“Have you guys been working together since your service in the military?”
“The sergeant and I have. The other guys here served in the military around the same time we did, but not with us. Well, I’ll be damned!”
A large black man still wearing his sunglasses walked into the room. Sergeant O’Donnell embraced him.
“Now, that man we did fight with in ’Nam,” said Riggs, standing to embrace the man himself.
“Mack,” the sergeant said, “meet your new best friend. Mack Maddox, this is Corporal Bic Green. He’s going to snipe for us, and you’re going to spot for him.” The sergeant patted the large man on the back. “We haven’t worked together since ’75, but this time I figured I had ten million reasons to get this recluse to come out of hiding and finally join us for a job.”
“Good to meet you, Mack.” A massive hand thrust out to greet him.
Mack shook it. “Corporal.”
“Call me Bic. If you’re going to be my spotter, we need to be on a first-name basis.”
“Bic, it is.”
“Here’s the contract with Templeton,” O’Donnell said, holding out a document. “It’s pretty standard, but I need you to sign it so we can get started.”
Bic removed his shades to read the document.
Something about the man’s eyes. They were like an albino’s eyes. The irises seemed to glow red, surrounding pupils the size of pinheads. Mack felt that if Bic looked up from the contract and met his gaze, his stare would pierce him to his soul.
“Well, listen,” said Mack, “There’s a turkey sandwich with my name on it. I’m gonna grab some lunch. Meet back here?”
“Be ready in thirty minutes,” said Bic, his eyes still on the contract. “I want to have our ghillie suits ready before dusk.”
“Yessir.”
A couple minutes later, Riggs joined Mack at the kitchen table for lunch. He caught Mack glancing over at Bic and said in a calm, soft voice, “If you know what’s good for you, don’t ask him.”
“Hm?”
“His eyes,” said Riggs. “Don’t ask him about his eyes.”
“Well, I didn’t plan on it, but thanks for the warning.”
“I’m serious, Mack. I’ll tell you a story, then drop it if you know what’s good for you.”
Mack nodded.
“It was on one godawful rainy night back in ‘Nam, and we were tracking across an open field toward a part of the jungle with a double canopy of trees, looking for a dry place to sleep for the night. Suddenly, a bunch of VC start pouring in out of nowhere, like they were coming from the ground like ants.” Riggs’s jaw tensed as he continued. “We were caught in a crossfire. About fifty of them had the twelve of us pinned down in an open field with little cover.” Riggs shook his head. “They were picking us off like tin cans in target practice.
“I was scared stiff. All I could do was lie there in the wet grass with enemy fire coming from both directions, listening to the sounds of bullets whizzing by and snapping into or through everything around me, including my friends.
“About five feet from me, I heard an awful scream. It was Bic Green. In the dark, with the wet grass cover, I couldn’t tell where he was shot. As I got up the nerve to try to move to him and not get shot myself, he screamed louder.” Riggs’s eyes suddenly moistened, and hands started to tremble.
“I looked and I saw his eyes, glowing red, like he was possessed or something. I swear I thought I was seeing things. Then, from his knees, he jumped to his feet. Bullets were zippin’ by, but he just stood there, calm, like he knew he couldn’t be shot.
“He took off into a dead sprint toward Charlie and yelled so loud it was like a god was roaring through him. ‘It’s pork chop-eatin’ time!’ he says.”
The hair on Mack’s arms stood straight up as Riggs continued.
“I never saw anything like it in my life. The bullets lit up the air all around him, but they couldn’t hit him. He took out one gook after the other with his M-16. He must have killed at least ten of them by the time he made it to the tree line. They were missing him from ten feet away.
“In the tree line, he popped in and out from behind trees as he massacred one after another.
“They scrambled like mice as they yelled to one another, ‘NÓ LÀ MA ĐEN, NÓ LÀ MA ĐEN, NÓ LÀ MA ĐEN.’ Seconds after that they were gone, and all but four of us made it out alive, thanks to Bic.”
Riggs seemed lost in a distant, terrible memory. Mack put a hand on the man’s shoulder and gave a soft shake. “Hey, you alright?”
“Yeah, yes,” Riggs replied. “Those times… they never come back easy. And it’s just bad form to ask a man about the things that drive him crazy on the battlefield. Understand?”
“Yes,” said Mack. “Just curious though, what does nó là ma đen mean?”
“It means ‘It’s a black ghost.’”
112
“You ready?”
Mack almost jumped out of his shoes as he turned to see Bic standing in the entryway, his massive shoulders spanning the width of the door frame.
“Uh, sure, yeah.” Mack tried to answer calmly, but a rush of fear deadened his voice.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, suppressing a tremor of fear. He realized he could never tell Sergeant O’Donnell and Corporal Riggs what he suspected about Bic. This man had saved their lives in ’Nam. They were beholden to him. To sway them, he would need a little more evidence than something the guy said forty years ago.
Bic tossed him his BDUs. “I want to have our suits field-ready by dark.”
For the next hour, he and Bic worked on making ghillie suits by cutting brown and dark-green strips of burlap and tying them to the square netting attached to their jungle-pattern BDUs.
