Текст книги "The Naked Edge"

Автор книги: David Morrell

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He climbed higher, straining to ignore the heat as he spewed retardant.

Abruptly the extinguisher quit hissing. With a curse, he threw the empty tank at the flames and turned to William. "Give me yours!"

"It's empty!"

"No!" Cavanaugh's smoke-seared throat felt as if it would burst.

The flames regrouped. Roaring, they advanced.

Now the situation was reversed–William was tugging at him .

Pushed by the growing heat from the attic, Cavanaugh took an angry step downward.

"We can't stay!" William tugged him harder.

Cavanaugh reached the landing and stared desperately at the fires in the bedrooms.

Amid the din of the flames, William said something about "other fire extinguishers."

"We don't have enough."

"You're going to need this."

"Need . . .?"

" This. You set it down."

Through raw eyes, Cavanaugh blinked at the rifle William handed him.

"Yes," he vowed. "I'm going to need this."

Chapter 22.

In the pines to the south, a man wearing a baseball cap gazed through shielded binoculars toward the smoke and flames spreading from the lodge's upper windows. "Cooking nicely, Alpha," he said into a microphone on his shirt collar. "Won't be long now."

"Beta, is your team in place?" the spotter's voice asked.

"On every side."

"They know they're to stay within cover?"

"Affirmative. No need to advance when the target'll do us the favor of leaving his cover. In the confusion, it might be hard to distinguish him from the people with him, though."

"Don't even try. Do them all."

"Repeat, Alpha."

"All. Kill them all," the spotter's voice commanded.

Across the meadow, on the eastern part of the roof, the parched wooden shingles of the lodge exploded into flames.

Chapter 23.

Cavanaugh's face was streaked with soot and sweat as he and William hurried down the staircase.

Angelo remained by the front door, peering out. "No sign of them."

Cavanaugh pulled his walkie-talkie from his belt. "Jamie? Mrs. Patterson?"

The staticky voices quickly responded that they didn't see anyone.

"What about the security monitors?"

"They're not working now," Mrs. Patterson's voice reported.

" What? " Angelo flicked a light switch on the wall. Nothing happened. The electricity had been cut.

"The fire's spreading too quickly," Cavanaugh said. "We'll soon need to leave."

"But they'll pick us off," William objected. "The basement. Can we hide down there?"

"No. The fire would suck out the oxygen. We'd suffocate. Or the building would collapse and crush us."

"The helicopter."

"Too far," Cavanaugh said.

"Hey, I'm doing my best!" William complained. "If you don't like my ideas, come up with one of your own ."

At the back of the hall, Jamie heard parts of what they said. Her voice came from the walkie-talkie. "The car's closer. It's armored."

"There," William said. "What do you think of that idea?"

Smoke came down the staircase, the fire crackling on the upper level.

"If we stay here much longer," Cavanaugh decided, "we'll need to soak our hair and clothes and breathe through wet towels."

Mrs. Patterson heard in the kitchen. From the walkie-talkie, she said, "Without electricity, the pump for the well won't work. We can't get water from the taps."

William moaned.

Mrs. Patterson's sixty-year-old voice continued unsteadily from the walkie-talkie. "The toilet tanks. The only place there'll be water is in the toilets."

"Where are they?" William asked.

"One off the kitchen," Cavanaugh explained. "Another next to my office. Angelo, I'll watch the front. Go with him. Bring me a vest from the munitions closet when you come back."

Braced behind the log wall next to the front door, Cavanaugh saw the Taurus parked in front of the lodge. The passenger side was toward him. It was only twenty feet away. If he kept low . . .

Angelo returned with a soaked towel wrapped around his neck. Water dripped onto his clothes. "Here's the vest. I assumed you wanted body armor, not Kevlar."

Cavanaugh understood. Kevlar fibers were designed to block pistol bullets but were useless against high-powered rifles. Only the metal plates of true body armor could stop the latter.

He took the vest from Angelo and hefted it in despair. So much weight.

"While you're standing here thinking, you're cooking," Angelo said.

"What?"

Turning, Cavanaugh discovered that he'd been too preoccupied to realize that the fire was starting down the stairs. Flames licked the ceiling. The heat became overwhelming.

"No time. Jamie," he said into the walkie-talkie. "Mrs. Patterson. Get to the front. We're leaving. William, take my rifle."

"I don't want it." He had a wet towel around his neck, his once-beautifully tailored suit a drenched mess.

"For God's sake, do what I tell you. I need my hands free." Cavanaugh strapped on the bulky vest. "There's a round in the chamber. All you need to do is point and pull the trigger. Just don't shoot any of us ."

