Something to consider, depending on how this little battle played out.
Fleming got off a few shotgun blasts, and the cowboy returned to lead instead of tear gas. Between Hammett and Fleming, they had one man trapped in a protected location, which left at least four or five other operatives free to gun for Chandler.
Explosions rocked the other side of the house.
Shit. Hammett hardly ever screwed up, but there was a chance that—this once—she’d made a mistake by leaving her post.
The frantic bark of a dog erupted from the lighthouse.
Hammett spun around. Keeping low, she raced back toward the sound. Even with the tear gas, Fleming had the cowboy on his heels. She didn’t need help. Kirk did.
Hammett spotted the two from the engine house outside the window she’d exited. The big guy was stretching his arms through the open frame, as if accepting a delivery.
The chick with the slashes spotted Hammett before she could get a round off, laying down a spray of cover fire.
Hammett dove to the ground, the lichen-covered granite peppered with lead.
The hulk pulled something through the window, and as Hammett blinked the dust from her eyes, she could see the package was Julie, the girl squirming and screaming.
A woman came next, almost too large to get through the window. She was built a lot like the bodybuilder Tristan, and Hammett might have mistaken her for a female athlete on some 1980s Eastern European Olympic team if not for the cornrow braids and dark skin. The right leg of her BDUs was torn, her calf bloody. She limped alongside Izzy and contributed to the lead flying Hammett’s way.
The barking intensified, and Kirk’s face bobbed into view. The fur around his mouth was dark, his teeth red. Biting back. Defending his mistress.
The first time Hammett saw that dog, she knew he was special.
Kirk surged again, nearly making it through the window, scrambling to get a hold on the sill.
Tristan muscling Julie away, Izzy stepped out from behind him, gun raised, and—
NO!
Izzy’s rifle cracked.
Kirk’s body jolted back from the window, then he slid from Hammett’s view.
For a few seconds, Hammett couldn’t move. Another climbed through the open sash, a man this time, but Hammett wasn’t focused on him.
She stared at the Goth bitch who’d shot Kirk, a hum rising in her ears. Then she scrambled to her feet and started running.
The group moved away from the window, but still the barrage of bullets kept coming. Hammett circled the outcropping, using the rock as a shield, working her way closer. Forget capturing and interrogating. She wanted to kill someone.
Preferably every last one of them.
Tristan rounded the lighthouse, carrying Julie in one beefy arm. Isolde went with him, helping the woman Kirk had bitten. The final operative waited, pinning Hammett down with suppressing fire, keeping her behind the rock and giving the others a head start. By the time he retreated, she knew they were probably gone, but she pursued anyway.
Hammett reached the engine house to find the tram car at the bottom of the hill, the three and the cowboy she’d seen earlier already loading Julie into a sweet boat obviously built for speed. The last man was already halfway down the walkway.
Hammett squeezed off a few rounds, but her hands were shaking, her dash to catch up with them taking its toll, and she missed.
She never missed.
The last man reached the dock and jumped into Chandler’s boat; Hammett turned and raced back to the lighthouse. She passed the front door, circled to the open window. Blood smeared the white sill, and a soft whimper came from inside.
Hammett climbed in. She felt calm, steeling her emotions as surely as she was able to block physical pain.
Blood darkened Kirk’s fur, covering his neck and shoulder. He was panting, ears back. But when he saw Hammett, his tail attempted a halfhearted wag.
Hammett thought back to Max, her dog when she was a kid. All the times she cried into his neck. All the times she held him while sleeping. He was only a pug, unable to defend her as Kirk had defended Julie. But he’d allowed Hammett to retain a tiny part of her humanity. Proof that some things were worth caring for. Some things needed to be protected.
When Max died, Hammett never got another dog. Her lifestyle would have been unfair to any poor pooch. The travel. The constantly changing addresses. Plus owning a dog would have slowed her down in an emergency situation.
But Hammett still had dogs in her life, even though she didn’t actually own any pets. Her one charitable contribution in an otherwise violently selfish life was a sizable annual donation to a no-kill dog shelter.