Bic unzipped the long black bag at his side and pulled out an M24-A2 Sniper Weapon System. Mack noted the rifle was field-ready, with camo tape on the barrel and stock, and mesh netting over the scope to cut down on reflections. Seeing the ten-round magazine in Bic’s hand sent electric chills through Mack. Did one of those bullets have Ralston Templeton’s name on it? Or his?
One thing he knew for sure: he couldn’t do anything unarmed. They had taken his weapon when he arrived.
Bic holstered a sidearm, then wordlessly gave Mack a Leupold spotting scope.
The cloudless night was cool, sprinkled with bright stars and lit by a full moon. The moonlight reflected off the still waters of the lake, providing ample light to see by. For the past two hours, Mack had been lying on the forest floor, peering through his spotter scope, checking in all directions for anything suspicious. The hundred-yard stretch of dense trees between the main house—where Templeton was located—and the guest house seemed to be the most strategic location, so they had taken up station there. Mack worried about Gabriel and his love of Molotovs, but the location had a clear view of the main house to the north and the lake to the east, and it allowed them both cover and the chance to flee to other cover quickly if compromised.
He considered just shooting Bic right then and there. He’d justify it to the higher ups somehow.
“Mack,” Bic said calmly.
Mack looked toward him. Bic was so well-camouflaged that he couldn’t make him out, even from only two feet away.
“Look down at the lake. Under the boat dock, the middle extension.”
Mack turned his high-powered scope on the target. The main dock stretched west about fifty feet into the lake, branching out into shorter side docks.
“Keep your focus,” Bic continued. “If he’s there, he’ll make a move to get to the boat house next.”
“What if he’s already behind the boat house?”
“Already on it.” Bic picked up his two-way radio and thumbed the side-switch. “Sarge, get a couple of men to sweep the boat dock area. I may have seen something, not confirmed.”
Moments later, two figures armed with M-16s glided from t
he rear of the main house toward the boat house. Mack watched them disappear behind it. The next thirty seconds felt like minutes.
“I can’t see them,” Mack rasped.
“Confirm the dock area’s all clear,” Bic said into his radio.
Ten seconds passed with no response.
O’Donnell’s voice piped in. “Men, confirm all clear.”
Another silent ten seconds passed.
“Code red.” The sergeant’s voice, filtered through the two-way, was curiously devoid of emotion. The two men were probably dead, or lying somewhere mortally wounded.
With two of their group of ten already down in the first minute, Mack had to make a choice: shoot Bic now and deal with Gabriel, or... wait and see what came next.
What came next was a lit Molotov cocktail, thrown from the back side of the gabled roof of the boat house. The thing tumbled through the air like a flaming circus baton, heading straight for a large pine just fifty yards away.
113
Several hours had passed. Caroline was unsure how many. They were in the middle of a big waiting game, but the question was, for what?
Both she and Tidwell were seated in matching Queen Anne chairs, zip-tied at their wrists and ankles and bound to the chairs. The fine art in the study had been stripped from the walls, and almost all the furniture removed from the room. A single unshaded floor lamp provided light.
Caroline looked at Tidwell. The powerful, confident, well-spoken man she had been so attracted to ever since she first met him—when he came back to speak to her law class at Stanford—had just about broken. He looked like he might start to cry and beg these men for his life. She didn’t have the heart to tell him not to bother, that begging wouldn’t change a thing.
“We have to escape,” she whispered.
He looked at her, his eyes worn. “They’ll kill us.”
“Right,” she said, a current of rage growing in her gut. “Let’s go.”
He attempted to move his arms, which were zip-tied to each side of the chair’s back. “I can offer them money,” he pleaded.
“Money’s not going to work,”
“Then we’ll just have to give them whatever they want.”
Caroline looked at the man, realizing how worlds apart they really were.
It was just her now.
She awkwardly stood, still tied to the chair, and with small quick shuffles, backpedaled rapidly until she crashed into a nearby wall, shattering the hundred-year-old chair upon impact.
Scrambling on the floor to free her hands, she heard quick, charging footsteps. A man then snatched her to her feet.
Caroline struck the man in the side of the head with a piece of the chair. He stumbled backwards, dazed. She swung again.
The man recovered quicker than she had anticipated and caught the club in his hand.
He struck Caroline in the ribs with a vicious blow. She gasped for air, but quickly kicked the man in his midsection, then bashed him in the chin with an uppercut.
The man flew backward.
A bullet snapped into the floor inches from her feet.
“Enough,” another man yelled, pointing his gun at her.
“Come get some,” Caroline said, tears and sweat pouring down her face.
“How ‘bout I shoot you in the head if you don’t put that club down.”
“How ‘bout you go screw yourself.”
The third man reappeared in the room, aimed, and shot a dart into Caroline’s leg. She screamed as a jolt of pain coursed through her.
“You cowards,” she said as her senses went muggy.
She tried to charge at the two men. She went five steps and collapsed.
114
The lit bottle smacked against the tree and shattered. With a huge roar, the flames wrapped around both sides of the tree. The flames engulfed a soldier lying within its path. From a half a football field away, Mack watched as the man rolled on the ground furiously, shrieking like a banshee, fire and smoke all over him until, mercifully, his screams and movements ceased.
