He turned to look for Selma and Wendy, saw another man rise up to the window on the cherry picker, fired, and saw him collapse into the bucket. “Selma, Wendy!” he called. “Upstairs, one at a time. Remember the steps are loose.”
They ran for the stairs, and first Selma, then Wendy, held the climbing rope and climbed to the fourth floor on the rickety steps.
Sam continued putting an occasional shot through the sideboard to keep the men below away from it, and then he heard Pete fire the shotgun again. Sam turned toward him and saw him fire out the window. “Pete!” he called. “Up the steps, and get ready to drop the staircase.”
He sensed motion and turned to the stairs from the floor below him. The leading edge of the sideboard popped up and two hands extended from beneath it, holding Škorpions, and began to fire wild bursts onto the third floor.
Sam sprang to his feet, ran and jumped on the sideboard. The sudden impact of his weight brought the heavy piece of furniture down on the two arms and made the hands unable to hold their pistols. Sam used his momentum to make a second jump to the far side of the sideboard, fired three shots into it randomly, scooped up the two automatic pistols by their slings and backed up to the stairs.
He could feel the stairs shaking and wobbling with each footstep and knew the bolts must be working their way out of the nuts that held them to the I beam, but he knew he had to keep firing now and then to hold the attackers off and keep them from charging.
When he reached the top, Remi knelt beside him and fired once, twice, to keep the men below at bay. Sam set his rifle aside on the floor and pulled out his pistol. “Pete!”
Pete, lying flat on the fourth floor, reached down under the narrow staircase with a socket wrench and began to loosen bolts. As each one came loose, he let it fall, then moved to the next one. Sam reached down from the other side and began to unscrew bolts with his hand.
The sideboard below them on the second floor popped upward abruptly and slid aside. Men slipped out from under it and ran to both sides, where they couldn’t be seen from above. Just as one of them got his foot on the lowest step to the fourth floor, Pete turned the final bolt and the staircase fell with a horrific crash. The third floor belonged to the enemy.
THE FOURTH FLOOR
SAM GRASPED PETE’S ANKLES AND TUGGED HIM BACK from the edge of the opening just as the men below began firing wildly upward through the rectangular hole in the floor that once had held the staircase.
The opening was much narrower than the stairwells on the lower floors because the stairs were narrower up to Sam and Remi’s floor. Sam said, “They’ll be bringing the aluminum ladders up next. What have we got that will seal that opening?”
Remi said, “How about the safes?”
“Brilliant,” said Sam. “Pete? You okay?”
“I’m still alive.”
“Then help me with the safes. They’re bolted into the wall from the inside. Everybody else, stay back from the opening, but don’t take your eyes off it. Fire a shot now and then to remind them we’re still here.”
Sam went to the wall, pressed the spot to reveal the hidden corridor, stepped in, and opened the safes. He and Pete unbolted the two now-empty gun safes and Sam opened the third one, which held papers. Pete removed the bolts from this last one and then he and Sam pushed all three, one at a time, across the hardwood floor to the edge of the stairwell. As they pushed the last and biggest one, a deep scratch appeared on the floor. Sam said to Remi, “Oops. Sorry.”
“It’s too late to make Architectural Digest, Sam,” she said. “The whole place is decorated in vintage Kalashnikov.” They pushed the safes over, one by one, across the stairwell. They had sealed the opening completely.
Wendy said, “What do we do now?”
Sam said, “We seem to have just about run out of floors to make them fight for. For the moment, you sit on this safe. They don’t have anything with them that can make a dent in it, but the second it moves I want to hear you yell your head off and fire down into any space that appears.”
“Okay,” she said.
He looked around. “Selma, are you familiar with the way a Czech Škorpion automatic pistol works?”
Selma said, “I did look up the manual online after Remi’s problem in Russia.”
“Good. We seem to have five of them. Check the magazines and see how much ammunition is left, then consolidate it. We need to have a couple with full magazines. They might buy us some extra time.”
“What about the boiling water?”
“Turn down the burners for now so the pots stay hot but the water isn’t boiling. We’ll get it boiling again if they start moving the safes.”
He turned to Pete. “Take my rifle and guard the windows. Those cherry pickers might reach this high.”
“Where will you be?”
“Remi and I are going up to the roof. Selma? Are there any matches around?”
“In the kitchen downstairs.”
“Great,” he said.
Remi said, “I’ve got some in my backpack.” She went to her closet and came out with a small waterproof container of stick matches, two bottles of champagne from the small refrigerator in the closet, and two of her cotton halter tops.
Sam saw her and said, “You figured it out.”
“Of course I did. We’ll have to pour out the Dom Perignon champagne.” She handed him the two bottles.
He went to the sink in his bathroom, popped the two corks, and poured the champagne into the bathroom sink. “I hate to see this go.”
“If we make it, there are still five bottles in the refrigerator, and I think three of Cristal.”
They went to the back of Sam’s walk-in closet. There was a set of flat rungs like the steps of a stepladder running up the back wall and, above them, a round hatch that locked with a lever.
He climbed up, opened the hatch, and looked around on the roof. “All clear.”
Remi handed him the matches, the two champagne bottles, and the two cotton tops. He set them on the roof and climbed out after them. He stayed low as he ducked under the awning over the gas generator that had been running since the invaders had cut the outside electric power.
Sam picked up the funnel that he used when filling the generator’s gas tank, stuck it in the neck of the first champagne bottle, and used one of the red five-gallon cans he kept there to fill the bottle with gasoline. Then he filled the other.
Remi appeared at his side carrying the second .308 rifle. “Need cover?”
“I might,” he said. “Just hold on a minute while I see.”
He stuffed a halter top into the neck of the bottle, then tipped the bottle a little so the gasoline soaked it, then repeated the process with the other. He carried one of the bottles to the south side of the house near the front door, glanced over the edge at the scene below, and ducked back where he couldn’t be seen. He brought back with him a clear image of what was down there. A man had climbed into the bucket of the cherry picker and he was using the controls to raise himself upward.
Sam struck a match and lit the soaked fabric, leaned over the wall at the edge of the roof, and threw his Molotov cocktail. The flame on the wick elongated and brightened as the bottle fell. It landed on the roof of the truck that supported the cherry picker and broke, splashing a pool of flame on the roof that immediately spread to the sides of the cab and engulfed it.
Sam ran to the opposite side of the roof, stopping to pick up the second bottle on the way. At the other side, he struck a match to light the wick, then threw the bottle at the second truck. This bottle smashed on the truck’s hood and the flames rose high. Much of the burning gasoline ran down the sides to engulf the front tires and pool on the ground beneath the engine.
From both sides of the house there were loud bursts from automatic weapons fired at the upper edge of the roof. It was all just noise and wasted ammunition because Sam and Remi were now sitting near the middle of the roof, where they couldn’t be hit. After a minute, the firing stopped, replaced by the sound of more fireworks in the cove.