Revenge of the Dog Team

by William W. Johnstone

  They’d all switched off their transceivers, folding them up and pocketing them before going into action. In combat, such techno-gimmicks were often more hindrance than help, and could prove a lethal distraction when the utmost concentration was required. Time enough for the communicators when the shooting stopped and the killing was done…

  Crouched low, almost double, Steve quick-timed it toward the front of the west wing. All the windows had closed curtains, muffling the lights in the rooms behind them. Night gloom was thicker there than at the pillared, porticoed front entrance, which was bathed in brilliance from ground-level floodlights.

  Steve got up close to the looming wall, hugging the cool dimness as he made his way toward the front entrance. Before he reached it, gunfire sounded from the rear of the house.

  The jeep rolled on into the yard, an open space framed by a toolshed, the barn garage, and some smaller cube-shaped structures scattered toward the right. The yard was well lit by outdoor lamps. In its center were grouped four figures: two men and two dogs. The jeep lurched to a halt, Nevins hitting the high beams to dazzle the opposition with their glare.

  The caretakers, Karl and Jimmy Mac, were in the middle of making their rounds. Karl, big and shambling, wore a checkered shirt, work pants, and boots, and carried a rifle. Jimmy Mac was short, scrawny, and bowlegged. In one hand was a brace of leashes, each leash atttached to the neck collar of a Rottweiler. The Rottweilers appeared to be the size of Shetland ponies. In the headlights, their eyes blazed like balls of blood. They bristled, quivering with menace.

  Karl leveled his rifle, firing waist-high. A round struck the jeep’s front grille; a second shot blew out one of the headlights.

  Bryce hated guard dogs. Once, on a stealthy night raid against the headquarters of a Central American drug lord, a guard dog had closed with him unexpectedly as he was crossing a dark patio. Possibly due to its training, possibly because its vocal cords had been surgically severed, it emitted no warning bark or growl. There was the scrape of its paw claws against the flagstones and the impression of something swift and inexorable as it charged, and then it was on him. He just had time enough to instinctively throw up his arms to protect his face and throat. Fangs ripped and tore his flesh; the impact of the lunge knocked him down. At that, he was lucky; some attack dogs are trained to go first for the groin. This one went for his throat. Bryce lay squirming and writhing on his back on the patio stones, muscular forearms ripped and torn by a fanged muzzle that sought his neck. Somehow, he got one forearm wedged deep between the beast’s jaws, freeing his other arm to wrap around its neck. A big, powerful man, he got the devil dog into a headlock and, bringing his weight to bear, succeeded in breaking its neck. Pain and loss of blood nearly finished him, but he managed to survive. The doctors did what they could, but he still bore the scars to this day, and in cold or damp weather, could still feel their phantom bite deep in his flesh.

  Now, when Bryce saw the Rottweilers, he opened fire on them. His weapon’s selector was set on auto-fire and he triggered a three-round burst into the nearer of the two animals, downing it.

  Jimmy Mac screamed, “No!”

  Startled by the gunfire, Karl threw himself to the right, his right. His feet got tangled up with each other and he fell, tumbling sideways.

  This saved his life, because Nevins squeezed off a burst of machine gun fire his way, and instead of chopping Karl in the middle, it passed harmlessly over his head. Falling, Karl still kept hold of his rifle. Hitting the ground, he rolled away from the line of fire.

  When the first guard dog was shot, Jimmy Mac had unthinkingly released his grip on both leashes. The other dog, the one not shot, launched itself toward Bryce. Bryce let go with a burst, putting a half-dozen rounds into it. The momentum of the Rottweiler’s charge carried it all the way to the jeep, even with most of its head shot off and its chest riddled.

  Jimmy Mac pulled a handgun out of his pants pocket and fired at Bryce. Bryce and Nevins had both left the jeep, diving out their respective sides. Bullets from Jimmy Mac’s gun blew out the windscreen and thunked into the engine block. The engine began jammering in a loud, discordant rhythm, like it was trying to shake itself apart.

