by Scott Blade
Chang said, “Who’re you?”
“Shut up!” Cameron said and burst through the shattered glass like a one-man SWAT team. He said, “On the ground! Now!”
Chang wasn’t the kind of guy to be intimidated—not after the things that he had seen and done—but one look at Cameron’s face, and he dropped like a sack of potatoes.
Cameron heard a dog bark and saw a big dog covered in curly white hair, a mix of God knew what. It ran down the stairs and barked at the guy on the ground. The dog didn’t even look at him. It seemed to be interested only in restraining the guy on the ground.
Cameron flicked the gun up and pointed it toward the opposite hallway that led through a dining room and into the kitchen.
Raggie said, “There’s two more!”
“I know,” said Cameron. “Grab your mom, and get the hell outta here! Go through the backyard!”
Raggie stood bravely and led her mother by the hand out through the shattered glass of the French doors. Max stayed behind for another second, watching the guy on the ground and growling loudly. Then he darted out the door and chased after them.
Cameron stayed until he was sure they were out and away from harm, and then he looked at Chang and said, “If you move, I’ll kill you in a way you’ve never seen. Whatever did that shit to your face will seem like heaven compared to what I’ll do!”
The guy with no ears looked up at him, and Cameron knew he wouldn’t move. The guy had a fear in his eyes that Cameron had seen before. It was the kind of look you couldn’t fake. Cameron thought about shooting the guy just to be safe, but he’d already wasted enough time. Besides, with those shots fired, the neighboring Secret Service agents would be by soon enough. They’d find him and take care of him.
He walked back over to Grant’s body. He knelt down and picked up the silenced M9 that Grant had dropped. He tucked it under his armpit and held it there as he looked the body over. Seeing another gun tucked into Grant’s waistband, he pulled it out and checked it, one-handed. There were no bullets. It looked to Cameron like Grant had taken it off of the dead cop in the coffee table and ejected the rounds.
He looked back at the guy with no ears.
He asked, “You responsible for this?”
The guy looked up slowly and shook his head.
Cameron asked, “Are you the guy in charge?”
The guy said nothing.
Cameron dropped the empty M9 and pointed the silenced one at the man with no ears. “Name?”
The African guy said, “Chang.”
“You’re the rebel? The one Rowley thinks died ten years ago? He told me they took you prisoner.”
Chang said, “Sowe spared me. Taught me things.”
Cameron said, “He do that to you?”
Chang nodded with his hands behind his head.
“You the guy behind all of this?” he asked again.
Chang said nothing.
Cameron looked at the dead cop and said, “You responsible for that?”
Chang said, “Consequences. Casualty of war.”
Cause and effect. One thing led to another.
Cameron was taught never to use a gun in the field that he’d never test-fired before. So he test-fired the silenced M9. He aimed it at Chang and squeezed the trigger four times—three bullets for the dead cop and an extra for himself. He ejected the magazine and fired the chambered round into Chang also, making it a total of five bullets—and one very dead African.
The gun worked just fine, but he didn’t need it. So he ejected the clip and pulled the slide to empty the chamber. He tossed the silenced M9 and turned toward the hall that led to the kitchen. He glanced up the back stairs and thought, Two enemies left. He hoped he’d find them both in the kitchen, but he knew there was a second staircase at the front of the house. He figured if one of them was missing from the kitchen, he’d most likely be upstairs.
He headed quickly down the hall in a crouch. He stopped at an open doorway and peeked in, his head behind the MP5, stock jammed hard into his shoulder. His eyes hit the far corner and then darted to the others. Nothing there. Just empty furniture and darkness. He scrambled the rest of the way to a corner near the kitchen, just inside the dining room.
He heard gunshots—two very loud ones that sounded like cannons firing and three muffled ones. The two shots were from a .357 Magnum. No question. The other three were from a gun with a silencer attached. Unmistakable. He wasn’t sure what type of gun it was, but he figured it was Lane’s M9. Then there were three more shots that sounded like they came from a SIG Sauer—definitely Graine’s gun.
