The tray was a terrific weapon, and with my right hand I swept it off the floor and chopped it back toward him, toward his throat, toward the vulnerable cartilaginous area that shielded his jugular, and with great force smashed the wooden tray’s narrow edge into his Adam’s apple, winding him, and he groaned as his legs scissored upward to pin me, and I heard, suddenly-… can’t… shoot… mustn’t shoot… fucker…
And I knew I had him, I knew what he wouldn’t do. This was his real vulnerability, the reason he wasn’t reaching for his gun, and just as his fists formed themselves into cudgels, I managed to get my arms into a locked wedge, crashing into his abdomen, toppling him backward against the massive oak arm of the stolid overstuffed armchair, the back of his head cracking audibly against the wood, and with a whoof the air came out of his lungs, and he suddenly slackened, his mouth open, and slid to the floor.
Unconscious. He was hurt, but not badly. He would be out for ten, maybe twenty minutes.
And over it all the radio voice was ranting, ranting.
I had, I knew, maybe a few seconds before the back-up guard entered, suspicious about the delay.
The unconscious guard had a gun in his shoulder holster, an excellent Ruger P90.9mm semiautomatic, which I had trained on though rarely had occasion to fire in action. I pulled it out, inserted the spare cartridge, released the gun’s safety, and-
Looming over me was another guard, not Chet, but another one, on the early morning shift, and his gun was pointed at me.
“Drop it,” he commanded.
We faced each other, both frozen.
“Easy,” he said. “No one’s going to get hurt if you drop it. Lower it slowly to the floor, let go, then-”
I had no choice.
I stared at him blankly and pulled the trigger.
Aimed to hurt him only, not to do any serious harm.
A sudden sharp explosion, a flash of light, that acrid smell. He’d been hit, I saw at once, in the thigh, and he did what came naturally: he dove down. He wasn’t a trained killer; that much I had read earlier, and the information was priceless.
Now I stood over him, the Ruger pointed at his head.
The look in his eyes was a combination of great pain, from the gunshot, and enormous fear. I heard a great anguished rush of words-
no God no God no he’ll do it please God
– and said very quietly, “If you move, I’m going to have to kill you. I’m sorry.”
His eyes widened still farther, and his lower lip trembled involuntarily. I disarmed him and pocketed his weapon.
I said, “You stay there quietly. Count to one hundred. If you move before then-if you make one fucking noise-I’ll come after you.” And, stepping out of the room, I shut the door, heard it lock automatically, and I was out in the darkened corridor.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Crouching down now, I crept along the oak-wainscoted walls of the hallway and quickly surveyed the situation. At one end of the hall glowed a light that seemed to be coming from an open door. Perhaps there was someone there. Just as likely there was no one. The room was, I surmised, used by the guards while awaiting the change in shift, where they had their coffee.
I thought would there be anything in the room I might need?
No. Unlikely, and not worth the risk.
I continued along the edge of the hall, away from the light.
Suddenly I heard a static crackle, loud and metallic. It was coming from a walkie-talkie that the second guard had left in the hallway when he entered my bedroom. A signal, requesting confirmation. I didn’t know the codes, couldn’t fake it. Not worth trying.
That meant I had maybe a minute or so before someone would come from elsewhere in the house to investigate why nobody was answering his query.
Darkness everywhere, a long series of closed doors. I knew only as much of the layout of the palatial house as I’d managed to garner while they brought me up.
I was walking away from the main staircase now. The main staircase had to be dangerous territory, far too central; but I was convinced there would be a back stairway, for servants.
And there was.
Unlit and narrow, the treads wooden and worn, the servants’ stairs were located at the end of this wing of the house. I descended, walking as lightly as I could, but still the creaks echoed in the stairwell.
By the time I reached the second floor, there were footsteps above. Running footsteps, then shouted voices. They had discovered my escape much more quickly than I’d hoped they would.
They knew I was in the house still, somewhere, and I had no doubt that all entrances were guarded; all had now been put on alert, and I was trapped.
Looking first up, then down, I knew I couldn’t make it all the way to the first floor.
But what was on the second?
No choice; I had to take a chance. I sprinted out of the dark stairwell and into the second-floor corridor, but this one was not carpeted as the hallway upstairs had been, and my footsteps rang out with an alarming clatter. The voices were growing louder, nearer.
The only light came from the moon outside, shining meekly into a window at the end of the corridor, and I spun around, dashed toward the window, poised to pull it open and jump, dammit all, before I realized that the window overlooked not soft, spongy lawn but asphalt.
An asphalt, or macadam, car-park area depressed into the ground, a good twenty-five feet below me, a suicidal plunge. Nothing to break my fall. I couldn’t do it.
Then came the alarm, the shrilling of hundreds of bells, deafening, throughout the house, coming from all over, and now all the lights were on, a brilliant halogen blaze illuminating the hall, illuminating everything, flashing on and off and on, and the ringing kept on.
For God’s sake, move! I shouted inwardly.
Move, yes, but where?
Running desperately along the hall, away from the window, toward the main central staircase, I tried door after door, and then, four, five, six doors later, one opened.
A bathroom, small and dark, its window opened a crack, and through the crack came a cool draft. The vinyl shower curtain rustled and fluttered in the breeze, and that was it, of course.
I tore the shower curtain off its hooks, and it fell to the floor.
The alarm’s ringing seemed even louder now, insistent. There was a crash somewhere, the slam of a door, shouts.
Now what?
Break the box!
Only a goddamned shower curtain. If only I’d thought to take a bedsheet!
Tie it to something, I thought wildly. Tie it. Hook it somewhere. Something stable.
But there was nothing! Nothing to hold the length of vinyl, to anchor me as I climbed out of the window, and there was certainly no time to mess around, because the footsteps were thundering closer, closer. They had to have followed me to the second floor, and as I looked around desperately, my heart thudding crazily, I heard, not twenty feet away in the hall, “On the right! Move it!”
Raising the window all the way, I found a screen, cursed aloud, and clawed at it, at the goddamned release pins at the base, but it was frozen in place, wouldn’t move, and I backed up and dove-
And hurled through the window, through the screen, and into the night air, my body contorted awkwardly, trying to break my fall.
And crashed to the ground-dirt, not sod, but cold, hard earth, which rose up to meet me and crack against my shoulders and the back of my neck, and I sprung immediately to my feet, somehow twisting my ankle a bit, bellowing out in pain.
Trees ahead of me, a small copse of trees, just barely visible in the darkness, but now illuminated by the flashing alarm lights mounted into the third-floor eaves, now dark, now light.