Victor popped up like a dummy in a jack-in-the-box and returned fire with another burst from his MP5 before dropping out of sight.
“We’ll be safer upstairs,” Brody told Deirdre and Valerie.
“You’re hit,” said Deirdre.
“It’s just a nick. We need to move. They could come through the window any minute. Their bullets are cutting through the furniture. We need better cover.”
“How do they expect us to give them the suitcase if we don’t have it?” she said, her voice fraught.
“They’ve decided to take it by brute force because terrorizing you didn’t work.”
“Killing us won’t get them the suitcase.”
“They don’t know that yet.”
“Then let’s tell them.”
“I doubt they’re in a listening mood.”
Bullets tore into the sofa they were hiding behind. Several of the rounds penetrated the cushions and shot out past him and Deirdre like angry hornets, thudding into the wall behind them.
“We need to move now,” said Brody. “We’re going upstairs,” he cried to Lyndon.
“We’re safer here,” said Lyndon.
Brody shook his head. “We’re better off upstairs. Pinned down here, we can’t see them to return fire. We’ll be able to see them from upstairs.”
“If we stay here, you can shoot them when they try to get in through the French windows.”
“Half of us may be dead by the time they charge. Their bullets are penetrating our cover.”
“They’re not penetrating mine.”
“We’re going upstairs on the count of three. Did you hear, Victor?”
“Gotcha,” said Victor, swapping out magazines.
“Open fire on three.”
“Will do.”
“This is a mistake,” said Lyndon.
“One. Two. Three,” said Brody.
Victor commenced firing his MP5.
Crouching, Brody, Deirdre, and Valerie belted toward the staircase.
A swarm of bullets coughed from Victor’s MP5, spraying the French windows, the pool deck, and the backyard, which was steeped in gloom.
“Your turn, Lyndon,” said Brody, when he reached the staircase.
Victor fired another burst.
Hunched over, Lyndon bolted out from behind the wet bar, cut across the floor, and made for the stairs.
Victor emptied his magazine into the backyard, retrieved his backpack, and darted after Lyndon.
Standing on the staircase Brody could see none of the attackers in the backyard. But they were out there. Another salvo of gunfire tore through the now-empty French window frames and shredded upholstery.
Deirdre and Valerie clambered up the steps, Lyndon behind them, followed by Brody and Victor, who ejected his spent magazine and replaced it, hobbling backward up the steps so he could keep his eyes on the French windows and retaliate against any intruders storming the living room.
Chapter 110
Brody entered the master bedroom, which overlooked the backyard. He left the lights off and peered out the rain-thrashed window. Gingerly, he lifted open the sash. A gust of wind blew rain into the room. He thought he could make out a figure in the gloom toting a MAC-10.
Taking aim out the window with Victor’s SIG P226 and bracing his shooting arm with his grazed left arm, stilling his breath, Brody double-tapped the intruder in the head, which exploded and painted the rain around it pink. The intruder crumpled, dropping his machine pistol.
“Good shot,” said Victor, approaching Brody from behind.
“I was aiming at his chest.”
Victor did a double take. “Such a kidder. See any more of them?”
“They skedaddled for cover when their buddy went down. Now that they know we’re up here they’re gonna take evasive measures.”
“For all the good it’ll do them. We can pick them off one at a time from here.”
“You said there were four of them?”
“That’s all I saw. There could be more. It’s tough to see in these conditions.”
“At least one of them is gonna storm the living room with the French windows blown. We need somebody to guard the landing on the stairs.”
Victor strode toward the other window in the bedroom and slid its sash open. Its white voile curtains flapped and twisted in the wind, as rain splattered them. Spotting an intruder darting across the backyard he took aim with his MP5 and let loose a racketing burst at him, cutting him down in his tracks. The intruder sprawled facedown on the sodden grass, bleeding on it.
“Two down,” said Victor.
Thunder cracked and grumbled so loud Brody could feel its vibrations in his chest.
“Where’s Lyndon?” he said.
“Beats me,” said Victor, scoping out the backyard for gangbangers.
“I’ll put him on the landing. We can’t leave our rear flank exposed.”
Brody retreated from the window to the hallway in search of Lyndon, who was standing with Deirdre.
“Where’s your gun?” said Brody.
“In the bedroom closet,” said Lyndon.
“We need it.”
Lyndon entered the bedroom Brody had just exited and flicked on the lights. Gunfire crackled outside. A hail of bullets shattered the window where Victor was standing. Fearing for his life he dove for cover, his eyes bulging from his head.
“Kill the lights,” said Brody, the tendons and the blood vessels in his neck standing out.
He didn’t wait for Lyndon to react. Instead, he stepped into the room and doused the lights himself.
“You all right, Victor?” he said in the dark.
“Good to go,” said Victor, gathering himself beneath the blasted-out window, where rain-whipped wind was flapping the curtains above him like gull wings into the room.
“If they didn’t know before, they know where we are now.”
“They were gonna find out sooner or later.”
“We need your piece, Lyndon.”
Lyndon opened his closet’s louvered door. “I can’t see anything in here.”
