Ikaat and I wouldn’t be able to get out the way I’d come in. I seized her hand, dragged her toward the adjoining hall. It was a small hall. More of a foyer, really. A blocky Tudor-style staircase cut up one side of it and a massive front door of seasoned oak hung on another.
The door’s brass lock-plate was the size of a pizza box and centuries strong. A key protruded from it. It was as long as my forearm and as thick as my thumb. It was also locked. The knob spun back and forth uselessly as more men tried to enter from the front of the house.
Another doorway yawned beneath a second-floor gallery. Unfortunately, Scar Face blocked it with his body. And he had a Sig Sauer .45-caliber pistol in his hand.
He aimed the weapon at my head.
I froze.
Ikaat jumped in front of me—like my own, personal human shield.
Scar Face cursed her. His arm dropped to his side. Whoever he was, and whoever he worked for, he clearly considered Ikaat a valuable commodity.
He couldn’t risk killing her.
But gunfire exploded on the second floor. Boots battered the floorboards overhead. The three of us swiveled toward the top of the stairs—just as Barrett charged into the upper hall with two goons hard on his heels.
Barrett had slung an unconscious Armand Oujdad over his shoulder like a cast-off raincoat. Ikaat shrieked at the sight of her father. And Scar Face swung his pistol to draw a bead on Barrett.
I reached into my jacket pocket, closed my hand around the handle of the screwdriver Barrett had found in the car. In two steps I was at Scar Face’s flank. He fired at Barrett. And I slammed the side of my fist into his face. The butt of the screwdriver broke his nose.
Blood geysered everywhere.
I hit his nose again. And again. He dropped his gun, hands to his face, before passing out from the pain.
Upstairs, the goons lunged at Barrett. He hefted Oujdad higher, vaulted over the gallery’s handrail. Like a paratrooper with a full pack on his back, Barrett cleared the lip of the balcony and hit the foyer floor, his ankles and knees flexing to soak up the shock.
I grabbed Ikaat by the hand, towed her toward the door Scar Face no longer blocked.
Barrett brought up the rear with Ikaat’s father, still out cold, over his shoulder.
We emerged behind the house, where gravel walks and reflecting pools had once made a rarified retreat for English nobility. All that had been freshly paved to make a parking lot. And a series of buildings resembling a small university campus.
Finding such a complex made sense. Many country houses had been bought or borrowed by the British government during World War II. And many businesses and foundations had moved into them since.
But I didn’t know of too many businesses or foundations that had uniformed paramilitary guards on the payroll.
And these guards weren’t shy about shooting in our general direction, fog or no fog, and whether Ikaat was with us or not.
“Hold fire!” someone bellowed through a bullhorn, and the shooting stopped.
We didn’t stick around to find out who gave the order.
Using the manor house to get my bearings, I led Ikaat around the side of the building. We skirted the brick terrace, where men with machine guns had taken up positions outside the greenhouse. In the mist, we barely avoided falling over them. But our inability to see them before we were on top of them meant they weren’t able to easily see us, either. So I turned my back on them and pushed blindly into the thick of the fog.
I needed to find the estate’s stone perimeter wall. I needed to follow it to the old tree growing up its outside. It offered our only chance to escape.
But the fog that hid us from the guards also obscured the wall. It turned overgrown shrubs into hulking monsters rather than landmarks. I couldn’t tell one bush from another or recognize whether we’d passed the same one twice.
Worse than that, I couldn’t hear Barrett bringing up the rear. In the thick cloud cover, I couldn’t see him, either. Still, Ikaat and I ran, and the damp grass of late autumn muffled our footfalls. She panted in fits and starts thanks to shock and the need to run like a track star. Not too far away, men shouted as they searched for us. My heartbeat thudded in my ears. Silence was our friend in the fog and I knew that. But I still wanted to hear Barrett.
Not even the wall springing up in front of me made me feel better. I hooked a left to run westward along it and, within a few yards, reached the overhanging tree. I slid to a stop. Ikaat bent at the waist, struggled to catch her breath. I swiped water droplets from my lenses and squinted into the fog. I still didn’t see Barrett and I still didn’t see Ikaat’s dad.
