He waited until several more lightning strobes splintered the gloom and then scrambled into the relentless squall before the next lightning cycle appeared. He flattened himself in the long grass and mud beside the two-lane road and squinted where Gabriella had pointed.
Lightning forks revealed a cemetery and a boarded-up, two-story farmhouse atop a gently sloping hill. A sparse thicket of scrawny pines separated him from the house. Another round of flashes exposed a tangled growth of saplings and vines surrounding the house.
Nick waited, his eyes glued to the hillside through the pelting rain. Minutes passed like hours, but he held his position. Just when he thought that her warning was the product of a bad dream, he saw it. A silhouette hunched above a grave marker that hadn’t been there before.
Nick sensed that the man in the cemetery was no farm boy or even an FBI agent. Rance had often referred to Nick’s hunches as uncanny, but the Orion Sector Special Agent knew better. It was knowledge. How it came to him was beside the point. This ability had saved his skin numerous times in the field. He knew what the man was behind the marker.
He was a sniper waiting to ambush Nick and his party.
Nick resisted the temptation to move forward. His discipline allowed him to remain calm and wait. Was it safe to proceed? His knowledge answered no. Were there other snipers in the area? Yes.
Ron Withers’s smirking face appeared in Nick’s mind. Withers! Of course. The bastard wanted to be the last man standing in Orion Sector so he could take over and populate it with men of his own choosing. And it appeared as if the odds were on his side. With Rance a murder suspect, Neo missing, and he and Crow sitting ducks a half mile outside Duneden, he was in good shape to take over.
Another lightning burst revealed a second sniper position down the hill from the first. Still Nick waited. Ten minutes later, he made out a human form perched a hundred feet from the others in a thinly leafed tree.
It was time to move. He checked his weapons and ran low in a zigzag path up the hill a hundred feet south of the snipers’ positions. A bullet slammed the ground inches from his feet, but he kept going, changing his direction and speed every few feet to make himself a more difficult target.
It was apparent to him that they were using sophisticated, long-range sniper rifles with sound suppression, not that detonation sounds could be heard in town over the storm. They brought the equipment because they hadn’t expected a storm.
Another bullet splashed close and spattered his slacks with mud. The increased lightning show aided the snipers, but also helped Nick because they couldn’t utilize their night-sighting equipment.
These were professionals. They didn’t pepper the ground with automatic gunfire like amateurs would, but instead waited patiently for their shots. Nick was at once impressed and depressed. Where had Withers located such skilled marksmen? The answer wasn’t long in coming. Mercenaries. Ex-military killers for hire. But where would Withers get the capital to finance an operation like this? It took longer for the answer to arrive this time, but it did, and it surprised Nick. Withers had been bought. He was on an outside payroll.
But whose payroll and why? There was no reply to that one.
Nick dropped and rolled into a rain culvert gouged into the hill by thousands of thunderstorms like this one. It provided cover for him to safely reach the top of the hill. Wiping the stinging rain from his face, he splashed along the slippery depression.
Suddenly Nick stopped and dropped. This was too easy. Maybe the three snipers he saw were meant to be seen. Maybe, just maybe, there was a fourth at the top of the culvert awaiting Nick’s arrival with a head-splitting bullet. He scanned the potential ambush zones above and south of his position.
Forty feet or so east of his position, he spied a dilapidated gray feed barn. It leaned miserably toward the base of the hill, defying gravity; its windows were eyeless sockets and one barn door was missing while the other clung to the doorframe with one gnarled, rusted hinge. He studied it carefully in the flickering illumination and finally decided that it was deserted.
With the MP5K stretched out in front of him, he used his elbows and knees to inch toward his new destination. Mud oozed under his shirt collar and up his sleeves while the long grass and weeds stabbed at his face, but he stayed his course. There were no more sniper near misses, but it wouldn’t take them long to figure out his new course of action. He had to get a move on.
