Jenkintown, Pennsylvania
December 19, 2:15 P.M. EST
The two people at the door did not look like soldiers or terrorists. They wore long coats and felt hats. Each one of them carried a valise and wore a bright smile.
“Have you heard the word of God today?” asked the shorter of the two, a blonde woman with ice blue eyes.
“Have you been saved?” asked the other, a black man with scars on his face. He handed me a copy of
The Watchtower
.
“Well, hallelujah,” I said, and stepped back to let DeeDee and Top enter the Taylor household. I checked the street and saw that it was empty. No sign of Echo Team’s vehicle.
As I closed the door, Top said, “We’re parked two blocks over; engine’s running for when you give the word. We have the TacV.”
“Deployment?”
“John Smith’s on the roof of a house down the street. Khalid’s spotting for him. Bunny’s at the wheel waiting on your word.”
Circe and Amber Taylor had come into the entrance foyer.
“Mrs. Taylor, this is DeeDee Whitman and Bradley Sims. They are part of my team and they will be escorting you and your children to a secure location.”
“Just the two of them? He said that they—”
“We have the whole team with us, ma’am,” said Top. He had a deep voice and a fatherly tone. “And at need we can bring a world of trouble down on anyone who tries to hurt you or yours. Count on it.”
She looked into his eyes, searching him, reading him. She must have found something to believe in, because she suddenly threw her arms around his barrel chest and hugged him fiercely. He stroked her hair as she sobbed.
Top inspires that kind of confidence in people. I don’t.
DeeDee stepped aside and touched her ear jack. “Scream Queen to Dancing Duck, how’s the weather?” She listened. “Okay … copy that.”
“What have you got?” I asked quietly.
“Zips in the wires, Boss,” she said. “A white van just drove past Bunny and turned onto this street.” She knelt and fished something out of her valise. It wasn’t a religious tract. She handed me a tiny earbud and a booster unit. I clipped the booster to my belt and screwed the bug in my ear. “Team on one, Command on two.”
She also handed me three extra magazines and I stuffed them into my pockets. DeeDee had an M4 slung under her coat.
I tapped the bud once. “Echo, Echo, Cowboy on deck. Call signs here on out.”
I heard Bunny say, “Welcome to the jungle, Boss.”
“Sit rep.”
“One white van, two in the front, unknown in the back.”
“Got it,” said Khalid. Smith wouldn’t comment. He hardly ever speaks. “We have two hostiles on foot in the back alley. Hold on. Make that four hostiles. Two heading northeast. Two coming from the west. Van has stopped. Counting hostiles. Looks like the driver and one other only.”
“Six?” complained Bunny. “That ain’t even a fight.”
“Keep it tight, Green Giant,” scolded Top.
“We need someone with a pulse,” I said. “I’m in the mood for a conversation.”
“Hooah,” they said.
I turned to Circe and Taylor. “Go get the kids. DeeDee, go with them. Quick and quiet. Do it now. Just coats and gloves. Don’t stop for anything else.”
I tapped the earbud and called Khalid. “Dancing Duck, did they leave anyone at the van?”
“Negative, Cowboy. Driver and the other are walking along the street. They’re passing your Explorer. Wait; hold on. Shit. The driver put his palm on the hood to feel for engine heat. They’re drawing guns.”
“Chatterbox,” I said.
“Got ’em.”
I hurried to the window and looked out just in time to see both of the men stagger backward and fall into the hedges that lined the street near where I’d parked. Less than a second, two perfect head shots. No sound at all. I couldn’t tell where the shots had come from, but Smith was the hammer of God up to 350 yards.
I turned at the sound of commotion and saw DeeDee herding Taylor and her kids out the cellar door.
“What’s happening? What’s going on?” the kids demanded. Then they saw Top and me standing in the foyer. Top had shed his disguise. Under the topcoat he wore black fatigues, body armor, and belts from which were slung the kinds of weapons most people only see on TV or in movies.
“W-what—?”
I started to say something, but Top Sims brushed past me. He knelt on
one knee. “Look, kids. There’s something happening and we’re here to protect you and your mom. I’m a kind of policeman. We all are. We’re going to take you and your mom to a safe place.”
“But … but …”
“There are a couple of bad men in the neighborhood. We need to take care of that, and we will. That’s what we do. But I need you guys to be brave and strong and help us get your mom to a safe place. Can you do that?”
Their eyes were the size of hubcaps and their mouths were little round “ohs,” but they both nodded. Top gave them a warmer smile than anything his enemies would believe him capable of.
“Okay, now this man here is the boss. You can call him Cowboy. That’s his—”
“That’s his call sign!” declared young Mark.
Top grinned and patted Mark’s arm. “Well, look at you! I’ll bet you know all about cops and bad guys.”
“Are there terrorists out there?” Mark asked, his eyes huge with excitement.
“They are bad men,” Top assured him, not using the word “terror.” “But we got that covered, ’cause there are more of my friends outside. We’re all going to get into a big truck and drive away to a nice safe place.”
I turned away and smiled. Top was a dad; I didn’t have any kids. Right then, I’d have gone with him to an ice-cream shop or a ball game.
“Cowboy, Cowboy,” said Khalid, “be advised. Company in sixty. Looks like back and west side. Two and two.”
