Sam opened a small steel door in the wall by the front windows. He waited until the lights were off, then engaged the switch. The electric motor groaned, but the shutters descended only another inch or two. Sam took a small hand crank out of the box, knelt to stick it in a socket just above the windowsill, and turned it. The shutter lowered slowly down to the sill. He moved to the next window and knelt again to crank it down. But just as he did, a ladder appeared at the next one.
A man scrambled up the ladder, punched the window in with a hammer, and stuck his arm in holding a Škorpion automatic pistol. Remi shot the arm before he could fire. He dropped the weapon and made his way down a few feet, his arm hanging limp, and Pete pushed the ladder over with the wooden pole.
Sam cranked the shutter down over the window and moved on to the next one. As he cranked, the window next to it burst into a hundred shards as men outside fired at it. Sam shook his head to get rid of the glass in his hair and kept cranking. But after the next window, there was a sudden quiet. He looked up for a second, then ran to the other side of the house and began cranking shutters down.
Aluminum ladders appeared at windows on that side. Two of the climbers got as far as firing weapons into the second floor before Remi or Wendy shot them. Pete pushed the ladders off the house. Sam kept cranking down shutters.
There was a screech of wood against metal, and the piano jammed in the stairwell moved a little. Sam shouted, “Get the refrigerator!”
Pete, Wendy, and Selma ran to the open kitchen and laboriously wheeled the big wide stainless steel refrigerator along the hardwood floor toward the stairs. Sam picked up the .308 rifle he had set down when closing the shutters and ran to the stairs. He stalked around the opening for the well, peeking around the gym equipment for a target, but seeing nobody peeking back. He detected movement at the piano, as though someone were trying to push it. He aimed the rifle at what he guessed was near a leg of the piano and fired through the wood. There was a hush from the stairs so deep that he sensed men must be gathering there. He fired twice more through the piano.
He turned just as another man on a ladder broke a window and stepped toward the windowsill. He shot the man and then saw yet another man on a ladder coming up the opposite side of the house. He shot that man before he could break the window and saw him fall away from the house. He fired twice more through the beautiful mirrorlike finish of the piano into the stairwell.
The others had the refrigerator at the top of the stairs now. He gave them the signal to hold and they moved around behind it and waited. Sam used the time to close more shutters to prevent cross fire from outside. They all heard the sound of the engine of the pickup truck at the front door. Sam sprang to his feet, ran to the edge of the stairwell, and replaced the magazine in his rifle.
The engine outside roared and the piano screeched and then banged down the stairs, dragged by the truck, its strings making an awful noise. It had been holding the gym equipment, which now began to tumble down after it. Sam waved and the others pushed over the big refrigerator. It toppled, crashed, and then slid down and gathered speed like a steel sled. A few men below seemed to get bowled over, but it was hard to see what the damage was.
“Couches,” Sam said, and they pushed two big couches into the well together. This blocked the stairs, but a burst of fire came up through them and they had nothing in them that could stop a bullet.
Sam said, “Selma, go up to the third floor and boil water in the kitchen. As much as you can boil, as fast as you can do it. Take a shotgun with you and a pistol, and make sure they’re loaded.”
“What’s that for?” asked Remi.
“We’re going to lose this floor too when they clear the stairs. We can make it cost them, but then we have to get upstairs. Those extension ladders won’t reach the third floor.”
* * *
ÉTIENNE LE CLERC, Sergei Poliakoff, and Arpad Bako sat on comfortable chaises on the deck of the yacht Ibizawith their feet up and smoking fine Cuban Cohiba cigars. The warm offshore breeze blew the smoke over their shoulders and out to sea.
The second yacht, the Mazatlan, was anchored about a thousand yards to their left now because her crew was sending up fireworks from a raft they had spent the afternoon loading.
Through powerful binoculars, Bako watched the distant house above Goldfish Point. “This must be what it was like watching a conqueror like Attila take an ancient city—scaling ladders against defenders with poles, storming the lowest levels of the fortress, and forcing the defenders higher until they surrender and die.”
Poliakoff glared at his watch. “Our side had better step up the pace or the distraction of the fireworks will wear thin and someone who lives near them will figure out what’s happening.”
Le Clerc shrugged. “We cut the power and the telephone in the boxes at the end of the street, and the jammers will keep any sort of phone or Wi-Fi useless for some distance.”
Bako said, “There are also men at the intersections to warn our forces if the police come. If necessary, they can close down the roads for a few minutes.”
“I just hope Sam Fargo is beginning to feel my hand,” said Poliakoff. “What he did to my house in Nizhny Novgorod is exactly what I’m doing to his. And when it’s over, if they’re not both dead, I’ll bring them back with me and make Fargo start where he left off—reclaiming the treasures from the museums and bringing them to me and laying them at my feet to keep his wife alive.”
“Don’t forget this isn’t just you,” said Le Clerc. “You’re just one of the partners.”
“I was going to say that,” said Bako. “The treasures were mine to begin with. I just shared them with my partners.”
Poliakoff smiled and took a puff on his cigar. “You called me in only after you had failed and been defeated,” he said. “I took over when you had done everything you could and lost.”
Bako chuckled nervously. “Well, we’ve all committed ourselves and we’ll have them in a few minutes.”
There was another volley of shots from the house and then another rocket shot up from the raft in the cove and burst in a ball of blue streaks and gold stars. Each of the little gold stars popped loudly and sent a spray of exploding sparks into the sky above the ocean. Bako said, “Who would believe that the gunshots were not part of the show?”
* * *
SAM AND REMI pushed a weight-training machine over into the stairwell as Selma, Wendy, and Pete carefully carried the big pots of boiling water to the railing above.
They waited until the attackers had dragged most of the furniture away and the first men had dashed up the stairs from the first floor to clamber over the weight machine.
Sam made a single downward motion of his arm and Selma, Pete, and Wendy poured the big pots of boiling water down on them. The men shouted, turned and bumped into the men coming up the stairs behind them. The momentum of the others pushed them ahead and some went down on their bellies rather than go under the scorching cascade. As the attackers tussled on the steps, Sam fired his rifle above them, making the retreaters stronger than the chargers. “Go!” he shouted.
Remi, Pete, Selma, and Wendy rushed up the stairs to the third floor. At the top of the stairs, Remi lay on the floor and waited. While Sam backed his way up the stairs, she fired rounds into the second-floor stairwell to make the invaders keep their heads down.
As soon as Sam had cleared the last step up to the third floor, the others pushed over a big wooden sideboard that fell heavily across the stairway like a trap door. They were out of the line of fire for the next few moments, but they could hear the heavy footsteps of the enemy below them rushing up to occupy the second floor.