Uuuuuhhhhh.
The thrashing shadows in the corridor began to subside.
Uh.
The corridor became eerily quiet. Dangling by his right hand, Cavanaugh used his left to raise one of the wires from the water and twist it around the hook, interrupting the electrical circuit.
"Now," he told Jamie.
6
They dropped to the water. When they rushed into the corridor, the glare of the lights on the floor revealed ten bodies. Cavanaugh grabbed a submachine gun and prepared to shoot in case anyone was faking. He saw the contorted body of a man in a business suit, a doctor's valise next to him. He saw Edgar lying facedown in the water and reached into the man's baggy pants pockets, removing the Emerson knife and the Sig Sauer he'd expected to find there. He gave the handgun to Jamie and shoved the knife in his own pocket.
Grace. Damn it, where was Grace?
Hurried footsteps directed Cavanaugh's attention toward the end of the corridor. Silhouetted by sunlight, a figure darted up the steps toward the entrance.
Cavanaugh fired.
Bullets struck the steps, but Grace had already vanished through the opening, ducking to the left. Evidently, she had pressed the remote control on her belt. The concrete door began to descend.
Cavanaugh raced toward the steps, wondering how the hell Grace had survived. She must have been standing away from the water. Perhaps she'd been wearing rubber-soled shoes.
The concrete door sank lower. Cavanaugh heard Jamie charging behind him, but all he concentrated on was reaching the steps and lunging up them.
The gap of light was only two feet high now. He dove sideways, scraping his bare shoulders and back when he rolled. His body and then his shoes cleared the door a moment before it thudded into place.
In eye-stabbing light, he caught a glimpse of four startled men as he rolled upward and pulled the trigger, muscle memory controlling the length of time he pressed his finger against it. Tap. Tap. Tap. Three and four rounds at a time burst from the MP-5.
One man lurched back, blood spurting from his unarmored chest before he could raise his weapon. Another man did manage to raise his weapon, the wallop of bullets into his face deflecting his aim toward the sky as he fired and then dropped.
The third and fourth men scurried toward the rubble of the collapsed barn.
At the same time, Cavanaugh raced toward what remained of the burned mansion.
He dove behind the remnants of a stone wall just before the two men opened fire, bullets ricocheting. He hurt his bare chest when he landed on stones, but he didn't care-all that mattered was surviving, killing whoever blocked his way, and getting Jamie out of there.
But to open the door, he needed the remote control on Grace's belt. Where was she? Cavanaugh hadn't noticed her when he'd shot and run for cover. She'd disappeared to the left of the entrance, which was now on Cavanaugh's right. Her Ford Explorer was in that direction. Was she using it to hide?
A dark green station wagon, presumably the doctor's, was in front of the Explorer. Grace might be inching along them, trying to outflank me, Cavanaugh thought. Peering through a gap in the stones, he didn't have a vantage point that allowed him to see under the vehicles, where the movement of Grace's shoes might tell him what she was doing.
Likewise, the ringing in his ears prevented him from hearing faint sounds that might have warned him of what Grace or the two men were up to. His heart pounded furiously as he realized that he'd landed in a trough that one of the gunmen had made when the assault team had hidden among the rubble. To his left were similar troughs where wreckage had been removed. He crawled through them, over rubble, following the length of the collapsed stone wall. Trying to make as little noise as possible, he searched for a gap in the stones, a place through which he could study the ruins of the barn and perhaps get a better view of the vehicles to his right.
He examined the MP- 5 in his hands. Its magazine was capable of holding thirty rounds of 9-mm ammunition. He tried to judge how many rounds he had remaining. He'd fired three bursts. He'd been trained to release approximately four rounds per burst. But perhaps he'd fired more. Assuming he'd shot sixteen rounds, that left fourteen in the magazine-if it had been fully loaded-and one in the firing chamber, if the gunman had inserted a round there before attaching the magazine.
Be conservative, he thought. Assume you've got only twelve rounds.
He flicked the selection lever from automatic to the single-fire position. He extended the butt from a slot in the MP-5's frame, trying to make it aim like a rifle. When he raised himself to peer through the gap in the stones, he saw movement in the barn's rubble, to the right and left of the closed door. But before he could shoot, bullets struck the stones near his head, forcing him down. His forehead stung. Liquid trickled from it. When he touched his brow, his finger came away with blood from where a chunk flying off the stones had grazed him.
He picked up a charred piece of board and tossed it underhand toward where he'd first landed behind the wall. He hoped that the clatter would make the gunmen think that he'd returned to that position. Peering quickly through the gap he'd just used, he saw the man on the right raise his head from cover, aiming toward where he'd thrown the board.
Cavanaugh fired, hitting the man's shoulder, knocking him down. Immediately, he ducked below the gap as a volley from over there blasted the area through which he'd been peering. More chunks of stones flew, dust rising. He felt little elation that he'd hit one of the men. The wound hadn't been center of mass. It wouldn't have been incapacitating. The man was still a threat.
Jamie, he thought. She'll go out of her mind down there. Maybe some of the gunmen aren't dead. Maybe she'll have to fight.
Stop thinking.
He squirmed farther to the left along the collapsed wall, snaking over wreckage, scraping his chest more severely. He came to the edge of the ruins and realized that the men at the collapsed barn couldn't see him if he stayed low when he shifted along this far side. If he could reach the front and creep along to the opposite side, he'd have a chance of surprising his hunters. He would also have a chance of surprising Grace if she was behind the Explorer and the station wagon to the right of the collapsed barn.
When Cavanaugh reached the front of the wreckage, he found the Taurus where Jamie had parked it. Not that it did him any good. Without the ignition key, he couldn't start the car unobtrusively enough to be able to use it as a surprise weapon. In front, the rubble was high enough for him to run in a crouch. Blood oozed from the scrapes on his chest. His tongue felt thick. He peered around the next corner, seeing the station wagon and the SUV near the ruins of the barn. Their sides were angled toward him, concealing what was behind them, but from this vantage point, he could hug the ground and see under the vehicles.
Beneath the Explorer, Grace's sturdy walking shoes were visible near the front tires. He saw the cuffs of her khaki slacks. She knew enough to crouch behind the engine, the only spot where a high-powered bullet couldn't go all the way through. Then Cavanaugh saw movement just above the hood. Near the windshield, blond hair showed as Grace raised her head slightly to peer toward the collapsed wall at the back of the mansion. The angle of her gaze prevented her from noticing where Cavanaugh studied her from the front corner.