.

There were three explosions. The first blew out the windows. The second knocked the texture from the walls and buckled the ceiling and Sheetrock. Dust was everywhere. With the third explosion the entire structure shook and strained like a groaning old man. Two fighters came through the windows, and their bodies were ripped with bullets from outside and in. One of them lost at least half his head, but for seconds the breath of him still wheezed bloody froth out the trachea.

“We have a shrinking perimeter. Our men are withdrawing to their clusters around the house and grounds.” Sam saw Anna shooting next to him. Something in him reacted and he pulled her low to the ground.

“Be careful.”

As if to punctuate his words, rifle bullets began popping through the room and blowing holes in the wall. They remained hunkered behind the sandbags except when Sam rose, looking for shadows in the half-light. Outside it might have been Gettysburg, the way the smoke drifted in the night breeze. Men were down and screaming, calling out their anger as blood ran from ragged wounds and the cold of death crept through their bodies.

Bullets continued pouring through the windows, shattering remaining shards of glass. Sam could feel the jolt of the sandbags as they took rounds through the wall. Tear gas sailed through the window, streaming a picturesque arc of noxious balls of light before it hit the floor. They threw on the masks.

Then a .50-caliber machine gun began answering from just outside the house, and soon a similar gun responded, shaking the walls, blowing apart the studs. Wood flew from the ceiling as it knocked chunks out of the timbers. Then more huge explosions.

“They’re back into the rockets,” Sam said. “What have they got?” he shouted into the radio.

“No armor. All stuff you can carry. Rockets, fifty-caliber stuff. These bastards are crazy. You blow parts off ’em and they keep coming.”

Just then the wall behind them exploded and a cloud of white went everywhere.

“I got him, I got him.”

Sam knew that some soldier meant the guy with the launcher. Then a second rocket hit the house above their heads. “Must be more than one,” he muttered inanely. The concussion was bad and they were swathed in cotton-white dust clouds. Without the masks they’d have been choked nearly dead.

As the dust cleared, one of Sam’s men jumped through the window. His arm came off in midflight, leaving only red muck and the white of a blood-spurting artery.

Anna screamed from down the wall. In the confusion she must have moved away from him.

“Everybody out,” T.J. cried.

Sam knew he was right. The house was a target and the enemy had rockets. Either they were not that worried about Jason or they knew about the safe room.

Sam crawled after Anna just as another explosion ripped through the room. Able to see nothing, he crawled ahead, grabbing for her, but somehow she must have moved away from the wall. He could see nothing.

“Anna,” he called.

“Out, out,” T.J. said. “I sent her out.”

Sam scrambled, hoping Anna had indeed run out into the night. Grady and Jason would be safe in the concrete and steel.

He leaped through the window and crawled clear of the house for maybe thirty yards, shouting, looking for Anna. Finally he lay in the winter grass. Shots were being fired on every quarter. There were pockets of light and fleeting shadows, the rush of adrenaline, the craze of killing. One of Sam’s men sat on the grass holding a torn arm and wrapping a belt around it, trying to stop the blood. One of the enemy crawled with only his arms, his back obviously broken by a bullet, but undaunted.

Soldier profile.

Sam aimed at his head, but couldn’t or wouldn’t shoot. He wasn’t sure which. The man had no rifle but wore a pistol on his belt. Sam crawled over and yanked it away as the man struggled for it. There was a grenade belt that Sam also stripped. The man continued on. It appeared he was still attacking the house.

“You’re going soft,” T.J. said.

“Without a doubt.” Sam’s men were in little clusters, making no line that could be charged. Approaching the house could be a deadly sport and going inside worse—just as it had been for Sam. Now the enemy would have to slow down or be shot to pieces.

“Have you seen Anna?”

“No. I thought she was ahead of us. She could be anywhere around here,” T.J. said.

He looked at the cavernous black of the blown-out windows. Then his dream came back to him. Anna calling from a cave. He knew what was happening.

“You manage things from out here,” he said to T.J., and ran for the house.

“Like hell,” he heard T.J. say.

