Tommy Carmellini 02 - The Traitor (38 page)

When he saw it, he charged, swinging the big blade.

That was the wrong move. I went over backward, under the arc of the singing machete, and let his momentum carry him onto the knife. It went up to the hilt in his solar plexus.

Impaled, he tried to draw a breath as his eyes widened. He drew back the machete . . . and dropped it.

I gave the knife a savage twist, then shoved him off it. He fell over backward, tried to rise, gasping, then fell back.

I hunted around for my ray gun, wasting valuable seconds. Where was it?

Under this juniper. Must have kicked it. I dropped to my knees and retrieved it.

I didn't know anything about knife wounds, didn't know what my assailant's prognosis might be. Was he going to get up, go for help, follow me for another try, or die quietly dreaming of the virgins that awaited him in paradise?

Since I didn't know, I helped him on his way. I stabbed him in the throat with the knife and jerked it upward, slashing, as I pulled it out. Blood shot all over the place—the sight and smell of it hit me like a hammer. Maybe I shouldn't have done that. Probably have to answer for it at the Pearly Gates, if I ever get that far.

I keyed the mike on my headset. "Better call the cavalry. I just got attacked by a raghead."

"You okay?" Willie asked, worried.

"Yeah. Get Grafton and tell him to step on it."

I stood over the rapidly dying man, looking around. The grocery van was parked beside Rodet's Mercedes. Another car was there, an

older small Fiat; figured that belonged to the maid or security man. Beside it was a small pickup. The gardener? Hell, for all I know, French upstairs maids drive pickups.

I headed for the dog pens.

When I was fifty feet away, I saw a body lying beside the fence. I slowed. Walked. Before long I saw the corpses of the dogs inside. I couldn't tell if they had been shot or poisoned, and it didn't really matter. The man, though, had been hacked with the machete.

I stopped. Looked around at the buildings and the empty windows looking back at me. Could hear the wind sighing in the big pines that shaded the pen.

Where were the people?

"Dead man here by the dog pens," I said to Willie. "Dogs look dead, too. Grocery van still here."

"Grafton's on his way."

"Don't know where the people are," I said to Willie. "Gotta be here someplace."

"One of them is coming," Muhammed Nada told the old man. "The infidel warrior, Shannon."

"The others will be here soon," Abu Qasim said, and carefully knotted the rope around Marisa. He stepped around the chair that held the sagging corpse of Jean-Paul Arnaud and checked the rope that held Henri Rodet to his chair.

"You have been a brother and father to me," he said softly to Rodet. "Someday I will welcome you to paradise."

"It will be soon, I think," Rodet said.

"Oh, no. You have much to do before that day. Allah will help us both."

With that, he removed a cloth from his pocket and used it to gag the Frenchman.

"Your precious faith," Marisa said acidly as her father was tying the knot. "What if you are wrong? What if hell awaits murderers?"

"Don't blaspheme, woman."

"Can't you admit that there is no way to be absolutely certain you are right?"

"With Allah there is no doubt."

"Only a fool is absolutely certain of anything in this life," she shot back.

"She
may
betray
us,"
Muhammed
Nada
suggested
to
Qasim. "One word from her, and all our preparation and suffering will be for nothing."

Qasim finished the knot behind Rodet's head and looked at his daughter.

"One word," Nada repeated.

"He's right," Marisa Petrou said, and bowed her head. "Why take the risk? I am tired of living and I loathe you all. Kill me. And explain that crime to God, if you can."

Rodet made a noise, and Qasim glanced at him. He was shaking his head from side to side.

AbuQ asim walked over to Rodet with the silenced pistol in his hand. The Frenchman closed his eyes. At a distance of three feet, Qasim aimed carefully and squeezed the trigger.

The barn was nearest, so I went to the door, eased it open and looked into the gloom . . . and saw nothing. Not even a horse. The building was empty. I put on the goggles, flipped them on, turned them to infrared and studied the ceiling. No humans up there, I concluded.

Raising the goggles onto my forehead, I checked the courtyard, then stepped outside. One other barn, the garage, or the house. They had to be in one of them.

I pulled down the goggles and looked. The daylight shining on the walls had warmed them so much the goggles were nearly useless. I played with the contrast control, trying to see something, anything.

Wait! In the garage ... on the second floor. The apartment above. A moving shape. At least one.

I pulled up the goggles, checked everything I could see one more time, then trotted for the personnel door of the garage.

I was halfway across when the door opened and a man with a submachine gun stepped out. He didn't hesitate. God, he was quick! He braced the weapon against his hip and started shooting.

He should have aimed. As the bullets went over my head, I dropped down and squeezed the trigger on the ray gun. The laser shot out.

I kept the trigger down for what seemed like an eternity. When nothing happened, I thought / had had the stroke. This guy might not be a marksman, but he had lots of bullets and it would only take one to do me. Despair and panic welled up in me, and then the lightning flashed and strobed from the weapon in my hand.