Already, three down.
Mack looked to Bic for direction, but the big man was gone. His worst fear had just come to fruition. He squeezed the MP5 desperately and took cover behind a tree, flipping the gun’s safety switch. He wasn’t sure, but he assumed Bic had just begun his run to go kill Ralston Templeton. Added to that, without Bic, Mack was cut off from radio communication with the team. Even if he wanted to warn O’Donnell about Bic, he couldn’t.
Fully automatic weapon fire ripped through the silence. For a moment, Mack considered retreating deep into the forest and escaping with his life. Dressed as he was in heavy camouflage, he could make it. But he was there to do a job: to protect Ralston Templeton and bring down two killers.
He dropped and belly-crawled toward the main house. The shooting continued uninterrupted. Mack held his fire, reluctant to compromise his position, especially as he had no idea where the perp was situated. Or anyone else, for that matter.
He stopped at the edge of the dense forest, about twenty yards from the side of the main house. Rapid blue-white flashes of light were stabbing into the dark from nearly every direction. He couldn’t tell who was shooting at who. The estate had become pure chaos.
He peered through his scope, focusing on the shots fired from the boat house, and spotted a man firing an automatic weapon from that location. The gunman looked Hispanic, all right, but this man was at least fifty.
The cold steel of a large-bore pistol barrel pressed against his head.
“Hello, my little bullet-dodger,” said Gabriel.
Bic had taken his ghillie suit off, and was dressed now in BDU pants and a black T-shirt. He had entered Templeton’s house through the south wing, and was cautiously making his way deeper into the mansion. He wasn’t sure exactly what he was going to do. All he could think about was his little Gracie. But when this was all done, he was going to hunt down his employer and kill him. That dirty snake had crossed the line, and he would die for it.
He savored the coming slaughter like a long-awaited meal.
115
“Shhhhhhhh,” Gabriel whispered excitedly into Mack’s ear. “The wolf’s about to kill the chickens in the hen house,” he slurred, holding Mack from behind with one arm pulled behind his back, and the pistol jammed into his side.
Mack, now a human shield, felt confident he could escape Gabriel’s lax grip, but he couldn’t escape the gun.
Entering through a busted window on the first floor, Gabriel half-pushed, half-dragged Mack through the eerily-silent main house. The Templeton mansion was essentially a vast maze composed of a few open living areas and a warren of private rooms. Mack had studied the schematics and knew the plan. They would have to go upstairs or use an elevator to get to where the Templetons were nestled on the second floor.
Gabriel squeezed Mack’s arm as he yanked him from the hallway into a huge study. “Not a noise or I’ll make a tunnel out of your head right here,” he commanded as he threw Mack into the front corner of the room. “On your knees, hands on your head, pig.”
Mack did as he was told. Rapid fire exchanges still stuttered on from outside, initially more than half a dozen weapons fired, but these had diminished to two or three pops now.
Gabriel retreated from the doorway and positioned himself along the wall by the door. His whole body coiled as he prepared to strike. Seconds later, a line of at least twenty bullets shot from the hallway popped through the wall and into the study. A priceless oil painting sprang off the wall and crashed to the floor, and several bullets snapped into the large mahogany desk before angling up into the oversized flat-screen monitor on top of it, shattering it completely.
Gabriel dropped to the floor and bear-crawled behind the heavy desk. As he did, he looked to Mack with his weapon pointed at him, making sure he understood that if he moved, he would die.
Mack, still at the front corner of the room, wasn’t su
re how he had avoided being shot, but he was glad he was no longer directly behind Gabriel, who had disappeared from view except for the heel of his left shoe, which poked out from behind the desk. He was half-thinking of making a run for the doorway—hoping whoever was on the other side of the wall would recognize him instantly and not fill him full of lead—when he heard a distinct sound. A heavy metallic object had rolled fast into the room across the hardwood floor.
“You putas,” Gabriel spat, diving under the desk.
Just then, the world’s biggest giant roared, and everything went white.
He’d instinctively balled himself up when he saw the grenade roll in.
After the explosion, he opened his eyes, astonished not to be blind. When Mack felt heavy footsteps thudding across the floor, he looked up to see Bic charging into the room, spraying the desk with M-16 fire. Like a football player hitting a blocking sled, Bic dropped the rifle and pushed the massive wooden object across the floor. He didn’t stop until the desk was flush against the back wall of the room, trapping Gabriel underneath it.
Bic retrieved his M-16 off the floor, then contemptuously removed his sunglasses, tossing them aside.
Time seemed to slow to a crawl as Gabriel, from underneath the desk, unloaded his clip in a random pattern in a last-ditch effort to hit Bic. Mesmerized by Bic’s glowing red eyes, Mack watched as Bic returned fire. Flashes spat from the end of the gun barrel, wooden splinters erupting in all directions as the bullets snapped into the desk.
A solid thump thrummed faintly through the floor from under the desk. At first Mack assumed it was Gabriel’s head hitting the floor, but he knew better.
“He has grenades!” Mack screamed.
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