He reached up to the top shelf and groped around it. Brody strode over to him, took out his iPhone, and shone its flashlight on the top shelf, shielding the beam from the window with his body.
Lyndon spotted his pistol safe, stood on his tiptoes, slid the black plastic safe off the shelf, and took it down.
“Here it is,” he said.
Brody turned off his smartphone’s flashlight.
He and Lyndon stepped out into the hall.
“Do you know the combination?” said Brody.
“I hardly ever open the thing. Let me see,” said Lyndon, thinking it over. “Same as my ATM code?”
He punched in four numbers on the safe’s electronic keypad.
Gunfire rattled outside. A round slammed into the bedroom door’s architrave above the lintel, splintering it. Brody ducked.
The safe beeped, and a light on it flashed green. Lyndon popped open the lid.
“A Glock 17,” said Brody.
A loaded magazine lay next to the pistol in the safe.
Brody wedged Victor’s P226 into his waistband, withdrew the Glock and the magazine from the safe, slammed the magazine into the Glock’s magazine well, and racked the slide to chamber the first round.
“Do you know how to use it?” said Brody.
“It ain’t rocket science,” said Lyndon, snatching the semiautomatic from Brody and setting the gun safe on the floor. “Aim and shoot.” He inspected the gun. “Where’s the safety?”
“That’s a Glock 17. The safety’s in the trigger. Don’t worry about it.”
“Ah, oh yeah. It’s been a while. I forgot.”
“I want you to guard the landing. If you see anybody climbing the stairs, shoot him and holler for me.”
“And what are you gonna be doing while I’m doing your job?”
“I’ll be manning your bedroom window. I’ll come over to help as soon as I hear you.”
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Gun in hand, Lyndon crept over to the landing and peered down the stairs.
Brody stepped over to Deirdre, who had been watching them with Valerie standing behind her.
“I want you to go into Valerie’s room and keep watch for intruders in the front yard,” he said. “They might try to enter through the front door.”
“I’m sure I locked it,” she said.
“They may try to kick it down. Lemme know if you see anyone out there.”
“Do I get a gun?”
Brody decided to give her his SIG P365, while he held onto Victor’s P226 for himself. “It’s already loaded.”
Circumspectly, she accepted the piece. “I don’t like guns.”
“You don’t have to take it if you don’t want—”
“But in this case, I’ll take it,” she said, and took the SIG with her to the window that overlooked the front yard.
Valerie followed her, her nose sniveling.
Brody returned to Victor, who was sitting under the window. “Have you seen more of them?”
“Not so I could get off a shot at them,” said Victor. “They know where we are now, so they know how to keep out of our line of sight.”
“Either that or we killed all of them.”
Victor shook his head no. “There are at least two more out there. At least.”
Brody picked up on blood seeping out from the duct tape secured around Victor’s wounded leg. He hoped the popliteal artery or one of its branches hadn’t been hit.
“Are you sure you’re OK?” he said.
Victor grinned. “Not much I can do about it now if I’m not.”
Brody nodded. “Not with all the phones out. There’s no way we can call for help.”
“Did you post someone on the landing?”
“Lyndon’s there.”
“The bogeys may already be in the house.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“You want me to go downstairs and take a look while you stay up here?”
“The stairway’s a chokepoint. We can cut them off there. It’s the only way they can get up here. We’re better off waiting for them than going downstairs to confront them. They could cut us apart as we go down the steps.”
“I get your drift,” said Victor, and peeked over the windowsill down at the backyard.
Gunfire exploded level with the window, coming from a eucalyptus tree thirty-odd feet away, whose branches lit up under the muzzle flash of a TEC-9. Nonplussed, Victor dropped below the sill, his back braced against the wall. Brody found cover behind the wall beside the window frame.
Chapter 111
“They’re in the fucking trees like monkeys,” said Victor, face sweaty.
“How many shooters?”
“I couldn’t tell. It came out of nowhere. I wasn’t expecting it.”
Brody peeked around the window jamb, the wet fluttering curtain slapping him, and picked up on a gangbanger cutting across the backyard toward the pool at a dead run, a machine pistol in his hand. Brody doubted it was the same guy concealed in the tree. The guy wouldn’t have had time to climb down the trunk to get to the ground, which meant if Brody got off a shot at the runner, he would run the risk of exposing himself to the shooter in the tree, who would have a clean shot at him.
Brody didn’t plan on staying in the window long. He took the gamble of drawing fire and thrust in front of the window, drew a bead on the runner with Victor’s SIG P226, and fired two shots, blowing the guy’s brains out in pink mist, a fragment of parietal bone skimming through the rain like a luminous white Frisbee out of his shattered skull. The runner stumbled forward, dropped to his knees, and belly flopped onto the rain-slick lawn, pounding his face into mud.
Brody ducked behind the wall as the shooter in the tree opened fire, riddling the window with slugs, spewing shards of glass into the bedroom like a backfiring vacuum.
Victor reared up over the windowsill and exchanged gunfire with the shooter, though he hadn’t pinpointed the shooter’s exact location on any of the eucalyptus boughs. Victor’s magazine went dry. He dropped under the window into a reclining position, his back against the wall, and ejected the spent magazine.
