"So you're on our side?" Holliday asked.
"Until I'm told differently by my client."
"So for you it's about the job. No loyalties to anyone. It's all about the money."
"Don't be naive, Colonel. It's always all about the money. Wars are fought for all sorts of reasons by all sorts of people, but inevitably it is the people who sell the warriors their bullets who get rich. Life, Colonel Holliday, is a retail event, just like Christmas."
The water- skiing boat was visible now, no more than fifty feet off the dock below them. The skis of the man being towed behind the boat slapped the water noisily and the roar of a pair of big twin engines was enough to drown out conversation at the kitchen table. Everyone looked toward the lake, including the guard on the deck. There were four people in the speeding towboat, all wearing black life jackets. Directly in front of the dock the man being towed suddenly let go of the tow-rope and the boat throttled back to almost nothing. The four men on the boat turned toward the shore.
Who the hell wore black life jackets?
23
Not life jackets. Bulletproof vests.
"Get down!" Holliday yelled. He grabbed Meg by the arm and dragged her off the chair and onto the floor. The big window looking out onto the lake shattered, and the kitchen erupted in a hail of silent lead. The man on the deck was torn to ribbons by automatic fire even before he had a chance to stand up.
More fire came from the trees around the cottage. The water-ski boat had just been a distraction. They were coming from all sides. Quince was on the floor, facedown, arms spread, his right forefinger still hooked into the delicate handle of the ornate china cup he'd been drinking his coffee from. Most of the back of his head was missing. Moira's plum jam was everywhere. The gunfire muffled by silencers continued in an unbroken stream.
"Who's shooting at us!?" Meg screamed.
"Quince's competition!" Holliday yelled back. Still hanging on to Meg's arm, he crabbed across the floor, dragging Meg along. He huddled under the stairs. It was probably the safest place in the house. They found their knapsacks tossed into the little alcove, probably searched while they were knocked out then cast aside.
"What are we going to do?" Meg asked. Her voice was a frightened panting sound. Holliday was in the groove. This was combat. Familiar territory. The rule book said always attack from the higher ground, but going up onto the second floor of the cottage would be suicide. The rule book also said that with insurmountable odds the best option was to make an orderly withdrawal-army talk for retreat. But they were in George Armstrong Custer territory now, surrounded on all sides.
"Grab your pack and put it on," instructed Holliday, more to keep her occupied than anything else. He needed to think and she was on the verge of losing it, which wouldn't do anyone any good.
Meg lifted her pack off the floor and slipped it on while Holliday peeked around the corner of the stairway. The guard outside was bleeding all over the Adirondack chair and the men in the black life jackets were coming up the steps. Six of them, armed with various brands of riot guns and automatic weapons. They had thirty seconds at the outside.
Holliday felt Meg tugging at his sleeve. He turned to her, irritated.
"Not now!"
"Look," she insisted. She'd swept his knapsack aside. Outlined on the floor he could see a trapdoor or a hatch. It made sense. A crawl space. The cottage was built on a slab of bedrock so all the plumbing would be under the floor. There'd have to be some way of getting at it for maintenance. Not that it mattered. It was the only option now.
Holliday shrugged on his own pack and pulled on the brass ring inset into the floor. The hatch pulled upward, revealing three roughly made steps. He smelled stone and cedar. Gunfire exploded around them, chewing into the wood of the stairs behind them. Windows exploded and fist-sized holes appeared in the walls. Even silenced, that much ordnance was making a racket outside. Eventually someone was going to call 911, but it would almost certainly be too little, too late; a myopic summertime cottage cop with maybe a.38 on his hip.
"I'll go first," said Holliday.
Meg nodded, eyes like saucers, wincing and jerking as each bullet struck the walls around them. He went down the steps. There was barely enough room between the floor joists and the ground to duckwalk forward.
He looked around. It was impossible to move to the back of the cottage; the rock sloped away toward the deck and the crawl space narrowed to barely a foot-high crack. Most of the fire seemed to be coming from the steps leading down to the dock.
He looked back over his shoulder. Meg was right behind him. Under the floor the ground was covered in old rotting construction litter and decaying leaves. There were spiders above them and dark slithering things below. It occurred to Holliday that the best horror movies came out of basements and attics. Most people didn't have the slightest idea of what was going on within the walls of their own houses. Domestic nightmares.
Holliday reached the edge of the cottage and paused, peering out into the open. Sun dappled down. There was about a thirty- foot clearing between the side of the cottage and the wall of surrounding trees. As he knelt, looking outward, someone emerged from the tree line in full combat fatigues and a dark green balaclava. The man's hands were covered with Camtech camouflage makeup. He was carrying an Atchisson AA- 12 assault shotgun with a twenty-round drum magazine and a Glock or something similar in a waist holster.
The Atchisson had been developed for close-quarters combat. It fired a Magnum shell that could kill a Kodiak bear or an elephant. It could blow a man in half from thirty yards away and drill a through-and-through hole in the cottage from one side to the other.
The man with the shotgun paused for a split second at the edge of the trees and then raced forward. Ten points off in a tactical exercise exam at West Point, Holliday thought. He should have approached his target in a crouch. If he had, he might have seen Holliday lurking in the shadowed crawl space. The man in the camo gear ran forward, then paused next to the house. From the position of his feet Holliday guessed he was going to sidestep along the wall to a window. The feet were encased in sand-colored standard-issue two-pound Belleville combat boots.
Barely thinking about what he was doing, Holliday reached out with both hands, grabbed the man's ankles and pulled as hard as he could. Caught completely off guard, the soldier toppled backward, his head smacking into the rock and the shotgun flying out of his hands. Holliday heaved on the man's feet hard and dragged him under the cottage. The dazed man struggled but Holliday jammed his elbow hard into the man's wind-pipe and leaned on it with his full weight. Something in the soldier's throat cracked. He made a choking, gurgling sound and then stopped moving, blood streaming from his mouth.
Holliday hauled the body even farther under the cottage and stripped the soldier of his sidearm and an ammo pocket full of 9mm magazines. Two more drums for the Atchisson in a canvas pouch over his shoulder. Holliday slipped the pouch off and put the strap over his own head.
There was also a sheathed Ek Commando knife, like the one Holliday had used in the Rangers. Holliday took the weapon and slipped it under the gun belt. Easing the body to one side, he edged forward and peered out into the sunlight.
Somebody blew a whistle. A split second later there were explosions from inside the cottage: flash-bang stun grenades of the type used in hostage situations. Suddenly the air was filled with yelling voices and smashing wood. There was more gunfire, this time from above. Quince's people making a last stand on the upper floor. This was the push.