Sam knew that in the end he would have to guess. Right now he wanted so much to believe in magic. Outside he heard a flurry of shots and the occasional rocket concussion.
“Sam, I am warning you, you need to be careful about charging in here. With the gas canisters out, you could have us all with no skin. Anna has beautiful skin-I don’t think she’d like that.”
Sam suspected that the gas wasn’t in the safe room yet. Maybe it didn’t exist at all. Something about the tone of Gaudet’s voice told him. Now he heard Gaudet talking on his radio, but couldn’t discern the words.
Sam closed his eyes and leaned against a wall near the tub. He had to know the unknowable. He concentrated on the safe and the utility room below him, remembering every detail. The top of the safe extended up between the floors; its rear wall lay directly against the utility room’s. But there had to be two or three meters of space between the safe’s sides and the utility room’s side walls.
Given that those walls were reinforced, a blast at the back of the room would funnel both shock waves and debris around the sides of the safe and toward the hallway door, following the path of least resistance.
Gaudet would have his men arranged to provide the greatest cover from a conventional attack. Anna would be in the utility room’s doorway, facing the hall and farthest from the safe-a human shield against any hallway assault. Between her and the safe would stand T.J., Gaudet, and the others, with T.J. and Gaudet nearest Anna. This meant that Anna would be partially shielded from the blast by her captors’ bodies-perhaps enough to save her life, perhaps not.
A direct hit to the top of the safe could kill Grady and Jason inside, so Sam would fire the rocket to strike a glancing blow at the top of the box. He could scarcely believe he was considering doing this. But what else could he do?
His feet moved silently across the floor. Keeping the first-floor layout in his mind, he stepped into the bathtub and aimed the rocket at an angle to the floor toward the rear wall, the point of entry where the carpet met marble. It was a huge risk for Anna, but Sam did not expect to be around to see the result.
“Are you still there?” asked Gaudet over the radio.
“Guess.”
Sam pulled the trigger, launching the rocket.
Forty-one
Sam awoke in the bathtub. He had no idea how much time had passed. Probably only a minute or two. His arm felt broken and was clearly bloody. Likewise his shoulder was torn up, but probably not broken. Hardly any floor remained in the bathroom; the wall next to the bathtub was mostly gone and the tub itself rested next to a giant hole where the rocket had blown away a series of floor joists.
Below him he saw Clint bending over a bloodied Anna, who lay facedown on the floor, the blast having come from behind her. Clint was telling her not to move-that the medics would come. T.J. looked to have been broken in the back since he V’d the wrong direction. His body had sheltered Anna’s from the blast, as had the three other men lying motionless on the floor. None at first glance appeared to be Gaudet.
Gaudet had left a calling card. Sanford was hanging, tied to the hot water heater. His face had been mutilated and rags stuffed in his mouth. Gaudet had cut a small hole in Sanford’s belly and pulled out his entrails. That would explain Anna’s hysterical screaming. Gaudet had kept Anna unblemished but still had genuine sound effects.
The safe room appeared intact but for a giant black spot across the top of the box. As Sam intended, the back wall of the utility room was blown out having received the brunt of the shock wave. The concussion forward toward the hallway had killed those in the utility room nearest the back wall and farthest from the hallway entrance. The occupants of the utility room had been between Anna and the blast wave.
“Is she going to live?” Sam said, his voice so weak that it surprised him.
“I think so. She has a nasty cut on the head.”
Sam struggled out of the tub, nearly screaming at the pain in his arm.
There was enough left of the stairs that he could walk to the first floor.
Clint used a couple of belts to stop the bleeding in Sam’s arm.
“You okay?” Sam asked Anna.
“Head hurts, bottom hurts.”
“What happened to Gaudet?”
“He left the room just before you blew it up. The radio silence seemed to scare him off.”
“Where’d he go?”
“Turned right toward what used to be the living room.”
“Out the windows,” Clint said.
Medics were coming and two of them approached Sam; one a young wide-eyed fellow with a sincere intensity worthy of a brain surgeon. His partner with a cowboy belt was more laid-back.
“Please get right down here on the stretcher, sir.” It was Mr. Intensity.
“Just a minute,” he said.
“Do what they say,” Anna said from the floor as two more medics prepared to slide her onto a stretcher.
“I’ll stay here,” Clint said. “I’m not leaving until Grady and Jason come out of there.”
Ignoring the medics, Sam looked at the bullet wound to Clint’s arm and the one to the leg. They appeared to go just through the meat and were being patched with big gel-covered plastic bandages.
“Those are gonna hurt like hell, and an Excedrin won’t cut it,” Sam said. “Grady will be all right without you.”
“I’m staying.”
“Look, Clint, she’s not coming out for another ten hours. The Mounties will be here. I’ll send more people. She’ll be fine.”
Clint looked doubtful.
“I cut the intercom,” Sam said. “She won’t be coming out early. Unless they run low on air they’re staying put for the duration. I think Grady has learned to follow instructions.”
“You think that’s true in her love life?”
“You’re on your own there. She’s as stubborn as her aunt. Now let’s get you in an ambulance. Hell, if they sew fast you may make it back before they come out.”
Sam then turned and walked beside Anna as his medics carried their stretcher empty, still imploring him to lie down.
They rode in an old ambulance, Sam sitting on the bench with the attendants working on Anna. A couple of the new rescue vehicles had been blown to tiny pieces by rockets, the result of being parked too near the Mounties. In addition to the one remaining new ambulance, they were using station wagons, vans, and cars to meet the ambulances coming from Victoria and Vancouver. Helicopters from Victoria and Vancouver were taking out the worst cases.
“I wish you were a better shot,” Anna said as the sedation kicked in. “That was a rocket?”
“We’re taking over her airway when she’s completely out,” the attendant said. “Just to be sure she doesn’t get sick and aspirate.”
Anna had already nodded off.
“It isn’t bad, is it?” Sam asked.
“She’s the luckiest woman in the world. Another thirty-secondths of an inch and the shrapnel or whatever might have pierced the skull and there would be a lot more issues-like bone fragments in the brain. As it is, I think she’ll just have a hell of a headache and a scar under her hair. You won’t see it unless you look close.”
“She’s gonna be pissed. Her hair’s pretty burned.”
“They’ll cut it anyway to sew the cut. But there’s always a wig.”
“You don’t have a smoke, do you?”
“No. You can’t smoke in here. Do you smoke?”
“No. No. I quit a long time ago.”