  Nevins fired from the prone position, stitching Jimmy Mac up the middle. Jimmy Mac fell backward, his gun hand raised straight up, pointing at the sky, reflexively firing off one last blast before he flopped over on his back, dead.

  Nevins squirmed to one side, wriggling on his belly, looking for Karl so he could shoot him. But Karl was out of sight, having managed to duck behind a stone pillar at the foot of a short, wide staircase leading up to an extensive pavilion at the rear of the house. Karl stuck his head out for a look-see. Nevins’s gun muzzle pointed at him and fired. But Karl had ducked back in time. Nevins’s rounds cratered the square-edged pillar, ripping off chunks of stone. It sounded like a jackhammer breaking up pavement.

  The jeep’s wounded engine continued making an ungodly racket, muffling, but not completely obscuring, the sound of a second-floor sliding door in the front of the barn garage being flung open. The doorway was a relic of the era when the barn had been just that, a barn, and the upper loft had been used for storing hay bales and such that were winched into place.

  In the doorway space appeared Havoc Renna, wild-haired, wild-eyed, with a Herculean physique, holding a machine gun pistol in each hand. His weapons were of the Uzi variety; he started firing down into the yard below.

  Bryce, who had come tumbling out of the jeep’s passenger side, somehow got his feet under him and half stumbled, half fell toward the cover of a toolshed.

  Up in the loft, Renna was working his guns like fire hoses, holding the triggers down and spraying lead. A tremendous volley of slugs tore up the ground below. Seeing Bryce in the corner of his eye, he swung the machine gun pistols in the intruder’s direction.

  Bryce lost his footing and fell, but not before reaching the toolshed, belly-crawling behind it. A fusillade tore through the wooden-walled shed, ventilating planks, richocheting off pieces of equipment inside, spraying clouds of wood chips. Bryce’s face was in the dirt as he concentrated on flattening out his body as much as possible. A hand span away from him, the earth shuddered as a line of slugs tore into it.

  Renna was firing blind; he couldn’t see Bryce, but he knew he was behind the toolshed and kept pumping lead into it, hoping to tag Bryce that way.

  Nevins got set to shoot Renna, whose massive form framed in the square of the loft doorway made a ripe target. A round passed so close to Nevins that he could feel the rush of its passage just missing his head.

  It came courtesy of Karl, who’d just taken a potshot at him with his hunting rifle from behind the pavilion stairway’s banister. Nevins returned fire, but Karl had already ducked safely under cover and Nevins’s rounds damaged only the stonework.

  Nevins was in a bad position, stretched out prone in the open to the right of the jeep with no cover. He was just lucky that Renna’s attention was caught by Bryce, because Renna could have nailed Nevins sure if he’d focused on him first.

  Behind and to the left of Nevins was a blocky metal cube, an exterior component of the big house’s extensive air-conditioning system. Some kind of ventilator or heat-exchange unit. It was about four feet high, five feet long, and three feet deep. It stood ten feet away from the house’s rear wall.

  To Nevins, it looked like a good place to be, anyway a hell of a lot better than where he was. Firing another burst at Karl to keep him pinned down, he rose crouching, pivoted, and made a dash for the blocky cube unit.

  The motion registered on Renna, who swung his guns in Nevins’s direction. In that instant they came up empty, the clips exhausted.

  Nevins dove headfirst over the unit’s grilled top, clearing it and landing hard on the other side. Karl popped up from behind the stone banister and shot at Nevins, but missed. Two rounds thwacked into the wall of the house.

  The fall partly knocked the wind out of Nevins, but he kept moving,
gathering himself, huddling against the side of the cubed unit. Its metal exterior felt cool against the side of his face.

  In the loft, Renna ducked back out of sight to reload. In the center of the yard, the shuddering jeep made a hell of a racket. Karl shot at Bryce, missed. Bryce low-crawled around the corner, behind the back of the shed, putting it between himself and Karl. It covered him from Renna, too.

  Nevins poked the machine gun muzzle around the edge of the cube, probing for an opening, an opportunity. From the ground floor of the barn, the garage area, came a flicker of movement and a volley of slugs. A third defender had come into play: Bennett. Wielding a big-bore semiautomatic pistol, he tried to take off Nevins’s head.

