“Who?” Glory quavered.
“No idea,” Mercer said. “We’ll have to find out after.”
“After what?” Sharon asked.
“After I kill them all.”
“You’re crazy,” Sharon whispered.
“Not really. Sharon. Get the shotgun.”
“It’s all full of mud,” she protested.
“No,” Glory said. “I think I got all of it out.” She held the shotgun out to her mother.
Mercer looked at Glory. A smile started and died on his face. “Okay,” he said to Sharon. “You see that door start to open, give him both barrels. To do that, you pull both triggers. That light shot won’t do any real damage, but maybe it’ll keep the fucker’s head down.” Sharon looked at the gun in her daughter’s hand. “You want me to do it, Mom?” Glory asked gently.
“No,” Sharon snapped, snatching the weapon away. “I don’t want you touching this again.”
“Don’t make any commitments you can’t keep,” Mercer said. “Now cover the back door. I want to see if there’s anyone out front.” He moved to the door they’d entered through. She went to one knee in the doorway, facing the back of the tiny building, trying to control her shaking. She heard the latch on the front door open behind her. There was a sudden loud bang as the wind slammed the door open. Sharon jumped and the shotgun went off, another loud bang in the enclosed space. The shot spattered against the door. “Shit,” she muttered. “Shit. Shit”. How did you re-load? She tried to remember her granddaddy’s shotgun, back at his house near Asheboro. He had broken the shotgun open…ah. There. She located the lever on top of the barrel with her thumb and cracked the gun open.
“Mom,” Glory whispered frantically. “MOM!”
She looked up. The back door was opening slowly. There was someone in the doorway, off to one side, a darker irregular shape against the darkness outside. A flash of lightning illuminated the half-figure of a man in an olive drab coverall. The part of his face she could see was tight with strain. The lightning vanished, leaving her without her night vision. She groped blindly, felt Glory press something round into her hands. Her daughter was sobbing in fear. She fumbled one shell into the chamber, but the other slipped out of her nerveless fingers and clattered to the floor. She saw a bright ruby-red beam appear from the doorway. It was like something from a science fiction movie as it swept quickly across the room, coming to rest unerringly and painting a tiny red dot on the center of her chest. She snapped the breech shut and fired in the same motion. The pellets rattled uselessly against the wall to the right of the door. There was a blast of sound and light directly over her head. She threw herself to the floor and the red light vanished. She looked up. Max was standing over her, his machine gun held to his shoulder. “Good job,” he whispered.
She was too shaken to answer. “Come on,” he said. “There’s nobody out front. Yet. But if we stay here, they’ll remedy that if they can. They’ll pin us down and pick us off.” He fired off another burst at the doorway. “We have to move.” She stumbled to her feet. “Get behind me,” he said. “Back out, slowly, then when you get outside, run like hell.”
“Run where?” Glory said.
“The clubhouse,” he said. “We can hole up there.”
“What if they’re in there?” Sharon asked.
“I don’t think they are. If they are…well, we’ll deal with that if we have to. Now move.” They hesitated. “MOVE!” he barked. They moved. They heard him fire one last time as they reached the door. The rain and wind battered them as they reached the doorway, then they turned and ran.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Worth pressed himself back against the wall of the building, next to the open, splintered door, waiting. The rain was running off the edge of the shed roof like a miniature Niagara, and he watched it as he strained his ears to try to determine what was happening inside. Walking through this downpour was like drowning standing up. He reached up with his free hand and switched off the laser sight hanging beneath the barrel of the machine gun, silently cursing himself for not thinking of it sooner. At this range, practically point blank, there was no need, and all the ruby beam was good for was pointing out precisely where he was. He listened and as he listened, he wondered. Who the fuck was this guy, anyway? Where had he come from? And what was he doing with the woman and her daughter? The questions multiplied. What the hell was Moon still doing here, on the island? And why hadn’t the rest of the team been informed? What was Blake up to, and what might he still be hiding? Worth had a bad feeling about what the answers to those questions might mean. He shook it off. There was a target inside who meant to kill him. That was the immediate problem. He heard a voice raised, giving orders. They were making a move. Worth turned to his left, dropped to a knee in one smooth motion, and scanned for targets. From his doorway, he could see straight through to the open front door. A flash of lightning outlined a darkened figure in that door, a man turning, trying to run. Worth fired. The figure went down.