It was a side of her no one ever knew about. A secret she’d go to the grave keeping.
“Don’t worry, boy. I’m here.”
Hammett stripped off her sweater, ripping the sleeve, tying it gently around Kirk’s mouth so he didn’t snap at her while in pain, then pressing the rest of it against his wound to stanch the bleeding.
Kirk couldn’t die because of her miscalculation.
She wouldn’t let him.
Chandler
“This job is filled with risk, and you have to be ready to face that fact,” The Instructor said. “Don’t care about any person, any secret, any value so much that you can’t accept its loss, because there’s nothing as weak as decisions made from a position of fear.”
I couldn’t be sure how much time had passed before I woke up, but the lingering tear gas made me guess it hadn’t been long. Throbbing cheek pressed to the hardwood, I listened to gunfire exploding around me, picking out the Mossberg. Fleming was still OK. I could hear her shooting between fits of coughing coming from the back porch. But there wasn’t any other gunfire.
So where was Hammett? And now that Heath and the woman with him had ventured deeper into the house, was Julie still OK?
My eyes burned, my throat thick, head spinning. Forcing myself up on my elbows, then my hands and knees, I struggled to think. I was caught unprepared and thoroughly beaten. I shouldn’t be alive, and why Heath hadn’t put a bullet in my brain when he’d had the opportunity was beyond me. But whatever the reason, I had another chance, and I was going to take it.
I started crawling for the lighthouse. For the past few years, I tried never to think of Heath, although I’d dreamed about him from time to time. Sometimes we’d be making love, sometimes I was killing him, but mostly I’d hear him laughing at me, and I’d wake feeling angry.
I grabbed hold of that anger, used it to push me to my feet and propel me down the hall.
Heath had taken my shotgun. I had no other weapon except for a folding knife, and no real idea what I would do if I ran into him or the hulking woman who’d stormed in with him. Might as well attack a T. rex with a nail file.
The door leading from the utility room to the lighthouse was open. My shotgun lay on an old workbench, and I picked it up, checked for shells. Full.
Why had he left it for me?
My pulse raced, and I felt shaky with adrenaline overload and the lingering effects of the gas. Falling back on my training, I moved to edge of the door and listened for a second. Only the pop of Fleming’s gunfire outside reaching me. I entered, weapon leading the way.
The cylindrical space was dark, shadows gathering behind the spiral stairs, but I didn’t need light to see that Julie was no longer in the spot I’d left her.
My pulse ratcheted up a notch. I peered up into the tower, but I could see nothing beyond the weak light outside reflecting off the lens in bull’s-eye swirls.
“Hammett?”
No answer. No movement.
The shooting outside thinned, then stopped.
I moved back into the utility room, shotgun in front of me, and continued to the hall. There were dozens of possibilities. Julie could be hiding, in the bathroom, in her bedroom. The lighthouse could have been compromised, and Hammett had taken her somewhere safe.
I paused before moving
into the hall. I felt a dank breeze whisper across my skin, fresh air diluting lingering tear gas fumes. I heard the shuffle of movement around the corner. Stepping into the hall, I brought my shotgun around, aiming at the sound.
Hammett crouched on the floor, the Skorpion in her hands pointed straight at me.
“It’s me.”
She lowered her gun, and I did the same.
Then I noticed Kirk lying on the floor, blood wet on his fur, her sweater wrapped around his muzzle and chest.
“He’s still alive,” Hammett said. She was pressing against Kirk’s wound.
“Julie? Where’s Julie?” I peered out the open window. Blood smeared the sill.
“They got Julie.”
My mind shuddered. It couldn’t be. I didn’t believe her. “How?”
“They got past you, that’s how.”
She was right. I’d been overwhelmed. I’d hardly put up a fight.
Somehow I had the presence of mind to stop, to listen. I heard nothing, no beat of helicopter blades, no gunfire, nothing. “They took her to the boat?”
“They were headed in that direction.”
“You didn’t follow?”
Hammett looked up at me, eyes hard. “You should have let me go out there, take them out before this whole thing started. Instead, they called the shots and left us playing catch up.”