  Nevins had seen the newcomer in time to pull his head back out of range. The cube unit vibrated as some slugs tore into it. Its smooth-sided exterior must have contained a mass of machinery, thwarting deep penetration by the rounds, flattening them into lead smears.

  Nevins had reason to be doubly grateful for its solidity, as Renna resumed firing, this time at him. The cube unit absorbed bullets, which hammered it like rivets being driven in.

  Things were getting hot!

  On the other side of the building, when the shooting started, Steve Ireland made his move. He’d planned to go in by the front door, using the riot gun to blow open the locks and clear the way. If he had his druthers, he’d have used a grenade, but grenades had been ruled off-limits for tonight’s mission by the higher-ups, in the interest of furthering the nonmilitary, gang-related nature of the assault. Not that some of these gangs lacked grenades and machine guns and whatnot; hell, some of the big-time cartels had their own fleet of aircraft, and even submarines.

  Thinking twice, Steve decided to change tactics. For all he knew, the front double doors might be reinforced and crossbarred.

  Beside him loomed the façade of the mansion’s west wing, with its array of high, curtained bay windows. Their sills were about chest-high. The curtains were thick, opaque, blocking off all view of what lay inside. Mayhew was certainly a man who valued his privacy. Impossible to tell from the outside whether the room within was occupied or not. Not that it mattered much either way.

  Standing a few paces back, Steve loosed a blast into the nearest window, immediately following it up with another.

  Glass panes exploded inward, disintegrating in a mass of shards, bringing down drapes and curtain rods with him. The tall window might just as well have been hit with a wrecking ball. Crystalline fragments cascaded, raining down on the interior. A pall of gun smoke hung in the air.

  Within lay a wide, handsomely appointed, well-lit space, seemingly unoccupied. Steve glanced up at the top of the window frame, making sure no glass shards remained to work themselves loose and come down like guillotine blades. That would be a hell of a note, to get decapitated while making his entry!

  Some saw-toothed fragments remained sticking up out of the sill like glass fangs. Steve’s riot gun had a short, chopped wooden stock; he used the butt end to sweep the shards clear. Grabbing the sill, he chinned himself up and inside.

  Broken glass and ragged, shredded drapery made a hell of a mess on plush, deep-pile wall-to-wall carpeting. Steve moved to one side, so as not to be outlined with his back turned toward where the window used to be. He didn’t know who might be roaming around out front. Moving out of the potential line of fire, he put himself between two curtained windows, his back to the wall between them.

  Standing half-crouched, legs bent at the knees, Steve worked the slide, jacking another shell into the chamber. There was a ringing in his ears from the previous blasts. There was also a wheep-beeping sound, irritatingly persistent, which he realized was no auditory effect but rather an alarm, doubtless triggered by his forced entry.

  He faced south, toward the rear of the house. The surroundings were rich, all cream-colored carpeting and pale blue walls lined with engravings of old-time hunting and racing prints.

  Sizable though it was, the space he was in was a kind of anteroom to a much larger room that lay beyond, on the far side of an archway gaping in the opposite wall. On his left, a high, square-sided portal accessed the front entrance and main hall. It was ablaze with light, its rose marbled floor shot through with iridescent gold-colored veins. Or maybe they were shot through with real gold, Steve didn’t know. From a high ceiling hung a crystal chandelier.

  The front hall was all white brightness, while the room beyond the anteroom was dimly lit and thick with the shadows. Steve headed that way; it seemed sneakier. He padded light-footed, unable to avoid stepping on pieces of glass scattered on the floor. The carpet was so plush that he felt like he was practically wading through it. He approached at an oblique angle, not wanting to be outlined by the archway.

  The arch opened onto a dining room, its long axis running north-south. In its center was a chair-lined table that could comfortably have seated a dozen guests. Above it, hanging down from the ceiling, was another chandelier; this one was unlit. At the opposite end was a door, outlined in light that shone on its far side. It and the light flooding through the archway from the anteroom were the only sources of illumination; no lights burned in the dining room.

  The irritating wheep-beeping continued; the alarm system extended throughout the house, Steve guessed.

