Miraculously, only two men were hurt. Werner was one of them. It felt as though he’d been shot in the back. The rifleman pulled the door open and ran out with his spotter behind. The others went next, one of them helping Werner while another hobbled on a sprained ankle.
The Princess was next. She was taller than Cooley, and managed a look that contained more than mere contempt. The little man spun her around roughly to tie her hands.
“We have big plans for you,” he promised when he finished.
“You little scum, I bet you don’t even know how,” Sissy said. It earned her a vicious slap. Robby watched, waiting for the blond-haired one to get in the clear. Finally he did, moving back toward the others . . .
Chapter 26
The Sound of Freedom
Pellets fired from a shotgun disperse radially at a rate of one inch per yard of linear travel. A lightning flash blazed through the windows, and Ryan cringed on hearing the thunder immediately after — then realized it had followed too quickly to be thunder. The shot pattern had missed his head by three feet, and before he understood what had passed by him, Blondie’s head snapped back, exploding into a cloud of red as his body fell backward to crash against a table leg. Blackie was looking out the window in the corner and turned to see his comrade go down without knowing how or why. His eyes searched frantically for a second, then a red circle the size of a 45-rpm record appeared in his chest and he was flung against the wall. Shorty was tying up Cathy’s hands and concentrating a little too much. He hadn’t recognized the first shot for what it was. He did with the second — too late.
The Prince sprang at him, knocking him down with a lowered shoulder before himself falling on the floor. Jack leaped over the coffee table and kicked wildly at Shorty’s head. He connected, but lost his balance doing so and fell backward. Shorty was stunned for a moment, then shook it off and moved toward the dinner table, where his gun was. Ryan lurched to his feet too, and threw himself on the terrorist’s legs. The Prince was back up now. Shorty threw a wild punch at him and tried to kick Ryan off his legs — then stopped when the warm muzzle of a shotgun pressed against his nose.
“You hold it right there, sucker, or I’ll blow your head off.”
Cathy already had the ropes shucked off her hands, and untied Jack first. He went over to Blondie. The body was still twitching. Blood was still pumping from the surreal nightmare that had been a human face thirty seconds before. Jack took the Uzi from his hands, and a spare magazine. The Prince did the same with Blackie, whose body was quite still.
“Robby,” Jack said as he examined the safety-selector switch on the gun. “Let’s get the hell away from here.”
“Second the motion. Jack, but where to?” Jackson pushed Shorty’s head against the floor. The terrorist’s eyes crossed almost comically on the business end of the Remington shotgun. “I expect he might know something useful. How’d you plan to get away, boy?”
“No.” It was all Cooley could muster at the moment. He realized that he was, after all, the wrong man for this kind of job.
“That the way it is?” Jackson asked, his voice a low, angry rasp. “You listen to me, boy. That lady over there, the one you called niggah — that’s my wife, boy, that’s my lady. I saw you hit her. So, I already got one good reason to kill you, y’dig?” Robby smiled wickedly, and let the shotgun trace a line down to Shorty’s crotch. “But I ain’t gonna kill ya. I’ll do somethin’ lots worse –”
“I’ll make a girl outa you, punk.” Robby pushed the muzzle against the man’s zipper. “Think fast, boy.”
Jack listened to his friend in amazement. Robby never talked like this. But it was convincing. Jack believed that he’d do it.
So did Cooley: “Boats . . . boats at the base of the cliff.”
“That’s not even clever. Say goodbye to ’em, boy.” The angle of the shotgun changed fractionally.
“Boats! Two boats at the base of the cliff. There are two ladders –”
“How many watching them?” Jack demanded.
“One, that’s all.”
Robby looked up. “Jack?”
“People, I suggest we go steal some boats. That firefight outside is getting closer.” Jack ran to his closet and got coats for everyone. For Robby he picked up his old Marine field jacket that Cathy hated so much. “Put this on, that white shirt is too damned visible.”
“Here.” Robby handed over Jack’s automatic. “I got a box of rounds for the shotgun.” He started transferring them from his pants to the jacket pockets and then hefted the last Uzi over his shoulder. “We’re leaving friendlies behind. Jack,” he added quietly.
Ryan didn’t like it either. “I know, but if they get him, they win — and this ain’t no place for women and kids, man.”
“Okay, you’re the Marine.” Robby nodded. That was that.
“Let’s get outa here. I have the point. I’m going to take a quick look-see. Rob, you take Shorty for now. Prince, you take the women.” Jack reached down and grabbed Dennis Cooley by the throat. “You screw up, you’re dead. No fartin’ around with him, Robby, just waste him.”
“That’s a rog.” Jackson backed away from the terrorist. “Up slow, punk.”
Jack led them through the shattered doors. The .two dead agents lay crumpled on the wood deck, and he hated himself for not doing something about it, but Ryan was proceeding on some sort of automatic control that the Marine Corps had programmed into him ten years before. It was a combat situation, and all the lectures and field exercises were flooding back into his consciousness. In a moment he was drenched by the falling sheets of rain. He trotted down the stairs and looked around the house.
Longley and his men were too busy dealing with the threat to their front to notice what was approaching from behind. The British security officer fired four rounds at an advancing black figure and had the satisfaction of seeing him react from at least one hit when a hammering impact buried him against a tree. He rebounded off the rough bark and half turned to see yet another black-clad shape holding a gun ten feet away. The gun flashed again. Within seconds the woodline was quiet.
“Dear God,” the rifleman muttered. Running in a crouch, he passed the bodies of five agents, but there wasn’t time for that. He and his spotter went down next to a bush. The rifleman activated his night scope and tracked on the woodline a few hundred yards ahead. The green picture he got on the imaging tube showed men dressed in dark clothes heading into the woodline.
“I count eleven,” the spotter said.
“Yeah,” the rifleman agreed. His bolt-action sniper rifle was loaded with .308 caliber match rounds. He could hit a moving three-inch target the first time, every time, at over two hundred yards, but his mission for the moment was reconnaissance, to gather information and forward it to the team leader. Before the team could act, they had to know what the hell was going on, and all they had now was chaos.
“Werner, this is Paulson. I count what looks like eleven bad guys moving into the trees between us and the house. They appear to be armed with light automatic weapons.” He pivoted the rifle around. “Looks like six of them down in the yard. Lots of good guys down — Jesus, I hope there’s ambulances on the way.”
“Do you see any friendlies around?”
“Negative. Recommend that you move in from the other side. Can you give me a backup here?”
“Sending one now. When he gets there, move in carefully. Take your time, Paulson.”
“Right.”
To the south, Werner and two other men advanced along the treeline. Their night-camouflage clothing was a hatchwork of light green, designed by computer, and even in the lightning they were nearly invisible.
Something had just happened. Jack saw a sudden flurry of fire, then nothing. Despite what he’d told Robby, he didn’t like running away from the scene. But what else could he do? There was an unknown number of terrorists out there. He had only three armed men to protect three women and a child, with their backs to a cliff. Ryan swore and returned to the others.
“Okay, Shorty, show me the way down,” Ryan said, pressing the muzzle of his Uzi against the man’s chest.
“Right there.” The man pointed, and Ryan swore again.
In all the time they’d lived here. Jack’s only concern with the cliff was to keep away from it, lest it crumble under him or his daughter. The view from his house was magnificent enough, but the cliffs height meant that from the house there was an unseen dead zone a thousand yards wide which the terrorists had used to approach. And they’d used ladders to climb up — of course, that’s what ladders are for! Their placements were marked the way it said in every field manual in the world, with wooden stakes wrapped with white gauze bandaging, to be seen easily in the dark.