On this side of the house the smoke was less dense and I could see no flames. The breeze was blowing down the hillside, but nothing had yet reached this far. I assumed many of the remaining patrol guards had been lured up towards the fire, from which direction the shots were also coming. The exchanges were infrequent, but they were persistent. Ahead of us, Terry had spotted two men wearing loose dark clothing, both clutching two-way radios and holding on to DPMS TAC 2 semi-automatic carbines. The two were focussed on the rear of the property, drawn by whatever action was occurring further along to their right and beyond the house itself. The fact that they had both been drawn in the same direction without checking their backs told me everything about them.
Terry turned to me and nodded once. The look in his eyes told me what the nod meant. These two armed guards would not hesitate to kill us, so we had to be prepared to engage them with the same conviction and lack of emotion. That would come later. For now, we had a job to do and would not turn away. Violence sometimes met violence head-on, and those who were left standing were adjudged the victors and the writers of history.
As he stood upright, stepped around the bins and launched himself forward once more, Terry scraped his boot across the concrete pathway that ran around towards the garages. I knew he would not have wanted to shoot the men in the back, and so had deliberately alerted them to our presence. Our own weapons now held in firing positions, Terry and I snapped off two rounds each at the men turning our way, and all four bullets found their intended targets. As he stepped over the two fallen bodies, Terry put a further round in each of the victims’ heads. The old-style double-tap has become a triple-tap because protective vests are now standard issue. That final shot – always to the head – is primarily used to put the target down.
As we approached the corner of the building, I noticed for the first time a side door close to the angle. My mind imagined an opening leading from a utility room, which itself led into the kitchen area. Either way, I was certain Terry would choose this entrance into the house. I now followed him whilst turned sideways on, so that I could see both behind us and to our left. For all we knew, the garages were concealing further guards, perhaps sheltering from the gunfire they could hear going off all around them. As we approached the door I saw Terry readjust his grip on his weapon, and then his right hand slipped out towards the handle. As it moved, so did the door, swinging fully open in one swift movement.
Terry took a step right and slammed himself up against the wall behind the open door. I raised my weapon and waited for whoever had decided to exit that way to move into my line of vision. My finger was resting on the trigger guard, ready to slip into place. No matter who was emerging from inside the house, and irrespective of how well-armed they might be, I would have the drop on them and if I chose to fire they would be dead.
It was that simple sometimes. Especially if you always expected the unexpected.
Instead of combatants, however, two flustered women appeared from behind the door. Both appeared to be Native American, one middle-aged, the other much older, their flesh heavy and thick with wrinkles. As they turned and saw me, both let out loud yelps of surprise and alarm. I held a finger to my lips and shook my head, lowering the carbine.
‘Do you work here?’ I asked, taking a chance. For all I knew they were relatives of Mangas Crow, but I had a hunch they might be his employees.
The two women jumped a second time when they caught sight of Terry, but by now he had also lowered his weapon to become a less threatening presence. Nonetheless, the women looked anxiously at each other, then back at me. Their eyes remained fearful and neither made any reply.
‘Do you work here?’ I punched the words this time. ‘If you do, just tell me what’s on the other side of that door and where we can find Crow. Then you can go.’
Again the exchange of looks. Something more than words passed between them as the elderly woman nodded. The other one turned to me and said, ‘We do. My mother cooks, I clean.’
‘Good,’ I said, offering a smile. ‘We’re not here to hurt you. We just need to know the layout inside and where Crow is.’
The woman laid it out for us. My assumptions had been correct. Through the door we would find a utility and wash room. Beyond that the kitchen and open-plan dining area, which in turn led to the guts of the house. The woman told us that Crow could normally be found in the vast living room, but was now almost certainly upstairs in his office where he kept a floor-to-ceiling gun case.
‘Have you seen a white woman and her daughter in there today?’ I asked.
The two women glanced at each other but said nothing. I felt it was important to find out. That way I would know if I had to ensure we took at least one of Crow’s henchmen alive. ‘Please!’ I said more urgently. ‘The woman is my wife. The girl our daughter. Please tell me if you have seen them.’
Again it was the younger of the two who spoke. ‘Yes. They came a short time ago. He has them.’
I thanked her and pointed towards the garages. ‘Wait over there in the corner, keep down and stay together. Whoever is out there shooting won’t fire at you if they see you squatting there, but if you make a run for it they almost certainly will. When the shooting stops, then you leave as quickly and quietly as you can. Okay?’
They both nodded and scampered across to the garage driveway. As they moved, two figures came around the side of the building and made their way towards us. I kept my rifle pointing down.
‘No shifting those two heavy doors at the front,’ Crozier said. Heather was behind him, edging sideways and checking their flanks exactly as I had done moments earlier. ‘We tried the windows, too. No luck.’
Terry stepped away from the wall behind the door. ‘Mike and I are going inside,’ he said. ‘Can you cover us from here, make sure we have an exit to use?’
The sheriff nodded. ‘I can. But as the man with the badge I really ought to be going in there with you.’
‘Me too,’ Heather said immediately.
