The Time to Kill

by Mason Cross

  He tapped the button on his headset and spoke quietly. “Murphy, you there?”

  The response in his ear was almost immediate. “Go ahead, Stark.”

  He ran his fingers along the edge and found a corner. It was square. A hatch in the floor.

  “I think I found something.”

  75

  By the time Murphy got there, Stark had fully uncovered the edges of the concealed hatch. There was a lock on the bottom edge, the keyhole covered by a flat strip of plastic to protect it from the dirt. Stark unclipped a pocket-sized snapper bar from his belt and wedged it between the edge of the hatch and the frame at the lock. He put pressure on it and the lock broke easily. It opened on a narrow pit, about three and a half feet square and seven deep. Just enough space for a man. A bolt-hole: somewhere a person could conceal himself if the house was being searched. Stark had seen photographs of Saddam’s hiding place near Tikrit, and this reminded him of it. He directed the beam of his flashlight into the hole. It was neatly dug into the earth, with the edges squared off.

  “What have we here?” Murphy said.

  As the two of them peered into the hole, Stark saw that there was a shadow at the far edge, as though a small cutting had been made in the dirt wall at the bottom. He played the beam around to confirm there was a hollow there and looked up at Murphy.

  “Check it out.”

  Stark handed Murphy his AR-15 and dropped into the hole. It was just big enough to accommodate him. With difficulty, he crouched down to get a better look at the hollow. It was about a foot high, impossible to tell how far back it went. He crouched down on one knee and reached his hand in carefully. Immediately he felt something plastic. He took hold and pulled out a case of six bottles of water. He threw them topside and reached around in the hollow again. There were two more objects in there, both felt like boxes. One large, one small. The larger of the two contained dry rations and a Glock 19 wrapped in clear waterproof plastic. The smaller was a fireproof lockbox. Stark tossed it up to Murphy, who caught it and examined it. Without saying anything, he removed his own snapper bar from his belt and put the box on the ground. He inserted the thin, bladed end in the join between the lid and the base and twisted. The lockbox sprang open. Stark hauled himself out of the pit and looked down at their bounty. The lockbox contained two wads of banknotes: dollars and euros, a stack of ID documents held together by a rubber band … and one black flash drive.

  Murphy smiled. “Looks like ‘alive’ just became less of a priority.”

  No sooner had he finished speaking than the sound of gunfire rang out from the direction of the house.

  76

  I’ve heard people say that the Chinese have one word that means both “crisis” and “opportunity.” I have no idea if that’s true, but it sounds good enough to have gained currency.

  When I heard Stark’s communication to Murphy, I knew he had found the hatch, which was a crisis of sorts. But it also meant Murphy had immediately taken the bait, leaving the remaining man, Usher, alone in the house. Which was an opportunity. As I watched the house, I saw movement on the front porch, and then Murphy sprinted for the barn. I thought about taking the shot, decided against it. I wanted to get into the house, and I knew there was enough to keep Stark and Murphy occupied in the barn for a few minutes. Murphy was taking quite a risk breaking cover like that, which meant he wanted what was in there badly. He wouldn’t be disappointed, either.

  Then, secure in the knowledge that Stark would be busy examining the trap door in the floor, I sprinted toward the back door of the house. There were no windows in the upper floor facing that way, and I hoped that Usher was still on that level.

  I reached the back porch and flattened my back against the wall next to the door. In the silence, I could hear movement from the barn. I reached for the back door handle and turned it. It was unlocked. I opened the back door with care and deliberation and cursed under my breath as I heard the kitchen door slam shut as the wind gusted through the house and out past me. A window open somewhere. Because of that, I had lost the element of surprise.

  I stood still for a second in the hallway, listening for sounds. My instinct was that Usher would still be upstairs, perhaps in the main bedroom with its view from the front of the house. Bryant’s location was easy. Whether he was alive or dead, he would be locked in the basement. But before I could check that, I’d have to flush out the sentry.