Cameron tucked in tight and took a quick glance around the kitchen doorframe. He saw Li crouched behind an island. He didn’t see Lane or Graine.
Li looked at him and gestured to an open doorway at the far corner. That’s where they were—on the other side. Probably hugging the wall.
Graine was an old man, a has-been cop, and a traitor who had misled his friends for years. He may have been a special ops soldier at one time, but that didn’t change the fact that he was a has-been.
Lane was a different story. He was from the same unit as Graine, but he was younger and had personal motivation. He also had a skill set that had probably only gotten better with time. More than likely he’d been running bullshit missions back in Africa for whoever that guy in the living room was. And there was something about him that Cameron knew all too well. He was a guy who thought he was still in his prime and, in a way, he was probably right.
What would Lane do here? he thought.
Simple—Lane knew Li wasn’t alone. They’d heard Cameron fire a three-round burst, and they had probably heard his voice. So Lane would instruct Graine, the weaker of the two, to stay behind and take care of Li while Lane headed to the second floor by way of the front staircase and then down the back stairs to flank Cameron from behind.
Cameron wished he knew some of those special ops hand signals that Li probably did. But he didn’t, so he did the best he could. He held his hand up and gave her the universal signal for stay put. And then he pointed up at the ceiling. She nodded. He wasn’t worried about her. She could handle herself.
Cameron leaped to his feet and ran in a crouch back the way he’d come, being careful to check every corner before turning it. He made his way back to the family room and stopped. The guy with no ears still lay face down on the floor, dead as a doornail. Cameron slumped back into the darkness of a far corner. He got down on one knee, pressed his back to the corner, and pointed the MP5 at the back staircase.
He waited. Seconds crept by slowly—and nothing. He waited longer. Still nothing. He barely blinked, moving his eyes from side to side and up and down, not keeping them trained on one single location for too long. Eyes had a tendency to blur when you stared at one thing for too long.
No one came.
He heard another two gunshots from the kitchen, and still he waited. The seconds ticked by. He counted them. The first shots from the SIG Sauer were one minute and ten seconds apart. And then the shots of the second set were spaced one minute and eleven seconds apart. The third set came, and there was one minute and nine seconds between. The spacing was intentional—an ambush.
He smiled and waited.
Finally, he heard a fourth set of two rounds fired at one minute and ten seconds from the last. Then he saw a foot creep down from the top of the staircase. He silently slid his back up the wall and steadied the MP5 in a rock solid stance. He breathed in and breathed out.
He saw the guy’s other foot come down on the second step from the top. He waited patiently as John Lane’s legs came fully into view and then his chest and then his face. John Lane crept down the stairs with his silenced Beretta M9 pointed out, ready to fire.
Cameron stood still in the darkness of the corner, waiting for Lane to either see him or reach the bottom. Lane never saw him. When his foot hit the floor after the last step, Cameron moved out of the corner—slowly. He stared down the iron sights of the MP5. Lane
’s center mass filled the middle of his reticle.
Cameron whispered from the darkness. He said, “Lane.”
Lane twisted fast and pointed his M9, but he wasn’t fast enough.
A burst of bullets exploded from Cameron’s MP5, traveling one hundred and five feet, which at eleven hundred feet per second was one-twelfth of a second a piece. The three bullets ripped through the flesh and bone in Lane’s chest, and he flew backward onto the stairs in an explosion of red. He slumped down, and blood spurted from the wounds in his chest. His silenced M9 fell useless to the carpet.
Cameron stepped out of the darkness and over Grant’s corpse. He moved toward the staircase, his gun trained on Lane. He stopped, his right foot on top of the fallen M9.
He stared into Lane’s eyes—close and personal—for the first and last time.
Lane tried to speak, choking on the blood gurgling in his throat.
Cameron said, “Jack killed your brother. And I killed you. Guess it’s just a family thing.”