At last he reached the front of the barn and slowed his crawling, avoiding the larger grass clumps as he went. Any movement contrary to the wind would surely give him away. He was thankful that he hadn’t had time to change the black assault fatigues that he’d worn while nabbing Bustillo the night before. It prevented the lightning flashes from making him easy prey.
When he gained the rear of the barn, Nick stood and peered around a corner at the landscape between him and the farmhouse. A collapsed chain link fence ran diagonally from the barn to the house, passing within fifteen feet. The fence line was an uncut tangle of weeds and grass that stood about three feet high. It provided excellent cover for what Nick had in mind.
He returned his attention to the trees. They were lifeless hulks that failed to adequately camouflage a sniper and were spaced too far apart to provide a safe approach to the farmhouse. Nick’s eyes roamed the exterior for any sign of a sniper presence. The wind gusted through the barn and whistled like a child missing his front teeth. The rain blew in silvery sheets from the west, but Nick’s presence on the lees side of the barn afforded him a relatively rain-free view.
He noticed a narrow space in a boarded-up second story window where a plank had been pried away. Nick watched as a night scope protruded from the small crevice, searching the hillside for its target, and quickly retreated at the next lightning flash. He raised his MP5K and sighted the partially boarded window. The sniper was within range. All Nick had to do was fire at the window, and the bullets would create a sieve of the boards and the sniper standing behind it.
He lowered the submachine gun. Yes, he could kill the sniper that way, but in doing so, he would alert the others who would no doubt close in for the kill.
No. The hunter would become the hunted. He decided to take out the snipers one at a time, and if Withers was there, he would go down with his merc friends.
Nick delayed his assault until a brilliant lightning burst momentarily blinded his enemies, and then he rushed along the shadowy fence line. When he was behind the house, he repeated his lightning strategy, sprinted to the back door, and stood there, rain-soaked and winded, quietly awaiting any sniper activity indicating he had been made. Minutes passed, and there was no reaction. Nick’s breathing slowed. He hadn’t been spotted.
It was time to seek and destroy.
The back door swung open noiselessly. The mercenaries had obviously oiled the hinges so that they could enter and exit without exposing their position. Nick cautiously advanced toward the staircase that disappeared into the darkness. There wasn’t a light in the farmhouse, not even a hooded lantern, so he used Mother Nature’s light show to guide him around cloaked objects.
Once he reached the staircase, Nick timed his ascending footfalls to coincide with the exploding thunderclaps to mask the creaking of the risers. He paused at the top and found the sniper. The man was fireplug squat. His attention was exclusively focused on the hillside, so he wasn’t aware of Nick’s furtive approach.
Nick’s powerful hands seized the sniper’s hair and roughly jerked his head back. Before he could scream a warning, Nick’s combat knife sliced deeply through the soft flesh and tendons of his throat. The mercenary’s mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water, but the only noise was the hushed gurgling of blood flooding his windpipe.
Nick dragged the lifeless body to a corner, lowered him to the floor, and returned to the window to inspect the man’s rifle. It was a refitted Remington 700 with laser sighting and a sound suppressor and was mounted to a heavy tripod.
Nick peered through the nake
d window crevice. It was a terrible night for sniping. The wind gusts, rain, and flying debris would easily alter the bullet’s path to the target. He groaned. It had been a long time since he’d used one of these ponderous rifles, eleven years to be exact, but he had to try. It was his only means of survival. Where was the magic when he needed it tonight? It appeared as if he’d have to handle this situation his way.
Take the snipers out.
He picked the single lense scope off the floor and panned the hillside. He pinpointed the position of each of the remaining snipers. Logic dictated that he start with the furthest target, so if the closest sniper became aware of Nick’s presence in the farmhouse, Nick could use the MP5K to eliminate him at short range.
He swiveled the Remington barrel toward the man positioned behind a grave marker to the north. His back was exposed to the house because his assignment required him to be invisible from the road. The rain puddled at Nick’s feet as he used the laser sight to compute the exact distance to the target.
He told himself to relax as he tucked the rifle stock into his shoulder. The line of sight was clear. He delayed the shot until the wind died some, breathing slowly and stroking the trigger.
