Drake followed his dog through the house to the front door. Lancer stood pointing outside. From his still and steady stare, Drake knew the intruder was somewhere in front of the house.
He reached down to pat Lancer and considered his options. He could wait for something to happen, turn on the floodlights, or slip outside to identify the intruder. Since Lancer rarely alerted him to the occasional black bear that wandered across the farm, it wasn’t likely the visitor was four legged. Using the floodlights would probably scare the intruder away before Drake had a chance to see who it was. That left slipping outside, and choosing action over anxiety.
He turned and ran to the stairs leading from the kitchen to the basement, and then to the tunnel and the winery building. In less than a minute, Drake cracked open the side door on the north end of the building and peered out into the darkness. Over the pounding in his ears, the first sign of an adrenaline rush, he heard a car somewhere in the distance and a whisper of breeze in the tops of the tall fir trees behind the building, but nothing in or around his house.
Thirty yards across an open grassy area, a small copse of oak trees stood on the northern edge of his property. From there, he’d be able to see ninety percent of the sloping ground in front of the house. Drake kept Lancer at the heel, and ran across to the oak trees. The short, early summer grass absorbed the sound of their movement and cushioned his knee when he knelt in the trees’ cover to search for the intruder. When he reached out to Lancer, he felt the raised hair on the back of his neck.
Drake looked for any movement around the house. Lancer’s body stiffened against his leg and turned to the right, toward the gravel driveway leading up to the house. Drake focused his eyes in that direction and spotted three men moving single file in the grass along the driveway. With the light of a thin crescent moon, he could see that the two men in front carried rifles. The third man had something shorter, stockier, maybe a MP5 submachine gun.
When the group reached the point where the driveway began its sweep to circle in front of the house, they paused for a moment, then separated. Two men broke off from the group to circle the house, while the third crept toward the front. Drake thought the third man was the leader, from the way he directed the other two with a wave of his hand. By separating, they gave him a chance to pick them off one at a time. He felt his training take over and, magnified by the rush of adrenaline, a sense of confidence he hadn’t experienced in a long time. He didn’t welcome the confrontation, but he knew his chances of prevailing were as good as theirs.
Drake moved down through the oak trees, keeping his eyes on the man circling the house on the north side. When the man stopped beneath his bedroom window, Drake gave Lancer a finger-down, palm-back signal in front of his nose. Lancer would stay and protect his back as he crept forward to deal with intruder number one.
With a slow, deep breath, Drake moved within a yard of his first target. The man was looking to his right and left, carrying an AK 47 at port arms. A bulge beneath its barrel identified a grenade launcher. Whoever these guys were, they weren’t here for a routine burglary. Nothing he owned was worth killing for, and no one knew enough about his military training to bring this kind of fire power.
Drake leaped forward and drove his right fist into the man’s kidney. As the intruder bent backwards from the blow, he swung his left forearm around his neck and his right hand behind his head. When he was able to hook his left hand in the crook of his right elbow, he pulled back in a stranglehold. The man dropped his rifle but fought to escape. Drake pulled him backwards off balance and whispered in his ear.
“Keep fighting and I’ll break your neck. Who sent you?”
The man answered by throwing his left elbow over his shoulder at Drake’s head, violently wrenching his body from side to side.
Drake tightened his hold, to choke out his attacker.
“Keep fighting, and you’re going to take a long nap.”
The man dropped to his knees and tried to pull Drake over his shoulders. The maneuver was a military move taught in third-world countries, and when he whispered
“One last chance before I break your neck.”
When the man threw his hands back to claw at Drake’s face, Drake powered his right forearm down and pulled quickly back on his left, breaking the man’s neck.
As the body went limp, he softly snapped his fingers for Lancer to join him. The man circling the house on the other side wouldn’t stay there long before getting a signal to enter.
Drake ran quietly across the parking area at the back of the house and peered around its corner. The second man was standing with his back to the house, looking to his left, waiting for a signal from his leader. In the shadows, Drake saw the man wore the same dark clothing and carried the same weapon as the first man. What were they after? Perhaps he could learn the answer from this second man.
He patted Lancer’s head, signaled for him to stay and protect, and slipped around the corner of the house. The second man was a foot taller than the first, but slower in his movements. Drake had moved to within six feet of the killer when he turned and started to swing his weapon around.
Before the man could warn his leader, Drake took a quick step forward, knocked the weapon aside and head-butted him on the bridge of his nose. While the man was still stunned, Drake slipped behind and applied the same stranglehold he’d used a few moments before.
Refusing to be subdued, the man struggled to claw at Drake’s eyes. In less than ten seconds, he also lay dead.
Drake ran back to the other side of the house, away from the gravel drive. If he could slip back into the oak trees and get behind the man at the front of the house, he had a chance to neutralize him and find out what this was all about. That chance was slim, however. The leader would be suspicious by now that something was wrong.
Staying next to the back of the house, he ran until he again reached the stand of oaks. From there, he could see the third killer walking slowly toward the veranda in front of the house. He was twenty yards away, two first downs, about the distance he used to run to chase down quarterbacks who tried to run away from him before they were sacked. The only difference was this QB was armed.
Instinct and old training prevailed. Drake charged at the man with his.45 drawn and pointed center mass. As a Delta Force operator, he’d learned to run, shoot, and keep shooting until the target was down. Now, he just wanted to get close enough to gain the advantage and convince the man to drop his weapon.
The man finally reacted to the sound of the charge, and started to turn around.
Lancer was five or six feet to Drake’s right, ready to launch himself at the intruder when Drake gave the signal.
“Lancer, kill!”
Drake wanted Lancer’s attack to knock the man down. Once he was on the ground, he would have a chance to reason with him. But the man brought up his MP5 to shoot the closer of two moving targets.
Big mistake, Drake thought. No one shoots my dog. He fired twice and dropped the man before Lancer landed at his throat.
In the silence that echoed in his ears, Drake called off his dog.
“Lancer, leave. Good boy,” he said, patting his head until he felt him start to relax.
After he kicked the MP5 away and couldn’t find a pulse, he pulled off the killer’s black ski mask. He was a black man, mid-twenties, with a scraggly goatee. There was nothing in his pockets except a blue, prepaid Motorola TracPhone.
Drake circled the house and searched the other two men, while Lancer sniffed their bodies. Like the first, both carried no identification and were also black men in their twenties. By the time he finished, the adrenaline rush hit and he willed his muscles to relax.
He needed to stay focused. It wasn’t unusual to hear gunshots where he lived, but the last thing he needed was a zealous neighbor calling the police. He needed to decide what to do with three dead bodies.
Drake listened for sounds of any remaining intruders. When Lancer stopped casting his eyes back and forth and sat next to his right leg, he started over to the driveway where a black Suburban was parked next to the old barn. He moved at a fast walk, with his.45 drawn, until he reached the right rear of the SUV. Satisfied that the SUV was empty, he opened the door. No light came on and the interior was empty. Whoever these guys were, at least they were smart enough to shut off the interior lights. They had even left the keys dangling from the ignition.
Drake relaxed and holstered his.45. On the way back to his house, he considered the situation. The approach
