“You don’t need to tell me twice. See you later, Sheriff.”
“Good luck, Erwin.”
The men clasped hands, but it felt forced. Or perhaps final. Then Erwin headed back to the Honey Wagon, and Streng again focused on the house. His recent bad experience prompted memory flashes of fear and panic. He pushed those memories aside, shined Olen’s dirty flashlight at the front door, and made himself walk toward it.
Darkness and silence greeted Streng as he entered. Though the commonly accepted veteran stereotype spoke otherwise, Streng never had posttraumatic stress disorder, never had any kind of flashbacks. He’d seen some horrible things in the war and still had occasional bad dreams, but he managed to escape Vietnam with both his mind and his body intact.
Stepping into Sal’s house, though, brought back a feeling he hadn’t experienced in more than thirty years. The hell that was patrol.
Streng hated patrol. You had an equal chance of dying no matter how quiet you were, how careful you were. During those nighttime missions Streng felt like he had a hundred bull’s-eyes on his body, each one with rifle crosshairs zeroing in on a different body part. Nowhere to hide, and running was useless. The Cong were part of the jungle, and every tree, every rock, every shadow had deadly potential. All you could do was stay low and hope.
That same feeling enveloped Streng as he crept into Sal’s house for the second time that night. The feeling of being watched, hunted. Except this time he didn’t have a gun, just a Ka-Bar knife. Not that it mattered much. If Santiago was waiting in the shadows, Streng doubted anything less than a rocket launcher would keep him at bay.
He took the stairs slowly, shining the light on each step so he didn’t trip, pausing every three steps to listen. Streng’s injured kidney throbbed in time with his heartbeat. Halfway up the staircase the odor of death hit, and hit hard. Streng switched to breathing through his mouth, which didn’t help much. He pressed his hand hard against his aching side and ascended to Sal’s bedroom.
A snatch of childhood skipped across Streng’s mind, him and Wiley and cousin Sal, climbing the fence to the Safe Haven cemetery on Halloween night to prove their preteen bravery. Streng, the youngest of the trio, had been terrified, and before they took more than a dozen steps on hallowed ground he froze, refusing to move.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Sal had told him. “Everyone here is dead.”
“I’m not afraid of the dead,” Streng remembered saying. “I’m afraid of what made them dead.”
Streng thought he’d come a long way since those childhood years, a long way from being a grunt, from being a rookie cop. But much as a man matured, he stayed the same man. With the same fears.
The sheriff of Ashburn County steeled himself as best he could, pure will forcing emotional detachment, refusing to be swayed by the horrors that he would witness. Then he went into the bedroom.
There was blood. A lot of blood. Painted in black Jackson Pollock madness, thrown across the bedspread, the walls, the carpet.
But there were no bodies.
Streng’s shoes made squishing sounds as he walked to the closet, its sliding door closed. He opened it fast, stepping back, pointing the flashlight inside. The beam exposed some hanging shirts and a laundry hamper.
Where were they? Who could have taken them? Santiago and Ajax didn’t have time to dispose of the bodies—they’d been right behind Streng and Josh. Unless …
Unless they came back for them.
The gray hairs on Streng’s arms pricked out like a porcupine, and he had that tingle/surge in his belly that brought instant flop sweat. He could feel the sniper rifles aimed at him, ready to fire, and knew he had to get out of there as fast as possible.
Streng spun and saw Santiago standing in the doorway.
“I guessed you’d come back for your car,” he said.
I’m going to die, Streng thought. Horribly.
He wanted to ask what happened to Sal and Maggie, but his throat closed up. That was good—it prevented him from weeping. From begging.
“I’m going to enjoy making you scream,” Santiago whispered.
Somewhere, within the old body, the young man’s training kicked in, and Streng moved. He feinted left with the knife, then tried to get around Santiago, driving his shoulder into him, hoping momentum would take him to the stairs.
Santiago took the hit and grasped Streng by the shoulder, yanking the sheriff off of his feet. Streng got shoved to the floor, Santiago pouring onto him like liquid. The knife was pried from his grip and tossed aside. Streng reared back the flashlight and lashed out, catching the soldier in the chin. There was a delicious, revolting cracking sound, and Santiago’s head snapped back. But he stayed on Streng, his hands pinning down the sheriff’s arms, squeezing, forcing him to drop the flashlight.
“I think you broke my cheekbone.” Santiago’s words were slow, slurred.
Streng hoped he broke every bone in his goddamn head. He wanted to say that aloud, to show some defiance. But he knew he was trapped, knew the pain was coming, and he was afraid if he opened his mouth he’d vomit from fear. Blood—his cousin’s blood—soaked through the back of his shirt and pants, cold and wet. He smelled death, and staring up into Santiago’s dark eyes, he saw it, as well.
“Give me the Charge.”
That was the same thing Bernie said. Was it something Streng took from them?
“Give it to me.”
Santiago’s hand moved down over Streng’s body, seeking out his tortured kidney. Jesus, no. Streng tried to find his voice, to tell him there was some Charge in the Jeep, when he remembered the metal case he’d taken off Santiago earlier.
“My pocket,” he managed to say. “I’ve got some in my pocket.”
He felt the killer’s hand pause on his midsection, and Streng braced for the agony, if bracing for it was even possible. But Santiago’s fingers passed, probing lower, patting down Streng’s pants, finding the case. The killer tugged it out and cradled it in his palms like a junkie with a fix.
Streng’s fist shot out, knocking the case across the room, onto the bed. Incredibly, Santiago leapt off of him, going after the Charge. Streng didn’t bother hunting down the Ka-Bar. Instead he rolled onto all fours and crawled like hell out of the bedroom, heading for the hallway. If he could make it down the stairs, make it to the car—
Ajax filled the staircase.
Streng went right, into the second bedroom. His shins pleaded with him to stop, but he picked up speed instead, crawling toward the broken window, the cool breeze promising freedom, his .45 waiting for him on the roof.
He bumped something in the darkness.
Streng couldn’t see, but he knew. His hands rested on a body, cool and still, and even though he didn’t want to do it he reached up the chest … up the shoulders … until he found the empty space and the slick, sharp knot of vertebrae where Sal’s head used to be.
Revulsion swirled within Streng, rooting him. His heartbeat thundered in his ears, but he could faintly hear someone coming into the room behind him, someone who wanted to kill him or worse. Streng crawled around his cousin, his leg brushing something that rolled, something that could only have been Sal’s severed head, and then his hands were on the shattered windowpane and he was pulling himself up and Ajax grabbed him by the shoulder.
Streng tried to duck under the gigantic hand, but it locked under his armpit and tugged violently, hurling him across the room. His back hit something—a dresser or desk—bringing a rainbow banner of pain before Streng’s eyes. Then he fell, face-first, to the floor.
“Bring him,” Santiago said, or perhaps Streng imagined it. Ajax grabbed his ankle, pulled him across the carpeting, and Streng cast about frantically anything to grab. He touched something—something cold and sticky that felt like jelly.