I woke up in darkness, not even the glowing red numbers of thebedside clock. Power out. That’s what woke me — I’d set a silent alarm on oneoutlet, if the line went dead, a relay dropped and a battery-powered rigvibrated under my pillow. Dead phone lines would also trigger it. And Cash hadthe same system in her room.
She also had her cell phone and hand-held police radio.Neither would work inside the building’s shielding, so she slept with a windowopen. I had to assume she was calling for backup.
I pulled my SIG out from under the covers, slipped out of bed— or as close to “slipped” as a 300-pound man with a cast on one leg canmanage. I “slithered” across the floor, ditto, to the bedroom door and theother SIG and a stash of spare magazines and a filtered mini-flashlight by thejamb. Enough splash from the streetlights bounced into the living room that Icould see the dark outline of Cash’s door on the other side, also open a barecrack. A pinpoint of red light flashed, and I answered. She was awake, she wasready.
We waited.
I felt them before I heard them — a team of three with buzzingelectronics, not wizards. I didn’t like what I felt. Sharp hard focus, the samekind of mind you’d feel in a wolf or in that hawk I’d “borrowed” for my hunt.Those weren’t some of Sandy’s red-clay-hills relatives out there.
It felt more like a SEAL team, Marine Recon, that kind ofhard-man outfit. I started rethinking my strategy. Too late, as usual. I justhadn’t expected a full-out commando strike in the heart of a US city. I flashedthree times at Cash, got three flashes back.
We waited some more.
The wireless alarm system went down, I saw the little yellowlight of the battery backup fade and die, but it never switched to red, so nocall went out. I started sweating at that point. Those guys knew what they weredoing and carried state-of-the-art gear.
One lock clicked. The second. It sounded like they had keys,not picks. I wasn’t surprised — they’d hit Sandy’s apartment and could havetaken impressions of her spare keys. Which included mine. Maybe I should havechanged the locks, but we’d thought we wantedthe bad guys to come in. Another of my dumb moves, in that 20/20 hindsightthing again.
We still had a heavy bolt. Something flashed and hissed andthe bolt started to glow. Sparks showered down, dazzling white against thedarkness. Bolt gone.
The door eased open. I saw shadows moving. One, two, three.Into my kitchen, fanning out, crouched. Silent. Hand signals.
I closed my eyes and hoped Cash had already done the same. We’drehearsed this. I triggered the flash, feltthe white-hot magnesium powder glare through my eyelids like a slap.
“POLICE! FREEZE!” The shout came from my stereo system,battery powered, taped, triggered with the flash. Didn’t give my position away.
The speakers exploded in fragments. Slugs ricocheted off thebrick backing the plaster walls, whining and rattling away into corners. Theyhad silencers on their SMGs.
I threw up my wards. I fired. I assumed body armor, went forhead or neck shots, went for femoral arteries, fired and fired and switched tothe backup SIG and fired again and felt plaster raining down and stinging mycheeks and saw muzzle flashes from Cash across the room. A grenade exploded,bouncing me off the floor and stunning me with the shock wave, once we’dstarted shooting they didn’t care about the noise. Another, muffled but theconcussion hurt. I blinked them away, shaking my head.
I couldn’t hear a damn thing over the ringing in my ears. Ididn’t see any movement out there. Three shadows down. I took my time, aimedover the glowing night-sights, and fired three careful head shots. Or at leastwhere I assumed the shadows might be hiding their heads. Two of them jerked andlay quiet. The third rolled and fired back. A muzzle flashed from the doorwayacross the living room and then a quick second shot. The firing stopped.
My ribs hurt, a stitch in my side like I’d been running. So I’dbeen hit. One 9mm slug can ruin your whole day. I cussed under my breath.Perfect shielding requires perfect concentration, and there’s that split secondwhen you fire and the shield has to drop. I swapped magazines in the SIG andgrabbed a spare in my left hand, crawled out of the bedroom, keeping down,never certain that I hadn’t missed a fourth member of the team out in the hall,never certain another of those shadows wasn’t playing possum.
I shook one. Floppy. Dead. Takes a damn good actor to imitate that, especially wounded and in pain.Even unconscious doesn’t feel the same. The second one ditto. Third had a hintof muscle tone. I shoved the muzzle of my SIG up under his chin, under thehelmet strap, and blew his goddamn brains out. Not taking any chances.
Yeah, helmets. Night vision goggles. Throat mikes and radios.The whole commando team bit. I’d made a heavy-duty mistake, underestimating myenemy.
My hearing started to come back. I heard sirens. I crawled on,still keeping low, not even checking to see if I could stand. I crawled to the other bedroom door, looking for Cash.
She was lying behind the latch side of the doorway. Her goodhand moved, banging the heel of her Smith down on the floor, locking a freshmagazine in place one-handed. She twisted head and shoulders, looking up at me.I started to breathe again.
“I can’t move my legs.”
She had whispered, still keeping discipline. Or maybe my ears werestill ringing, and she’d shouted.
She pushed her cop radio over to me with her right hand, themaimed two-finger hand she was just learning to use again. I picked the radioup, fumbled the controls, and put out the “officer down” call that every cop hatesto hear. It worked — no shielding problems because those grenades had blown thewindows out. I talked the first team in, sent the second to the power panels