***
Mercer was on his way out the door, after Sharon and Glory, when he felt the hammer blow in his left shoulder. He stumbled and went face down onto the concrete walk in front of the office, hard enough to knock the wind from his lungs and leave him gasping. Then the pain came, feeling like someone had shoved a hot poker through his shoulder. He bit his lip to keep from crying out. Never let them know you’re hurt, a voice out of the past spoke to him. He rolled to his back, groping for the machine gun that had fallen from his hand. He saw movement from inside the office, knew someone was coming for him, coming to kill him. He tried to sit up. Suddenly, Sharon was beside him, the shotgun at her hip. Don’t fire from the hip, you idiot, you can’t hit squat that way, he thought, but the gun roared, he heard a cry of pain from inside, then Glory was at his side, her arm around his wounded shoulder. He bit his lip so hard, trying so hard to keep from screaming with the agony, that the sudden copper taste of blood burst in his mouth. He got to his feet more to keep from being hurt any more than from Glory’s attempt to help him up. He looked around for his weapon. He could vaguely see a figure down and thrashing inside the office, his hands over his face. He remembered the knife stuck in his belt at the exact time he drew it, advancing to finish off his wounded adversary. There was another incredible pain in his shoulder, and this time a tiny grunt of agony did escape from between his clenched teeth. He felt Glory at his side, pulling on his elbow. “Come on,” she begged, almost sobbing. “Come ON!” Sharon was next to her, fumbling with the shotgun. He felt suddenly weak, fuzzy. I’m losing blood, he thought. I need to get out of here. We need to get out of here. Another tug, another bolt of pain though his arm. “Okay,” he muttered. “Okay, goddamn it!” The three of them bolted off in the direction of the clubhouse.
***
Worth struggled to his feet, his face on fire where the pellets had peppered him. He felt a trickle of blood running down his cheek and reached up to feel the wound. There was a tiny lump beneath the skin of his left temple. A gash on his cheek also bled profusely. He swore under his breath. “One, three.” he broadcasted.
“One.”
“They were in the marina office. Trying to use the radio. One of them had a shotgun. I’m hit, but not badly. Bitch…” he stopped. He didn’t really feel like telling Blake he’d been shot by a woman. “I’m just grazed,” he finished. He saw a black shape lying at the edge of the walkway. He stepped out into the deluge, picked it up, and retreated back inside. “One of them had Two’s weapon. I’ve got it back.”
“Three,” Blake said, “How many targets down? And where did they get a shotgun?”
“One wounded. I’m pretty sure. And I don’t know where they got the weapon. But it looks like all they have is birdshot or something like that. I got grazed, but that’s all.”
“Where are the targets now, Three?” Blake’s voice sounded weary.
“Unknown,” Worth said. “They ran away. I’ll find them.”
“Negative. Fall ba
ck to the rally point.”
A pause. “Say again?”
“Fall back to the rally point, Three. We’re scattered all over the damn island. We need to concentrate our forces.”
Worth’s face contorted in a snarl of frustration. His quarry was wounded and practically unarmed. More than anything he wanted to find the bitch who’d shot him in the face and make her pay for it. But orders were orders.
“Three, acknowledge,” Blake snapped.
“Acknowledged,” Worth said through clenched teeth.
“And disable that radio.”
“Roger.”
“Six,” Blake said. “Report.”
There was no answer. Then a single click as someone keyed his microphone.
“Six,” Blake said, his voice dropping unnecessarily to a whisper, “Are you in contact?”