I heard our hunters searching for us, though.
“Listen,” I whispered urgently to Ikaat. “I’m going to boost you up. You’re going to climb down that tree. Do you know how to drive a stick shift?”
She nodded.
I told her how to find the car. Told her to get the hell out of there. Told her to meet Katie at Heathrow.
“But my father—”
She said it on a sob and my heart broke to hear it. My father was safely ensconced in a red Moroccan leather desk chair—behind the fortified walls of the U.S. Capitol. But he hadn’t always been so tucked away. In his youth, he’d been a soldier who’d gone off to face the uncertainties of Vietnam. And later, as a single parent, he’d left a worried daughter as he took his place among the leadership in the First Gulf War. I’d been afraid for him. But had I cried for him?
Had I ever felt the way Ikaat felt now?
Her slender fingers clutched my sleeve. “Please—I cannot go without my father.”
“You won’t have to,” Barrett said, appearing through the fog.
His gait was off, as though his leap from the mansion’s second floor had knocked something loose in his leg or foot, but he’d never looked better to me. And he wasn’t the only one who was limping. Armand Oujdad staggered through the mist behind him. Ikaat ran to him, embraced him, whispered to him in their shared language. He leaned on her heavily. And he smiled from ear to ear.
“You’re not safe yet,” Barrett warned them.
That was for sure. The searchers shouted to one another. And they were closer than ever.
Barrett boosted Ikaat to the top of the wall. With help from his daughter above and Barrett below, Armand made it over, too. All the while, I kept one eye over my shoulder. Because somewhere on the grounds, an angry dog had begun to bark. And he was much too close for my liking.
When the dog’s snarls were joined by the voice of a second, Barrett glanced my way.
“Dobermans?”
The word was barely out of his mouth when the first bulky shape hurtled out of the fog.
“Rottweilers,” I breathed. Fear threatened to crush my lungs.
Barrett seized my hand, jerked me close. “Go!”
He laced his fingers into a kind of stirrup. I stepped into his hands and, with his boost, reached for the top of the wall. The masonry tore at my fingertips and nibbled the plaster of my cast as I scrambled up.
I got a knee under me and pivoted to lay flat on the thick granite slabs capping the stones. When Barrett’s hands caught the ledge, I grabbed his forearm and tried to haul him to the top. His legs were long and his body strong, his arms and shoulders capable of endless chin-ups. A brick wall wasn’t the same as a chinning bar, though. His boots tried to find purchase on the wet stones and couldn’t. That’s when the first dog, big and beefy, rushed the wall to snap at Barrett’s heels.
The second dog, in an athletic leap, bounded into the air—and sank his teeth into Barrett’s ankle.
“He’s got my cuff,” Barrett grunted.
Panic shot through me where fear had been. I grabbed desperate handfuls of Barrett’s shirt, tried to haul him onto the wall beside me. He grimaced with his own efforts, got an elbow onto the ledge.
The dog, though, wouldn’t let go. Dangling from Barrett’s ankle, he growled like a diesel engine. Instinct made him shake
his prey, but hanging in midair meant he swung like a pendulum.
The force of it threatened to drag Barrett from the wall. The canvas of his coat rasped as he began to slide southward along the stone. His fingertips turned white as he clutched at safety.
“Get!” I hissed at the dog. “Go home! Release!”
But my commands only made the Rottweiler angrier. His companion wasn’t any too happy, either. She danced on the ground beneath us, gnashing her teeth and no doubt imagining how tasty Barrett was. She leapt for him, her fangs flashing in the moonlight. She got a mouthful of air, hit the lawn, and leapt again.
Beneath my hands, Barrett’s muscles strained and trembled. But he didn’t stop trying to reach the top of the wall. And the dogs didn’t stop trying to pull him down.
“Go,” he ordered me. “Get back to London.”
“I’m not leaving you here.” I sat up, straddled the wall, and reached low to slip my good arm beneath his.