I tapped the earbud. “Chatterbox … Sergeant Rock’s coming out with friendlies. Keep ’em safe.”
“’K,’” he said.
“Green Giant,” I growled to Bunny, “we’re waiting on you. Bring Black Bess to the front door. Quick and noisy.”
“Rock and roll,” he answered.
To Top I said, “Get the kids into the car. Scream Queen, you’re with me.”
In the distance I could hear the rumble of a heavy engine as the big DMS TacV thundered down the street toward us. Ghost started barking like mad and I knew that he sniffed the hostiles.
“Now!” I yelled, and jerked the door open. Ghost stood at the edge of the porch, craning his neck around toward the back, barking with heavy monster barks. Bunny screeched to a halt and leaped out. The kids—and even Circe—goggled a little at the size of the driver, but he waved them on and opened the back door, fanning a big IMI Desert Eagle over their heads as they ran.
From inside the house I could hear glass breaking as the hostiles smashed their way in through the back door and side window. With the barks and yells and engine noise, they had to know that a rescue attempt was in progress, so they weren’t going for stealth. They opened fire at once, filling the house with hot rounds as they crowded inside, trying to flush us out toward the two men from the van. They apparently didn’t know that they were two head shots past the point where that plan was going to work.
I flattened out against the living room wall behind the couch with Ghost on the floor beside me. I told him to be quiet and ready. He looked ready to tackle Godzilla. DeeDee climbed to the fifth step on the staircase and crouched low.
The hostiles were working in pairs. Two out front, the others a room and a half behind them. Nice combat spacing. We could kill them all, but we couldn’t capture them all.
The first two men rushed through the TV room and into the living room, heading straight for the open front door. We let them pass; then DeeDee and I wheeled around the edges of the wall and opened up on the other two. It was a classic ambush and they didn’t have a chance. We put three shots in each and then spun off of that, closing to zero distance with the other shooters, who were skidding to a stop, scrambling to turn, realizing that they’d been mousetrapped.
DeeDee reached her target half a second before I did, so I got a peripheral view of how she handled him. She used the stock of her rifle to slap his AK-47 wide; then instead of checking her swing and bringing the stock back for a head shot, she continued the circular swing of the weapon and caught him in the face with the barrel. The guy’s nose and upper teeth exploded, but before he could scream DeeDee kneed him in the groin; as he bent forward she knee-kicked him in his broken nose.
The second guy was about my size and he knew that he was too close to
use a long weapon, so he tried to slam me across the chest with the length of it. I checked my forward momentum so that his thrust stopped a half inch short. I didn’t have a long gun and didn’t need one. Ghost shot past me and under his gun and hit the shooter teeth first in the crotch. He screamed and tried to club the dog, but Ghost was trained to fight armed men. He released the first bite and jumped up inside the circle of the man’s arms, biting fast and hard, tearing muscle and tendon and cracking bone so fast it looked like the shooter had thrust his arms into a leaf shredder.
“Off!” I called, and that fast Ghost jumped sideways. He crouched and growled, fur up along his spine, mouth bloody, eyes fierce.
The shooter went down in a messy heap and curled into a fetal ball, wrapping his head with his ruined arms. I kicked his gun out of reach.
Outside, the TacV roared away.
I stepped back to offer cover while DeeDee slapped Speedcuffs on the two shooters. One was unconscious, the other screaming.
“Juice him,” I ordered, and DeeDee pulled a syringe from her kit and jabbed it into the screaming man’s arm. It wasn’t painkiller. His eyes rolled up and he passed out, sagging to the floor with a thump. Then she applied a fast field dressing to the critical wounds.
I tapped my earbud.
“Cowboy to Echo. House party is over. Got two sleepy guests.”
“Copy that,” said Khalid. “Area is secure.”
“Green Giant, talk to me.”
“Class trip is away,” said Bunny. “I got six police units inbound to your twenty.”
“Outstanding,” I said.
Khalid showed up at the door and I tossed him my keys. He brought the Explorer over and we loaded the prisoners, moving with haste and only marginal care. We needed them alive. Comfort wasn’t an issue.
By the time the cops converged on the house, we were in the wind, following Black Bess north along Route 611.
The Seven Kings
December 19, 2:00 P.M. EST
Sebastian Gault set down his phone and stared at it for a long moment. Then with a growl of sudden anger he swept everything off his desk—phone, laptop, whiskey glass. It all crashed to the floor.
A moment later he was crouched over the debris, brushing ice cubes and broken glass off his phone. He dried it on the front of his shirt and then sat on the edge of the desk and opened the phone. It still worked. He punched a number.
“Yes,” said a soft voice.
“I just heard from Fear.”
“As have I,” said Santoro.
“Do you have a team in the area?”
“There is one very close; I can pull them off of that job and put them on this. A matter of minutes; however, taking action would be ill advised, yes? Things are not—”
“Don’t tell me what things are
not,
god damn it. I want you to do something right fucking now! And I want it splashed across the wire services. I want everything else wiped off the sodding news by it. Do you understand me?”
Gault’s voice had risen to a banshee shriek.
The ensuing silence was so complete that Gault wondered if Santoro had hung up on him. If that little Spanish prick had, he’d skin him alive.
“Is this also the will of the Goddess?” Santoro asked mildly.
“Yes.”
Another moment of silence.
“Very well,” said the killer, and he disconnected.