Safe and Sound (30 page)

There was no answer.

***

I’ll be damned,” Powell said. He saw the trunk lid pop up, saw Keller stumble and fall from the car. He took a breath to yell the news back to Marie, then stopped as he saw another figure step out into his sight. The other figure dropped a familiar-looking cylinder on the ground in front of him. That’s the bastard that killed Mike, Powell thought. His finger tightened on the trigger. But Keller had moved. He was between Powell and his target.

“Come on,” Powell muttered. “Move, damn it.”

***

The man with the knife moved toward Keller with an easy assurance, like a cat stalking on wounded prey. He feinted with the knife, laughed again as Keller
staggered to his feet. “Just wish I had more time to play,” he said, “but you know how it is. So many engagements, so little time.” His face became taut with concentration.

There was a sudden blur of movement in the leaves behind him. As the man started to turn, a hand snaked across his throat. There was a brief glint of steel and the hand was suddenly gone. The man had a stunned expression on his face. His hand went to his throat. The hand turned suddenly crimson as the severed arteries sprayed bright red blood across them. He tried to cry out, but all that came out was a bubbling wheeze as the air from his slashed windpipe mixed with the spurting blood. He turned as he fell, trying to see who it was that had killed him.

Lisa stood behind him, her own crimsoned blade clutched tight in one hand. She looked at Keller, a stunned expression on her face. “I never actually killed anyone before,” she whispered. The man had fallen to his knees, blood coating the front of the vest. He seemed to hear Lisa’s words and looked up. An expression of disgust crossed his face as he toppled over. Lisa looked at him lying in front of her and took a step back. She laughed, a little hysterically.

“Come on,” Keller said. “Cut these damn things off me.”

Lisa looked up, confusion in her eyes. She shook her head as if to clear it and stepped forward. Keller turned around to give her access to his bound wrists. He felt the knife sawing at the plastic of the cuffs.

“How many of them are there?” Lisa asked.

“Three now,” Keller said. “They started with five. Whoever was in the tower got one of them. You took out another one. Thanks, by the way.”

“Don’t mention it,” she replied in a subdued voice.

***

The damned car was still in the way. Phillips’s vision was partially obstructed by the remaining car window, but he could still see the two figures, Holley and Keller. Abruptly there was a third figure, a commotion, then blood everywhere

“Idiot,” he muttered out loud for the first time as he saw Holley’s body fall out of his sight.

“What was that?” DeGroot asked in the earphone.

“Keller’s out of the trunk,” Phillips whispered. “Holley tried to play silly buggers and take him with his knife. Someone else got Holley from behind. He’s down. Permanently, judging from the amount of blood.”

“Who took him?” DeGroot demanded. “Powell or Riggio?” DeGroot asked.

“Can’t tell.”

“Whichever it is,” DeGroot said, “take him out. And Keller as well.” Phillips merely clicked his mike on and off one time to signal the affirmative. He could dimly make out two figures still standing. They were slightly downslope from the car; he could just make out the top of Keller’s head. It was a shot he knew he could make, but there was a higher percentage shot available. Phillips always took the higher percentage shot when possible. He lowered his sight and prepared to fire through the remaining window.

***

The cuffs fell away from Keller’s wrists. He grimaced at the pain as blood began to flow freely again. He turned around. Lisa was standing there, between him
and the car. She stared at the bloody knife in her hand. She looked up at him with an uncertain smile.

“I did the right thing,” she said, “right? I didn’t have any choice.”

“Yeah,” Keller said, “you did the right thing. We need to get away from the car. The gas tank’s ruptured.” She nodded.

The air was suddenly filled of flying glass.

Lisa made an abrupt sound, midway between a grunt and a sigh, as if she’d been kicked from behind. She sagged forward into Keller’s arms. Instinctively, he dropped to the ground, pulling her on top of him to cushion her fall.

He rolled her off of him. She cried out in pain as she landed on her back. There was a stunned look on her face.

“I…I…,” she whispered. He gently turned her onto her side.