One click. Yes.
“How many?”
One click.
“Armed?”
Two clicks. No.
There was no sound except the howling of the wind and the roaring of falling rain. Then: “Take him alive. Bring him to the rally point,” Blake said. “Let’s see what he knows.”
One click.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Bohler stumbled along the beach, trying to keep his footing in the incredible wind that threatened to knock him over. It seemed impossible that such a wind could exist on Earth. The rain could no longer be said to be falling; it was being driven horizontally into him, stinging in its force like a multitude of needles. The wind bellowed and shrieked among the twisted and gnarled branches of the trees behind the dunes along the shoreline. Suddenly, over the sound of the wind, he could hear the unmistakable rattle of gunfire. He instinctively reached for the sidearm that usually hung at his waist. His hand closed on nothing. “Damn it,” he muttered. He felt suddenly naked. There was a blinding flash and for an instant, a pillar of white fire bridged ocean to sky several hundred yards offshore. The thunderclap that followed immediately after stunned and deafened Bohler. He fell to his knees, his hands over his ears. I’ve got to get out of this, he thought. I’ve got to get under shelter. Ahead, at the edge of the trees, he spotted a large wooden deck with steps leading down to the beach. A railed walkway extended behind it and disappeared behind the dunes. There would be a house at the other end. Someplace out of the wind and rain that seemed as if they were trying to scour the flesh from his bones. He got up and started to run. When he reached the stairway, he had to grab on with all his might and use the strength of his arms as well as the power of his legs to pull himself up to the deck against the push of the wind. When he got there, he could see the house, a sprawling white modernistic structure that looked as if it belonged in the Hollywood Hills rather than a North Carolina beach. Bohler vaguely remembered that the place was owned by a past-his-prime action movie star. Well, he thought grimly, hope he doesn’t mind me dropping in. He struggled along the walkway, occasionally grabbing the rail to steady himself. He got to the end of the walkway where another stairway dropped down into a perfectly manicured yard. A small tool shed off to one side was rocking back and forth, raising up off its concrete slab foundation in the stronger gusts, then falling back down with a thump. There was the tinkling of glass as a window broke, then the wind was inside, rampaging through the tiny structure. Bohler watched in fascination as the roof peeled up and off with a groan of rending wood, tumbling to the ground before coming apart. “Shit,” Bohler said. He turned towards the house.
There was a man standing a few feet away, holding an automatic weapon trained on him. He was dressed head to foot in camouflage fatigues, and a camo mask obscured his face from view. Bohler halted, stunned by the sudden apparition. The man gestured with the gun. Bohler slowly put his hands up. The man advanced, the gun never wavering.
“Come on,” he said. There was something wrong with his voice. “We’re going to take a walk.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
There had once been a line of palmetto trees standing along the part of the seawall between the path to the beach and the clubhouse. They were all gone now save one, and that one stood stripped of its leaves and most of its bark, bare and wind-carved to a sharp spike at its top, like a giant pencil stuck point-up in the sand. They stumbled past the line of ragged stumps and under the covered entranceway. It offered meager protection against the sidelong rain. They stood for a moment, all three of them staring at the big, ornately decorated double doors of the clubhouse.
“Shit,” Glory said. “How are we supposed to get in?” The doors looked like the gates of a fortress.
Mercer walked over beside the entrance. Flanking the door on either side were a pair of pineapples molded of concrete. Each one stood about a foot high. He bent down and tried to heft one with his good arm.
“Wait,” Sharon said. He ignored her. He bent at the knees, grimacing with the pain in his wounded shoulder, and managed to get one up into the cradle of his right elbow.
“MAX!” Sharon said. He rolled the pineapple awkwardly down to his hand, bending his knees as he did so. When it reached his palm, he clumsily flipped it over and shoved it at the door like a shot put. It smashed into the heavy wood with a massive thud and a crack of splintering timber. The door held. Mercer stood watching it, panting with exertion and frustration.
