Without backup, he couldn't walk straight in through the front door with a gun in each hand-there was no way he could control so many men at once and be free to do anything but guard them. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and allowed himself a mental picture of finding Sean alive and well, of taking Sam Manelli hostage and using the threat of killing the old bastard to hold off his guards until Chet's assault force arrived.
Winter went back to the door leading into the darkened room next to the kitchen and slid it open silently. He had the SIG in his right hand already, so after he closed the door, he pulled Yul's Hi-Power from inside his belt. Illumination coming into the bunk room from a slightly open hallway door allowed Winter to make out the line of bunk beds and the shape of a man lying asleep in one of them.
After crossing the room, Winter stood at the hallway door, listening. A split second before he moved out into the hall, he heard the hard-soled shoes of someone entering the hall from the kitchen.
He moved quickly aside, flattening himself against the wall beside the door.
The man pushed open the bedroom door a few inches and called in, “Angelo, get your ass up!” before he returned to the kitchen. Angelo got up and ambled into the bathroom, closing the door behind him.
Winter slipped out from the bunk room, crossed the hall, and started carefully up the staircase that led up to a central hallway. At the top of the stairs he peered to his left around the corner. The opposing walls rose to the vaulted ceiling that peaked twenty feet above. There were two doors on each side of the hall. Beyond the hallway's throat, edged with vertical rough-hewn cypress beams to support an arch of the same material, was a great room. What Winter could see of the living room included the back of a couch and overstuffed leather armchairs arranged before a massive fieldstone fireplace centered in a wall of window glass. Winter decided to find a door that would allow him to get out onto the porch so he could see into the great room. The acoustics were such that Sam's loud voice filled the hallway as if he was using a public address system.
“Where's Spiro? I thought you went to get him,” Sam growled.
“He's with two of the new guys watching the back gate. He'll be back soon.”
“I think the boy should have paid more attention to his school and less to that weight-lifting rigmarole.”
Winter was almost at the closest door to the stairwell when Manelli crossed the room and stopped, framed in the archway. In person, Sam Manelli was a living illustration of dynamite coming in small packages.
All the aging gangster had to do was turn and he would be staring at a stranger thirty feet away holding a pair of pistols. Winter didn't want to do anything until he had located Sean, but if Manelli turned, he would take the man hostage. If there were more people in the great room sitting silently, or if Sam was to yell out for the downstairs guards, it could get bad. If Sam yelled, Winter would run into the room and perhaps shoot everybody there. Sam walked away without turning. Relieved that he didn't have to shoot Manelli yet, Winter put the Hi-Power in the small of his back and slipped through the nearest door.
He entered a dimly lit bedroom, stopping beside a partly opened closet door. Ahead, he saw a bed with the covers disturbed. What must have been a bathroom door was closed, but light leaked out from under it and he could hear water running in the sink.
He heard footsteps moving down the hallway and someone tapping at the door before opening it. Winter slipped into the closet, eased the sliding door almost closed so he could peer out through the crack and ready himself. As the door closed, Winter saw Sam Manelli's profile, less than two feet away.
101
Shadows among shadows, the quartet of cutouts moved west through the narrow line of trees along the drainage canal. They cut a hole in the eastern ILS fence and slipped through. Their starlight goggles painted the world a Saint Elmo's fire green. They wore sensitive, sound-activated headsets and could talk to each other in an emergency.
Nearing the gate separating the tank farm from the lodge property, they slowed and crept to the edge of the road, where it exited the tank farm and entered Manelli's property. A clot of four guards, who couldn't have been more visible to the cutouts if they had been on fire, stood just inside the gate. As one of the men waved his hand in the darkness, his lit cigarette looked like an acrobatic firefly.
Lewis took up his position not fifteen feet away from the four guards.
Tomeo, Mickey, and Apache kept going toward the lodge.
Normally they would have taken out the four guards and moved on, but Lewis was not going to put a single team member at unnecessary risk. He wanted a lightning strike whereby all of the exterior guards were neutralized at once. He didn't want any of the guards to have an opportunity to resist-or for a shout or a gunshot to alert anyone inside the lodge. The body armoring all but removed that risk for Tomeo and Apache, but his and Mickey's lighter suits offered superior maneuverability with full protection of only their torsos. Even if the inserts were missed, the latest version of Kevlar would take multiple rounds in the same spot without failure.
According to Russo, there could be as many as fourteen guards there, all of them aware that they were not to fire at anyone without Russo's orders. Russo thought the cutouts were going to erase only Sam and Sean.
Despite what Lewis had told Russo, Fifteen's orders had been clear. “Erase everybody there and leave no witnesses.” As Lewis had put it to his people, “If they didn't come here with us, they're staying after us.”
Figuring his team was in position up the road, Lewis raised his MP5 SD and fired at the men standing like cows in the curve of a nameless dirt road.
102
Sam Manelli stood at the foot of the bed staring at the bathroom door. If the aging gangster had ever smiled, there was no evidence in the famous mask, which seemed to have been carved from a lifetime of suspicion and displeasure. The water stopped running.
The old man sat on the edge of the bed, his knees facing the closet. The bathroom door opened and Sean Devlin climbed up onto the bed and sat cross-legged, facing Manelli. Stunned, Winter watched Sam lean over and kiss her gently on the cheek.
Winter stepped out of the closet, aiming the SIG at Sam Manelli, his finger on the trigger, already knowing that the first bullet would strike his square head in the center.
Manelli reacted by standing up to face Winter.
When Sean saw Winter, she slid quickly off the mattress and stood between Winter and Sam for a split second before Sam shoved her behind him.
“Go ahead an' do me,” Sam growled. “Just leave her alone!”
“Winter, no!” Sean cried out. “Don't.”
“What the hell is this, Sean?” Winter demanded. He couldn't accept what he was seeing before him.
“It's okay, Winter. Sam, he's the deputy that saved my life on that island.”
“Okay? This old reptile's been trying to kill you,” Winter told Sean. “He sent the people who killed Martinez and Greg! His people just tried to kill Hank and me.” Winter's hand was trembling from anger, shock. “I'm not dead, you old bastard, your three in the boathouse are.”
Manelli's blue eyes were suddenly curious. “When was you in my boathouse?”
“Russo told your clowns to drown us.” Winter kept the SIG aimed at Sam's head, wanting to squeeze the trigger.
“I don't believe that,” Sam growled. “Why would he do a thing like that and not tell me? When?”
“Fifteen minutes ago. A creep named Spiro and two guys grabbed us. Russo came to the boathouse and said for them to drown us in your crab cage. One of them shot my partner.”