He should abort the meeting. Something was very wrong. He could feel it. But if Novak had Katya in his grasp, he couldn't walk away. He had thought himself invulnerable, but Katya was his weak point. She always had been. And he had nothing to bargain with but a piece of cold metal, and images from a nightmare.
They were approaching the marina. The readout on the monitor shifted constantly with the changing flow of spatial information.
He switched off the useless thing and flung it into the water.
Maybe it wasn't Katya. Maybe someone else was carrying one of her tagged belongings. Maybe it was a malfunction. He could only hope.
To think that after all his plotting and planning, that he should be reduced to relying upon something so fragile as hope.
“I have got to get myself a pair of these,” Sean said, staring through the foggy woods with his goggles. “I haven't been so jazzed since the last time we burgled that bastard. I can already spot three ... no, four of Novak's goons with the long-range TI function. Playing with your toys is like having superhuman powers.” “That's the whole idea,” Seth said. He handed a pair to Davy and looped his own around his neck. He handed a tiny mike and earphone set to the brothers, identical in their green camouflage gear. They put them on with a swift efficiency that showed such equipment was not new to them.
“So what's your plan?” Davy asked. “March up to the front door and ring the bell?”
“No way to do recon if you don't know the site. I was going to wing it. You guys got any ideas, let's hear 'em.”
Davy and Sean looked at each other for a long moment. Their matching sets of perfect teeth flashed through the green ski masks.
“Hunting season,” Davy said, popping open the back door of the Jeep Cherokee. “Time to show you the McCloud family arsenal.” He pulled out a heavy black case and slanted a questioning glance at his brother. “Do you want the Remington 700 or the Cheytec .408?” He snapped open the case and hauled out a huge sniper rifle.
“You take the Cheytec,” Sean said. “You're the better sniper.”
“That's exactly why you should take the Cheytec,” Davy said with exaggerated patience. “And besides, you're a perfectly good sniper.”
“Sure, I don't suck, but you>e still better. You're the marksman. I'm the demolitions man.” He grinned at Seth. “Too bad we didn't know the site beforehand. God, how I would've loved to bomb the shit out of those assholes. There's nothing so satisfying as a nice big kaboom, know what I mean? Gives you a real sense of emotional closure.”
“Focus, Sean,” Davy muttered. “Take the fucking Cheytec.”
“Nah. The Cheytec gives me performance anxiety. You take it. I like the Remington with my Leupold power scope. We're old pals.”
“Whatever.” Davy hauled the Cheytec up into position and peered through the scope. “We used to hunt with a bow and arrow when we were kids. For run “ He shot a glance at Seth. “Ever try it?”
Seth stared at the massive rifle, impressed in spite of himself. He focused belatedly on Davy's question. “Give me a break. I'm a city boy.”
“Dad taught us how,” Davy said. “To prepare us for the inevitable day of doom and judgment when government is overthrown, anarchy rules, and civilization is flung back into the Bronze Age.”
“And the prepared, the elect, the chosen ones, would be the dukes and princes of that new world order,” Sean intoned. “Namely, us.”
“And I thought my childhood was weird,” Seth muttered.
“Yeah, Dad was a pretty original thinker” Davy said. “Anyhow, when you hunt with a bow and arrow, you have to get really close to your prey. Sometimes we'd make a game out of it, get close enough to the deer or elk to slap them on the rump and watch them run. Sometimes we shot 'em. Depended on how much was in the freezer.”
Seth held up his goggles and peered through me trees that obscured the house. “Do you guys have a point to make with all this?”
“Nah, not really” Davy said. He pulled a bunch of plasticuffs out of his bag, and offered a handful of them to Seth and Sean. “It's just been a really long time since Sean and I have gone hunting.”
“Too long,” Sean added. “Too bad Connor couldn't come. He was the best of all of us. The original shadow man.”
Seth looked down at the plasticuffs, and back at the McClouds. Two sets of disembodied green eyes glowed with hot anticipation out of the ski masks. “You guys are really into this, aren't you?”
'Those bastards put Connor in a coma for two months,” Davy said softly. “And they killed Jesse.”
“Jesse was our friend, too,” Sean said. “We wouldn't miss this party for any money.” He reached into the back of the Cherokee and pulled out another case. “Check this out, Seth. You're not the only one with a few magic tricks up his sleeve.” He popped open the lid and held the case out for Seth to see. Seth peered in. “What's this?”
“Gas powered air pistols converted into tranq dart guns. With super-fast acting tranquilizer darts,” Sean said triumphantly. “I got 'em from Nick, one of Connor's task force buddies. He specializes in just this kind of situation. When a guy wants to even up the odds without having to cope with all the red tape of an all-out bloodbath.”
Seth stared at him. “No shit,” he said slowly. “You mean to tell me you've already used this stuff? What do you do for a living, anyway?”
Sean shrugged noncommittally, and gave him a bright, impenetrable grin. “Oh, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. I get by. Here. I brought along Connor's for you. A Beretta M92, with a power scope. A laser sight, too, if you want, but I personally think that kind of takes the fun out of it.”
Seth took the proffered gun and stared down at it, starting to grin. His mood had unaccountably lightened. “You McCloud boys are a strange breed.”
Davy grinned back. “You're not the first to make that observation,” he said.
Another man was lying on the ground.
Raine crouched beside the second motionless body, checking with trembling fingers beneath the dark hood to make sure it wasn't one of the McCloud men. She sighed with relief when she saw that it was not. It was a young man with buzz-cut red hair. He was alive, a tiny needle dart sticking out of his neck. Plastic bonds were ratcheted tightly around his wrists and ankles.
She looked around, but she saw no one in the murmuring forest besides her and the unconscious man. It was like the enchanted forest of Sleeping Beauty. Everyone but her had gone to sleep.
She had parked as near as she dared to the abandoned mansion, and sneaked through the woods as quietly as she could, using the monitor to guide her. Seth and the McClouds must be roaming around, taking out Novak's guards one by one. That was heartening.
It had started raining again, but she was too keyed up to feel it. Her metabolism must be raging like a grassfire. The raindrops that hit her skin felt like they ought to hiss and sputter like water on a griddle.
She huddled by a tree trunk and looked around, clutching Ed's Glock with a white-knuckled hand. Racing to Seth's rescue had seemed like such a good idea at the time, but now, in this silent, creepy forest, doubts were racing back. She was out of her depth, as always.
But it was far too late for good sense or second thoughts. She couldn't just abandon Seth with that necklace in his pocket; and besides, she had nowhere else to go, nothing else to do. Nothing existed but this moment, this place, this task. It pulled at her like a vortex. It was the key to unlock the whole wretched puzzle of her life.
The culmination of everything.
The monitor indicated that the necklace was less than three hundred meters from her to the northeast If she sneaked along under the cover of those willow trees, maybe she would see—