On the roof of the addition, a gently slanting plane some fifteen feet off the ground, Hendricks lay in wait.
“Look at this-someone yanked the fucking dial off.”
His partner glanced over his shoulder without lowering his weapon, which was aimed vaguely toward the tree line. “That enough to kill the power?”
“Beats me.”
In fact, it was. Electric companies aren’t wild about supplying power free of charge, so juice will flow only if the meter is plugged into the meter box. Removing it is a simple-if illegal-matter of snapping off the wire security seal and yanking the piece containing the display dial from its housing.
“They take it with ’em?”
“Dunno. Maybe.” He clipped his weapon to his vest and rooted around the flower bed for a second. “Wait-got it.”
“Is it busted?”
The merc wiped soil off the meter and turned it over in his hands. On the back were four prongs, which corresponded to four exposed slots in the box. “Doesn’t seem to be.”
“Put it back, then. See what happens.”
“On it. Watch my six.”
He lined the prongs up with the slots and plugged the meter in.
A white-hot burst of sparks lit up the night. The air crackled with electricity. The smell of ozone and scorched hair invaded Hendricks’s nostrils as 220 volts blew the man backward into the yard.
Hendricks had used the hose to drench the meter and the box before he’d scaled the trellis, and he’d counted on the darkness and the man’s tactical gloves to hide that fact until it was too late. If he were being honest with himself, he wasn’t sure if it’d work.
The electrocuted merc landed, limbs rigid, on the grass. His hair and clothes were smoking. An involuntary groan escaped his lips. The man covering him cried out and dropped his weapon when the sparks erupted from the meter box, his night-vision goggles amplifying the light and blinding him. He stripped them off and tossed them aside, staggering. Then he rubbed uselessly at his eyes and called to his fallen friend.
“Bigs? Bigs, are you okay? Talk to me-I can’t see you!”
And that’s when Hendricks leaped.
Reyes was inspecting the underbrush to the right of the front porch when the streetlights dimmed. On the far side of the house, a brilliant flash of white, accompanied by a firecracker pop, turned night to day. Stahelski shouted something and was quickly silenced.
Reyes took off running toward the backyard.
The fog was thick; the grass was damp. Reyes wished he were wearing a bulletproof vest beneath his suit jacket and cursed his treadless dress shoes with every slip. McTiernan-who’d been nearer to the backyard when the light show started-was well ahead of him and more sure-footed in his combat boots. It wasn’t long before he vanished into the mist.
Visibility was shit. Still, near as Reyes could tell, the backyard was empty. No Bigelow, no McTiernan, no Stahelski. They weren’t far, though. He could hear them engaged in battle somewhere to his right: The dull thwack of blows exchanged. The wet, popping sound of tendons snapping. A crunch of bone. A strangled cry. And then silence. Reyes hoped the sudden hush meant his men had neutralized the threat.
When he turned the corner to the side yard, his foot caught on something, tripping him. It was Bigelow. He lay flat on his back in the grass and stank like a perm gone wrong. Portions of his uniform had either melted or blown off, and his exposed skin was badly burned. Reyes checked him for a pulse and felt one, slow and weak.
Stahelski was slumped against the house not far away, his tongue lolling, eyes bulging. His helmet had been yanked backward off his head and twisted until its chinstrap cut off blood flow to his brain. Beside him was McTiernan, his right leg bent at an unnatural angle, his face misshapen by what looked to be a broken jaw.
Their guns, Reyes noted, were missing.
Reyes scrabbled over to check on the men. They were alive, but barely. Somehow, Bigelow, McTiernan, and Stahelski had all been incapacitated without anybody-friend or foe-firing a single shot.
Luckily for Reyes, McTiernan had managed to injure his assailant. His combat knife lay beside him on the grass, and a trail of blood led from it into the fog.
Reyes followed it, pulse racing, his finger on the trigger of his SIG Sauer. Fog obliterated the world around him. After thirty yards or so, the blood trail stopped. Then a cold circle of gunmetal touched the base of Reyes’s neck, and he realized he’d been had.
“Slick move, leaving a decoy blood trail,” he said. “What, did you slice open your own goddamn arm?”
“Shut up,” the man behind him whispered. “Put your hands behind your head. And take your finger off the trigger or the last thing you’ll ever see is your teeth leaving your face.”
Reyes complied. The man behind him took his weapon. Nylon rustled as he stashed it in a jacket pocket. “Now get on your knees.”
Reyes started to do so. Then he spun and looped his arm around the man’s wrist, pinning the gun against his side and wrenching it sideways.
The gun fell. Reyes dove and grabbed it. The man tackled him, and the gun slipped from Reyes’s hand and skidded across the lawn.
Reyes was on his stomach in the grass. His assailant drove a knee in his back and grasped for his forearm, trying to maneuver him into an armlock.
Reyes elbowed him in the temple and received three quick jabs to the kidneys for his trouble. Pain spread, wet and loose, in Reyes’s guts. He curled up instinctively to protect himself. The man rose and kicked him twice. Reyes swept the man’s legs out from under him, and he went down hard.
Reyes was on him in an instant, straddling his chest and raining punches. His opponent was well trained; he anticipated, blocked, deflected. As Reyes’s speed waned, the man caught his swinging fist and responded with an open palm to Reyes’s face, trying to break Reyes’s nose. Reyes dodged it but overbalanced and toppled.
They rolled, grappling, for a moment, each struggling for an edge. Reyes’s hands slipped free. He took hold of his assailant’s neck and squeezed, only to release his grip when he felt the gun that he’d surrendered digging into the tender flesh beneath his chin.
The man rose but kept the SIG Sauer trained on Reyes’s face. He collected his firearm from where it lay a few feet away and aimed that at Reyes too.
“There are more men inside the house,” Reyes rasped between breaths. “If you shoot me, they’ll come running.”
“Not fast enough to do you any good.”
Now that the man used his full voice, Reyes thought there was something familiar about it. He squinted up at him in the dim half-light, eyes widening as recognition dawned.
“Hendricks?”
33.
REYES?” HENDRICKS SAID. “What the hell are you doing here?”
The two of them had worked together years ago, when Hendricks’s Special Forces unit was brought in on a mission to rescue eleven U.S. NGO workers-three of whom were actually CIA assets-who’d been kidnapped by narco-guerrillas in Colombia. Reyes had been the Company’s top field agent in the area at the time, working out of the U.S. embassy in Bogotá, officially as a cultural attaché.
“That’s a funny question coming from a guy I heard was dead.”
“Those reports were greatly exaggerated.”
Reyes looked him up and down. “Maybe not greatly. You look like shit.”
Hendricks believed him. His cheeks felt flushed. His throat was parched. The stitched-up knife wound in his side was burning up and seeping blood.
“Really? I’ve never felt better. When did you go private? Last time we crossed paths, you were with the CIA.”
“Yeah, well, last time we crossed paths, you were one of the good guys.”