She might have been right, and if it had been just the three of us, I would have agreed with her. But I’d had Julie to think of, Julie to protect, and now…
I started back down the hall and into the living room, moving fast.
“Chandler?” Fleming called. Her voice sounded as if it had been worked over with sandpaper.
“They took Julie,” I said over my shoulder as I slammed out the door.
I raced along the path, my head clearing in the outside air. I’d promised Julie she’d be OK, that I would protect her, keep her safe.
I’d failed.
I passed the engine house and noted the camera, or what was left of it, dangling from a cord underneath the eave. Reaching the top of the rails leading to the dock, I heard the buzz of one boat motor and then another cutting through the fog.
I couldn’t see much from this distance, but I could make out enough to know the dock was vacant. My boat and their boat were gone.
I ran back to the lighthouse as fast as I could move. The exertion working out some of my frustration, sharpening my mind. I found my sisters in the living room, clustered next to Kirk.
I went straight for Hammett. “Why did you tell me you saw Isolde say they were moving at nightfall?”
“Because she said it. She must have known we were watching.”
It was an easy answer, but one that fit with my observations on the security monitor. The sudden way Tristan spun to face the camera, shooting it as if he’d known it was there all along. But I wasn’t willing to believe her. Not yet.
“Why did they take Julie?” I brought up my shotgun, not pointing it at her, but keeping it ready all the same.
Her hand rested on the handgun in her back waistband. “I don’t know.”
“How did they get to her?”
“Why would I know any of this? I don’t even know why they would want that girl. What value is she to them?”
“Didn’t you see them coming from the lighthouse?”
“You move that barrel one more inch, Chandler, and you’ll be dead before you can ask your next question.”
“Put the guns down,” Fleming said. “Both of you.”
I lowered my weapon slowly and handed it to Fleming because I didn’t trust myself with it.
Hammett stared at me for a good long time, then tucked hers away. As soon as I saw her hands, I went at her with a heel strike to the solar plexus.
She partially blocked the blow, but I could hear the air rush from her lungs. Then in one move, she countered with an elbow to the side of my face, which glanced off the cheekbone already bruised by Heath.
A shotgun exploded, the sound shaking the house and ringing through my ears. I spun around to see Fleming holding the weapon, barrel pointed at the ceiling.
“We have to get out of here,” she said, eyes boring into me. “And you need to stop fucking around.”
Hammett shot me a venomous look and knelt to pick up Kirk and hold him close, as if shielding him from the crazy lady.
As if she was one to cast judgment.
Hammett turned her focus to Fleming. “What are we supposed to do? Swim?”
“There’s another boat,” I said. I could barely hear my own voice. If I survived this with my hearing intact, it would be a miracle.
If I survived at all.
“Then let’s go.”
Grabbing the bags we’d just hauled up the slope, we headed back down. Hammett shouldered the first-aid case and the duffel, leaving her arms free for Kirk. Fleming heaped the rest on her lap. By the time we’d reached the engine house, I could feel the distant sound of helicopter blades beating the air.
I raced to the pulley controls inside the engine house, fired up the diesel engine, and set the lever to full speed. The tram car seemed to take forever to inch up the track.
Unlike trams designed to carry passengers, this one was strictly for cargo, and I wasn’t sure how safe it was, especially for Fleming. But as the helicopter sound became louder, I was increasingly sure if we didn’t get to the dock and soon, safety standards wouldn’t matter.
Finally it reached the top.
“Get in!” I yelled.
Fleming paused, as if wondering how she was supposed to wheel herself aboard, but after setting Kirk down, Hammett took one of Fleming’s wheels, I took the other, and we heaved her into the cart.
While Hammett climbed in with Kirk, I raced back into the engine house and set the controls to lower us back down the incline. Then I caught up with the tram car and jumped on with my sisters.
“Aw, shit,” Hammett said, staring behind us, her expression grim. “Apocalypse, now.”
The explosions started on the far end of the island. The sound reached me first, then the smell, then the heat.
