I saw movement and then the overwhelming, bone-shaking blast and brilliant muzzle flash of a fully automatic weapon. A long burst burned past two feet overhead. I was in an ocean of noise and light, without being much aware of it: aware only that I wasn't yet dead. I fired once, lurched forward to the bedroom door, and rolled through it.
A half-second later, another burst chewed up the carpet where I'd just been. I did a quick peek, then stuck my head around the corner and fired again.
Bedroom. I looked around, panicked. I didn't have a chance against the automatic weapon, if it came to a straight shootout. The bedroom had a glass door and a short balcony, but if I went over the side, I'd have to run across fifty yards of lighted, bald-as-a-pool-table lawn before there was any cover. I'd be cut in half before I made ten of them.
What to do? Who was that out there? Had to be Corbeil.
"Corbeil? Why are you killing us?"
"Who the fuck are you?"
"We're just some guys, trying to stay away from the feds," I shouted back. "Why are you killing us?"
He said nothing for a moment, then: "Because I like it. I'm gonna cut you to pieces, dickhead."
No way for a CEO to talk, but he was right about one thing: if I moved, he'd cut me to pieces. I did an inventory I had the flashlight, the revolver, the night glasses, LuEllen's usual break-in kit.
Ten seconds later, I had the quilt off the bed behind me. A fat one, a nice traditional quilt filled with cotton batting. I balled it up, watching the door, snapped LuEllen's lighter under the blanket, and got it burning. When the fire was going hard, I threw it over across the hallway and over the railing onto the main floor.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Corbeil screamed, "What are you doing?"
"You burned Jack's house down," I shouted back I pulled the pack back on. "You burned it down: so suck on this."
Another row of gunfire and the edge of the door splintered. I risked a quick peek the instant it stopped, and sawfeltanother movement, on the stairs, going down. Had to risk it: crossed to the railing in the near dark, saw the blanket burning on a couch below. And in the glow of the small fire, movement.
I took a quick, unsteady shot, and missed. Corbeil turned and fired a burst along the railing, but by that time, I was further up the hall, crawling toward the bedroom where I came in. At the stairs, I paused.
Corbeil was screaming something unintelligible, and then a cloud exploded across the room below. He'd gotten a fire extinguisher from somewhere, CO2, and I fired another shot at what seemed to be the source of the cloud. He screamed again and the cloud suddenly went sideways. Had I hit him? I moved, fast and low as I could, scrambling, and nearly lost the gun.
He opened fire again, this time shooting at the railing further along the balcony, but not as far as I had gotten. The light was growing, the couch was now fully on fire.
Run, or wait? I could run fifty yards in maybe six or seven seconds, dressed as I was and carrying the pack But now, caught in the break-in without a chance to clean up behind myself, I really wouldn't mind seeing more of a fire. So I waited.
Corbeil, whether he was hit or not, was soon back with another extinguisher, this one firing some kind of spray. But the couch was burning too hard, the fire now running along what looked like a big Oriental carpet under a grand piano. He began shouting again, but I was concentrating on the gun. I had no wish to lose any shells, but I couldn't for the life of me remember how many times I'd pulled the trigger Four? Five? Was it empty?
I flipped the cylinder out, pulled the flashlight out of my jacket, looked at the primers. Four of them had firing-pin dents. Two shots left. I clicked the cylinder back into place, so a shell would come under the hammer with the next trigger pull.
Move or wait? The fire was growing and Corbeil had shouted something unintelligible again.
I shouted back "Satellites."
One loud word One word to get him thinking about what I was saying, get him looking up at the balcony I was out the window, over the edge, and running. Waiting for the impact at my back. Across the lighted lawn, running, running, thirty more steps, twenty, five, and down on the ground. Laying still. Then up and moving again, fast, running hard for fifty yards, dropping to the ground again. Listening.
I could hear Corbeil, still in the house, screaming, and I could see firelight in all the windows now.
A minute later, Corbeil ran out into the yard, running as I had, but at an opposite angle. He dropped to the ground, and I realized that from his angle, he could see most of the lighted yard around the housethat the only part that he couldn't see was the driveway. He must have thought that I was still inside, but if the fire was building, he knew I'd have to run for it. And I probably wouldn't run down the driveway. He waited, patiently, as the fire spread through his log palace, and began eating it alive.
Moving as slowly as I could, I shrugged off the pack and got out the night glasses. The yard lights were still burning, and the fire glowed from the windows of the house: I turned down the gain on the glasses, and looked toward the last place I'd seen Corbeil. He was still there, looking toward the house, then away, then back toward the house.
I studied him for another minute, then flattened into the ground cover. He had night glasses, just like mine, and was scanning the fields around him. I didn't dare move, except snakelike, pushing backward on my belly, watching him. Every time his face turned toward me, I flattened, frozen in place. I would wait fifteen seconds, then look: each time I expected a quick slap on the forehead and the final darkness.
I made progress. At the beginning, we were fifty yards apart. Ten minutes later, I had another fifty. I was there, a hundred yards out, studying Corbeil's position with the glasses, when a car swerved off the highway, drove up the driveway, and a man got out and ran up to the front door of the house and began pounding on it, shouting. Then he ran back to his car, took what must have been a cell phone from the front seat, and staring up at the house, made a call.
Two or three minutes later, I heard the sirens, and far down the road, the flashing lights of the first fire trucks. The man who called them was running around the house, looking in the windows. I could see Corbeil watching him with the glasses, and I backed further away.
When I was two hundred yards out, I stopped to watch the fire: the house was now fully involved, flames leaping from the rooftop. One of the fire trucks sprayed foam on the bunkhouse and garage. They didn't bother with the house: they had no good water source, and the house was burning so hard it probably wouldn't have helped if they did have water. The best they could hope for was to keep the flames from spreading to the outbuildings.
I switched back to Corbeil. He was standing now, just outside the circle of light cast by the flames. He was turning, his hands to his face, scanning the fields.
And I thought: how odd.
He'd been questioned about a murder. He must've worried that the copsor the FBI, if we'd made any impression with the NSAwere going to break down his door at any moment. Anything in his apartment would be up for grabs.
It stood to reason that he'd move anything incriminating out of his apartment, out of his office, out of any place that the police or the feds could get at by looking at records, like safe deposit boxes. He couldn't actually destroy it: the docs and software used for controlling a satellite system would not be something you commit to memory.
My eyes drifted back to the burning house. I'd gone in because the last guy who left took the only vehicle. There were no other cars visible. It seemed unlikely that Corbeil would take the chance of being stranded on foot, so he probably had a car somewhere.
Like in the garage.
I looked back at him, still scanning. I was due east of the garage, if I moved out, and around to the south, I could come up behind it. As long as I could see him.