Cavanaugh unzipped the waterproof bag and pulled out the sawed-off shotgun, along with a nylon bag of shells that he hitched over his right shoulder. He removed the Emerson knife and clipped it to the neck of his wet suit. He took out a pouch of his lock-pick tools. Finally, he threw off the wet suit's hood and reached into the bag for night-vision goggles that he'd found at the military-surplus store while buying the Zodiac boat. He draped the goggles around his neck.
Ready, he dropped to the terrace, sank to the flagstones, and squirmed across them toward the French doors, the bottom of which was another area that the angle of the TV cameras couldn't reach. When he came to a crouch, he at last risked being seen as he hurriedly picked the lock. He opened the doors, rushed into the dark house, shut the doors, put on his night-vision goggles, and aimed the shotgun.
His goggles gave the dark interior a faint green illumination as he checked the wreckage of the living room and then shifted left into the media room, then the guest bedroom and bathroom. These areas weren't his main interest, but he had to make sure they weren't a threat. Satisfied, he crept toward the opposite side of the house, broken glass scraping under his rubber-protected feet. The vague smell of cordite still lingered in the air. At once, Cavanaugh knew that the TV cameras had at the last moment revealed him crouching to pick the padlock and enter the house- because the smell of cordite was overpowered by the sudden pungent stench of the hormone.
Until now, Cavanaugh's wet suit had been comfortably warm. Now the sweat that squirted from his body raised his temperature so much that he felt as if he were in a sauna. Almost dizzy from the heat under his wet suit, he risked taking his right hand off the shotgun for the few seconds he needed to pull down the wet suit's zipper, exposing his chest. The effort made no difference.
In Karen's basement, he had thought he'd endured the full force of the hormone, but now, as the smell became almost unbearable, he understood that he had no idea how powerful Prescott's weapon could be. His legs threatened not to support him. His stomach felt simultaneously scaldingly hot and polar-cold. His pulse was so fast, he came close to fainting.
Part of him wanted to roll into a ball and pray for this nightmare to end. Another part compelled him to pivot in an increasingly rapid circle, pointing his shotgun anywhere and everywhere. His body heat misted the faint green images of his night-vision goggles. Surrounded by every imaginable threat, seeing through fear-narrowed vision, he spotted a man with a pistol aiming at him from the corridor that led to the master bedroom. He came within a millisecond of pulling the trigger, then realized that the man with a pistol was merely a shadow, that this was how the Rangers and the SWAT team had reacted.
Cavanaugh's only advantage was that he'd suffered the hormone's effects and knew what to expect. Even so, as the pungent smell became strong enough to make him taste bile, he heard unnerving noises that he realized were pathetic whimpers forcing their way from his throat. The heaving bellows of his lungs made the whimpers come and go, come and go, each time stronger, building to a scream that he repressed by racing along the corridor to the master bedroom.
Charging inside, he didn't dare think, didn't dare hesitate or second-guess himself. The huge bedroom had an arcade video game next to a luxurious reading chair. A large flat-screen plasma TV was mounted to the wall at the foot of the bed, a cabinet of electronics next to it. To the right of the TV, a sliding door led into a closet. That afternoon, Cavanaugh had looked into the closet and seen Prescott's designer jackets hanging on a rod, cedar shelves of expensive tank tops, T-shirts, and sweaters behind them.
Now he shoved a bureau from the side of the room and rammed it into the closet so hard that he broke off the pole that supported the jackets. He yanked down the electronics cabinet and the plasma TV, shattering its screen. With the closet blocked and the wall at the foot of the bed fully exposed, he pulled earplugs from his bag of shotgun shells and put them on. His shaky fingers could barely do the job. The pungent smell was so overpowering that he came close to bending forward and retching. Cursing, he stepped back, raised the shotgun, and fired at a spot three feet from the ceiling. Nearly knocked back by the recoil, which his shuddering body could barely support, he was gratified that the almost-severed plastic shell separated from its base when the gunpowder detonated. Like a miniature rocket, the main part of the shell and the buckshot within it roared toward the top of the wall, blasting apart on impact, creating a fist-sized hole, through which the buckshot burst like shrapnel. An eerie pale light was visible through the hole.
Cavanaugh yanked the pump on the shotgun's forward grip, ejecting the remainder of the empty shell, chambering a full one. In a fury, he fired just below the ceiling again, aiming toward an area three feet to the left of the first hole. Another miniature rocket seemed to blast a fist-sized hole in the wall. And another. Each hole revealed more of the eerie pale light. The Remington 870 held four shells in its magazine and one in the firing chamber. Cavanaugh rapidly discharged all five, blasting more holes in the wall, working his way downward. The odor of cordite helped to mask the stench of the hormone as he fumbled for more shells and forced his trembling fingers to shove them into the slot under the shotgun. Despite his earplugs, he heard muffled screams behind the wall just before he started shooting again.
He moved the pattern of the fist-sized holes lower, soon reaching five feet down from the ceiling. Prescott screamed more fiercely behind there as Cavanaugh reloaded again and fired, the holes showing even more of the light. The bedroom was filled with a haze of gun smoke. Reload. Fire. Reload. Fire. Now Cavanaugh lowered his aim to three feet above the floor. Prescott's screams came from down there, where he'd taken cover as the descending movement of the blasts pressed him toward the floor.
"You had me believing you'd gone!" Cavanaugh shouted. His fear and the earplugs caused his voice to sound as if it came from a disorienting distance.
"Then I spotted the miniature TV cameras outside the house!" Cavanaugh pumped the shotgun and blew yet another hole in the wall, keeping it three feet above the floor, forcing Prescott to huddle in panic down there. Wood and plaster flew. More of the glowing light was exposed.
"So many cameras!" Cavanaugh's shout was primal.
"Cameras need monitors! So where the hell are the monitors?" As Cavanaugh blasted yet another hole in the wall, the hormone made his bladder want to let go.
"Where's the walk-in closet that ought to go with a bedroom this huge?" Cavanaugh pumped the shotgun and fired. The glow of the monitors streamed through the increasing holes, revealing where they were stacked on shelves against the far left side of the enclosure, away from his shots.
"It couldn't have been hard to put up a wall inside the closet! Something you could pivot like a door and lock on the other side!" Again Cavanaugh pulled the trigger. He knew that the neighbors would hear the shots and phone the police. He didn't care. By the time the police arrived, his business would be finished.
"What did you do, use the van from the parking garage to bring in construction supplies?" Again, Cavanaugh's shotgun roared. "Your neighbors wouldn't have realized you were dividing the closet! Shelves for the monitors! A ventilation duct connected to the main system! A cot! Preserved food! A portable toilet! Like the first time I met you! You were in a hiding hole then! You're in a hiding hole now!"