"So what's in the case?" he asked casually.
"Surveillance equipment," it lied. "So I'm going up alone. It's very sensitive and I don't have much time, so I don't want any more interference than necessary. It's rented," the Terminator continued. "So you'll have to return it for me. We won't have time to go back to Griego before my flight. My employer will pay you extra for your inconvenience."
"Oh, hey, that won't be necessary," Marco protested, pleased.
"She will insist."
Cassetti nodded absently as he worked out a new scenario. So this guy was von Rossbach's cousin, but apparently no relation to the beautiful blonde who had hired him because he kept referring to her as "my employer."
Maybe what happened was that von Rossbach had stolen something that he was offering for sale to all these underworld types and the blonde, who maybe ran an
old family company that manufactured weapons or something, was trying to get it back before von Rossbach could sell it and put innocent people in jeopardy.
And the cousin here was trying to recover his own family's lost honor by helping to bring his cousin to justice. Yeah, that worked. That sounded plausible. It had plot.
He turned off the headlights and cut the engine, coasting to a stop. "The house is a quarter of a mile that way," he said, opening his door.
"I'll find it," the Terminator said. "You stay here."
It would kill Cassetti at the airport, it decided. Unless there was noise during the termination of Connor and her son and the human panicked. Yes, it would keep this resource alive unless and until it became inconvenient.
"There's a ravine over that way." Cassetti pointed. "It goes right by their house and makes a good place to observe from."
The Terminator looked in the direction the human was pointing and saw it immediately. "Yes," it said. "Stay here." And it moved off. On-site, it sent to Serena. Approaching target.
Serena, at dinner with Jordan Dyson, was distracted for a fraction of a second.
Understood. Continue. Out. She felt a little shiver of pleasure pass over her skin as she contemplated finally, finally, seeing the end of that miserable pair.
As she looked at Dieter Sarah could feel Suzanne Krieger falling away like an old coat. In a way it was a relief. Even as she regretted the loss of her life here in Villa Hayes, she had to admit that Suzanne and her concerns were, well…
Suzanne was a hausfrau. Suzanne was content to vegetate in a small town.
Suzanne is boring. She had opened her mouth to speak when a noise interrupted her.
Growling.
The puppy had jumped up onto all fours and its nose was pointed to the picture window toward the slatted vents above it. It growled again, a shocking sound from an animal so soppy-friendly and so young, and its slightly shaggy brown-gray coat was bristling as if it had been plunged into a giant electrostatic generator. Then it barked, hard and hostile.
Mother and son looked at each other, with a dawning horror in each pair of eyes.
"John!" Dieter exclaimed, pointing. "Down!" And he threw himself forward off the couch.
In the split second before the big man's hands dragged him to the floor, John looked down and saw centered over his heart the telltale red dot of a laser sighting mechanism. A nanosecond before he moved, there came a sharp
"klack!" from the window, as though a pebble had been flung, hard, against it. A fuzzy-edged star appeared on the glass.
Sarah hit the floor and crawled over to the wall switch. In the moment before darkness fell she saw that Dieter had drawn a gun from somewhere. She hadn't even realized he was carrying.
My God, I've slowed down, she thought bitterly.
"Friends of yours?" she hissed, hoping against hope.
A glance at the cowering terror and teeth-baring rage of the puppy as it backed toward the kitchen killed… the hope that I'm being targeted by a ruthless covert-ops antiterrorist agency.
"No," he snapped. "Sector doesn't operate this way. It would be easier to simply arrest you, Sarah. And we definitely wouldn't deliberately target a sixteen-year-old boy!"
She didn't bother to answer.
The window was suddenly peppered with bullets, like a flurry of giant hailstones hitting the glass. It didn't break, but crazed into an opaque wall. Bulletproof glass, he realized. Clever. And, as it turned out, necessary.
John tipped over Sarah's chair, ignoring the hidden pistol, to rip out the fabric covering the bottom. Then he yanked the 12.7mm heavy Barrett sniper rifle out of the cradle that ran up its high fan-shaped back and crawled toward the kitchen, pushing the six-foot mass of steel and synthetics before him.
"Get ready," Sarah told him. "On three—one, two… three!"
She flung a switch and the outside yard was flooded with light.
Dieter opened his mouth and then closed it again with a snap. These weren't civilians, and he wasn't in command of the defense against whoever it was that was trying to kill them.
The feeling was reinforced as Sarah—he reminded himself to call her that—
came leopard-crawling back from the kitchen and ripped an M-16 rifle with a scope sight out from under the cushions of the sofa. Even her body language had changed as she slapped back the weapon's bolt, still graceful but with all softness gone from it.
"What have you got in the way of fixed defenses?" he said, for want of something better.
"Floods," she replied briskly. "Israeli surplus personal surveillance radar.
Reinforced doors and windows, with breeching alarms." Her eyes crinkled slightly. "Poor Dieter—I think you're going to get that proof you wanted. If we survive this." Then she shook her head. "No if about it. We have to survive."
"I was planning on it," he said, and smiled. "In a way, I am relieved."
"How do you spell relief…" Sarah said. Then: " Down!"
Before the word, the hollow choonk of a grenade launcher had already sent Dieter diving for the cover of one of the heavy leather armchairs. As he pulled it over on himself he saw Sarah burrowing under the couch. Here was a woman after his own heart…
BAADUMP.
Flame and splinters of tempered armor glass and a wave of heat washed over him; something stung his left hand. He sucked on the cut as he came up behind the thick chair, aiming his Glock out the empty space where the big window had been. A figure stirred beyond the lawn and flower beds, moving. He squeezed
off two rounds from his pistol—long-range, but he'd always been a good instinctive shot. Sarah's assault rifle gave a spiteful crack-crack-crack, firing on semiauto, but rapidly. He saw the figure lurch and spin, something flying from its hand.
"I knocked it down!" Sarah called—loud enough to sound like a shout, even to his battered ears. So John can hear, Dieter thought. "It lost the grenade launcher!"
"Knocked it down?" Dieter said. "Did you hit him?"
"It," Sarah said coolly. "Five rounds into the center of mass."
Even body armor won't stop rifle rounds at less than a hundred yards, Dieter thought: 5.56 rounds were high velocity; and they tumbled in a wound. That many would cut a man in half, spill his guts over the ground.
"That'll put it out for a minute or so," Sarah said. "It'll have to reboot. C'mon."
She'd fallen into English, unnoticed. Dieter reacted automatically, helping her push the heavy furniture into an improvised barricade against the ruin of the window; she stooped and threw the rug to one side as well.