  I had waited long enough to know one thing with reasonable certainty: Wherever Usher was, he was within earshot. I knew this because I hadn’t heard a peep on the headset. There was no way he could have missed the sound of the door slamming. If I had been Murphy or one of the others, I would have identified myself already, or given him a heads-up I was coming. If he was far enough from me to speak without being heard, I would have heard him speaking over the communicator to confirm Murphy was still in the barn. That meant he had a compelling reason to keep quiet, which suggested that he was close by.

  My unwelcome guests had had a few hours to get the lay of the land, but they would never know the house as well as me. I thought again about Walker’s mention of nine against one odds. Assuming that he could count, and had no reason to lie, that left just one remaining hostile in the house.

  I advanced down the hallway slowly. I held my breath as I approached the spot in the hall that would bring me within line of sight of the landing at the top of the stairs. The basement door was ten feet ahead of me: not far, but far enough to ensure I’d never make it alive.

  I tightened my grip on the AR-15 I’d taken from Abrams and moved my eyes from the basement door to the full-length mirror on the wall. I hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about interior decor: Everything in the house had a function, and this was no exception. It was positioned so that you could stand in the hallway and see the top of the stairs. If you chose a certain position, you could do so without being seen from the landing. It had taken me a while to get the angle right, but I was glad of it now. In the dull light from the window at the top of the stairs, I could see an unfamiliar shadow. Something was behind the wall at the top of the stairs. Something, or someone.

  All of a sudden I remembered why the name Usher was familiar. It had been five years since I had looked at the contents of the Black Book, but that was where I had seen the name. Usher had been the one tasked with killing Senator Carlson. And now he was lying in wait again, cloaked in the shadows, ready to kill once more. I wondered how many people he had killed in the interim and how many of those had been innocent people in the wrong place at the wrong time. Partly by elimination, partly through gut instinct, I knew the man at the top of the stairs was the man with glasses, the man who had remained nameless up until now.

  Stalemate. I knew where Usher was, but he certainly knew where I was, too.

  Time was not on my side either. I made up my mind and took the last step out from under the landing, turning and firing a short burst at the corner of the wall at the top of the stairs. As I heard the bullets’ impact into the thick wooden support pillar behind the drywall, I knew I hadn’t hit the man on the landing. The sound of him moving on the floorboards just confirmed it. I ducked back beneath the cover of the landing as he responded with an answering burst, the bullets tearing into the floorboards and passing through to the basement below. I hoped that Bryant hadn’t happened to be in their path. From above, I heard footsteps on the surface. Hollow and then flat as he moved across the top of the stairs and to the opposite end of the landing.

  I knew the support pillar would shield him effectively, but I had accomplished my real purpose: flushing him out and rattling him into moving his position. And now the sound of his footsteps was going to help me put him down.

  I had bought the house following a minor fire that had left the structure intact, but necessitated a full rebuild of the staircase and upper landing. The project hadn’t taken long to complete, but I had had the opportunity to view the work in progress. That was how I knew that the opposing ends of t
he landing were supported by a pair of six-inch-thick concrete ledges, leaving a stretch of two-inch-thick floorboards in between. My adversary had just moved from a position shielded by the vertical pillar to one sheltered by the concrete underneath him. I hoped his adrenaline would be pumping too hard to notice the slight difference in the surface beneath his feet.

  There was a pause of a few seconds while each of us waited for the other to make a move.

  “Drop your weapon and I’ll let you walk out of here,” I called out. When there was no response, I continued. “I know you’re smart, Usher. You backed off in LA.”

  There was a pause and then a barely perceptible noise as Usher moved. I ducked and rolled as he angled the barrel over the edge of the drop, aiming for the sound of my voice.

  I waited and took another step forward.