‘There’s a probable combat and hostage rescue situation inside this house,’ Terry said, no emotion in his voice. ‘Even if you two are trained for that, I doubt you will have done it for real as many times as Mike and I have. There are only four of us, and two need to remain out here to help protect our exit strategy.’
‘Yet you were okay with us gaining entry through the front door,’ the sheriff said, eyeing Terry shrewdly.
My friend hiked his shoulders. ‘I guessed they would be locked and dead-bolted and you’d have no chance of breaking past them.’
‘You might have said something.’
‘You would only have argued, sheriff.’
‘Two of each, then,’ Heather suggested. ‘One of us comes with one of you.’
‘No.’ Terry shook his head and was firm about it. ‘We do that then we’ll have two pair who don’t know the other’s moves. Mike and I can’t be thinking of other people when the bullets are flying. Now, I’m not asking I’m telling. Mike and I are going in. You can come or stay as you think best, but if nobody remains here to protect our route out, we may find ourselves without one.’
I felt my chest swell. Terry was good at taking charge. It was easy to forget that, prior to last summer, he and I had not fought together for a number of years. But he was right; two unfamiliar pairings made us less effective as a whole.
I pulled my shotgun out of its sleeve attached to my Bergen, and handed it to Crozier. ‘Take this,’ I said. Heather was already carrying her own. ‘You might need more stopping power than your hand gun.’
I felt Terry tap me on the shoulder. ‘Gear up for flash-bangs and smoke,’ he said.
It took me a few seconds to remove the gas mask from my pack and pull it on over my head. By the time I turned, Terry was already heading through the doorway. I looked at the sheriff and Agent Green. ‘We’ll be back with our hostages,’ I assured them. ‘Buy us time.’
I had no idea if they could understand me beneath the breathing apparatu
s, but I thought they would get the message. With that, I followed my friend into the unknown.
35
Terry tossed flash-bangs and smoke grenades into every area we entered. There was no resistance until we were in the main hall at the foot of the stairs. There, we came under fire from a semi-automatic weapon. The rounds went high and wide, but they held us back momentarily. The gunman was clearly unused to the rifle, and emptied his magazine within seconds, providing us with a gap in which he would have to pause to reload. Terry and I rose up at the same time from our hiding places, our aims more deliberate, the result more effective. We entered the next area stepping over the tattered remains of the body we had put down.
As we stepped past a tall square pillar, two men were coughing and weeping as they waved their arms around uselessly to fan smoke away from their eyes, which they would find partially blinded for a while yet. With the men disorientated by the sound as well as the flash, it felt a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, but we had no choice other than to put them away. I felt sure they would have done the same to us given half a chance.
We cleared the ground floor quickly. Through the wall-sized folding glass doors in the vast living room I could see the fire in the wood more clearly now, and although the treeline stopped well short of the house, small pockets of vegetation were also catching light, the smoke thick and climbing high. Somewhere out there gunfire was still snapping through the trees, and there was some rapid movement. Given the spread of the fire and the choking smoke rolling through, I did not think it would be long before everyone in the woods had to retreat from their entrenched locations. I heard dogs barking in the distance, the odd shout or cry of alarm. Thankfully, it was all taking place outside the house. Beyond the immediate area I could hear distant sirens.
I tilted my head to look up at the ceiling. Donna and Wendy were up there. I knew it as much as I could know anything at that moment. What I did not get a sense of was whether I would find them alive or dead.
I shut the thought away in a steel trap. I could not take it with me into the next skirmish, or the distraction might mean it was my last. Not knowing what awaited us was both terrifying and exhilarating, but I had to keep thinking positively.
As we headed up the stairway, Terry and I continuously swapped positions at the front, covering the steady movements of the other in turn. As we reached the landing there was a short burst of fire, and wooden splinters from the bannister handrail flew into the air around us. A couple of balusters were shredded in the same way.
Terry shot back and fell to one knee. I did the same beside him, covering our flanks once more. Terry tossed two more flash-bangs in rapid succession and we followed them as they exploded ferociously, our eyes and ears protected from the worst effects. That was not the same for whoever had shot at us, and as Terry took lead once more he rattled off two more rounds. This time I fired the third, not even bothering to glance at the devastating results.
The third room we attempted to clear was locked. Given the hostage situation we could not fire through the door without knowing the layout inside the room beyond. Instead, Terry gave the lock a thumping kick, then stood to one side behind the wall. He had expected shots to come back the other way, but there was only silence. He did it again, but the door refused to yield. It was a sturdy timber construction, and the lock looked solid and new. He stood aside and allowed me to slip a breach charge into place, opting for the hinges as he had done back in Roswell. Ten seconds later the door blew inwards, despite the charges being relatively small. I knew the detonation would cause confusion and panic inside, and hoped to take advantage of that.
But when we stepped inside, our weapons raised and ready to fire, we encountered our first genuine headache since entering the house. A large Native American man stood behind two young girls, one arm snaked around them as he pulled tight, the other hand holding a gun which moved from head to head in swift succession. The girls were little more than children, and wore only thin, shapeless nightgowns.
