Zero, the voice announced as he breathed deeply to clear his head. All that accomplished was to fill his lungs with smoke.
Tears muddled his vision. Through the dust, smoke, and flames, he heard a door creaking open behind him and footsteps running along the second-deck landing. The MP7 lay out of reach, so he grabbed the M870 that lay alongside him. Feeling along the pouch near his waist, he inserted another cartridge. Turning from a seated position, he spotted the blurry form of a man emerging from the bedroom to his left, holding an M4.
Crocker fired first. The M1030 breaching round hit the man smack in the middle of the chest and exploded. Crocker pulled himself up, ran, and stepped over the man as smoke rose from the ghastly hole in his chest. The man’s hair stood straight up.
Suárez and Mancini crouched behind an avocado tree along the front side of the house as white smoke spilled out of the barrels of their MP7s. The bodies of two Mexicans they had just taken down lay bleeding out on the concrete driveway next to a military-green Toyota pickup. Beyond the pickup rose a big black metal gate and a fence covered in red bougainvillea.
Mancini raised two fingers and pointed to the front of the house to indicate that two other Mexican guards had retreated through the front door.
Suárez nodded.
Using hand signals, Mancini instructed Suárez to enter through the side door, which was to their right and about ten yards behind them, while he circled around and bum-rushed the front.
The idea was to trap the two retreating Mexicans in a crossfire before they reached the stairs.
Mancini tapped the top of his head and nodded. Suárez tore across the lawn to the shattered side door. He entered and was immediately hit by a wave of heat and smoke. A fire had broken out on the other side of the front hall and was spreading quickly through the wooden structure.
Through the smoke, Suárez spotted two men kneeling along a wall near the stairway, and he circled to his right through a breakfast room, kitchen, back porch, and media room, to try to surprise them from the other side. The dark-wood-paneled media room was filled with white smoke. Still, he made out boxes of Cuban cigars and glass cases filled with DVDs.
Using his left foot, he slowly pulled open the door and stepped into the hallway. The combination of tear gas, smoke, and heat blinded him for a second and squeezed his throat. Still, he kept his head enough to see something move to his left along the floor.
As he turned, shots rang out. One of them slammed into the door near his chin. Another cut through the web of skin between his right thumb and forefinger and clattered along the stock of his weapon, causing him to let it go.
The MP7 hit the floor. So Suárez reached for his handgun, and in that second he knew he was fucked. He heard a weapon discharge and clenched the muscles in his chest and stomach to try to repel the bullets. But mysteriously, they didn’t come. Instead, they tore into the men along the wall, who screamed and grunted.
Looking up, he saw Mancini step through the white mist, gray smoke still wafting out of the end of his weapon.
“You okay?” Mancini whispered.
“Flesh wound,” Suárez whispered back, pointing to his hand, then bending to recover his weapon from the floor. His arms shook. What he really wanted to say was: Thank you for saving my life.
Choking on cordite, smoke, and tear gas rising from the second deck, his eyes raw and teary, Crocker entered the front bedroom, his mind operating at warp speed, picking up impressions-two windows in front of him, a white wrought iron king-sized bed in the middle, and stretched over the bed, a blue plastic sheet, which had ballooned a foot and a half on the top and sides. A clear plastic tube traveled from the bed to a tank of gas near the wall to his right.
Otherwise, the room was empty. A terrific firing erupted outside, shattering glass and ripping through the clapboard walls.
He knelt, dropped the M870 on the floor, located the SOG knife in his vest, and slit the plastic open in one long, careful motion. A pungent gas leaked out.
A chlorine compound, Crocker said to himself, reaching into his admin pouch, feeling for a blue bandana, and tying it over his nose and mouth. Spinning to his right, he rose and kicked out the window, then tightened the knob on the tank, which had an elaborate timer attached.
Under the sheet, he spotted one woman, not two. It looked like Mrs. Clark, and she appeared unconscious. Six leather straps bound her tightly to the bed. Kneeling on its edge, he sawed through the restraints, carefully lifted her into his arms, carried her like a baby to the bathroom, and shut the door. Patches of livid red covered the skin on her face and neck, and her lips had turned purple. He set her down on the green tile floor, pulled open the bathroom window, then felt for a pulse along her neck.
It was weak, but she was still breathing, so he held her airway open.
Akil’s voice filled his ears. “Boss, boss…”
Crocker thought he was hearing him through the headset, but when he looked up through tear-filled eyes, he saw Akil standing in the other doorway-the one that opened to the landing. The left side of his head and his left arm were covered with blood.
“Boss.”
“You intact?”
“Hell, yeah. You locate the other one?”
Crocker shook his head vigorously and pointed to the other front bedroom. His throat, ears, and eyes burned, and he was sweating excessively because of exposure to the chlorine gas.
“The downstairs is on fire,” Akil announced.
“Then go, quick! Find her.”
Akil nodded, turned, and ran, and Crocker heard Mrs. Clark moan. He watched her gasp for breath and cough and a second later throw up greenish-yellow bile all over his arms.
He was pleased to see it, and the surprised look on her face, as he held her mouth open with his left hand and cleared her throat with his right.
“You’re okay,” he whispered. “Bear with me. Try not to make a sound.”
He walked to the stall shower, turned on the water, then picked up Lisa and carried her inside. Feeling the cool water on her skin, she tried to pull away.
“No. Don’t!”
“Quiet,” whispered Crocker, holding her firmly. “You’ve been exposed to chlorine gas, so I have to wash it off your skin and out of your hair and eyes immediately.”
“Take me home, please,” she groaned.
“I will.”
“Don’t hurt me.”
“I won’t.”
He propped her against the wall of the shower and pulled off her skirt and blouse. She stared at him in shock as he peeled off her underwear to the pale skin underneath, covered with patches of red. She shivered against him.
He let go of her and whispered, “Wash your whole body. Nose, ears, throat, eyes, everything. I’ll be right back.”
She nodded, covered herself with her arms, and sank to her knees.
On the landing, he ran into Akil emerging from the other front bedroom. Smoke and flames rose from the ground floor.
“Where’s the girl?” he asked urgently.
Akil shook his head.
“You check all the rooms up here?”
“Affirmative.”
Crocker pointed downstairs. “Find her.”
He entered the bedroom Akil had just exited, pulled a white cotton coverlet from the bed, and returned to the bathroom. There he helped Mrs. Clark out of the shower, and seeing that the patches of red were less livid, draped the coverlet around her.
“Wait here, but don’t rub your skin.”
Then he removed his vest and T-shirt and stood under the water himself. After quickly cleaning his hair, face, and chest, he stepped out of the shower and picked her up in his arms.