bursts.
We edged our way along the fence toward Costigan’s compound. Something big went off in the armory and sent a volcanic spurt a hundred feet in the air. The gunfire had spread and came from everywhere, or seemed to. Someone had set off a fire alarm and the bell clanged steadily in counterpoint to the siren.
“Lucky they’re ringing that bell,” I said. “Never know otherwise there was a fire.”
“Alert,” Hawk said.
At the edge of the fire’s roar, and the siren’s shriek and the bell’s clang and the gunfire and exploding ammunition I could hear small sounds of human yells, but only bare wisps of sound, almost illusory, the cries of the men overwhelmed by pyrotechnics. Only when I saw the black shadowy distorted elongated forms flit briefly in front of the flames were the cries audible, as if it required the sight of near human form to connect sound with source. Around the mercenary barracks there was no sign of activity. Most of them had been in combat and most of them knew when to stay low and when to fight. When they had guns and you didn’t was the time to stay low.
CHAPTER 36
WE REACHED THE COMPOUND AND CROUCHED on our heels behind a low hedge. The picket fence was no problem. It was merely ornamental. Beyond the picket fence a big gussied-up Ford van was parked, with its motor running and its lights on. The van had been customized with porthole windows in back and a big chrome roof rack, and a lot of fancy custom paintwork in the form of swooshes and stripes. The back doors of the van were open and two men carried luggage from the house and stowed it away. Around the van, near the back doors, there were four men with Uzi machine guns and flack jackets. There was a light on upstairs in the house. The men carrying the luggage put the last of it in the van and closed the back doors. They both had Uzis slung over their shoulders. One of them got in the driver’s seat of the van, the other opened the side door nearest the house.
“They bailing out,” Hawk whispered.
“I figured they would,” I said. “I was hoping we oould get them while they did.”
Russell Costigan came out of the back door of the house, and Susan came behind him. She wore a black leather jacket and pants. Her face in the reflected light from the car headlights looked serious but not scared. The fire across the company area made everything look reddish and a little satanic.
The guards closed around them as they stepped to the van.
“No chance,” I whispered.
Hawk said, “Um.”
Susan got in first, Russell behind her. Then the bodyguards got in, the doors closed, and the car lurched slightly as the driver put it in gear.
“The roof rack,” I said.
And Hawk and I stood and sprinted for the van. It began to move slowly across the darkened compound. I caught it from behind and put one foot on the bumper, jumped slightly, caught the rear bar of the roof rack and slithered up onto the roof of the van. The van picked up speed, I felt it rock slightly and Hawk was beside me. Both of us sprawled out flat, side by side on the van roof, holding the front bar of the roof rack as the van moved faster but not yet fast through the flame-tinged darkness.
There was no one at the facility gate, and as we pulled through it the sound of gunfire behind us became desultory, as if the fight was nearly over. Outside the facility the van picked up speed and Hawk and I held hard as the wind began to rush past us.
“We stowed away,” Hawk said. “Now what?”
“Hope the road’s not bumpy,” I said.
CHAPTER 37
THE ROAD WAS SMOOTH ENOUGH, IF YOU WERE riding on a springy upholstered car seat. If you were lying on your stomach on the metal roof of a van on top of steel rack ridges, you tended to wish for smoother. The van drove east through the uninterrupted night, following the tunnel of its headlights. We jolted along atop it, holding on to the roof rack, keeping our faces turned away from the rush of air that boiled up over the hood and windshield of the van. There was no other sound. We could hear nothing from the van beneath us.
“Susan wasn’t there we could start shooting down through the roof,” Hawk said. “Ain’t but a thin piece of sheet metal.”
He had his mouth close to my ear.
I answered him the same way. “Don’t want to hit the driver, either,” I said. “Having him roll this thing over would not be in our long-term interests.”
“They got to stop sometime,” Hawk said.
“And there’s six bodyguards, plus Costigan,” I said.
“Good idea,” Hawk said. “Getting up here. We no better off than we was if we tried to take them back there.”
“But it gives me time to think,” I said.
“Oh good,” Hawk said.
Now and then a car would come the other way, heading west in the dark, and its headlights would sweep over us. But if they saw two guys riding on top of a van they were by before they could react. And what was there to do in the way of reaction?
“How fast you think we’re going,” I said to Hawk.
“Hard to tell. Nothing to compare it to.”
“Probably fifty-five,” I said.