When the wind calmed, he fired. Lightning absorbed the barrel flash. Nick watched as the marker man fell sideways and lay still in the tall grass.
Nick wanted to celebrate his accuracy, but there were still two snipers left. He rapidly calculated the distance to the man located below the marker man’s position. Nick relaxed, aimed, and fired. The bullet struck the mercenary behind the ear, and his twitching body slumped to the ground.
Two down. Nick rotated the sight again to the sniper he’d seen earlier in the tree, but he was gone! His sweat mingled with the rain, and he wiped it from his face. Where was he?
Nick surveyed the entire area with the scope. If the treeman had seen the first sniper go down, he couldn’t have climbed down and run too far.
Nick stiffened. The third man wasn’t running away from the house. He was running toward it with a grenade in each hand!
The man was moving too fast for Nick to target him with the Remington, so he snatched his MP5K and flew down the stairs and out the front door. The sniper pulled the pin on a grenade and drew his arm back for the toss, but he and the grenade dropped to the ground amid a quick burst of the MP5K. Nick turned and shielded his face from the detonation that scattered the mercenary’s body in all directions.
Nick leaned against a porch post. It was over. Gabriella and Jill were safe. And he was alive to find the Creeper.
His muscles tensed from a clapping behind him. His finger tightened on the machine gun’s trigger, but an all too familiar voice warned him not to.
“Drop the gun, Nick. The party’s over. Try anything stupid, and I’ll unload my Beretta into your back.”
The MP5K clattered on the porch planks.
“Okay, turn around slowly,” Withers directed.
Nick did as he was ordered and was even more troubled when he saw the crazed smile splitting his face.
“Nice work, Bellamy,” Withers said. “You’re our best field man and always were. Too bad you have to die.”
Nick maintained his composure despite the prospect of death. “And why’s that?”
“Money, Nick. Lots of money and a wealthy retirement in South America.”
“Just you and the Nazi’s, huh?”
Withers’s smile dropped. “Always the smart ass. In a few seconds, you’ll be a dead ass.”
“Who’s paying you?”
He shrugged. “What does it matter? I’ll be rich, and you’ll be dead.”
Nick faked a gruff laugh. “You don’t know, do you?”
He raised his Beretta to Nick’s face. “Shut up.”
“Your meal ticket could walk up to you at any time or place and put a bullet in your brain and save themselves the expense of a Withers’s retirement.”
“Shut up, I said!” His lips curled into a sneer. “Good-bye, Nick.”
Nick’s gaze shifted behind Withers, and before Withers could turn his head, a knife sliced into his back and punctured his heart. A large hand appeared and grasped his elbow, spoiling his clean shot at Nick. The bullet splintered the second story siding. The gun slipped from his hand as blood burbled from his mouth.
Withers stared wide-eyed at an old Indian who stood defiantly before him with a large, bone-handled hunting knife. As the raindrops washed the blood from the keen blade, Withers’s eyes stopped seeing, and he crumpled to the porch floor.
Crow’s grandfather faded from the site like an apparition, leaving Nick alone in the storm to ponder the unbelievable series of events. He retrieved the machine gun and slipped and slid down the hill toward the SUV where the welcome glow of its headlights were waiting.
Too much magic. He considered the phrase he had spoken not too long ago, and then he pictured the dead bodies atop the hill. Maybe he had been wrong all along. Maybe there wasn’t such a thing as too much magic. When he considered the possibility of his bullet-riddled corpse lying at the top of the hill and Withers standing over it, laughing, maybe, he conceded, there was just enough magic in his world.
Chapter 53
The gate to Gabriella’s daunting estate swung open without prompting as Crow swung the SUV into the long drive.
“Wait,” Crow’s grandfather stated loudly.
Crow applied the brake. “What’s up?”
“This is as far as I go.”
“Why? C’mon in and get cleaned up and have something to eat,” Crow insisted.
The old man shook his head. “This is not a place for me.”