He yanked his car keys from his pocket and pressed a button on the remote control, unlocking the doors. When he pressed another button, the engine started. He took a deep breath so hot it warned him that he couldn't wait any longer. A flaming chunk of wood crashed onto the stairs.

Go! he told himself.

Chapter 24.

Burdened by the heavy vest, he banged the screen door open, leapt off the porch and kept running the moment he landed. He focused all his attention on the passenger door. Something snapped past him as he pulled the latch. The moment he yanked the door open, a bullet whacked it, the door's armor preventing the projectile from going through.

Another bullet struck his vest, pounding an area between his shoulder blades, knocking him forward. Gasping, he didn't allow himself to think of anything except lunging into the vehicle and sprawling across the seat as bullets struck the open door. Fragments spun toward his eyes. Averting his face, he rammed the gearshift into reverse and stomped the accelerator. The vest squeezed him. His back hurt.

Tires ripping up earth, he sped backward until he was away from the lodge. With sharp rapping sounds, bullets hit the front, rear, and driver's side of the car. They cracked against the reinforced windows on those three sides. Straining to ignore them, he shifted into forward, swung the steering wheel toward the lodge, and sped so close to the porch that he almost hit the front steps. He stopped on an angle so that the rear of the car was closer to the porch than the front was, providing cover just as the open front passenger door did.

Awkward in the vest, straining to catch his breath, he leaned into the back seat, fumbled for the latch, and thrust the porch-side rear passenger door open.

"Come on!" he yelled.

When he saw the flames looming inside, he realized that he didn't need to shout encouragement. The door burst open, Jamie and Mrs. Patterson rushing out while Angelo shoved William. The soaked towels draped over their heads were steaming. The group pounded across the porch, Jamie shoving Mrs. Patterson into the front passenger seat, Angelo thrusting William into the back, scrambling in after him, screaming, "My arm! Mierda ."

Next to Mrs. Patterson in the front, Jamie slammed the front door shut. Angelo did the same with the back.

"How bad are you hit?" Cavanaugh shouted to Angelo, speeding away from the lodge. He needed to raise his voice–the bullets striking the car sounded like hail.

"Grazed me! I can still use the arm! Hijo de puta , the bleeding!"

Jamie yanked open the glove compartment, grabbed a roll of duct tape, and threw it back to Angelo.

"The gunfighter's friend." Angelo gave William his rifle, then unclipped a folding knife from a pants pocket, thumbed it open, and cut off the sleeve on his left arm. Cavanaugh got a glimpse of him wrapping duct tape around the wound as the Taurus rushed across the meadow, bullets pelting the vehicle.

"Seat belts!" he warned, fumbling to secure his.

The bullet-resistant windows developed stars. While the reinforced glass could withstand widely spaced bullets, it could be shattered if several struck the same spot. Cavanaugh flinched as more stars developed in them.

Then he worried about something else. Tensing his hands on the steering wheel, he felt his right front tire shudder from a bullet's impact. A tire with a bullet hole could support a car for perhaps five miles before the tire completely deflated. But repeated bullet impacts were another matter.

These tires are reinforced, though , Cavanaugh fought to assure himself. It's fine, it's okay, it'll still do its work.

The gunmen in the trees didn't have sound-suppressed rifles. To Cavanaugh's left, the horses galloped insanely, the din of the shots overwhelming.

"Somebody'll hear and call the police," William said.

"The nearest neighbors are a couple of miles away. They hear us shooting all the time." Cavanaugh pressed the accelerator, throwing up dust. "It's a private canyon. The ridges muffle the shots. Nobody pays attention."

"But they'll see the smoke and call the authorities," William said.

"It'll take time before the smoke rises above the canyon. Then it'll take more time before emergency crews arrive."

"Couldn't you lie to me just once?"

The horses reached the trees to the left and veered in panic.

Don't you dare hurt them , Cavanaugh silently warned the gunmen in the trees.

Out of control, the horses galloped toward the Taurus now. More bullets starring the windshield, Cavanaugh aimed toward a gap in the trees: the lane that would take him to the road. The horses threatened to cut in front of him, making him afraid he'd hit them.

Blood spraying, a horse flipped, its momentum twisting it over and over.

In a fury, Cavanaugh veered around it, then urged the Taurus into the gap between the trees. Now the gunmen at the eastern and western sides of the canyon couldn't see the car. Only the shooters in the woods to the south could be a threat. The left front tire felt mushy, the same as the one on the right, but the lane was only a quarter mile long.

We'll soon reach the road , Cavanaugh hoped. Rounding a thickly treed curve, he pressed the button that would open the gate, only to realize that the button was useless–the electricity wires had been cut.

