“What is it?” yelled Jason. The hand kept moving back toward the edge of the blotter, the tapping more rapid. “Below? Underneath?” With minuscule—nearly imperceptible—motions of his head, Cactus nodded in the affirmative. “Under the desk!” shouted Bourne, beginning to understand. He knelt down to the right of Cactus and felt under the thin top drawer, then to the side— He found it! A button. Again gently, he moved the heavy rolling chair inches to the left and centered his eyes on the button. Beneath it, in tiny white letters on a black plastic strip, was the answer.
Aux. Alarm
Jason pressed the button; instantly the shrieking pandemonium was cut off. The ensuing silence was nearly as deafening, the adjustment to it nearly as terrifying.
“How were you hit?” asked Bourne. “How long ago? … If you can talk, just whisper, no energy at all, do you understand?”
“Oh, Br’er, you’re too much,” whispered Cactus, in pain. “I was a black cabdriver in Washington, man. I’ve been here before. It ain’t fatal, boy, I gotta slug in the upper chest.”
“I’ll get a doctor right away—our friend Ivan, incidentally—but if you can, tell me what happened while I move you to the floor and look at the damage.” Jason slowly, carefully lowered the old man off the chair and onto the throw rug beneath the bay window. He tore off Cactus’s shirt; the bullet had gone through the flesh of the left shoulder. With short, swift movements Bourne ripped the shirt into strips and tightly wrapped a primitive bandage around his friend’s chest and between the underarm and the shoulder. “It’s not much,” said Jason, “but it’ll hold you for a while. Go on.”
“He’s out there, Br’er!” Cactus coughed weakly, lying back on the floor. “He’s got a big mother ’fifty-seven magnum with a silencer; he pinned me through the window, then smashed it and climbed inside. … He—he …”
“Easy! Don’t talk, never mind—”
“I gotta. The brothers out there, they ain’t got no hardware. He’ll pick ’em off! … I played deep dead and he was in a hurry—oh, was he in a hurry! Look over there, will ya?” Jason swung his head in the direction of Cactus’s gesture. A dozen or so books had been yanked out of a shelf on the side wall and strewn on the floor. The old man continued, his voice growing weaker. “He went over to the bookcase like in a panic, until he found what he wanted … then to the door, that ’fifty-seven ready for bear, if you follow me. … I figured it was you he was after, that he’d seen you through the window go out to the other room, and I tell ya, I was workin’ my right knee like a runnin’ muskrat ’cause I found that alarm button an hour ago and knew I had to stop him—”
“Easy!”
“I gotta tell you … I couldn’t move my hands ’cause he’d see me, but my knee hit that sucker and the siren damn near blew me out of the chair. … The honky bastard fell apart. He slammed the door, locked it, and beat his way out of here back through the window.” Cactus’s neck arched back, the pain and the exhaustion overtaking him. “He’s out there, Br’er Rabbit—”
“That’s enough!” ordered Bourne as he cautiously reached up, snapping off the desk lamp, leaving the dim light from the hallway through the shattered door as the only illumination. “I’m calling Alex; he can send the doctor—”
Suddenly, from somewhere outside, there was a high-pitched scream, a roar of shock and anguish Jason knew only too well. So did Cactus, who whispered, his eyes shut tight: “He got one. That fucker got one of the brothers!”
“I’m reaching Conklin,” said Jason, pulling the phone off of the desk. “Then I’ll go out and get him. … Oh, Christ! The line’s out—it’s been cut!”
“That honky knows his way around here.”
“So do I, Cactus. Stay as quiet as you can. I’ll be back for you—”
There was another scream, this lower, more abrupt, an expulsion of breath more than a roar.
“May sweet Jesus forgive me,” muttered the old black man painfully, meaning the words. “There’s only one brother left—”
“If anyone should ask forgiveness, it’s me,” cried Bourne, his voice guttural, half choking. “Goddamn it! I swear to you, Cactus, I never thought, never even considered, that anything like this would happen.”
“ ’Course you didn’t. I know you from back to the old days, Br’er, and I never heard of you asking anyone to risk anything for you. … It’s always been the other way around.”