And in seconds, the life drained from Lane.
Cameron looked over at the dead guy with no ears and then back at Lane. Only one left. He stared at Lane, wondering how much he weighed. Holding the MP5 in his left hand, he reached down and grabbed Lane’s belt with his right. He deadlifted him straight up. He wasn’t a big guy, average size. Still, carrying dead weight like a suitcase wasn’t easy. But the adrenaline and the combat instincts in Cameron’s bones magnified his strength. He lifted Lane’s corpse up and hauled him up the stairs. Lane’s arms and legs hit the edges of the steps limply as Cameron climbed. Once at the top, he dropped the body on the second floor and dragged Lane through the hallway and around corners until he reached the back staircase. He didn’t go down them. He stopped at the top.
He called out, “Graine!”
Chapter 53
GRAINE WAITED LIKE HE HAD BEEN TOLD and fired his gun every seventy seconds as instructed. He wasn’t trying to hit anything, not that he could see anyone anyway. They’d seen a flash of a small man with a gun—or maybe it was a woman. Whoever it was had hidden well.
Graine wasn’t as young as he used to be, and his usual thing was more a behind-the-scenes thing. He didn’t really like all of this exposure. This was Lane’s show, not his. And why should he keep sticking his neck out? Rowley may not have gone through with killing Asher, but the damage was done. It looked like he was going to tell everything and deal with the shame for the rest of his life. He’d probably go to prison as well for conspiracy or something like that. Even if his family lived, they’d never speak to him again. He’d very clearly chosen his country over his daughter’s life. Graine didn’t quite get all that patriot shit. Well, he understood it to a point, but sacrificing his own for this country? That was cold even by his standards.
No matter the outcome, Rowley was finished.
Graine’s money was in an account in the Cook Islands, so why should he stick around? He’d fire one more shot, and then he was out of there. As a matter of fact, he should just take off now while Lane was occupied and none of the agents from the neighborhood had arrived yet. He knew they’d be coming any second. Probably the cops, too.
He decided to go. He didn’t even fire the next rounds like he was supposed to do. Seventy seconds had already passed. It had now been more than ninety. He turned and started to head out the front door when he heard a voice call from the top of the front staircase.
It was Cameron. Cameron had called down. He’d said his name.
Graine froze, trained his SIG Sauer at the stairs.
He said nothing. He waited. At the first sign of Cameron, he’d unload the rest of his clip into the guy. He had a backup.
Cameron said, “Graine, I’m coming down. Don’t shoot. We can talk.”
Graine readied himself, his finger tight on the trigger.
LI HEARD CAMERON CALL DOWN FROM THE FRONT STAIRS. She lifted her head up and looked over the counter. She took a chance and darted toward the opposite wall. She hugged it close and crouched down low, moving slowly across it. She stopped three feet from the doorway. Graine was somewhere on the other side. She thought about shooting through the wall—surely a .347 Magnum would rip through it—but she didn’t know his exact location. Four bullets left. Maybe she’d hit him, and maybe she wouldn’t. So she waited.
CAMERON PULLED LANE’S CORPSE UP ONTO ITS FEET and tossed him down the stairs like a rag doll. Lane’s body plummeted down the stairs like a heavy bag. He bounced and bumped against the railing. Blood and other loose entrails splattered out across the stairs.
Graine reacted, firing his SIG Sauer. The bullets did their job, tearing through and shredding his target. The problem wasn’t that his aim was bad. The problem, he realized too late, was that he hadn’t shot Cameron. He’d shot John Lane.
Lane’s corpse lay sprawled at the base of the stairs. It was a grisly heap of meat. It looked like someone had used him for target practice. Graine was suddenly reminded of a local African soldier they’d found in the jungle years ago. His body had been used as a target by the local rebels. And those rebels had turned out to be children. They’d caught the soldier and shot him to death one day, and then they’d just kept shooting him until they’d gotten bored and moved on.
