“Oh sure. Listen — don’t leave home without ‘em!”
“Th-that’s right,” she said.
“Where’s he gonna use ‘em lady — bottom of the fuckin’ sea?”
“I’m telling you the truth — truly—”
“Then give me yours, honey.” He was so close now she could smell him — cigarette smoke and beer — but she didn’t think he was drunk. He moved too quickly for that. “Gimme yours,” he told her. “Hurry up!”
“They’re in my bedside drawer.”
“Well what the fuck you standin’ here for? Go get ‘em! I want your bank cards and your secret little number.”
She heaved herself out of the chair, heard the dolphins squeal. “I’ll get them,” she said.
“That’s right, momma, you get ‘em.”
As she walked through the door from the kitchen into the hallway toward the bedroom, she remembered what Robert had told her: Try to get your breathing under control — if it isn’t, your aim will be off. You’ve got to hold the gun steady enough. She knew he would kill her if she didn’t get him first. She knew it — not because she knew credit cards would be of no use if she were left alive to talk, but because she’d seen it in his eyes. And all this time she’d been worrying about the Chinese sending agents to eliminate or terrify the wives and families of—
“Move yo’ ass!” he said.
By the time she reached the bedroom she was perspiring heavily, her hand on the metal knob of the bedside table. She suddenly became ice cold, focused on what she had to do.
The phone rang.
“Fuck — you got a message machine?”
“No,” she said.
“Shit — how come you got no fuckin’ machine?”
“I’ve — we’ve just moved onto the base. I haven’t—”
“Shut up. You answer. Say you’re in the bath. You’ll ring back.”
“A bath?” she said. “At five in the morning?”
“Shit — shit—”
The phone stopped ringing.
He was staring at it, went over to rip it out, then changed his mind. “Fuckin’ phones. If it rings again—” He wasn’t sure how to play it. “Just hurry up. C’mon — cards — and gimme that fancy ring on your finger.”
She still had her hand on the cool metal handle and opened the drawer. She made a quick move with her right hand and froze.
“This what you lookin’ for, honey?” He pulled the gun from his hip pocket and with one swipe, pistol-whipped her to the bed, blood running down from her cheek. He kicked at her legs. “You fuckin’ bitch — stay on the bed.” She was on her stomach, and he grabbed her by the hair, the gun in one hand, the knife in his pocket so he could clout her about the head a couple of times, she whimpering in fear and trying to cover her face from the blows. He reached over, tore open her nightdress, grabbed a breast, and squeezed it roughly. She gasped in pain.
“You like that, huh?” he said, his breath all over her. “You makin’ me hard, white trash. You want it, huh — you askin’ for it?”
“No, no, I — please, the baby!”
“Fuck the baby. Fuck you, little smart ass. Now you got five seconds to get your cards else I’ll kick you right in the gut. How’s that? You like that?”
She heaved herself off the bed, went to the closet, and was barely able to reach a shoe box.
“Hey,” he said, “wait!” But it was too late. The lid was on the floor and the box’s contents spilling out. He started in fright, but there was no gun, only traveler’s checks.
He picked up a wad of five-hundred dollars in American Express. He saw they were the double signature types either spouse could sign. “Hey, Rosemary, now we’re cookin’.” She was slumped by the closet, barely able to stay upright, he standing in the doorway between the bedroom and the hallway. Rosemary was trying to hold up the top of her nightdress, and he was staring at her breasts rising and falling with fear. He pocketed the gun and, after picking up the checks, started to fondle her breasts, and she was stiff with fear. She knew without the slightest doubt that he was going to kill her. What use was the robbery to him if he could be reported?
“Hell,” he said, “you ugly everywhere else with that bun in the oven, honey, but you got nice tits. Kneel down in front of me. Here, I’ll sit on the bed, tell you what we’re gonna do—”
The shot crashed through glass and hit him in the left shoulder, flinging him toward the bedstead. For a split second Rosemary saw the gun sticking out of his back pocket and grabbed it. She fired once, twice — she fired till the chamber was empty, the bed and wall splattered in blood and bits from his head, an artery gushing blood like a burst pipe. She dropped the gun and didn’t hear the knocking till a few seconds later. When she let Andrea in, the second mate’s wife looked calmly at the carnage. “Good girl, Rosie. That’s the way. You killed the bastard.”
Andrea embraced her. “Now, honey, you have a damn good cry. I’ll call the MPs. You sit — c’mon in the living room.”
“How did you know?” Rosemary began as Andrea dialed.
“Easy. Couldn’t sleep. Usual, first few nights after they go out. Saw your lights go on and phoned. No answer and I just knew there was trouble. You did good, Rosie — don’t worry about it.”
For some inexplicable reason, Rosemary, the English teacher, almost corrected Andrea—”You did well.” She hated the ungrammatical “did good” when they meant “well.” She said nothing, still shaking. “Andrea?” she called.
Andrea was on the phone.
“Andrea!”
“What is it?”
“The baby — I think—”
“Uh-oh — you better hurry with that ambulance, ma’am. I think we’ve got a premature baby on the way. What? Yes, ma’am, a mother in premature labor. And she’s in shock. So you hurry!”
Rosemary had never felt as ill as she did now — pain from the blow to her cheek and so sick in the stomach she just wanted to pass out, but she didn’t and could hear the ambulance siren wailing in the distance.
The flares were finished and it was down to killing by moonlight because there was no place to run — a hundred yards here, a hundred there, and then there would be a collection of new boulders. And in the darkness atop the cave a few triple A guns brought forward so they could be depressed to shoot down in front of the missile cave couldn’t do so for fear of hitting their own troops with ricochets.
The Chinese were brave. Ordered out to hunt down the SAS/D, they couldn’t contain the American and British commandos, whose morale, fitness, and equipment were superior. As the SAS/D shot their way past the tanks, the range was often point-blank, and here the small, thirteen-inch-long HK MP5 submachine guns firing at nine hundred rounds a minute were better than the longer AK-47s, pumping out two hundred rounds in less than a minute. Some SAS, however, carried AK-47s, it always being useful to have the enemy’s 7.62mm ammo as well as your own at your disposal.
More than a dozen Chinese were felled by the chest-sheathed knives of the SAS/D teams, and several of the SAS/D troopers had the Browning High Power 9mm pistol as a backup, the magazine holding thirteen rounds of hardhitting Parabellum. In the din of the battle, huge, flickering shadows crisscrossing the boulders could be seen as a result of the light from the missile’s dying fuel fire. Now and then a scream would pierce the air as another SAS/D chest knife found flesh and bone. Even so, nine more SAS/D were cut down, reducing the original force of eighty to sixty-two, counting the four who had not made the rendezvous after the jump.
Aussie Lewis’s and Salvini’s men were first to reach the open ground before the cave, the ground now littered with the smashed gantry, looking like some monstrous metallic stick insect that had crashed and fallen amid the flames, exposing its ribs.
Unhesitatingly Aussie Lewis began scaling the rocky cliff by the base of the door off to the left, searching for finger holes or anything that would help propel him up and lead him to the exit from where he’d seen the Chinese come.