  “There’s no way out,” I said, ducking back into cover as he fired again. The bullets smashed into the floor a couple feet away, but the angle was no good. Sooner or later he was going to have to move from his position. I was hoping for sooner, because the shots would have alerted Stark and Murphy in the barn by now.

  So far my attempts to rile him had failed. He hadn’t even bothered to answer me, never mind move position. I weighed the odds and decided to force the issue. I stepped out of cover and fired blind up at the landing. The angle was just as ineffective for me, and I knew all I was doing was putting a few more holes in the ceiling.

  I ducked back underneath the landing, making sure to position myself beneath the concrete. I took careful aim at the stretch of wood between the two concrete support platforms. I started to wonder if there was anything I could do to make Usher lose his cool. But then I heard footsteps again—two flat slaps and then two hollow thunks as he headed for the top of the stairs. I knew he was planning to rush me, spray the hallway with bullets as he ran down the stairs, hoping to take me out before I could return fire. Before he got within line of sight, I squeezed the trigger and sent a long burst straight through the floorboards at the top of the stairs just as he crossed the unprotected area. I saw the holes explode in the surface of the wood, heard a scream, and watched as the body tumbled down the fifteen stairs, landing in a crumpled heap at the bottom.

  The AR-15 clattered on the floor beside him. I took no chances, lining my sights on the back of his head. When I got close enough, I kicked the weapon away and used my foot to roll the body over, keeping my rifle trained on the motionless body.

  The head rolled back and the dim light from the upstairs window glinted off a single glass lens. I recognized the face from LA. The man in glasses had taken multiple hits. I switched in a fresh magazine and then crouched down beside him to take a closer look. Some of the bullets had punctured his legs, some had impacted off his body armor, and one had smashed through the right lens of his glasses.

  As I straightened up, I noticed a small light in the corner of my vision, through the open kitchen door. I turned and looked inside, a feeling of foreboding growing. The kitchen was located in the center of the ground floor. I felt a cold chill as I saw a pile of shapes in the dark: stacked objects connected by wires and a winking red light. Enough C-4 to turn this place into matchsticks. Every instinct in my body screamed at me to run, to head for the door.

  But Bryant was still in the basement.

  77

  Stark turned his head toward the source of the gunfire.

  “That’s in the house.” He looked back at Murphy, who hadn’t shifted from his position and had a thoughtful look on his face. “He’s in the damn house!”

  Stark picked up his AR-15 and started to move toward the barn door when Murphy reached forward and grabbed his upper arm.

  “Wait.”

  “What are you doing?”

  Murphy kept a tight grip on Stark’s upper arm, looking him square in the eye. “Could be an easier way to deal with that. Bryant, too. All of them.”

  Stark didn’t get it for a second, and then he remembered the explosives in the house. Murphy’s backup plan.

  Another exchange of fire rang out.

  “Usher’s in there,” he said, as though Murphy didn’t know that.

  Murphy held out his hand, and Stark knew what he wanted: the remote detonator that was currently nestled in the padded pocket of his combat vest. “Usher can take his chances. We’ve got what we need.”

  Stark looked back at him for a minute, trying to work out if this were some kind of black humor. Murphy stared back at him, unblinking. No joke.

  Before Stark could say anything else, Murphy reached forward, grabbing at the pocket of the vest. Instinctively, Stark ducked back. Murphy lunged at him, and Stark sidestepped again before slamming his fist into the left side of Murphy’s jaw, knocking him down on the barn floor. For a moment they just looked at each other. Stark still standing, Murphy on the ground with blood flowing from his upper lip.

  “I’m going in there. You can follow me, or you can sit here and wait.”

  Stark began to turn toward the door and heard a familiar click before he was turned all the way around.

  “You forgot option three.”

  He turned back to Murphy. The gun was pointed directly at his head.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  Murphy said nothing but shook his head from side to side.

  “What Blake said—he didn’t kill the senator, did he? We did.”

  “Give me the remote, Stark.”