His thoughts were shattered by the sight of a van parked sideways, blocking the lane. The trees were dense on each side, giving him no room to veer around it. He'd be forced to ram it, striking the van where it had the least weight–at the fender behind the rear axle. The mass of the Taurus's armor would give it enough force to shift the van and allow the Taurus to squeeze past. But the moment Cavanaugh flicked a switch to deactivate the Taurus's air bags, he noticed how low the van was. Something in it was enormously heavy.

I'll never be able to force it aside .

As a man stepped from behind the van and fired toward the Taurus's windshield, beads of glass flew inside the car. Cavanaugh stomped the brake pedal and skidded to a stop, his passengers jerking forward despite their seat belts. He yanked the gearshift into reverse and sped swiftly backward along the lane.

A bullet whacked through the front windshield.

"Everybody down!"

Cavanaugh sped backward around the curve. He reached an area where the lane widened, took his foot off the accelerator, and simultaneously twisted the steering wheel a quarter turn. The Taurus spun a hundred and eighty degrees, grazed a tree trunk, and now faced ahead. Immediately, Cavanaugh shoved the gearshift into forward and pressed the accelerator. The rear wheels threw dirt toward the pursuing gunman, who fired at the Taurus's rear tires, the dust ruining his aim.

But Cavanaugh knew that it wouldn't be long before the rear tires had bullet punctures, also. Already, the deflating front tires made his steering hard to control. The stress from the 180-degree turn had worsened their damage. As he sped from the trees and into the meadow, he felt the front wheels settle onto the plastic ring that he'd attached to the center of each rim, a tire within a tire. Without the cushion of the normal front tires, the Taurus jounced and slammed over holes in the lane.

"We're all going to die!" William exclaimed.

"Wrong!" Cavanaugh stared ahead through the shattered windshield and saw that the entire lodge was aflame. The dense smoke didn't rise. Instead, a breeze kept it low, carrying it in Cavanaugh's direction, and as he approached it, he shouted to William, "Hand me the rifle I gave you!"

Reaching back, taking it, he told Jamie, "Switch places with Mrs. Patterson! Get ready to drive!"

He steered to the left of the burning lodge and sped into the smoke, which was so thick that he couldn't see ahead of him.

Jamie crawled over Mrs. Patterson, squeezing next to him.

"Angelo, check your watch!" Cavanaugh yelled. "Tell Jamie when it's ninety seconds from now!"

"What do you want me to do?" Jamie asked.

"Drive forward until Angelo tells you it's time. Then drive back this way until you reach the smoke."

"Why? What are you going to–"

"When you come back, stop just before you get to the smoke. I'll step out of it on your side. Be careful you don't shoot me."

Cavanaugh floored the brakes, the solid inner tires digging violently into the ground as the car stopped. He took a deep breath, shoved the door open, and lunged out into the smoke.

Hearing the door bang shut behind him and the car speed forward, he ran to the left in the direction that the breeze took the smoke. Despite holding his breath, he had a desperate urge to cough, the smoke stinging his eyes. His nostrils and throat felt irritated.

The air lightened, the smoke getting thinner. He saw an opening. Sunlight revealed the stream where it wound through the canyon. He rolled down its bank, feeling the impact of his armored vest against his ribs. At the smoke-free bottom of the streambed, he took a deep breath, feeling cool sweet air fill his lungs.

Rising to a crouch, he hurried along the stream until the smoke was behind him. Then he crept up to the rim. Peering carefully across the meadow, he scanned the pines and aspens. The smoke behind him prevented the silhouette of his head from showing as he aimed toward the trees.

He remembered the Condition Yellow operators he'd seen at the gas station where he'd stopped on the way home.

Why? I'm not in the game any longer. Why am I suddenly a target?

This much, he did know. If this was the same group, there were ten of them. He'd taken a count while he stood at the pump. Plus, there was the sniper on the eastern ridge. And no doubt a spotter for the sniper. Twelve.

Behind him, the burning lodge roared and crackled. Inside it, something heavy collapsed, rumbling like an explosion.

Twelve , he repeated to himself.

Well, let's see if we can lower the odds.

Hearing the Taurus speed toward the northern part of the canyon, Cavanaugh estimated that the car would have emerged from the smoke by now. The men in the woods on this side of the valley would chase it.

With the Taurus gaining distance from them, they'll choose the easy route and run through the grass next to the trees.

And here they come , he thought as he squinted to the south, toward the gunman who'd been in the lane. The man raced into view, sprinting next to the trees, pursuing the Taurus.

Cavanaugh sighted along the AR-15, squeezed the trigger, and blew a hole in the man's throat. The man fell as if someone had yanked a rope attached to his ankles.