“Time for the C-Mag,” he said, rummaging through his backpack and jerking out the hundred-round Beta C-Mag drum.
He attached the drum to his MP5 and racked the slide, chambering a nine-mil cartridge.
“Cover me,” he said.
Brody fired two shots into the eucalyptus branches.
Victor sprang to his feet and, wielding the MP5, sprayed the eucalyptus raking its branches up and down and sideways with a continuous burst of over twenty rounds. He caught sight of a body plummeting off a branch and taking a nosedive, snapping lower branches on its way down and its neck when its head smacked into the sodden ground.
“Gotcha,” said Victor.
“Is he dead?” said Brody.
Victor fired a short burst into the upper body mass of the prostrate shooter, perforating his back with three slugs. The body shuddered and became still.
“Yeah,” he said.
“I count four dead.”
“You got three. I got one here, and another one when I first spotted them on the perimeter,” said Victor, standing in the window, scanning the yard, his MP5 at the ready.
“Are we clear?”
A shot rang out in the hallway.
Lyndon, decided Brody.
“They’re on the stairs,” he said.
“I got your six,” said Victor, following Brody.
“You stay here and guard the window. Make sure no one’s down there.”
Victor nodded and returned to the open window, where the blustering wind continued to snap and torque the clammy voile curtains that flailed into the room spraying water like a dog shaking off after a swim.
Glock in hand, his eyes wide, Lyndon saw Brody enter the hallway. “There’s one on the stairs. I saw his head and shot at him.”
“Did you hit him?” said Brody.
“I couldn’t tell.”
Watching the stairs Brody stole toward the landing, Victor’s SIG at the ready in his hands. As he scoped out the stairs, a TEC-9 rattled off a burst in his direction. He dropped into a crouch out of the line of fire and retreated. He couldn’t get a bead on the shooter without exposing his head to the guy.
“What’ll we do?” whispered Lyndon.
“We’ll have to wait for him to make his move. As soon as he shows his head on the staircase, we blow him away,” said Brody, keeping his voice low so the intruder couldn’t hear him.
“What if he doesn’t come up the stairs?”
“He has to at some point because he thinks you have the suitcase. He’s not gonna find it downstairs, so he’ll figure it’s up here with us.”
“But it isn’t.”
“He doesn’t know that.” Brody paused. “How many were there?”
“There might’ve been two. I’m not sure. I thought I heard them talking to each other.”
“Right now it’s a stalemate—unless . . . ,” Brody trailed off.
“Unless what?”
Brody didn’t want to think about it. “Unless they got a hand grenade or C-4 or something like that.”
“Shit. Do you think they came with grenades?”
“They’re armed to the teeth. They expected a firefight. I wouldn’t put it past them. If they could score MAC-10s and TEC-9s, they could just as easily lay their hands on grenades.”
“Where’d they get all that hardware? Are they military?”
“Gangbangers can get any weapons they want. They gotta be bangers.”
“How many are there?”
“We’ve whacked out five so far. And there are more downstairs, and maybe in the front yard.”
“A goddamn squadron.”
Keeping his SIG trained on the landing, Brody backed toward the master bedroom until he could discern Victor standing at the shattered window, drenched curtains fluttering around him.<
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“Do you see anymore out there?” said Brody under his breath.
“No. But the storm and the dark are perfect cover. Somebody could be lurking out there.”
Deirdre cut loose with a bone-chilling scream of terror.
Chapter 112
Brody wheeled around and tore into Valerie’s bedroom.
Her face streaked with blood, Deirdre was sitting on the bed holding Valerie in her arms and wailing.
It didn’t take Brody long to assess what had happened.
Valerie was lying in Deirdre’s arms with a crossbow bolt through her neck, blood jetting in an eight-foot arc from her pierced carotid artery. He cut his eyes to the bedroom window and spotted a hole in the glass pane. Brody seized a pillow from the bed, stripped the pillowcase off, and handed the pillowcase to Deirdre.
“Put pressure against the wound to stop it from bleeding,” he said, knowing it wouldn’t be enough to keep Valerie alive without a doctor’s help.
Deirdre applied the pillowcase to Valerie’s neck and pressed it to stanch the wound.
Since an artery was severed, Valerie would bleed out in minutes without professional medical help, Brody knew. But the phones were out, and he had no way of contacting paramedics.
He whipped out his iPhone and punched 911 to see if he could get through. The phone rang six times unanswered. He let it ring five more times and gave up.
“We need to get her to a hospital,” he said. “What happened?”
“Somebody outside shot that arrow through the window at Val,” said Deirdre, between sobs.
The archer that had killed Terri at the Convent, decided Brody. It had to be him. Nobody else used a crossbow to kill in this day and age. He must be after the suitcase, but was he on his own or affiliated with the gangbangers?
Brody started when he heard shooting break out behind him in the hallway. He burst into the hall, SIG in hand.
Lyndon was training his Glock in the direction of the landing.
“What happened?” said Brody.
“I saw a shadow in the stairway,” said Lyndon.
The shadow was gone, noted Brody.
Victor rushed into the hall to find out the source of the commotion, his eyes wide and questioning.
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