  He crossed the dining room sideways, sidestepping crabwise, like a basketball player’s lateral move. Presented less of a target profile that way. The west wall was lined with curtained windows, the east by tall glass-fronted wooden cabinets containing stacks of plates, cups and saucers, crockery of all kinds. Steve moved his crabbed way between the cabinets and the table.

  The far door must have been a swinging door, for suddenly it swung inward and open, continuing with such force that it crashed against the inner wall.

  Standing in the doorway, backlit, was a hulking man-mountain, a dark outline of a figure that threatened to overflow the confines of the door frame. His features were hidden in shadow, but light glinted on the outlines of the gun held leveled in his hand. A long-barreled revolver, probably a big-ass .44.

  Steve shot first, the muzzle flare from his cut-down riot gun resembling a whisk broom made of red and yellow fire. The blast caught the hulk in midsection, blowing him backward out the door.

  The hinged, weighted door reversed position, swinging shut. It failed to close all the way, because the man-mountain’s big feet were blocking the doorway.

  Steve worked the slide, pumping another shell into the chamber. Flattening his back against the wall beside the door, he dropped into a crouch before easing the door open and peering inside. If someone was there waiting, they wouldn’t be expecting him to emerge low and would probably shoot high.

  The door opened onto a corridor that met it at right angles; on the right, it continued for a few paces before terminating in a blank wall; on the left, it continued for about twenty feet before opening into a kitchen. Steve figured the passageway was used by the help to deliver food from the kitchen to the dining room.

  The man-mountain lay flat on his back, stretched across the hallway. His blasted midsection presented a grotesque anatomy lesson, reminding Steve for a moment of one of those biology textbooks where a succession of transparent colored overlays detailed the inner workings of the inner man.

  No kitchen help, not this one. Instantly recognizable from the briefings, he was Mace, oxlike enforcer and premium muscle for the Black Glove Crew.

  Outside, behind the back of the house, gunfire popped and rattled. Suddenly, gunshots sounded closer, from somewhere in the house beyond the kitchen.

  Stepping over Mace’s corpse—a long stride—Steve slipped into the passageway, making for the kitchen.

  It looked capable of servicing a modest-sized restaurant. In its center was a massive island of a butcher’s block table; surrounding it were stainless-steel sinks, rows of cabinets, convection ovens, refrigerators, pantries, and appliances; from ceiling-mounted racks dangled rows of pots and pans.

&
nbsp; A breakfast nook littered with a couple of cell phones and a lot of guns, knives, ammo, and empty beer cans, plus an ashtray filled with cigar butts, showed where Mace had been discharging his dispatcher’s duties, receiving and tracking the reports of guard patrol units.

  On the far side of the kitchen stood the mouth of a passageway connecting with the house’s central structure; from there came the sounds of gunfire. Steve made for it. The alarm system kept wheep-beeping.

  Outside, the gun battle raged. Among the casualties was the jeep; with a final, yammering lurch, it made a thunking noise and fell still, the engine silenced at last.

  Karl’s rifle had been quiet for a while; he remained hidden behind the pillar at the foot of the banister.

  Huddled behind the back of the toolshed, Bryce alternated firing positions, sometimes popping out from behind the corner nearest to the barn garage, sometimes on the far side, where he had a better line of fire at Karl down by the stone stairway.

  True to his name, Renna had wreaked havoc on the toolshed in his attempts to nail Bryce, raining down so many slugs on it that the vertical uprights had been severed, causing the peaked roof to collapse. The top and side wall of the cubical ventilator block were sieved, but its machinery-packed bulk had prevented Nevins from catching a bullet.

  Neater and deadlier was Bennett, with his well-placed shots keeping Nevins and Bryce pinned down. One had grazed Bryce’s right shoulder, searing a hot furrow across his flesh. Blood soaked his arm to the elbow. He’d torn his right sleeve into strips, wrapping his upper arm and staunching the blood flow as best he could, but it was a concern. The bullet had passed through, severing no veins or arteries, but the blood loss was a weakener and the wound affected his mobility and dexterity to an extent.