Switching aim, Cavanaugh scanned the trees, saw a gunman racing along it, and blew part of his head off. A third gunman, racing farther along, sensed that something wasn't right and paused to look back. Even at a distance, the fear on the man's face was evident as he saw his downed teammates and charged for the cover of the trees. But not in time. Cavanaugh's bullet shattered the back of his head. The man became a rag doll whose lifeless legs folded, his momentum pitching him forward.

Farther along, a fourth man definitely realized something was wrong. As Cavanaugh switched aim, the man darted into the trees. Cavanaugh fired toward his retreating figure, seeing him lurch into a pine bough, blood spraying the green needles, the man's arms flying up as if in surrender, his hair seeming to part as a second shot caused more blood to spray, and suddenly he was falling.

Cavanaugh switched his aim yet again, but no targets presented themselves.

They realize what's happening , he thought. They've taken cover. Now they'll . . .

He rolled to the bottom of the stream a moment before bullets tore up dirt above him. Four . I got four of them. Out of twelve.

He heard the sound of the Taurus's engine change as Jamie turned the car and started back. Retreating farther along the stream, he took a deep breath before he reached the smoke. Then he climbed up, letting the smoke envelope him.

Keeping his eyes closed, he approached the sound of the returning Taurus. His nostrils and throat felt burned.

The drone of the Taurus became louder.

He stumbled faster. Come on, Jamie!

Then he heard the car stop ahead of him. Opening his eyes, which immediately began to weep, he stooped and emerged from the smoke. Coughing, he saw the car. Only partially visible through the bullet-starred side window, Jamie's strained face reacted with relief when he opened the rear door and climbed in, only to realize that the window across from him had a hole in it. The smell of blood permeated the car's interior. Angelo was slumped forward, unmoving.

William was covered with gore. He stared straight ahead, catatonic.

"Two windows are shattered!" Jamie said, pressed low in the front seat. "The others can't take much more!"

Desperate, Cavanaugh strained to decide what to do. To the south, the lane through the trees was blocked. To the west, most of the shooters were dead. But that still left shooters to the east and north, plus the sniper on the eastern ridge.

"Back up. Get a little farther from the smoke," he told Jamie.

Immediately, the car was in motion.

Cavanaugh pulled William down as bullets hit the no-longer protective window, chunks of glass flying.

With a clear view of the burning lodge, Cavanaugh told Jamie, "Stop."

She did.

"We're getting out."

She didn't hesitate.

Cavanaugh dragged William from the back seat. Jamie and Mrs. Patterson joined him, scurrying down into the streambed.

"I shot four of them on this side," Cavanaugh told Jamie, pointing to the west. "I think there's only one more shooter over there. If we can get into the woods, we can take him. Then we're home free."

The expression "home" struck him with bitter force as he thought about the burning lodge.

"But we'll be shot if we show ourselves and try to run to the woods," Jamie said.

"Unless we have a distraction."

Behind him, another car window burst apart, glass flying, too many bullets having struck it.

"What kind of distraction?"

"Give me a gun," William said, his catatonia broken.

"What?"

"Give me a gun. Bastards. Sons of bitches. Give me a gun. I'll shoot them until their whore mothers won't recognize them."

"Hold that thought, William. Glad to have you back with us."

Cavanaugh squirmed to the top of the bank and risked showing himself to what he assumed was now only one gunman on the western side of the canyon. But he didn't face the west. Instead, he peered toward the burning lodge. He studied a shed behind the building. A large white propane tank was next to it. But a non-incendiary bullet wouldn't detonate it.

"Jamie."

"What?"

"Cover your ears. Make sure William and Mrs. Patterson cover theirs."

He sighted his rifle toward the burning lodge, toward the fiery back porch, toward a barbecue grill on the porch. The grill had a small white propane tank. When he shot a hole in it, the flames caused the gas in the tank to explode, the porch heaving, its roof flying. Burning chunks arced toward the shed.

Immediately, Cavanaugh swung his aim toward the huge white tank behind the lodge, shot a hole into it, and tumbled down the slope, pressing his hands to his ears.

But nothing happened.

I didn't time it right. All I did was blow a hole in the tank. Now the gas is escaping, but if the fire doesn't reach it–

The ground shook. Even with his hands over his ears, the roar of the explosion stunned him. A shockwave jolted him, knocking him even closer to the ground. As the canyon walls captured the roar and thrust it back in a massive echo, Cavanaugh yelled, "Now! Run to the trees!"

He grabbed William, and thrust him up the side of the streambed. Jamie and Mrs. Patterson ran next to him, chunks of smoking metal and burning wood thudding around them.