The entry wound was in the center of her back, slightly below the shoulder blades. Bright red blood pumped rhythmically onto the leaves. The sharp coppery smell of it mingled with the gas fumes, nearly choking him. As he watched, the rhythm slowed, stopped. He turned her back. Her eyes stared sightlessly into the sky.

Keller reached out and gently closed them. He dropped down and looked underneath the car, toward the other side of the clearing. He couldn’t see the shooter, but he could feel him there, feel the watching presence, waiting for him to make the wrong move. He was pinned down. He crept up to the open front passenger door and hoisted himself prone onto the seat. Patrick’s body lolled against the driver’s side door. Everything above the lower jaw was gone, the muscle
and veins stretched across the back of the seat like severed cables. Keller reached over and pushed the cigarette lighter in. He popped the glove box open and rummaged through it. As the lighter popped back out, he pulled out a sheet of flimsy paper marked “Vehicle Inspection Report.” He rolled it into a loose cylinder. It caught easily when he touched it to the glowing lighter. Keller slid back out of the car and crawled to the rear of the vehicle. He took a deep breath. The paper was burning quickly, almost scorching his fingers. He tossed it into the puddle of gasoline. There was a soft whump as the gas caught. Keller sprang up and bolted for where Holley’s AK was leaning against the tree. He was halfway there when the tank exploded.

Phillips lay still, poised in a state of total alertness, waiting. Waiting was the sniper’s gift. The shot would come. The target would move. He had to. Phillips didn’t, and that unbalanced equation was why Phillips knew he’d win.

There. A sudden flurry of movement, toward the back of the car. He was going for Holley’s weapon. Phillips’s brain swiftly calculated range, elevation, target speed. His muscles, in perfect synchronization, made the minute adjustments needed to bring the bullet to its target. His finger tightened on the trigger…

A huge ball of black and red flame erupted from the wrecked vehicle. The sound of the explosion rolled like summer thunder across the clearing. Phillips’s attention was yanked toward the car just enough to jerk his hands ever so slightly to the side. But it was enough. He knew the shot would go wide even as the silenced rifle gave a soft cough. Phillips tore his eyes away from the scope.

The car was an inferno. The smoke billowed and rolled around it. Phillips could see nothing. “Clever boy,” he muttered.

“What was that?” DeGroot demanded.

Phillips keyed his mike. “I got one target,” he said. “But Keller torched the car. I can’t get a clear shot for all the smoke.”

There was a moment of silence. Then, “Okay. Concentrate on the house. Keep anyone from getting out the front. We’re in position around back.” Phillips keyed his mike once in acknowledgement.

***

“What was that?!” Marie yelled from the back bedroom.

“It was Keller,” Powell called back. “He set the car on fire. For a diversion, I guess.”

“Jack!” Marie said. “He’s here? He’s alive?”

“Yeah,” Powell answered. “I saw him.”

“I knew it!” Ben called from the bedroom. “I knew he’d be here!”

“Ben!” Marie yelled. “Get back where I told you!”

“It’s okay, Mom,” Ben said. “Jack’s here.”

“Ben!”

“Okay, Mom.” Ben sounded exasperated.

“Any sign of Lisa?” Marie asked.

Powell didn’t know what to say. He had seen Lisa fall. But he didn’t want the boy to know. “Yeah,” he said finally.

“And?” Marie insisted. Powell hesitated. “There’s a sniper somewhere in the front,” he said finally.

“Okay,” Marie said. “I get it.” After a moment, she said, “I’ve got movement around back.” Powell heard the bark of her rifle.

There was a brief rattle of answering gunfire and the sound of breaking glass. “Jones?” Powell called back.

“Mom?” Ben cried with an edge of panic in his voice. “Mom?”

***

“Okay,” Caldwell said. “We’ve got them bottled up. Now what?”

DeGroot fired a three-round burst at the window where the shot had come from. “Now,” he said, “while I keep their heads down, I need you to take your grenade launcher and put a WP round on the roof of that cabin.”

