an Apache on a stalk, Behr imagined. Decker moved lightly and disappeared into the neighbors’ tree line, bending, ducking, and turning sideways, not disturbing a single branch. Within seconds Behr had lost sight of him altogether.
Behr was conscious of the heaviness of his own step as he dropped below the tops of the rhododendrons that ran along the street side of Gantcher’s front lawn and connected the open end of the U-shaped driveway. When he had crabbed across and reached the far side, Behr stayed low and leaped across the opening. He moved along parallel to the driveway, hugging some close-planted Japanese cherry trees. Their trunks were too slender to give him real cover, but he hoped they’d break up his silhouette a bit.
He made his way toward the house and paused beneath the last tree, standing very still, thick droplets of water slapping the leaves around him. He saw now that he’d have to cross the courtyard, out in the open, in order to make it to the side of the house and then ultimately a window or the door, or better yet a set of French doors off what seemed to be the dining room or kitchen. He glanced at his watch. Two minutes. He couldn’t let Decker hit the back door alone; God only knew what he’d be walking into. Behr drew the Bulldog.44 from the holster at the small of his back.
He dropped as low as he could-which wasn’t very, considering his height-and made his move. The gravel crunched softly beneath him. The windows appeared black through the rain, and it was impossible to see clearly inside the darkened house, but Behr thought he detected a streak of movement inside. It caused him to crouch further and raise his gun, but then his feet were ripped out from under him and he was slammed to the ground on his back. He had no air in him and saw white in front of his eyes. The triple hammering sound of three rounds, muted and distant, arrived almost like an afterthought.
When his regular sight returned he saw translucent rain beads falling from black clouds and then he breathed and all the pain in the world concentrated in his chest and shoulder. He was railroad spiked to the ground and the oxygen blew in and out in a stabbing manner, but it was like pumping a ruptured inner tube-things were flapping around and not really inflating.
The bullet that he’d avoided in the parking garage had finally found him. Other words and thoughts washed through his head, along with images. Decker. Susan’s face. The sonogram image of his tiny son. Breslau’s wide nostrils and clenching jaw. Gina, awash in blood. Kolodnik. The police, politicians, the Caro Group-he was as done with organizations as they were with him.
But he was down and he was going to stay down, and he wasn’t ever going to see his child, because whether he bled out or was finished by someone standing over him at point-blank range, he was going to die here.
74
It came as a roar.
Three shots smeared together, almost as one, belched out of the ugly black gun in Dwyer’s hands. The kitchen filled with the malevolent stink of gunpowder. It must’ve been a hit because Dwyer stepped away from the shattered window, lowered the weapon, and handed it off to his huge friend.
“Some piece,” the man said.
“Alternated buckshot and deer slugs,” Dwyer said.
“Nasty.”
Gantcher struggled to free his hands, but they-like his knees, ankles, and mouth for that matter-were held fast and painfully with silver duct tape.
“Now where’s the bloody safe-in the study or the basement?” Dwyer asked.
Gantcher didn’t answer. He had no idea how they’d gotten inside. He’d felt a breeze and had stood to investigate and lifted the over/under and was suddenly tackled off his feet and found Dwyer’s knee, like an anvil, on his chest. He saw Dwyer rear back for a punch, glimpsed a piece of black metal in his hand-and had woken up in the chair. He hadn’t even fired a shot.
Dwyer had been asking about the safe just before the tall one with the buzz cut had whistled him over to the kitchen window. They’d seen something-someone-and Dwyer had lined him up and fired. Gantcher couldn’t care less about them finding his lousy safe, that wasn’t the reason for his holding out, nor was it heroics. It was more his profound feeling that when the safe was open, and Dwyer found it held only three hundred dollars’ worth of paper issued by the American Express Company, it was going to all finally be over and they were going to kill him. And beyond that, Gantcher had suddenly gained the elemental knowledge common to all living beings close to their end: every last second mattered a great deal.
He heard the clatter of steel kitchen implements, but couldn’t turn his head to see what was happening. The information soon came to him, as Dwyer stepped back in front of him, this time holding one of Nancy’s long, stainless steel, two-tined barbecue forks. Dwyer put the points of it maddeningly close to Gantcher’s eye and said, “Now is it in the fucking basement or the study? Or should I take an eyeball to each place to help me look?”
“Basement,” Gantcher said, though the tape muffled it.
“Basement. Grand,” Dwyer said. Gantcher understood another elemental truth, this one specific to him: even close to the end, agony and disfigurement were still frightening propositions. Then Dwyer grabbed a paring knife to cut Gantcher loose at knee and ankle and dragged him out of the chair toward the door that led to the stairway down.
“Go make sure that fuck in the driveway is finished,” he instructed his friend, leaving the big shotgun with him, as he pulled Gantcher along.
75
Behr freight-trained through the French doors into the kitchen, splintering them in a shower of wood and glass, and landed on his face. Images flickered in front of his eyes as if played by an old film projector with a bad bulb. What was once a high-tech kitchen was destroyed. The table was upended, same with the chairs. Water sprayed out of a small sink, its faucet snapped off. A heavy black shotgun and shells were scattered across the floor. Bullet holes in the Sub-Zero refrigerator and a shotgun blast pattern in cabinets on the opposite side explained the popcorn sound Behr had heard as he entered. Somehow he found his way to his feet again, just as he had in the driveway. If this was the end of it, at least he kept getting up.
Decker was there, having arrived after the first gunshots, and was fighting on the ground with a tall man whose hair was buzzed military close. Both were bloodied, climbing to their feet and squaring. The tall man had a pair of round holes, a tight double tap, torn into his T-shirt, which revealed personal body armor underneath. Decker’s Glock was nowhere to be seen. The tall man’s hand went to his belt buckle in the instant before they lunged at each other with near simultaneous Superman punches. Decker’s landed hard, stunning the man. But the tall man’s landed too, and caused a geyser of blood to spray from Decker’s throat. A glint along the metal loop around the man’s knuckles revealed a HideAway knife, a razor-sharp two-inch point that had been camouflaged as a belt buckle. Decker sagged for just a moment and the man yoked him behind the head, raising his fist for a carotid punch with the blade. Behr blinked away the blood, sweat, and rain running down his face and emptied all five.44 special rounds from his Bulldog into the man, who went down bucking, like a sledgehammered farm animal.
