Death Glitch (33 page)

She was locked up, on fire, as if she had a fever and now she was choking back vomit, but despite it all, she moved her hand, not an inch, but all the way to the end of the fence.

Then, without Lila’s guidance, she took her left foot off the fence, moved it to the left, finding another toe hold and now she was spread eagled on the fence.

“
Good, Izzy, you did good,” Lila soothed. “You’re almost there. Now you’ve got to move your right hand, then your right foot.”

Eyes still closed, hands still on fire, feet now too, Izzy started to move her right hand when something grabbed her by the left arm and jerked her off the fence. She was in space, flying, but before she could scream, she hit the ground with a thud, landing hard on her back, breath stolen away with a fast whooshing sound.

She struggled for air, opened her eyes and was racked with stomach spasms as she rolled over, pulled herself up onto her hands and knees, finding herself face to muzzle, staring into the jaws of one of the Rottweilers.

The dog sort of grunted as Izzy turned away from it and vomited, fighting for the breath that had been knocked out of her when Lila had pulled her off the fence, pulling her around to the safe side, where her fall had only been a couple feet instead of a couple hundred.

Heaving finished, she gasped for air, but wasn’t finding any. Lila thumped her on the back, once, twice a third time.

“
Take short breaths.”

“
Yeah,” Izzy gasped out. She felt like she might never get enough air, but in a few seconds she was getting it, in short breaths, like Lila had said. Then she was able to take in more and shortly she was breathing normally.

“
Can you stand?”

“
I think so.”

“
Let me help you up.” Again, Lila took Izzy by the left shoulder, but gently this time, not with the force she’d used when she’d pulled her off the fence.

“
Thanks.” On her feet now, with her breath back, Izzy was surprised that her hands no longer burned. The cold hot fear that had been racking through her was gone. She’d done it, gone out on that fence, faced her fear and had survived. “I’m better now,” she said and somehow she knew she was.

“
So you’re not going to lock up when come face to face with the bad guys?”

“
I’ll be fine.” And she knew she would be. She felt like she could do anything.

“
Good.” Lila pulled the grenade launcher from her back. “So, I can count on you for the rest of this? You’ll have my back?”

“
No, not your back, I’ll be at your side.”

“
Good.” Lila looked into the fog. “The house is that way.” She pointed. “Manny’s men have a small house they work out of about fifty or sixty feet north of the main house. Manny calls it the guard’s quarters, or sometimes the barracks, but it’s not really either, because they don’t sleep over. I’ll try to land a grenade between the two of them, maybe take out one or two of the guards right off the bat, but even if I don’t, they’ll think the attack is coming from the front and as they’re rushing to defend against it, I’ll fire off the second grenade, then we come in the through the back.”

“
Sounds good,” Izzy said. “Let’s do it.”

“
Okay, you ready?” Lila aimed the launcher.

“
Wait,” Izzy felt a tightness inside, like she was having a heart attack. She put her right hand to her chest, under her left breast, pushed against her rib cage, over her heart, hoping to stop the pain she thought would be on her any second. But instead of the shooting spasms of a heart attack, a sort of warm glow seemed to be spreading through her.

“
I feel it, too,” Lila said. “For a second there I thought it was the big one, thought it was all over for Lila Booth, but now I don’t know what to think. I feel pretty darned good and I don’t know why.”

“
Me too.”

“
Think it’s because of your magic blood?” Lila said.

“
It’s your magic blood now, too,” Izzy said. “And yeah, I think it is.”

“
I’ve always known what I did for a living was wrong, but I didn’t have a problem living with it,” Lila said. “But all of a sudden, I’ve got this conviction that what we’re about to do here is right, that it has to be done.”

“
Me too.” Izzy felt one of the dogs rub its great head against her leg. “Them too. They’re with us.”

“
This is weird,” Lila said.

“
Way weird.”

“
You ready?”

“
I am.” Izzy unslung the riot gun, held it in front of herself.

“
You look like a soldier about to go into a firefight.”

“
I feel like one. I feel invincible, too.”

“
Invincible, that’s the word.” Lila aimed the grenade launcher.

An explosion rocked the night, the blast as loud as any Mouledoux had heard during Desert Storm and a scream cut through the house. It sounded like Peeps, Mouledoux thought as he grabbed for his weapon while he dropped to the floor, expecting the worst. Soldiers, Amazon warriors, murdering hoards, he expected them all, because all of a sudden it clicked with him, not only the impossibility of it all, but the fact that Dr. Isadora Eisenhower couldn’t afford to let anybody who knew about her live, because as long as there was a living soul who knew her secret, she’d never be safe.

She wasn’t here to negotiate the release of her granddaughter. She was here to wipe out everyone who knew about her and right now that included him. And there wasn’t any doubt in his mind about how this was going to play out. Manny Wayne may have his private Blackwater trained security force, but they were not going to stop Eisenhower.

For a flash of a second he thought about looking for a hiding place till it was over, till Booth and Eisenhower killed the Waynes and their crew, took the captives and left, but even as he was thinking about it, another thought pushed it out of his mind. He couldn’t hide like a coward or flee like one either, because he was a cop, one of the good guys.

He didn’t care about the Waynes or their men and he didn’t care if Eisenhower and Booth got clean away and never paid for their crimes, that was beyond him. But he did care about the two girls upstairs. His fate was unimportant compared to their’s and he was convinced when Eisenhower and Booth breached the house, Manny Wayne would charge upstairs and use them as shields. He’d kill them before giving up.

And that was something Mississippi Bob Mouledoux couldn’t allow.

Ignoring his partner’s wailing, he pushed himself from the floor, went looking for the stairs.