Nothing in Anna’s life had prepared her for the intensity of the killing frenzy going on around her. War movies were not war. The man’s arm had landed beside her and she’d stared dumbfounded at the wedding ring. A naked dangling artery spewed the man’s life onto the wool carpet. Before an explosion blew him away, she had put her hand on the flesh trying to squeeze off the great fountain that spurted obscenely over everything. T.J. came and helped, shooing her away.

“Go with Sam,” he said, pointing into the cloud of white. When she couldn’t find Sam in the immediate rubble where T.J. had pointed, she struggled to move farther until she felt him tugging on her arm. Instinctively she moved with it.

“Sam, I’m so glad ...”

Bullets pounded through the house and she was crawling fast.

He tugged her to go faster. Past the safe room she crawled, following a very determined Sam. Then the air cleared slightly and she looked ahead, finding Sam wearing black. But Sam had not worn black. Sam had worn camouflage.

“Hey!” she said. The man was faster than a cat, and in an instant a heavy French accent pierced the pounding of the bullets.

“Come with me.” There was the dull metal business end of a razor-sharp carbide blade at her throat. “I’ll kill you if you give me the slightest reason.”

He yanked her by the hair. She screamed and went with him when she felt the knife hot and stinging slice the skin of her neck.

He had her.

Sam knew it without knowing it. The man from Polynesia, the man whose initial was G, who had killed John Weissman, who was responsible for the death of his son. This man had Anna.

Sam crawled through the destroyed living room, knowing now why the rockets and the massive assault. It was cover for a desperate man who needed a bargaining chip. What would he do with it? How would he play it?

Sam made it quickly through the house past the safe room to the other side. It was alternately dark and light with muzzle blasts and explosions punctuating the night. The air was heavy with a smell like hot wires. Smoke curled in columns and hung in clouds. It was a primitive struggle with ghastly killing devices rending flesh and destroying a home. Half the men had to be dead, and the fighting was starting to ebb. Perhaps they had learned that there was no getting at Jason.

He picked up his radio. “Any word on Anna?”

“Nothing,” T.J. said. On the back side of the house Sam tried night vision between flashes. Looking off into the blackness all the way to the tree line, he scanned and scanned again. He saw men crawling and crouching, but no one really moving except the occasional man pulling back. His radio clicked.

“Monsieur Sam.”

“This is Sam.”

“If you will look at the trees by the pump house.”

Sam looked at the pump house and then saw a man step from behind holding someone in camouflage.

“You have Anna.”

“Yes. Still wet with your come.”

He knew it was a psychological jab, and still it worked.

“What do you want?”

“I want the two in the concrete box in exchange.”

“You’re Belle du Jour. You’re Freight Stop. You’re wanted for the murder of Wes King and the theft of his software. You are the lover of Benoit Moreau, the servant of DuShane Chellis.”

“Of course you know that men like me disappear everyday.”

“But you’re not sure, are you? Men like you get caught by men like me.”

“Not before I am through with your woman.”

“If you want to bargain you’re going to have to go for something I can give you.”

“Like what?”

“Like me.”

“What do I want with you?”

“You won’t get Jason. You can have Anna Wade, but to you she is just a toy and she can only die once. Kill me and you improve your own chances of survival considerably. I think you know that.”

“I didn’t come for you.”

“No, you didn’t. You came for Jason, but it didn’t work because he’s locked in a box with twelve hours of air and the Mounties are on the way. It’s all about timing, and it’s getting late. Of course, even to have a chance of getting in that box you need me dead, don’t you?”

“You come, she goes.”

“Anna, come here,” Sam called out.

Anna started walking with Gaudet’s gun pointed at her.

Sam walked toward her and the man in black. The shooting had quieted. T.J. had come up close behind him and was following. For some reason Gaudet did not protest. Other men were creeping to the edge of the field. Now there were many guns on Sam and many guns on Devan Gaudet.

“This is crazy,” T.J. said.

“Sam, don’t go,” Anna said, now almost even with him.