“You done, Max?” Sharon said.
He turned to look at her. “You have a better plan?”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” she said. “I know where there’s a key.”
“A key,” he said slowly.
“Yeah. A key. The kitchen manager keeps forgetting his. So he hides a spare out behind the back door. He thinks no one knows about it, but everyone in the kitchen does. And Sonny found out, which means pretty much the whole wait staff knows.”
“Okay,” Mercer said. “And when were you planning to tell me this?”
“About the time you started listening to me,” she snapped. “Now come on.”
In contrast to the luxury of the front entranceway, the kitchen entrance was plain and unadorned, a scarred metal door with peeling gray paint set in a wall of white-painted cinder block. There was another stockade fence shielding the area from the sight of the residents. The wind had been particularly, brutally effective in its destruction here; half the fence slats were missing, and several others were rattling, the nails pulled half loose. It wouldn’t be long before they too became missiles borne on the hellish, angry wind. There was a massive green Dumpster, at least twice the size of the one at the marina office, a few feet from the door. One of the sliding metal doors on the side had caught the wind and was vibrating so fast it sounded like the buzz of an aircraft engine.
Sharon picked her way over to the low brick stoop by the door. She bent down and fumbled for a moment, then stood up. They moved towards the door as he fumbled the key into the lock. It took the three of them to pull the door open against the pressure of the gale. Even then they had to slip through, Sharon first, then Glory. Mercer went last, and the door slammed shut behind him.
Despite the late afternoon, it had been dark gray, almost as dark as night outside. Inside the kitchen it was pitch black. Mercer tried to get his bearings. The abrupt change from the raging of the tempest outside to the mere wailing and banging they could hear from within the big kitchen was so shocking that the relative quiet almost stunned him immobile. It was only a few seconds before he saw the white light of a flashlight come on a few feet away. The beam wavered and danced in the darkness, reflecting and gleaming on the shiny metal and tile surfaces and glinting off the sharp edges that were everywhere to be found. The light approached and he could make out Sharon’s face in the back-glow. She was holding a white box in her left hand.
“Come on,” she said. “I don’t know if we have anything in this first aid kit for bullet wounds, but I’m pretty sure we at least have some antiseptic.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The first aid kit of a busy high quality restaurant is well equipped, f
ully stocked, and rarely used. There is a stomach-turning variety of injuries that can be caused by a hectic environment in close proximity to sharp blades, hot metal, and scalding liquid. There is little time, however, to care for any but the truly serious ones or the ones where visible blood and the terror of HIV infection causes a supervisor to pull an employee off the line or the floor—and, of course, off the clock, since no restaurant will pay someone during the time it takes them to treat an injury. Time off the clock is a luxury few can afford.
Sharon had the kit open on a table in the dining room. The room was dark except for the glow of a half dozen candles normally meant to provide an intimate, romantic atmosphere for diners. Sharon had them grouped in the center of the table, the small glass chimneys of their silver holders left aside in her hurry to get enough light to look at Max’s shoulder.
“There’s tweezers in here,” she said, “but they’re little. For splinters and stuff like that, I guess. I don’t think I can use them to get a bullet out.”
He looked amused. “You think you could go digging around in me for a bullet?”
“I’d do what I had to, Max. Or whoever you are.”
“Max’ll do for now. But you don’t have to worry. The bullet went through. All I need to do is stop the bleeding.”
“So get your shirt off,” she said. “Let me look at it.”
He smiled again. “Yes, ma’am.” But he grimaced with pain as he unbuttoned the shirt and pulled it away from where the blood was already starting to congeal. Sharon swallowed hard the sight of the blood that coated his left shoulder and arm. “GLORY!” she called out.
“Coming,” the girl called back. The kitchen door swung open and she came in, carefully holding a pot between a pair of oven mitts.
“Careful,” Sharon warned.
“Duh, mom,” the girl responded, her face taut with concentration as she brought the pot over. Steam rose from inside.
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