Napalm B was a thickening agent mixed with fuel and used in incendiary bombs. It smelled like a gasoline fire. Burning at 800 to 1,200 degrees Celsius, napalm killed not just from fire and heat, but from the carbon monoxide it produced. That alone could kill people the fire never reached.
A tidal wave of fire washed across the island, spreading toward us.
The tram’s engine wouldn’t get us to sea level fast enough. My sisters must have realized the same thing at the same time, because as one we fired on the cable, the pulley, and the hoist mechanism.
We broke free of the machine, a runaway train. I threw my body over Fleming. Hammett did the same with Kirk. Gravity and momentum took over, quickly doubling the speed of our descent, but not before a seventy-mile-an-hour firestorm swept over us.
I’d never crawled inside of an oven, but I could guess it felt similar. Superheated air blew over my back and head, searing through my clothing. Over the smell of gas and fire and smoke, I caught a whiff of my burning hair. The pain was instant, sort of a cross between severe sunburn and lashes from a whip. I peeked through my hand, unsure if I was on fire or not, and saw Hammett clutching Kirk, the flames around her blowing out as the cart accelerated.
Before I could cheer the good fortune that we hadn’t burned alive, we reached the bottom of the tram track, and I remembered there weren’t any brakes.
We hit a bump, my head banging into Fleming’s chair, then we were racing across the dock and skidding over the edge and hurtling through the air—
—into the northern Atlantic.
The cold, salty water hit me in the face, a welcome relief at first, and then the tram car splashed to a stop but I kept going, still clutching Fleming, and we skipped across the waves like stones until we slowed enough to sink.
I opened my mouth. A big mistake while underwater. Brine rushed over my tongue, and I fought n
ot to scream or gasp or swallow.
Fleming thrashed, and I released her. I didn’t like water, and though part of me knew Fleming was a better swimmer than I was, the true reason I let go of her was to save myself.
The ocean filled me with more raw panic than the napalm and tram ride combined.
I flailed, trying to figure out which way was up, peeking my eyes open in the stinging seawater and seeing a glimmer of light. I kicked, arms clawing at the water, blowing out my cheeks to spit out the salt. Something grabbed me, and I realized it was Fleming, moving me up toward the light. I broke the surface, gasping for air, amazed to still be alive. And Fleming broke the surface to my left.
Treading water, we watched flames lick up the side of the lighthouse, clear even through the fog, the whole island ablaze. The sparse vegetation wouldn’t fuel a fire long, and rock didn’t burn, but napalm did until it exhausted itself, and the effect was spectacular. Orange reflected off the waves, making them look more like lava than water.
I didn’t see the helicopter anywhere. The ocean, and the pounding in my ears due to my rapid heartbeat, made it difficult to hear.
“You OK?” Fleming asked, bobbing on the waves beside me.
I did a body inventory, letting my senses report any pain or lack of sensation, but didn’t notice any new damage. I could hardly believe it. “Yeah. You?”
“No.”
“What’s wrong?” I studied her face in the flickering light of the inferno, fearing the worst.
“I don’t think I’ll be able to walk again.”
I spat out more salt. “Funny.”
We swam to the wooden tram car, which floated like a raft ten meters from the pier. Hammett, Kirk, and Fleming’s wheelchair were still on board, though her chair was on its side.
“Now isn’t the time for a swim break, ladies,” Hammett called to us.
“I hate her,” I said.
“Break one of her fingers,” Fleming said between strokes. “You’ll feel better.”
Fleming put her back to the tram car, stroking the water with wide sweeps of her arms. I took the other corner, pushing with my hands and scissor-kicking, moving it toward the dock. The waves were with us, and it didn’t take long before we were back on the pier and headed toward the boathouse. Although Julie never left the island, I’d thought it necessary for her to have a means of escape in case of an emergency. So I’d gotten her an old aluminum ten-footer with an 8hp Mercury outboard motor. It was a tight squeeze with Fleming’s chair, but we all managed to fit. It took a few pulls and some finessing the choke before I turned it over. Then I took control of the motor, and got us the hell out of there.
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