Caldwell stared at him. “Why? Just order them to come out with the key. They know by now they’re surrounded. We let them walk if they give up the key.”

DeGroot’s grin was like a death’s head. “I think we’ll be in a stronger negotiating position if the house is on fire, hey?”

Caldwell shrugged. He reached into his bandolier and pulled out a fat, stubby grenade. It looked like an exaggerated cartoon version of a bullet. Caldwell cracked the grenade launcher open at the breech and slid the round in.

He snapped it closed and nodded to DeGroot. DeGroot began firing short, precise bursts, first at one window, then another. Caldwell sat the butt of the launcher on the ground and pointed the barrel toward the house at a steep angle. He squinted at the house and adjusted the barrel. He pressed down on the trigger.

The round arced up in a long parabola. It came down on the roof of the house and burst in a ball of brilliant white smoke. The smoke arced up in long spider-leg trails. At the end of each leg, a flame burned like a tiny sun. In a moment, the roof was aflame.

***

“I’m okay,” Marie said. She picked herself up off the floor of the back bedroom where she had thrown herself to avoid the hail of bullets. She heard a hollow thunk from outside. She dared to peek up over the windowsill.

One of the men was picking a familiar-looking weapon off the ground. Marie heard something land on the roof, then the flash of the explosion drove her back down to the floor. “Grenade!” she yelled. The room was filling with white, choking smoke. She had to get to Ben. She began to crawl toward the front of the house.

***

Keller hadn’t heard the sound since the desert, but he recognized it immediately. Thumper. He looked toward the house. Through the pall of black smoke that surrounded him, he saw the bright star of the white phosphorus round arcing high above. He bent back to his task with grim determination. Sweat poured down his face from the heat of the blaze only a few yards away. He pulled harder. Holley was a big man, and hard to move. Keller grunted with the effort as he pulled the Kevlar vest free. A stray breeze blew a gust of smoke into his face and eyes. The smoke was thick with the stench of burning meat from the body in the car. Keller coughed and gagged as he slipped the vest on over his head, trying to ignore the bloodstains on the front. He picked up the AK and thumbed the selector level to full
auto. He glanced up at the opposite tree line. He tried to keep the pall of smoke between him and whoever was up there as he faded back into the trees. The brush was thick, with clinging vines that clutched and dragged at his ankles as he moved from tree to tree. He caught a glimpse of the house through the trunks of the trees. The roof was burning, the smoke white in contrast to the black oily smoke of the car. He could hear shouting from inside the house.

Smoke and fire and screaming…

White fire from the sky, out of the night…

Burning, they’re burning…

Darkness rose in him like a tide. He had fought it for so long, the black rage that had pulled at him like an undertow. He had spent so much of the last fifteen years fighting it, trying to keep the rage at bay. Now he opened himself to it, letting it take him. He had always thought of it as an ocean trying to drown him, to drag him away from himself.

But this was like a homecoming. And home was a yawning abyss of dark fire. He knew the fire would consume him, leaving nothing behind. But that was all right.

The noise of voices was closer now. He could make out DeGroot’s voice, shouting what sounded like orders. And he could hear the sound of a child crying.

***

They could hear the crackling of the cedar shingles from inside the house. In one corner of the main room, the ceiling was beginning to crack and char from the flames working their way down. The inside began to fill with smoke. Marie had Ben
clutched to her. Powell was soaking towels in the sink. He brought one over to them and wrapped it around Ben’s nose and mouth.

“Breathe through this,” he said. “It’ll help with the smoke.” He handed another soaked towel to Marie. She wrapped it over her own face.

“What now?” she asked, her voice muffled by the towel.

“Inside the house!” DeGroot’s voice came from outside. “Come out. Hands up. Throw the key out first.” There was a pause. “Or stay in there and burn.”

Powell picked up his rifle. He stood beside the window, his back to the wall. “You can have the key!” he shouted back. “I’ll bring it out! But you let the woman and the boy go.”