“I’m going to pull you over,” interrupted Jason, tugging on the rug, maneuvering Cactus to the right side of the desk, the old man’s left hand close enough to reach the auxiliary alarm. “If you hear anything or see anything or feel anything, turn on the siren.”
“Where are you going? I mean how?”
“Another room. Another window.”
Bourne crept across the floor to the mutilated door, lurched through it and ran into the living room. At the far end was a pair of French doors that led to an outside patio; he recalled seeing white wrought-iron lawn furniture on the south end of the house when he was with the guards. He twisted the knob and slipped outside, pulling the automatic from his belt, shutting the right door, and crouching, making his way to the shrubbery at the edge of the grass. He had to move quickly. Not only was there a third life in the balance, a third unrelated, unwarranted death, but a killer who could be his shortcut to the crimes of the new Medusa, and those crimes were his bait for the Jackal! A diversion, a magnet, a trap … the flares—part of the equipment he had brought with him to Manassas. The two emergency “candles” were in his left rear pocket, each six inches long and bright enough to be seen for miles; ignited together yet spaced apart they would light up Swayne’s property like two searchlights. One in the south drive, the other by the kennels, possibly waking the drugged dogs, bewildering them, infuriating them—Do it! Hurry.
Jason scrambled across the lawn, his eyes darting everywhere, wondering where the stalking killer was and how the innocent quarry that Cactus had enlisted was evading him. One was experienced, the other not, and Bourne could not permit the latter’s life to be wasted.
It happened! He had been spotted! Two cracks on either side of him, bullets from a silenced pistol slicing the air. He reached the south leg of the paved drive and, racing across it, dived into the foliage. Ripping a flare from his pocket, he put down the weapon, snapped up the flame of his lighter, ignited the fuse and threw the sizzling candle to his right. It landed on the road; in seconds it would spew out the blinding fire. He ran to his left beneath the pine trees toward the rear of the estate, his lighter and the second flare in one hand, the automatic in the other. He was parallel to the kennels; the flare in the road exploded into bluish-white flames. He ignited the second and threw it end over end, arcing it forty yards away to the front of the kennels. He waited.
The second flare burst into sputtering fire, two balls of blinding white light eerily illuminating the house and grounds of the estate’s south side. Three of the dogs began to wail, then made feeble attempts to howl; soon their confused anger would be heard. A shadow. Against the west wall of the white house—it moved, caught in the light between the flare by the kennels and the house. The figure darted for the protection of the shrubbery; it crouched, an immobile but intrusive part of the silhouetted foliage. Was it the killer or the killer’s target, the last “brother” recruited by Cactus? … There was one way to find out, and if it was the former and he was a decent marksman, it was not the best tactic, but still it was the quickest.
Bourne leaped up from the underbrush, yelling in full view as he lunged to his right, at the last half second plunging his foot into the soft dirt and pivoting, lowering his body and diving to his left. “Head for the cabin!” he roared. And he got his answer. Two more spits, two more cracks in the air, the bullets digging up the earth to his right. The killer was good; perhaps not an expert but good enough. A .357 held six shells; five had been fired, but there had been sufficient time to reload the emptied cylinder. Another strategy—quickly!
Suddenly another figure appeared, a man running up the road toward the rear of Flannagan’s cabin. He was in the open—he could be killed!
“Over here, you bastard!” screamed Jason, jumping up and firing his automatic blindly into the shrubbery by the house. And then he got another answer, a welcome one. There was a single spit, a single crack in the air and then no more. The killer had not reloaded! Perhaps he had no more shells—whatever, the primary target was now on the high ground. Bourne raced out of the bushes and across the lawn through the opposing light of the flares; the dogs were now really aroused, the yelps and throated growls of attack becoming louder. The killer ran out of the shrubbery and into the road, racing through shadows toward the front gates. Jason had the bastard, he knew it. The gates were closed, the Medusan was cornered. Bourne roared: “There’s no way out, Snake Lady! Make it easy on yourself—”