* * *

Manny Wayne’s enlarged prostate saved his life. He drank a lot of coffee and that prostate had him in the john urinating more than he cared to admit. He had to go and when the urge came, he went. So, he’d left his post at the front window to take a quick pee, was halfway across the room when the deafening sound of an explosion racked the night and the front window blew out, sending shattering glass shooting into the living room. Thousands of slivery daggers peppered his back, sending him crashing to the floor.

The pain was intense, his back felt like it was on fire, his ears were ringing and he’d started peeing his pants as he pushed himself to his knees.

“
Peeps, they’re coming!” Manny couldn’t hear himself shout. He started to get up, still peeing as he realized he’d lost his weapon when he’d hit the deck. He scanned the carpet, saw it on the other side of the room. He scrabbled on all fours toward it, crawling like a baby, pissing all the way.

Magnum in hand, pissing finished, he pushed himself to his feet, fighting to ignore the burning swath of pain that was his back and the cold wet of his crotch.

“
Peeps!” Still deaf, Manny crossed the entryway, went to the den, found Peeps writhing on the floor, face a bloody mess. The man had been blinded, was obviously screaming, but Manny couldn’t hear.

However, he knew the men outside could and like a tortured soldier screaming in pain between the lines, Peeps’ wailing would take a toll on his guards, would unnerve them no matter how well trained they were, and this Manny couldn’t allow.

“
Sorry, Peeps.” He raised his weapon, aimed between the eyes, fired and though he saw the back of Peeps’ head blow off, he didn’t hear the sound of the Magnum in his hand. Had it not been for the kick the powerful pistol was known for, it might have been as if Peeps’ head had blown apart of its own accord, as if Manny Wayne hadn’t done it at all.

* * *

Izzy heard the pistol shot as Lila was loading the second grenade into the launcher.

“
What do you think that was all about?”

“
I don’t know,” Izzy said. “Maybe somebody inside is a bit jumpy.”

“
Maybe.”

“
Let’s give them a few seconds to sweat,” Lila said.

“
Trouble is, I’m sweating too,” Izzy said. “I’m all jittery inside.”

“
If I smoked,” Lila said, “I’d give you a cigarette to calm your nerves.”

“
Wouldn’t work.” She took in a deep breath, sucked it into her belly, sighed it out. “But don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”

* * *

Mouledoux was at the top of the stairs when he heard the shot from below and all of a sudden Peeps was silent.

His first thought was that the women were in the house already, but how could that be? Peeps had a thirty-eight, like Mouledoux’s own and he’d heard them fire a thousand times on the range and in the Nevada desert. If the women weren’t in the house and if Peeps hadn’t fired, that left only Manny Wayne and that cannon he used for a pistol.

It had started.

He hustled down a hallway, checked the first door on his right.

Bathroom.

He checked the second, found an empty bedroom.

Behind the third door and the first on his right, he found a master bedroom, a king size bed facing a glass wall, which on a clear day probably had a gorgeous view of downtown Reno’s colored lights, but today he saw only fog. He was backing out of the empty room, when he heard something knocking about. He turned toward the sound, saw a door, the master bath or a walk-in closet.

He started for it as something banged into it from the other side and he instinctively knew somebody was kicking it.

He pulled it open and found the two girls. Their hands were bound behind their backs with plastic handcuffs and they had grey duct tape covering their mouths, wrapped around their heads. Their eyes were wide open, so apparently Manny had lied about them being drugged.

“
I’ll get you out of here.” He worked his index fingers between the duct tape and Amy Eisenhower’s mouth and pulled it down over her chin, till it was wrapped around her neck, turning it into a grey necklace.

“
Ouch.”

“
Yeah, Amy I know that probably hurt,” Mouledoux said. “Sorry.”

“
Do Alicia,” Amy said.

“
Right.” Mouledoux repeated the process with Alicia, who immediately gasped in as much air as she could.

“
You okay?” Amy said.

“
Get me out of here and give me a gun,” Alicia said. “So I can kill that son of a bitch.”

“
She’s okay,” Mouledoux said.

Then another explosion ripped through the night.

* * *

Lila threw the grenade launcher over the cliff, pulled her Glock from her shoulder holster as Izzy unslung the riot gun.

“
You can use that?”

“
You betcha,” Izzy said.

“
You’ve got five rounds, make ’em count.”

“
Make ’em count, yeah, you can count on it.”

“
Then let’s rock and roll.”

“
Okay.” Izzy sucked in a deep breath, inhaling the eerie fog, which seemed to give her courage.

“
We’ll go in through the back, shooting anything that moves. Then we’ll bust out the front door and kill the rest of them.”

“
Got it.”

* * *

Like the first blast, the second blast knocked Manny Wayne on his ass. He didn’t hear it, but he felt it as the force of the explosion just outside the front facing window and it blew him across the room. No glass this time, the first explosion had seen to that, and the pain didn’t last long, because he smacked the side of his kauri wood desk with the side of his head and the world went dark.

* * *

Lila kicked open the back door with a force Izzy didn’t know a human could possess, ran through a laundry room with Izzy hard pressed to keep up. In the kitchen, Izzy was surprised to see it empty. Lila swept right through it and on into a dining room, then into a spacious living room that looked like it was straight out of a western movie. The front windows had been blown out. There was blood on the carpet.

“
This way,” Lila passed an entry way, went through an open door and into a large room that had been made into some kind of office. Animal heads on the wall. A hunter’s lair. An expensive desk, cowhide couch, hardwood floor with an oval carpet and a dead man in the center of it with half his head gone. A bloody mess.

“
That’s Manny Wayne,” Lila pointed to another man face down on the floor, by the foot of a dark wood desk. Blood covered his back. He looked dead.