did security consulting.”
“I like to keep my hand in on a lot of different things,” Adam
said.
“What I’d like to know,” Sherlock said, handing Rollo another
hot dog with lots of down-home yellow mustard slathered on it, “is
why you didn’t find out who it was right away. The guy was an addict?
That kind of thing isn’t easy to hide.”
Adam actually flushed. He played with his fork, didn’t meet her
eyes. He cleared his throat. “Well, the thing is that the son-in-law
wasn’t around for those three days I was checking things out. His wife
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was protecting him, said he had the flu, that he was really contagious,
et cetera. She swore to me and to her father that Irving wouldn’t even
consider doing something like that, no, it had to be a crazy, or a left-wing
conspiracy. She was so–well–damned believable.”
“Good thing you were there to deflect the guy’s knife,” Rollo
said.
“That’s the truth,” Adam said.
Rollo sat down at the kitchen table, squeezing in between
Savich and Becca. Adam said on a deep sigh, “I just heard that the
wife is trying to get the husband out of there. It could start all over
again.”
“Well, shit,” Rollo said. “Not much justice around, is there?”
Then Chuck came in and Rollo, still half a hog dog left, saluted
and went back outside.
“It won’t be long now,” Savich said. “I feel it. Things will happen.”
He took a last bite of a tofu hot dog, sighed with pleasure, and
hugged his wife.
Things didn’t happen until later.
They were all in the living room drinking coffee, planning, arguing,
brainstorming. There was no activity outside. Everything
was buttoned down tight, until at exactly ten o’clock a bullet shattered
one of the front windows, glass exploded inward, carrying
shreds of curtain with it.
“Down!” Savich yelled.
But it wasn’t a simple bullet that came through the window to
strike the floor molding on the far side of the living room, it was a
tear gas bullet. Thick gray smoke gushed out even before it struck
the molding.
“Oh, damn,” Adam said. “Back into the kitchen. Now!”
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Another tear gas bullet exploded through the window. They
were coughing, covering their faces, running toward the back of
the house.
They heard men’s shouts, sporadic gunfire, sharp and loud in the
night. The front door burst open and Tommy the Pipe ran in, his
face covered with his jacket. “Out, guys, quick. Through the front
door, the back’s not covered well enough.”
“He shot tear gas bullets,” Adam said between choking coughs.
“He’s probably using a CAR-15, behind our perimeter. Come
on out.”
They coughed their heads off, tears streaming down their faces.
Savich found himself with Becca’s nose pressed into his armpit.
“We’ve got to get him,” Adam shouted, coughing, choking, his
eyes streaming tears. “Just another minute to get over this and we’ll
start scouring.”
It took another seven minutes before they headed out in the
general direction of where the tear gas bullets must have been shot
toward the front windows.
They found tire tracks, nothing else, until Adam called out,
“Look here.”
Everyone gathered around Adam, who was on his haunches. He
held up a shell casing that was four inches long and about an inch
and a half in diameter. “Tommy the Pipe was right. He used a
CAR-15–that’s a compact M16,” he added to Becca, “stands for
carbine automatic rifle.”
Savich found the other shell casing and was tossing it back and
forth.
“But how can tear gas come from a gun?” Becca said. “I thought
they were canisters or something like that. That’s what I’ve always
seen in movies and on TV.”
“That’s real old-hat now,” Adam said. “This smaller Ml6 is real
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portable, you could carry it under your trench coat. It’s got this
telescoping collapsible barrel. The SEALs use this stuff. What you
do is simply mount an under-barrel tubular grenade launcher and
fire away with your tear gas projectiles. It’s wicked.”
Sherlock said, “He’s obviously connected and very well trained.
Got all the latest goodies. And just where would he get all this
stuff?”
And Adam thought: Krimakov.