For a moment the biker just stood in the entrance, staring.
“Well? Is she in there?”
“Stay there… I got this.” Big Tommy entered the master bedroom, his watering eyes drifting from the open window to the blonde agent. Spread-eagled on the bed, she was completely nude, her wrists bound to the bedposts with a pair of silk men’s ties, the quilt concealing her legs from the knees down.
Kelly looked up at the biker. “Are you here to rescue me or eye-fuck me?”
“Where’s Shariak?”
She nodded to the open window.
Big Tommy looked out in time to see a man in a gray sweatshirt lower himself out over the ledge of the A-framed second story roof by holding on to the rain gutter.
When he turned back, his biker pal was staring down his.12 gauge shotgun at the naked agent.
“Snowman, Shariak’s on the roof, northeast side of the house. I got this, go help Sasha!”
The big man nodded and left.
Big Tommy circled the foot of the bed, his eyes transfixed on Kelly Kishel’s body. “Now what am I gonna do with you?”
“What would you like to do with me?”
“I’m supposed to kill you.”
“But if you do that, who will get all the money?”
Big Tommy’s eyes looked up from her groin. “What money?”
“Drug money. That’s why I’m here, I’m a courier.”
“How much money we talkin’?”
“It’s usually somewhere between five and seven million. My job is to report the amount and deliver the cash to a private bank in Detroit.”
“Why do they want you dead?”
“Obviously they think I’ve been skimming off the top. I haven’t been, but that doesn’t matter anymore if they put out a TWEP on me. So let’s make a deal… I’ll take you to the drop zone and you free me with my cut of the cash.”
“Why should I trust you?”
“Why should I trust you? You’ve got the gun. I’m lying here, tied up and naked. Either way I’m screwed.” She glanced down at her vagina. “We’ve got a few hours until the drop… see anything you like?”
Sitting down next to her right leg, he placed his right hand and the gun flat on the mattress by her left leg and leaned over, burying his face in her groin.
Kelly moaned—
— her right hand releasing the loose necktie and snaking its way beneath the pillow…
Sensing movement, Big Tommy looked up — his right eye staring into the barrel of the Glock.
“Nighty-night.”
The shot blasted a Rorschach pattern of brains, blood, and skull fragments against the back wall of the bedroom and out the open door.
Kicking her legs free of the dead biker, Kelly hurriedly pulled on her pants, grabbed her shoes and sweater, and peeked out into the dark hallway. Hearing nothing, she slipped the sweater over her head and the shoes onto her feet and then entered the hall—
— managing two strides before a swarm of steel buckshot plastered parts of her neck and sweater to the age-yellowed wallpaper.
The counter-intelligence agent dropped to her knees, gagging on a stream of blood rising from the back of her throat. Still holding the gun, she aimed the Glock into the darkness, getting off three rounds before her body slumped over sideways.
Brent Snowden rose from his seated position at the top of the stairs. Pumping in another round, he placed the barrel of the.12 gauge shotgun inside the dead woman’s open mouth and fired, splattering her remains across the upstairs hallway.
Adam was dangling twenty feet off the ground when he heard the first shot. Forcing himself to stay focused, he worked his way hand over hand along the length of rain gutter, his target — the thick limb of an oak tree. Feeling something solid beneath his right shoe, he released the gutter, managing to maintain his balance long enough to squat and then straddle the thick branch.
He was crouching on the ground when he heard two more shots — these from a shotgun.
Ducking by a pile of firewood, he retrieved the night vision glasses from around his neck and quickly looked around.
There were three bikers. From the sound of the fired shots Kelly had taken out one of them before the second had most likely killed her.
That left two Devil’s Diciples… and the pilot — whoever he was.
Adam had a full clip and a bullet in the chamber. The night glasses offered him a slight advantage, the woodpile served as temporary cover from anyone approaching him from directly ahead, but he remained vulnerable from behind where one of the bikers could use the northeast corner of the house for cover while blasting him with their shotgun.
The sound of the kitchen door being kicked open sent him hobbling on his prosthetic leg to the northwest corner of the dwelling, the gravel driveway, garage, and barn now visible up ahead.
Targeting the black van, he leaned out to see around the corner of the house—
Whomp!
Sasha Moulder straddled the unconscious man. Spitting on his back, the female biker raised the shotgun over Shariak’s skull to strike him again when Brent Snowden grabbed her wrist.
“No, babe. We need him alive.”
“MAJI wants him dead.”
“I heard the girl telling Big Tommy this farm is a cash drop zone. Shariak may know the details. We’ll waste him after we get the money.”
Handing Sasha his weapon, the big man grabbed Adam Shariak by the arm and tossed him over his broad shoulders like a fireman.
“Snowman, where’s Big Tommy?”
“Dead. But don’t shed any tears; he went out with a smile on his face.”
37
Jessica ducked inside the clear plastic tube and stepped on a round platform covered with quarter-size holes. She gripped the rails by her side, prompting the onboard computer.
“Good evening, Dr. Marulli. Please state your destination.”
“Genetics Complex.”
Jessica felt the rubber soles of her shoes being suctioned to the porous floor a split second before she was transformed into a human bullet, soaring straight up, then sideways so fast she lost all orientation—
Stop!
Somehow she was upright again. The suction eased, her legs wobbling beneath her as she stepped out of the tube to a transportation hub, the six vertical shafts now aligned across from four elevators.
Dr. LaCombe was waiting by an impressive polished steel vault door. “Are you all right?”
“From now on, let’s take the stairs. Where are we? Fort Knox?”
“The vault contains a Faraday chamber which blocks out all electric and electromagnetic waves.” She pressed her face to the rubber housing for a retinal scan.
Eight bolts situated around the steel vault simultaneously retracted, the huge door whisper-quiet as it swung open.
“There are white noise dampeners inside; we’ll receive headsets before we enter. Make sure you keep yours on at all times.”
Jessica followed Joyce inside the vault entrance, immediately registering a faint buzzing sound in her ears. Ahead was a set of smoke-glass doors adjacent to another Plexiglas control booth, a male security guard seated inside. As they approached, a metal box similar to the ones found at a bank drive-thru ejected from inside the checkpoint.
Joyce reached in and removed two headsets wrapped in cellophane. She handed a pair to Jessica, who quickly secured the device over her ears.