“If I don’t go, he and about ten other guys are gonna put bullets in your head.”

“I don’t care. Don’t go. Tell the men to shoot.”

“We’ll all be dead. We’re in the open.” Sam walked past her and kept walking toward the man he meant to kill. T.J. fell away, going back with Anna.

As Sam approached he saw a mustached man wearing night-vision goggles. The man took off his mask and a bright light came on. It was aimed at him so that Gaudet was in a shadow.

“You are Devan Gaudet.”

“Some days.”

“You killed my son.”

“Now I understand what a triumph that was. I know you have in mind killing me, but before you try you should turn around.”

Sam looked back. What he saw sickened him. T.J. was holding a gun to Anna’s head. The other men were keeping their places.

“This is bullshit,” one of Sam’s men called out. “Whose side are you on, T.J.?”

“The money side. Everybody who wants an easy hundred grand, step up here.”

None of Sam’s men moved except to point their guns at T.J.

“What’s the way in?” T.J. called.

There is no way in. You can kill Anna and me all day long and there is no way in. That thing has twelve hours of air and it isn’t opening a moment sooner, no matter what I do or say. I told them to stay the full twelve hours. Even the cops won’t get them out. You blow it up and you’ll kill them with the concussion.”

“All right. Then we’ll put a rocket into that thing and kill them.”

“Have at it.”

“T.J. is a little small-minded,” Gaudet sneered. “I have a pneumatic drill and several diamond-tipped bits. They will go through anything.”

“Slowly,” Sam said, suddenly feeling a chill.

“As you said, if I’ve got you, I’ve got time. Granted there will be a few dead Mounties, but that’s no problem.”

Sam was ten feet from Gaudet and slightly to the side. Gaudet had a pistol aimed at his head, as did three other men. Too many men. Too many angles. It was impossible.

Grandfather.

Sam could think of nothing.

Without the sun the great horned owl lays waste the eagle’s nest.

“Maybe now you’d like to drop the gun before we begin killing your sweet Anna.”

Sam sensed that there would be no later chance and therefore any risk was acceptable.

Sam kicked both feet for the sky and as he fell shot a blast at the light.

Black. Men fired shots across the field and there was instant war. Sam rolled even as he was knocked three feet over the ground by a bullet.

Searing-hot pain shot through his ribs but he kept rolling. The bullet had hit the steel of the chest plate in his flak jacket. There was the excruciating pain of cracked ribs but nothing else. Beside Sam a man fell, shot. Sam took his weapon and hunkered behind him. Five bullets, at least, hit the body. Pulling his goggles down, Sam saw Gaudet step behind a tree, still blind without his night vision. With his chest aching like a grapefruit-sized tooth cavity, Sam ran for the tree, figuring to end Gaudet.

As he ran he caught a glimpse of T.J., dragging Anna back into the house.

“This is the Canadian Mounted Police,” came booming over a loudspeaker.

A rocket streaked across the field and a car exploded in liquid fire.

So much for the police, Sam thought.

Standing against the large tree, an oak several feet in diameter, he tried to imagine what Gaudet might do. A noise came from above; he looked straight up, fired a single shot. A body fell. Not Gaudet.

Whirling around the tree, he saw nothing. Gaudet was gone, his men pulling back to a sandbag bunker. Maybe Gaudet was with them. Firing erupted and Sam pulled back as well.

Someone had prepared. Of course ... as soon as T.J. had arrived he told them where to come. Along the way he no doubt had given them information. Even the travel was made easy.

“Sam, we are going to kill your Anna.” It was Gaudet’s French accent over a loudspeaker.

“Listen up,” Sam said into the quiet of his radio. “Converge on the house. Anybody gets any kind of a shot at T.J. just take it. They’ll kill any hostages anyway.”

Sam ran straight to the house, taking only slight cover when he could. Incredibly he had drawn no fire by the time he made it to what had been a side porch.

He wondered about T.J. actually killing Anna. Maybe, maybe not. But Gaudet would certainly kill her if he could get into the house.