The report was almost lost in the thunder of his gun, but the effect on him wasn't. His back arched and the gun muzzle went up and he fell with the weapon still hammering. I held the trigger down and the lightning pulsed across the thirty feet that separated us.

The lightning stopped about the same time his gun went silent. The pulse lasted maybe half a second, though it sure as hell seemed longer. I could see smoke wisping from the corpse.

"God almighty!" I whispered, stunned.

Mesmerized by the smoke rising from his flesh, I walked over to him. The electrical charge had hit him in the chest, burned a hole in his shirt and cooked his flesh. The smell turned my stomach.

Still standing there like a blithering fool, I glimpsed a motion in the doorway. Another man with a gun.

Before I could get the ray gun up, his gun flashed—that was the last thing I saw. A tremendous blow hit me on the head and everything went dark.

Jake Grafton was in the car that roared up alongside the van. Another car was right behind. Callie was already standing outside; Willie was in the van, monitoring the radio, waiting for Carmellini's call.

"Tell him Jake's here," Callie said through the window before the cars braked to a stop.

Willie complied. "No answer," he said, and hopped out of the van.

Willie and Callie piled into the rear seat of the lead car with a man neither of them knew. Jake turned around in the passenger seat and said names. "Pink Maillard," indicating the man at the wheel, "and Inspector Papin, of the French police."

"Bonjour,"
Callie said to the Frenchman. She was all business. She said to Jake, "Tommy called on the radio and said he had been attacked by an Arab. Now he doesn't answer when we call."

"Sounds as if they arrived a bit quicker than I thought they would," Jake muttered as the car sped along the road adjacent to Rodet's estate. "Did he say where the people were?"

"I don't think he ever got inside."

"Yeah, he would have said," Willie added. Then he pointed. "Up there on the right. That's the entrance."

"What if the gate's closed?" Pink Maillard wanted to know.

"Go right on through anyway," Jake Grafton said matter-of-factly. He glanced through the rear window. The other car was immediately behind them. The admiral grabbed the hand strap and held on firmly.

"This the first time I ever been in a car with the
po-Mce
without wearin' handcuffs," Willie declared as Maillard braked for the turn ahead.

Fortunately the gate was still open. Maillard feathered the brake and slewed the car, then accelerated up the driveway.

Two guys were dragging me up a flight of stairs when I came to. It took me a few seconds to figure it out, and that was the answer I came up with. One had each arm, and they were yanking and lifting

and tugging as my feet dragged over each step. Something was wrapped around my face; I thought it was the headset or straps for the night vision goggles. Whatever it was obscured my vision—or maybe the blow I took had affected my eyesight.

I tried to move and couldn't. My head was splitting; my face was numb; my legs felt as if they were being hammered on by lumberjacks. I must have moaned or something, because one of them paused and slugged me in the face. Then they resumed their ascent.

Somehow I knew we were going up the stairs to the apartment over the garage. I don't know how or why I knew that—I just did.

I was in damn big trouble—that I also knew. Two of these holy warriors had already tried to kill me. These two and however many more were waiting upstairs were going to finish the job if I didn't get to kicking and scratching pretty damn quick. My muscles didn't seem to work. Panic set in, probably stimulated by a quart or so of adrenaline.

As these two dragged me up the stairs they were jabbering loudly in some language I didn't recognize—calling to someone in the room above, a man who answered them.

As Pink Maillard braked to a stop near the rear corner of the house, he stuck his arm out the window and motioned for the car behind to pass him. It did. It roared between the garage and the house and stopped near the dog pens, where the four men inside came tumbling out. Someone in a window of the apartment over the garage opened fire with a pistol.

One of the men below was hit in the arm, and he dived back behind the car. As one, two of his colleagues opened fire with submachine guns at that window. The glass shattered; the framing around the window splintered. Pieces rained down.

The third man ran for the door of the garage.

I was going to die. Unable to move, I was going to be slaughtered like a steer by these Arab lunatics.

Not like this
—
no!

I tried to move, to resist, oh, my God, how I tried, but I couldn't make my muscles respond!

Then I heard the pop of a pistol, followed by the roar of submachine guns.

One of the men released an arm. They were going to kill me right here!

I grabbed a handful of balls and tried to rip them out. The man they belonged to screamed and went nuts. In that enclosed stairwell, the sensation was like being in a barrel with a tiger. His high-pitched wail of agony was like a tonic to me.

The other man tried to release me to get to his weapon but found that I had him, rather than the other way around. I didn't have a good hold, though, and there wasn't much I could do about it with this other guy kicking and pounding on me, trying to get me to release his scrotum.

Somehow I got my feet under me and regained my balance. I was screaming, too, I guess, because the noise in there was unbelievable.