I had an eagle-eye view as Barrett kicked at the dog with his free foot. I heard the rip and tear of his trousers. And the deep-throated fury of the animal.
The second dog jumped again. Her jaws wrapped around the arch of Barrett’s foot. The added weight jerked Barrett downward. He banged his chin on the granite even as he looped his arm over the wall.
My hands cramped as I clutched at him.
My heart bled as he slid in my grasp.
Barrett tried to shake the dogs loose. But the male dog wouldn’t yield. And he wouldn’t share Barrett with his mate.
In a fit of jealousy, the dog released Barrett to snap at his rival. She snarled, forgetting Barrett’s foot. As the two animals nipped and snapped at each other, Barrett hoisted himself to the top of the wall. He lay flat on his belly as his breath zipped through his lungs like a lumberjack’s saw.
Men’s voices, angry and aggressive, bounced across the grass. Their flashlight beams cut through the fog like chisels through stone. The dogs forgot their quarrel and began to bay.
“Time to go,” Barrett said.
I agreed. I swung my legs to the exit side and dropped to the ground. Barrett was right behind me. He rolled off the wall like a log—and hit the earth like a meteor.
He staggered to his feet.
I clutched his lapel. “Are you all right?”
“Get in the car.”
With a roar, the car burst from the brambles. Ikaat was at the wheel. But she hadn’t mastered the clutch.
The car shimmied and shook and pitched to a halt on the rough trail. Ikaat threw open the driver’s door. Just as uniformed men on the wall opened fire.
We piled into the car, me in the driver’s seat, Ikaat in the back with her father, and Barrett at shotgun. The gears screamed as I shoved the stick into place. And the engine groaned as I floored the gas pedal.
As if it had a mind of its own, the car hit every bump in the rutted trail. And just when I thought every tooth in my head had been shaken loose, we emerged onto the main road. We flew past the main gate to the country house, ate up the pavement toward Fenimoor. No headlights appeared in the rearview mirror. No sirens overtook us as we drove.
We were going to make it.
We were actually going to get away!
Barrett must’ve thought so, too. He settled into the seatback, stretched his legs out before him. But that’s when we heard the high whine of another engine.
Chapter 21
Ikaat was the first to spot them.
She’d knelt on the backseat, pressed her face to the rear window.
“I see them!” she squealed. “I see them!”
My eyes darted to the rearview mirror.
All I saw, though, were the first rays of the morning sun reflected in the glass. They stretched across the horizon to paint the countryside a sickening shade of pink. Overstuffed clouds scudded across the sky as if they had someplace else they’d rather be.
I snuck a sideways look at Barrett. His face had gone as hard as stone. And his eyes were pinned on a reflection in the side mirror.
“What is it?” I asked him. “What’s back there?”
When it came, I didn’t like his answer.
“Drones,” he said.
I twisted to look out the rear window.
Against the pink dawn, I picked out three pinpoints of black. These dots gained on us, growing larger while I watched. The whine of their high-powered engines grew to an all-out growl—and I was willing to wager they also had enough heavy hardware on board to blast an enemy bunker to bits.
My fight-or-flight reflex kicked into high gear, had me punching the gas. The road swung left, then right, like an asphalt ribbon, but offered no real getaway. Past the hedgerows, acres of open pasture would do nothing to hide us—and the cows that grazed there would certainly tell no one if they witnessed our deaths.
No sooner had I thought of the D-word than one of the drones caught up to us. It zipped alongside the car and, thanks to four sets of rotors, kept pace to hover outside my window. With two pairs of wing-like stabilizers and a compact body at its core, it looked like a dragonfly made out of fiberglass and metal—but this dragonfly was big enough to carry away a fully-grown billy goat. Some kind of lens swiveled under the smoked-glass dome that served as its head. When it winked at me, I knew I was on the paramilitary equivalent of Candid Camera.
With a sweaty palm, I jerked the steering wheel, tried to crash into the high-tech insect. But it swerved, too. It swooped wide and settled again into its spot inches from my head.