Another native stood close by holding on to Donna. She, too, was pinned by a muscular arm, the tip of a heavy hunting knife jammed against her exposed throat. Donna’s eyes were wild and moist, filled with panic and fear. Still my heart leapt – she was alive, and I had to hang on to that.
Book-ending them all stood two more large Native American men, both holding handguns pointed in our direction. My gaze drifted beyond them to a chair on which Wendy sat. She was bound and gagged, and even though she squirmed horrendously, those movements flooded my senses with joy and relief because each of them meant she was still alive.
‘Put your weapons down,’ the man holding the two young girls said, his voice not at all unsteady. It was a tone and manner entirely used to being in charge. ‘If you don’t, the woman and the kid die first. But these two get it next.’
My eyes flitted between them all. I noticed the figure holding Donna glance sidelong at the man who had just spoken. I had not spotted the man back at the Weather Balloon, so I did not recognise him now, but I figured this was our follower looking askance at Crow. The sheriff had told us his name was Joe Kane, and what I saw in his eyes made me think. I wondered if Terry had also clocked it.
Whether he had or not, Terry’s instinctive response to the threat was to triple-tap the gunman to his left. Less than a second later I did the same to the man standing farthest right. Both men were thrown backwards, dead before they hit the floor.
Behind her gag, Wendy gave a muffled cry of alarm. Her squirms reached the point of convulsions. Donna screamed, as did the two young girls.
‘That was to show you we are serious,’ Terry said, as the loud echoes of gunfire died away.
‘And you think I’m not?!’ roared the man I took to be Crow, yanking more firmly on the terrified young girls who both screamed louder still and wept uncontrollably. Their cries were piercing shrieks of terror. As he pulled them closer he also ducked down a little, leaving less of his frame exposed. Now the girls were not merely bartering material, they were human shields.
Terry casually swung his rifle across, aiming for the man’s head.
‘You want them to die?’ the man cried out. ‘You think I won’t do it then you carry on standing there ignoring me in my own home. They are disposable. They mean nothing to me. I can replace them with a snap of my fingers when this is all over and you two are long gone. If you want them to live, put your weapons down. Now!’
I noticed the other man – who I was sure had to be Joe Kane – slip his blade back into its sheath with great deliberation, and instead draw out a handgun. Donna wriggled in his grasp, her eyes focussed on me, but made no bid to escape. She had already submitted to her fate. I kept my focus on the man I believed to be Kane. There was something about him, buried there in the contours of his face, and in the deepest recesses of his eyes. Something that told me he was not about to pull the trigger on my ex-wife. The man was hard to work out, but I sensed there was a battle raging inside his head to which only he was privy.
‘If those girls fall, you’ll be the next to go,’ Terry said to Crow, ignoring everyone else in the room. ‘But we are your enemies, not them. Be a man and take the fight to us. Don’t stand behind girls for protection, you fucking coward.’
I knew he was goading the man. The second Crow’s hand switched the gun’s aim from the girls to either me or Terry, his head would disappear in a huge puff of blood and brain matter. But not until he moved that gun, because Terry would realise, as I did, that Crow’s finger could convulse and squeeze his own trigger even as he died.
I thought we were at an impasse, and my mind scrambled for an answer. Then I saw Kane’s hand move, the gun come up. I put some tension into my trigger finger, but all of my instincts screamed at me not to squeeze it yet. I watched in mute fascination as the man holding Donna raised his gun and fired a single shot.
The girls shrieked and broke away from the Judge as he pitched backwards and toppled like a mighty oak, and even before he hit th
e hardwood flooring inside the office, Terry had put two more rounds into him. Clearly Kane had not anticipated Mangas Crow reflexively pulling his own trigger as he died, because he had shot him in the head anyway.
Kane released his grip on Donna and raised both hands, allowing his gun to tumble to the floor. He and I looked at each other as Donna staggered away and slumped to her knees beside our daughter, her legs having given way to the flood of adrenaline and the sapping effects of shock. I thought Kane realised that I could have shot him before he pulled the trigger, but that I had given him the benefit of the doubt. I could not be certain, but it seemed to me there was an element of gratitude in his eyes. Along with respect.
I then rushed forward to remove Wendy’s bonds, hugging my girls and smothering them both with as much love, affection and relief as it was possible to summon up. Not only were they alive, they were also unharmed. I had a feeling Kane would have had something to do with that. From the corner of my eye I could see Terry attending to the two girls, who had both swapped screams for moans of incomprehension and shock, checking the pair over for injuries as he attempted to calm them.
‘I always knew this was the wrong place for Crow to make his home,’ Kane said. ‘This could never have happened on the res. There he would have been protected by more than guns. He would have had the defence of an entire nation at his fingertips. His ego killed him as much as I did.’
‘Why did you shoot him?’ I asked, standing upright again to face him.
‘Business is one thing,’ the big Native American responded. ‘But using two of his own people as shields, protecting himself with two children he also abused…’ Kane shook his head. ‘I could not allow that to happen.’
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