Nick beheld the impressive wrought iron fence surrounding Gabriella’s estate and the intricately sculpted gargoyle figures perched at close intervals along the top and wondered the same thing.
Crow groaned. “I don’t suppose there’s a chance that I can change your bullheaded mind.”
The old man chuckled. “No, I don’t suppose there’s any chance of that. Take care, Grandson.” He opened the door, and the storm pummeled him with furious gusts and rain. “Take nothing for granted here. Your eyes may play tricks on you,” he shouted and disappeared into the angry night.
Nick observed that the gargoyles’ eyes seemed to follow the SUV’s movement as it passed through the gates and up to the front of the mansion. He dismissed it as the overactive imagination of a fatigued mind, but he couldn’t shake the uneasiness that accompanied him as he pushed Gabriella through the downpour and into the house.
After they were all safely inside, Crows eyes swelled into unblinking saucers.
“What’s the matter with you?” Nick demanded.
At a loss for words, the usually flamboyant Indian merely pointed down and behind Nick. Everyone followed Crow’s gesture. They gasped simultaneously. Nick’s muddy footprints were vanishing one by one until they were gone and the marble floor was spotless.
Nick was the first to speak. “I’ve heard of a clean house before, but this is a little . . .”
“Unsettling?” Bustillo offered.
“That’ll do.”
Jill nudged Nick away from the wheelchair and pushed Gabriella down the hall. “There’s a lot of things about this house that are unsettling,” she yelled back over her shoulder. “Stick around.”
A hunchbacked woman stiffly identified herself as the housekeeper and showed the guests to private bedrooms with adjoining full baths. Nick welcomed the hot water and let it massage his aching muscles for nearly thirty minutes. After drying himself, he recalled that he hadn’t brought a change of clothes or toiletries.
He needn’t have worried. The medicine cabinet was full of toiletry articles, and the closet doors had been opened while he was in the shower, revealing an extensive selection of clothes in his size. More magic? This time he had no doubts.
Nick felt like a new man. The shower and shave eased the stress of the battle with Withers and his mercenaries, and after donning Armani silk and cotton attir
e, he was totally laid-back. What next, caviar?
As if on cue, the housekeeper rapped on the door and announced that dinner would be served in twenty minutes downstairs in the main dining room. He slipped on the Rolex watch he’d found on the dresser, rubbed an unpronounceable French cologne onto his face and neck, and descended to the dining room. He thought he’d be the first to arrive, but as it turned out, he was the last. The group ate the fancy dinner with gusto. Only Gabriella wasn’t in attendance.
Afterward, the housekeeper declared that Miss Wolfe would like to meet with Mr. Bellamy and Mr. Bustillo in her father’s private study. She headed for the kitchen.
“Wait,” Nick said. “Where is the private study? This is a big house.”
“Miss Wolfe indicated that you would know where to find it. She suggested that you trust your gut on this,” she replied and disappeared through the swinging doors.
“Well, Hefe, let’s make like a couple boy scouts and find the study,” Nick said.
Hefe chuffed at the idea of being a boy scout and tentatively followed Nick down the long hallway.
“Now where?” he asked himself. Something about the house was familiar to him. He closed his eyes and waited for his gut, as Gabriella called it, to reveal the way, but nothing came. “This is crazy!” he muttered in frustration. What kind of game was Gabriella playing with him, anyway?
After calming himself, Nick attempted another tactic. His memory. He closed his eyes and pictured the hallway. At first, he heard giggles. He concentrated harder. He pictured a little blonde girl running backwards in front of him, urging him to do something, but what? In his mind, he followed her through the house and into the large library where they stopped in front of a towering bookshelf.
That’s it! He blinked the image away and strode down the hall with a frowning Hefe in his wake. They entered the library, and he searched the room for the bookshelf resembling the one stored in his memory. They all looked alike, but there had to be a distinguishing feature. He closed his eyes again, conjured up the memory, and was about to throw in the towel when he noticed a book title tucked in among the classic texts. A children’s book title. The Boy Who Wasn’t There by Sterling Devonshire.
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