The second guy was about my size and he knew that he was too close to use a long weapon, so he tried to slam me across the chest with the length of it. I checked my forward momentum so that his thrust stopped a half inch short. I didn’t have a long gun and didn’t need one. Ghost shot past me and under his gun and hit the shooter teeth first in the crotch. He screamed and tried to club the dog, but Ghost was trained to fight armed men. He released the first bite and jumped up inside the circle of the man’s arms, biting fast and hard, tearing muscle and tendon and cracking bone so fast it looked like the shooter had thrust his arms into a leaf shredder.
“Off!” I called, and that fast Ghost jumped sideways. He crouched and growled, fur up along his spine, mouth bloody, eyes fierce.
The shooter went down in a messy heap and curled into a fetal ball, wrapping his head with his ruined arms. I kicked his gun out of reach.
Outside, the TacV roared away.
I stepped back to offer cover while DeeDee slapped Speedcuffs on the two shooters. One was unconscious, the other screaming.
“Juice him,” I ordered, and DeeDee pulled a syringe from her kit and jabbed it into the screaming man’s arm. It wasn’t painkiller. His eyes rolled up and he passed out, sagging to the floor with a thump. Then she applied a fast field dressing to the critical wounds.
I tapped my earbud.
“Cowboy to Echo. House party is over. Got two sleepy guests.”
“Copy that,” said Khalid. “Area is secure.”
“Green Giant, talk to me.”
“Class trip is away,” said Bunny. “I got six police units inbound to your twenty.”
“Outstanding,” I said.
Khalid showed up at the door and I tossed him my keys. He brought the Explorer over and we loaded the prisoners, moving with haste and only marginal care. We needed them alive. Comfort wasn’t an issue.
By the time the cops converged on the house, we were in the wind, following Black Bess north along Route 611.
Interlude Thirty-four
The Seven Kings
December 19, 2:00 P.M. EST
Sebastian Gault set down his phone and stared at it for a long moment. Then with a growl of sudden anger he swept everything off his desk—phone, laptop, whiskey glass. It all crashed to the floor.
A moment later he was crouched over the debris, brushing ice cubes and broken glass off his phone. He dried it on the front of his shirt and then sat on the edge of the desk and opened the phone. It still worked. He punched a number.
“Yes,” said a soft voice.
“I just heard from Fear.”
“As have I,” said Santoro.
“Do you have a team in the area?”
“There is one very close; I can pull them off of that job and put them on this. A matter of minutes; however, taking action would be ill advised, yes? Things are not—”
“Don’t tell me what things are not, god damn it. I want you to do something right fucking now! And I want it splashed across the wire services. I want everything else wiped off the sodding news by it. Do you understand me?”
Gault’s voice had risen to a banshee shriek.
The ensuing silence was so complete that Gault wondered if Santoro had hung up on him. If that little Spanish prick had, he’d skin him alive.
“Is this also the will of the Goddess?” Santoro asked mildly.
“Yes.”
Another moment of silence.
“Very well,” said the killer, and he disconnected.
Chapter Fifty
Willow Grove, Pennsylvania
December 19, 2:38 P.M. EST
We rolled into the Willow Grove Naval Air Station. There were two DMS choppers already on the ground—a burly Chinook and an Apache gunship. Shooters from Broadway Team from the Hangar in Brooklyn had the perimeter secured. I shook hands with Lt. Artie Mensch, Broadway’s top-kick.
“Busy morning, Joe?” he said, offering his hand.
“Same weird shit, different weird day.”
We watched as Top and Khalid guided Amber Taylor and her kids into the Apache. Bunny and John Smith rolled the gurneys with two prisoners over to the Chinook.
Mensch nodded. “We’re taking the prisoners straight to the Hangar. They’re prepping the surgical suite now. Aunt Sallie’s going to want to talk with these boys.” He cut me a look. “You haven’t met her yet, have you?”
“No. Looking forward to it, though.”
He laughed. “‘Looking forward’ to meeting Aunt Sallie. That’s funny.”
“What’s the joke?”
“You’ll know when you meet her.”
He clapped me on the shoulder, whistled to his team, and within a few seconds the helos were sky-high and tilting into the wind to head north.
I saw Circe O’Tree standing beside Black Bess. She looked small and lost, so I headed over to her.
“You did good work today,” I said. “Mrs. Taylor needed someone like you.”
“Someone like me?”
“Smart, steady—”
“And female?” Circe asked challengingly.
“I wasn’t going there,” I said. “You’re a doctor and a shrink. That woman needed that every bit as much as she needed my team of shooters.”
Circe studied me for a moment. “Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Circe nodded and pulled her winter coat more tightly around her shoulders. She shivered even though the wind wasn’t blowing. She stared at the choppers that were disappearing into the gray December sky. Her face was pale and her eyes had a jumpy quality.
I took a shot. “First time you ever saw someone killed?”
She nodded.
“Hitting you like a baseball bat upside the head, I expect.”
Another nod.
“You want to talk about it?”
She looked at me and shook her head.
“Would food and a whole lot of alcohol help?”
“Yes,” she said flatly, then turned and walked toward my Explorer.
She passed Top without comment. He watched her pass, pursed his lips, and came over to me.
“First time?” he asked.
“First time,” I agreed.
“She’s out from Terror Town, right? I read a couple of her books. Thought everyone out there was a vet of some kind.”
“She is now.”
He grunted. “So … what’s our next play, Cap’n?”
As if in answer to his question, my cell buzzed. I flipped it open.
“Sit rep,” snapped Church.
I told him. “We even have two prisoners en route to the Hangar. They’ll need a few million Band-Aids, but they have a pulse.”
“That makes a nice change,” he said. “For you.”
“Ha-ha.”
“Please extend my appreciation to Echo Team. Excellent work. Have your team refresh and reload there at Willow Grove. I’ll clear the paperwork. They’ll catch up to you.”
“Why? Where will I be?”
“Southampton. You know where that is?”
“Sure.”
“There’s a Starbucks at Street Road and Route 232. You are to meet my friend Martin Hanler. Do you remember him?”
“Yeah, he flew me out to Colorado during the Jakoby thing. Why am I meeting him?”
“He just called me to say that blowing up the London Hospital was his idea.”
Part Four
Conspiracy Theories
For you see, the world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.
—BENJAMIN DISRAELI
Chapter Fifty-one
Starbucks