Wingate glanced at Cutler. He straightened up and took a hypodermic out of his pocket.
“What’s that?” Vanessa asked.
Wingate moved quickly and pinned Vanessa to the bed.
“Something that will help you rest,” he said. “It won’t hurt.”
“I don’t want any more drugs,” Vanessa screamed as she struggled to get free.
Wingate and Cutler ignored her pleas. Sam stood over Vanessa. She bucked and threw herself from side to side. “Hold her still, General,” Cutler said as he bent forward to administer the injection. “I don’t want to miss the vein.”
It was a little over two miles from the jetty to the mansion through the woods on the south side of the General’s property. Charlotte Kohler liked to stroll along paths she’d had a landscape architect lay down through her private forest, but Carl avoided them because they would be a natural place for motion detectors. After a while, Carl saw the lights of the house through breaks in the foliage. He crept forward cautiously until there were only a few trees between him and the lawn at the back of the mansion. The grounds directly behind the house offered few places to hide, and two guards crossed on the back lawn while Carl had it under surveillance.
Carl watched carefully as the guards walked their route. One of the men crossed the pool deck near the cabana where Carl had changed into a bathing suit on his first visit to the estate. As soon as the guard disappeared, Carl made a decision.
It took the guards twelve minutes to complete their circuit. Carl worked his way through the woods as close to the cabana as he could. Everything depended on getting behind it undetected. He sprinted from the woods to the pool and dove low behind the cabana.
Carl checked his watch. Three minutes to go. He visualized the attack, going over possible scenarios. With a minute to go, Carl withdrew the combat knife from its sheath. He had made several silent kills, and he knew that he had to act without hesitation. He had already seen in such circumstances a certain phenomenon that convinced him that human beings had some kind of electrical field around them to warn them when there were other humans in close proximity. Though he didn’t know if there had been any scientific studies to support his notion, no matter how stealthy an approach, an intended victim would sense when an attacker entered this field. A moment’s hesitation was all it took to turn a sure kill into a fight to the death.
The guards passed on the lawn, and Carl’s target arrived at the pool just as the other guard disappeared around the side of the house. Carl moved as soon as the guard’s back was to him. The guard was turning as Carl attacked, but he had no chance. The knife struck home and he died without making a sound. Carl dragged the guard’s body into the cabana and changed into his clothes. Now, in addition to the Glocks and his knife, Carl had the guard’s automatic rifle and two extra clips of ammunition.
To make up time Carl walked a little faster than the pace his victim had kept, but he was still late. He spotted the other guard when they were on the north side of the mansion near the door to the cellar. This was fortunate because they were away from any windows. Carl knelt and pretended to tie his laces. He kept his head down to conceal his face.
“What’s up, Rick?” the guard asked as he came in range.
Carl shot him with the silenced Glock and dragged him against the side of the house. He tried the cellar door. It was locked. He rifled the guard’s pockets and found a key chain. The third key he tried opened the door.
In high school, Carl and Vanessa had made love in the basement’s cool darkness on a discarded Persian rug while Vanessa’s father was meeting with movers and shakers above them. The basement was still cool and dark, but those erotic moments were forgotten as Carl moved between the stacked furniture and abandoned art and up the steps to the first floor. He remembered that the basement door led to a short hall near the kitchen. He opened the door wide enough to see into the corridor.
A guard walked past the entrance to the hall, and Carl ducked behind the basement door. As soon as the guard was past, Carl moved down the hall toward him. When he reached the end of the hall, Carl stooped down and peered around the corner. The guard had stopped with his back to Carl. It looked as if he was taking a break. Carl stunned the man with a blow to the back of the skull, then choked him unconscious. He dragged him back into the basement, cuffed him with plastic cuffs he found in the guard’s back pocket, sat him against a stack of mildewed cardboard cartons, and slapped the guard back to consciousness.
The man’s eyes flicked open. They tried to focus on Carl’s face but the taste of metal in his mouth brought the guard’s eyes down to the gun barrel that was wedged between his lips.
“You have one chance to live,” Carl said in a calm, authoritative tone. “When I take this gun barrel out of your mouth you’ll tell me where the General is holding his prisoner or I will shoot you and find someone else who will tell me. Understood?”
The man nodded. Carl withdrew the barrel past the man’s lips.
“Second floor, maid’s room.”
Carl hit the man fast and much harder than he had the first time. The guard slumped sideways as Carl headed for the stairs. He knew the location of the maid’s room. He and Vanessa had screwed there one summer evening. Now that he thought about it, almost every memory he had of Wingate’s mansion was connected to sex.
Carl used the back stairs to get to the second floor. He moved down the hall without making a sound. As he drew close to the maid’s room, he heard voices. Then Vanessa screamed, “I don’t want any more drugs.”
When Carl wrenched open the door the General was pinning Vanessa to the bed and Sam Cutler was poised over her with a hypodermic needle.
“Put down the hypo or die,” Carl said.
Cutler froze. Wingate turned his head toward the door. His mouth opened, but he stifled whatever he had intended to say.
“Put it down, now,” Carl commanded. Cutler laid the needle on the end table next to the bed.
“Get away from her and stand against the wall. Quick!”
Both men obeyed.
“I knew you’d come,” Vanessa said.
Carl moved to the side of the bed. For a brief second, his eyes left Wingate and Cutler and moved over Vanessa. In that instant, Sam Cutler slipped a Shirken out of his sleeve. The Japanese throwing star had six knife-sharp points. Cutler hurled it across the bed like a discus into Carl’s right shoulder. The shoulder went numb and he dropped the Glock. Cutler leaped across the bed. Vanessa raised her leg, catching Cutler across the knees. As he stumbled over her, Vanessa grabbed the hypodermic and rammed the needle into Cutler’s thigh.
“You bitch!” he screamed. Then his eyes started to loose focus. Vanessa knew exactly what was happening to Cutler’s body. It had been happening to hers with regularity ever since Cutler had injected her in the woods.
Wingate took a step toward Rice, then changed direction and charged out of the room when Carl grabbed the Glock with his left hand and start to aim. The shot went through the open door and into the wall, sending plaster chips spraying across the hallway. The General was shouting at the top of his lungs. Rice peered into the hall. It was empty but it wouldn’t stay that way long.
“Get up, Vanessa.”
Vanessa struggled to her feet. She wanted to move faster but her legs felt like noodles. Carl helped her stand. He knew it was going to be impossible to fight his way out of the house and escape down the cliff with Vanessa in this condition, but he didn’t dwell on the future. He would complete his mission one step at a time and whatever happened, happened. And the first step was getting out of the room.
Carl held the Glock in his left hand and gripped Vanessa’s elbow with his right.
“Concentrate, Van. We have to get out of here fast.”
“Okay,” she answered in a sleepy voice.
Carl took a step into the corridor, and a bullet almost took his head off. He ducked back inside the maid’s room as wood splinters from the door frame flew through the air. Carl slammed the door shut and jammed the chair under the knob. Then he dumped Sam Cutler on the floor and pushed the bed onto its side.