Once inside, Sam moved quickly to the hall around the corner from the safe room. Paintings worth thousands caked with dust hung on the wall or rested on the floor. One depicted red-coated gentry and hounds and the bloody plight of the fox they sought.

“Grady, I’m gonna take Anna’s hand off one finger at a time until you come out.” T.J. was talking into the intercom box.

“Save your breath,” Sam said. “I disconnected it. They’re not coming out.”

“I’ll kill Anna. So help me God.”

“No payday for that, I’d imagine. Better get your drill.”

Sam could hear T.J. retreating down the hall to the utility room that housed the safe room. Anna was struggling against him. Sam retreated around a corner and waited. From behind him he saw a shadow. Maybe Gaudet.

“I have her now, Sam.” It was Gaudet’s voice. But not from where he had seen the shadow. Sam’s skin chilled and tightened. How did Gaudet get into the house and to the safe room that fast? Maybe it was a bluff.

“How shall I kill her, Sam? You know me. I will find a way to enjoy it.”

“You’re a tough guy, I know.”

A motor started—the sound of a heavy drill.

“We’ll be in within an hour,” Gaudet called to Sam. “Perhaps a half hour. Come on in. Watch Anna as she gets the treatment.”

“Can anybody see the generator?” Sam whispered into his radio.

“They’re all dead, Sam,” Gaudet said.

Sam tried to ignore him, waiting for a response. “Anybody, come back.”

“A lot of wounded. We’re pinned down. So are they.”

“It doesn’t sound good, does it?” Gaudet’s voice came through the radio.

“Let’s bargain.” It was T.J.

“No deal.” Gaudet. It was obvious he had no regard for T.J.

“They must have used lightweight concrete. Probably shorted the cement. It is going faster than I hoped,” Gaudet said.

Sam could hear the drill grinding. Above him the ceiling had been blown out and holes ripped through the walls. He tried to think, searching for a way to get Anna.

“Soon we’ll be at the steel. Maybe they used cheap steel too.”

The sound of a large helicopter shook the night air. It was far off but coming closer. An explosion reverberated through the atmosphere.

“The Canadian government just discovered we have missile launchers on top of the mountain.”

“Victoria’s not far. Neither is Vancouver. They’ll have more.”

“Yes. And we will shoot them down at five thousand meters. Then, Sam—they’ll be cautious. We will have ample time, I assure you. One thing I’ve been wanting to do is give Anna a good shot of the Nervous Flyer formula. I think I’ll take her with me. She can screw me for the oil antidote. Where we’re taking her they’ll appreciate that.”

Sam tried to clear his mind of anger and frustration. Anna was weeping.

Suddenly Anna screamed an incredible shriek. Sweat poured down Sam. His body shook, his mind threatened to betray him. Still he didn’t move. With Gaudet using Anna as a shield, he couldn’t even sacrifice himself to kill them. Grandfather had given his life. Gaudet would not give him that chance. Grandfather was fond of saying that a man’s ideas were more deadly than his arrows. More than bullets, Sam needed something completely unexpected.

A new plan brought him energy. Running out the back of the house with near-reckless abandon, he made his way through a rapid stream of bullets to the tree line. Three rounds grazed him as he dived into the forest. The shooting came from men skirmishing from various haphazard bunkers or corners of the house. He found Yodo, wounded in both arms but alive and functional.

“We have to take the bunker in the trees.”

Yodo nodded.

“I need one rocket.”

Gaudet would have been talking to thin air as Sam ran, and any second it would start to worry him.

“You’ve left us, Sam. I may have to kill her after all.”

“I’m here,” Sam said into the radio.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting ready to catch you when you escape. I’ve already lost Anna.”

Sam didn’t listen to the response; he ran with Yodo, making a big arc. Nobody would be expecting an attack on this bunker from the ground. It was too far from the house. They went into the trees and passed through gaping holes in the chain-link fence. They used night vision, but made no effort to be quiet and still drew no fire. Sam wondered if Gaudet’s men were deserting, or more likely dead or wounded.