Chalk cracked out his night vision binos again, and scanned inland at the building. He zeroed in on the windows of the first floor. Nothing. Then he focused on the upper story windows. Nothing, at first. Then he saw it. The box on the window sill, sitting there like it needed geraniums. And something shiny hanging over it. A key.
Rage overwhelmed him. He could not control it. “The bastards! My fucking gold! They’re trying to piss me off!”
There was no more time for reconnaissance. Only the one Islander picket took shots with a pump-gun on the left, but more hostiles could quickly surround them. He peeled out of his poncho and coat to free his arms.
He said, “Tahereh, I want you to hold the fort here. Don’t snoop around. There’s no telling who’s out there, and I for one don’t want to plug your sweet ass by mistake. Diggity?”
She nodded and said, “The boat’s gone. You better have a plan.”
Chalk said, “Don’t you fret about that. I’ve got resources. When we have what we came for, we’ll get all the help we need.”
She nodded again. “Your resources.”
“Yes, my resources. A chopper for starters. A crackerjack medic for your boo-boo, and some strong backs to help us tote the goods.”
Tahereh broke a sweat. He watched her assess her situation, her stock tanking on the Chalk Exchange.
She said, “What about me?”
Chalk rolled his eyes. “Pull up your big-girl panties. I could have killed you a long while back if that’s all I meant to do. You have to relax. Have a little faith, okay? My deal with you stands. You get what you paid for if that’s all you really want. And my offer of glory stands too, in case you’re feeling frolicsome. Here, watch this.”
Chalk dialed his sat-phone. It was answered immediately. He said, “Tora, tora, tora. I want a heavy helo on this station in one hour. Come in packing heat. Six to dust off, with cargo. That’s a heavy. Have two 68-Whiskeys on board. We’ve got casualties. Copy that?” Chalk paused listening, then said, “Good. Mark my coordinates, now!”
Chalk took the phone away from his ear and pressed a button sending a signal that would, in the best of all possible worlds, illuminate the phone’s location on a discreet government radar screen in Quantico, Virginia. Returning the phone to his ear he said, “You ident that?” He paused. Then he snapped the phone shut.
Chalk took Tahereh gently by the shoulders and said, “There. Transport and medics. Up to that moment, my operation was totally black. Off the radar, and nobody the wiser. And now everybody in creation knows where I am. I did that for you, sweetie pie. All for you.”
Tahereh smiled small. That was all Chalk wanted. It was none of her business that he’d really dialed the automated Time-and-Temperature number in his home town of Scranton, Pennsylvania. He privately noted that at the tone, the time was two thirty-seven a.m., and the temperature was sixty-four degrees.
Before Tahereh could gush with girlish gratitude, Chalk let go of her shoulders and said to Pallaton, “Okay brother-man. Let’s boogie! Straight in!”
To Tahereh he said, “Sugar-britches, play us a little tune called Keep Your Heads Down Low You Jive-Ass Sister-Fucking Rednecks. Don’t know the melody? I’ll play you a few bars.”
Pallaton and Chalk leveled their guns and dashed straight at the front of the old building. They wove low between the dunes as far as they could, shooting all the way.
Tahereh pumped mag after mag into the hotel. Finally Chalk and Pallaton reached the edge of an open waste between the dunes and the veranda. Tahereh’s covering fire was noisy enough, but it was too far back to inspire any real fear. Chalk and Pallaton crouched, then sprinted for the porch stairs like the Devil was on their tails.
That Islander with the shotgun made the dash seem like Scranton, PA; unseasonably warm. He blasted away at Chalk and Pallaton like a maniac. The slugs churned up 3-iron divots around them, but nothing went home. Yet.
CHAPTER 59
Ben tried to ignore the slight tremor in his hand. His body broke a cold sweat all over. His breathing got too quick, too shallow. This was why he had left the service. Taking this shot here and now was stepping back toward the most ruinous moment of his career.
Ben made sure he had a tight weld between his cheek and the gun stock. There could be no sighting shot to check his zero. Gauging the wind speed by the bend in the reeds, and smoke from the boat fire, he compensated. Gut-guessed his height above the target, and figured the drop. Took care not to make the rookie mistake of aiming too high for a target at a lower elevation. He folded in the temperature, the humidity. Ben had done it so many times before, this was second nature to him. Ben would take the shot CCB, with a Clean Cold Barrel. He must implicitly trust Ellis’s set-up of the gun. No time to change his dope in the scope. He had no choice. Hundreds of lives depended on it.
He engaged the running man, then led him slightly in a classic ambush shot. Put the vertical line of the reticle one quarter of one milliradian ahead of the target’s balaclava-cloaked head. This was a full value shot, with the wind blowing in perpendicular to the beach and his line of fire. He whispered the phrase going hot. He emptied his mind of any thought. B.R.A.S.S. time. Breathe. Relax. Aim. Slack. Squeeze. Ben slowly drew his index finger through the trigger in a line toward his shooting eye. The rifle’s kick rippled through his body, jolted his fractured ribs hard. A small swirl of sand rose as the bullet passed close over a high dune. A second later, the target’s balaclava distended as if a small explosion had gone off beneath the tight fabric. The man’s momentum carried him a few feet before he rag-dolled flat into the sand, face down.
And suddenly a masked face, eyes blazing with hate, joined the ranks of the other souls haunting Ben’s mind. Ben returned to the business at hand. There was no time to commune with his inner specters. Ben shifted the eyepiece onto Chalk.
CHAPTER 60
Chalk hit the porch stairs at a thousand miles an hour. Almost at the top, he heard Pallaton grunt behind him. Then came a big caliber gunshot. This was not the usual order of things unless the shooter was actually a distant sniper. He turned without arresting his headlong rush up the steps. Pallaton was down. His balaclava a ripped gunny full of fish guts.
Chalk rolled through the open double front door, and cleared the immediate entry hall. There was a grand old staircase sweeping up the back of the hall to a second floor landing. Chalk went for it, quick, but easy. The ancient treads squeaked, threatening to collapse in a puff of termite dust at every step.
Chalk cleared the upstairs hallway. Scanning for anyone with an eye to mow him down. Nobody there. Quiet as a tomb.
And then he heard the chuckling. A man, laughing low the way a person does when he’s read something funny in a book, but has nobody close by with whom to share the joke. Chalk shook his head to clear it. No, this laughter was real, not psychosis; it came from a front room. Chalk figured the box and key were in there, too. He slowly followed the sound, his gun ready.
Whatever the joke, it must have been a good one. The mirth persisted until he reached the doorway to a parlor. Chalk’s first glance through the door was directed out the opposite window. He could see the burning Palestrina at the shore throwing orange-white clinkers into the air. The southerly breeze wafted the sparks toward the building. This was bad enough, regardless of the hebephrenic loopster waiting for him in the room.