I yanked on the wheel a second time and then a third. Tires screamed as I swung all over the road. But the drone didn’t budge.
And then a second one joined its friend, taking up a position on Barrett’s flank.
“Get on the floor,” he ordered the Oujdads.
Past him, through his window, I watched as the slender cylinder protruding from the chest of the second drone rotated to point at Barrett’s head. I glanced at the machine shadowing me. It had done the same. And suddenly I felt ill. Because these cylinders weren’t part of any camera.
They were the barrels of machine guns.
Without thinking, I stomped on the brake.
Inertia threw me forward, but my seat belt kept my face from wrapping around the steering wheel. Barrett’s belt caught him before he slammed into the dash. In the back of the car, Ikaat and her father rolled across the floor like a pair of frozen turkeys.
The two drones sped on, opening fire as they’d been ordered. But without us between them, the barrage of the first machine hit the second, and the spray of the second clipped the wing of the first. Both contraptions spiraled out of control, burning up before going down to crash in the roadway.
Relief made me light-headed. But I didn’t have time to relax. I tromped on the accelerator, blew past the drones’ smoking remains. Because in the rearview mirror, I saw the third drone close the gap between us like a torpedo on target. When it reached us, it would open fire, and when it opened fire, we would die.
That truth made terror shimmer through me like quicksilver.
“Take it easy.” Barrett placed a steady hand on my thigh. “We can’t outrun it, but under the cover of the village, we can out-think it.”
As soon as he said it, the streets of Fenimoor leapt up out of the dust to meet us. Lights winked and blinked in the cottage windows as we zoomed past. Commuters shambled toward the train station—and that gave me an idea.
I sure as hell needed one. Because the last drone had caught up to us. In spite of all those pedestrians with eyes to see and ears to hear, it opened fire.
Dank, dank, dank, dank, dank!
Bullets ripped northward across the trunk of the car, making hash out of the metal. Shots shattered the rear window. When the glass fragmented, it collapsed inward like a sheet of ice.
Tunk, tunk, tunk!
Slugs slammed into the backseat’s upholstery. Stuffing flew like feathers from a shredded pillow. And Ikaat began to scream.
Near the
train station, I laid on the horn. Pedestrians in crosswalks leapt out of my way. But I didn’t dare slow down.
If I slowed, we’d die.
Everything outside the car became a blur. Except the drone. Its glittering lens tightened focus as it laid down a barrage that made the vehicle shimmy. Not that I could hear the gunfire. Ikaat’s screaming filled my brain.
But I could see the train trestle—that ancient overpass I’d driven under as Barrett and I had chased the men who’d met Ikaat at Fenimoor Station.
And I could see the single lane that shot right through it.
With a final desperate blast of my horn, I barreled beneath the train tracks. In that instant, I knew how thread felt as it passed through the needle’s eye. But I didn’t know if threading this needle would be enough.
I gritted my teeth, braced for the bite of gunshots in my back. My eye jumped to the rearview mirror. But the drone, flying at highway speed, didn’t have time to correct for the pass-over’s close quarters.
It slammed into the arch’s keystone.
And burst into flame.
Chapter 22
Our borrowed car had done well under fire. And it did its job after the last drone crashed and burned. Sputtering and stuttering, the car got Ikaat and her father, and Barrett and me, to Heathrow International Airport, but as I handed the keys over to the stunned parking valet, I knew it wouldn’t be long before that car gave up the ghost.
The rest of us had managed to keep body and soul together, though, and that was the main thing. Ikaat and her father had suffered minor cuts and bruises when my hitting the brakes had thrown them to the floor. Armand had also been knocked around by the men who’d held him captive. He swore that they hadn’t done any real damage—that he didn’t need a doctor—and I wanted to take his word for it. Because I wanted him to board a plane.
According to a text from Roger, we just needed to check in at the British Airways counter, flash our passports and collect boarding passes from the helpful attendants, and stroll onto a Boeing 777. From there, we’d buckle up, sit back, and enjoy the ride. Or so Roger seemed to believe.
The Kill Shot Page 17