  Being careful not to make a sudden movement anywhere near his own gun, Stark’s hand went up to his earpiece. He tapped the team channel button.

  “Usher, do you read? Get the fuck out of there. Murphy’s going to blow—”

  The barrel of Murphy’s AR-15 erupted in white light. Stark realized he had stopped in the middle of a sentence and couldn’t remember why. He started trying to speak again, but the words wouldn’t come. Then his vision went red, and then black.

  78

  I was headed for the back door when I heard the voice in my ear. “Usher, do you read? Get the fuck out of there. Murphy’s going to blow—” followed by a burst of fire that I heard in stereo: a series of rapid clicks in my left ear and the unfiltered noise from farther off to my right.

  And then I stopped thinking. The back door was too far away, too close to the thin drywall separating the hallway from the kitchen. There was a quicker way out. I charged through into the living room, raising my Glock and firing at the plate-glass window. It shattered around the trail of bullet holes and the glass dropped away. I caught my foot on a jutting shard of the window as I jumped through the hole. I tumbled out into the night and hit the snow, landing hard on my shoulder. I rolled to my feet and started to run just as the wave of light and heat hit me and carried me off my feet.

  I landed facedown, the snow breaking my fall a little. I stayed down, hands over my head as I heard and felt large fragments of my house crash to the ground behind and ahead of me. When the larger impacts subsided, I rolled over. My ears were ringing from the blast. Black smoke was billowing skyward. As I watched, the blackness began to be penetrated by the light of dirty orange flames. After a minute I could just make out a burning husk where my house had once stood. I put a hand above my head to protect me from the small debris that was still raining down in place of the snowflakes. Murphy had missed me again. I started to struggle onto one knee, and then I saw a figure silhouetted against the flames.

  Murphy’s voice sounded amused. “Last men standing, huh, Blake?”

  I started to get up from my kneeling position, and he shook his head. “Uh-uh. Stay right there, hoss. Toss the gun. Hands behind your head.”

  Slowly, I did as he asked, throwing the Glock a couple of feet in front of me. I stayed where I was, kneeling in the snow. I wondered if Martinez had been kneeling when they’d caught up with him. I wondered if he had managed to take any of them with him.

  “Looks like your luck ran out tonight.”

  “Looks like lots of people’s did,” I replied, gazing p
ast him at the burning house.

  Murphy nodded. “Not exactly a perfect mission, I’ll grant you. But you’re not exactly an easy target.”

  “We can still make a deal,” I said.

  Murphy didn’t say anything for a moment, and then he took a step closer. I could see him grinning in the flickering light from the house.

  “I’m afraid you’re too late. Stark found your little bolt-hole in the barn. I got the Black Book right here.” He laughed at the pained expression on my face. “Oh shit. Damn right. Tell you the truth, you’ve done me a favor. With Usher dead, there’s nobody left to know what really went down on the Carlson job.”

  “You always were a pragmatist, Murphy,” I said.

  He nodded. “Goddamn straight. But even so, I’m sorry it had to come to this. These last couple of days made me realize I actually missed you.”

  “I’m touched.”

  “I mean, sure, don’t get me wrong—you’ve made things more difficult than they needed to be. But it’s been so long. Made me realize they don’t make them like us anymore.”

  “There is no us. You’re nothing like me,” I said quietly.

  He nodded agreement, like he could afford to be magnanimous. “All right, you have a point. You know what your problem is?”

  I said nothing, waited for him to continue.

  “Sentimentality,” he said finally. “You worry about other people. You have friends. Men like us can’t afford friends.”

  “I bet Usher would agree with that,” I said. I closed my eyes and tried to think of a way out of this. I didn’t think there was one.

  “He wouldn’t be the only one,” Murphy said in a reflective tone. He paused and seemed to make up his mind. “You tried to get Bryant out of the house, didn’t you? Maybe things would have gone differently if you’d have cut your losses.”