Then, like a phantom, Cameron was suddenly at the top of the stairs, crouched down on one knee. He said, “Drop it!”
“Okay. Okay,” Graine said. He dropped his gun and slowly raised his hands.
Cameron said nothing about his missing glasses, figuring that they had been as fake as Graine was.
Cameron called, “Li?”
Li stepped out into the doorway, gun drawn like a trained agent. She said, “You got him!”
“We got him!”
Li smiled and pointed her gun at Graine.
Cameron asked, “You got handcuffs?”
Li said, “You know it!” She didn’t move her eyes from Graine. She said, “Turn around slowly and touch the wall! Spread your legs!”
Great cop voice, Cameron thought.
Li shoved him against the wall and frisked him from top to bottom. She used one hand, keeping the gun shoved deep into his back, and then she holstered her gun.
She said, “You’re under arrest for treason and for conspiracy in the attempted homicide of President John Asher. Plus, a hundred other things, I’m sure.”
She cuffed him. The sound of the metal locking was loud in the stillness. She jerked on his cuffs like they were the reins on a workhorse.
Graine said nothing.
She started to take him out the front door, but Cameron stepped in the way.
He looked at Graine and said, “Remember my face! I hope you think about it every day while you rot away in prison.”
Graine started to speak, but Cameron catapulted off of his back feet, whipping himself forward. It was his third head-butt today, but by far the most enjoyable one. It wasn’t intended to crush Graine’s face, something he could’ve easily done, but to break his nose and his front teeth.
The results were perfect. Graine flew off his feet and hit the door. A cracking sound echoed through the foyer, and blood spurted out of Graine’s broken nose. He spat out four whole teeth and fragments of others. The man writhed on the ground.
Li said, “Why did you do that? That’s police brutality.”
Cameron said, “I’m not a cop, and no one is going to think you did it. No offense.”
She said nothing.
They could hear distant sirens closing in.
He said, “Sorry. I couldn’t help myself.”
“Wait for me out there. There’ll be a lot of questions.”
Cameron said, “You take them. I’m going to slip out the back.”
She said, “What? Why?”
“Questions and red tape isn’t my thing.”
“What the hell do I tell them?”
Cameron started to walk away. He stopped and turned. He tossed the MP5 at her, and she caught it.
He said, “
Tell ’em you did it. Cord won’t refute it. Believe me, he and Rowley will want to keep as much of this a secret as they can. They’ll probably never even mention me, and no one would believe them anyway.”
He turned again and walked down the hall. Stepping through the shattered French doors, he walked into the backyard and disappeared in the darkness by the back fence.
Chapter 54
LI TOOK GRAINE OUT TO THE COPS and the Secret Service agents. Cord was taken immediately to a hospital.
Questions were asked and answered. More questions appeared after that, and they, too, were answered. Soon people got tired of asking questions.
Li spent the entire night in a debriefing room at FBI headquarters. She sat in a cold room with a hot cup of black coffee, which made her think of Cameron. She wondered where he was and if she’d ever see him again. She sat staring off into space. No one had been in to see her for forty-five minutes or so. She’d been questioned so much that she felt like she was the main suspect. And she had said as much to the last agent who questioned her.
He’d insisted that she was not under any suspicion. She was regarded as a hero.
Finally, she was told she could go home for the night but needed to return first thing in the morning. She nodded and left the room. She walked down a long maze of hallways, past cubicles with agents transfixed by their computer screens. She passed security downstairs, and they buzzed her out of the building.
On the street, she was stopped by a tall Secret Service agent named Renth.
He said, “Agent Li?”
Li nodded.
“Come with me, please.”
Li yawned and covered her mouth. She looked closely at the man’s face. She recognized him. He was the Assistant Director of the Secret Service. She nodded and followed him around a corner to a black sedan.
He said, “Get in, please. Someone would like to see you.”
She started to get into the front passenger side, and Renth told her to go to the back. She got in and leaned back in the seat.