Inside Out (43 page)

Winter rolled away, made it to his feet, and went for his SIG on the table. Spiro caught him from behind before he got there. The enraged giant locked his massive arms around Winter's chest and, when Spiro squeezed him, Winter thought his ribs would cave in.

“You like that, you fuck?” Spiro raged.

Winter drove the back of his skull against Spiro's nose crushing the cartilage and simultaneously stomped his heels down on Spiro's toes.

Most men would have let go. Spiro merely loosened his grip for a fraction of a second, but just long enough so Winter—his arms pinned and useless—could twist around to face his captor. Spiro's nose and chin were bleeding. Face-to-face, Spiro met Winter's eyes, smiled, and squeezed harder.

Winter sank his teeth into Spiro's narrow nose and shook his head violently. He felt the tip of Spiro's nose separate, then spit the grape-size nugget out and bit down on Spiro's chin. Spiro released Winter and grabbed his damaged nose, howling.

You . . . like that . . . you fuck?
With his hands outstretched, Winter stumbled toward the table again after his gun. He had seconds to get Hank up, and he'd have to put Spiro to sleep to accomplish that. He made it to the table and grabbed his SIG by the barrel.

Spiro caught him by the neck of his coat and slung him away from the table.

The handgun flew away toward the workbench.

Winter landed beside Yul's body and managed to reach inside the dead man's coat to grab the gun from his belt.

Spiro went for his high-powered rifle still leaning against the wall next to Valentino. He jerked the weapon up to his shoulder and whirled to aim down at Winter. “Now, you fuck!” he howled, tears streaming down his cheeks. “You fucking, fucking . . . fuck . . . FUUUCK!”

“Wait!” Winter yelled. “Russo said to drown me!”

Spiro hesitated.

Bringing the Browning Hi-Power up from behind Yul's prone body, Winter gave the giant a triple tap. Spiro fell sideways into the water, leaving most of his brains behind.

Winter set aside the Hi-Power, scurried over, grabbed the control wand, and flipped the toggle from down to up. The wheel pulled the cage up out of the water, pushing Spiro's floating corpse aside.

“What took you so long?” Hank sputtered. “My damn boots are ruined.”

Winter reversed the winch and guided the descending cage to the floor. He helped Hank out. The older marshal looked around the room, surveying the carnage. “Son . . . you have made . . . one hell of a mess.”

Winter reached into his pocket to get his handcuff key to unlock his cuffs.

“You tired?” Hank said, after Winter had unlocked his cuffs.

“I'm getting my second wind.”

“What happened to your mouth?” he asked Winter after seeing Spiro's blood on him.

“Nosebleed.” Using his coat sleeve, Winter wiped the blood off.

Winter lifted his SIG from the floor and pushed it into his holster, snapping the thumb break closed. Water dripping from his clothes, Hank took up his Colt from the table and holstered it.

“My boots are so full of water they're gonna hear us coming a mile off. Best I—”

Boom!
A sharp report filled the room and Hank collapsed.

Winter turned and saw the barrel of the Ruger KP-90 drop to Valentino's leg, and Valentino's head fall forward—his chin against his chest.

At some point, while Winter was busy, the guard had freed his semiautomatic and, using the last of his energy, managed to squeeze the trigger.

“I'm okay. I'm fine,” Hank said, sitting up.

Winter kept the Walther pointed at Valentino's head as he crossed to him, put his thumb between the hammer and firing pin, and twisted the gun away. He cursed himself for not checking on the man as soon as he had gotten Hank safely up. In the excitement he had lost a vital thread that could have cost both their lives.

Winter removed Hank's wet coat and, using the bullet hole in the shirt's sleeve for a starting place, he pushed his finger through and ripped the material wide open. The bullet had hit Hank's left arm above his elbow. Winter saw shattered bone inside the exit wound, and the blood flow was steady, so the artery wasn't cut. The bullet was lodged in the side of Hank's vest. Using his belt, Winter made a tourniquet just below Hank's shoulder.

“Scratch,” he told Hank. “You can hardly even see it.”

“Ruined my best shirt.”

“Maybe Millie can turn it into a short sleeve.”

“Based on our movie stars here”—Hank winced—“I'd say I got off pretty light. I still got my gun hand and I can walk.”

“Hank, you're going to sit here. If anybody comes here looking for them, you shoot the bastards. In the meantime, loosen this every once in a while so you don't explode. I'm sorry, I didn't think . . .”

“It ain't your fault,” Hank offered. “I could have checked him out myself.”

Winter got the cell phone, dialed Chet, and told him that Hank was wounded, in the boathouse, and would be fine until they arrived. Chet told him that their helicopter was there to pick them up and he wouldn't be able to use the phone because of the chopper's noisy engines. Winter turned the phone off and handed it to Hank.

“You keep it,” Hank said.

Winter put Spiro's coat over Hank's shoulders. “I know it stinks, but it'll keep you warm. Winter reached into the pocket and removed Spiro's red phone. “I'll use this if I need to make a call. You wait here for Chet,” Winter told Hank sternly. “He'll be here in twenty minutes.”

“You keep your narrow ass out of that lodge, Winter.
You
wait for Chet. That's an order. I am your superior officer.”

“You think I'm crazy, Hank?”

“What I
think
is none of your business. I know for a damn fact you're crazy.”

100

Winter approached the lodge as stealthily as possible, finding it remarkable that there were no guards posted between the two buildings. The fact that there had been a gunfight and no one heard anything was testimony to the quality of the soundproofing Manelli had installed.

Almost every window inside the building was lit. A green van and three SUVs were parked across from the lodge in a small clearing. In the photo taken from space, which had reduced everything to the shape of its surface, Winter hadn't been able to see that there was a covered porch entirely wrapping the second floor. The lodge was built so the ground floor was half as large as the second. Steel beams supported the end closest to the canal. The only way up to the porch from the ground floor was by means of a staircase located beside the front door. Just before he made it, someone sitting on the steps in shadow lit a cigarette. If the man hadn't been a smoker, Winter would certainly have walked right into him.

Winter crouched and made for the back of the lodge. Looking up as he approached the building, Winter clearly saw the old gangster pass by an upstairs window. He made his way around the far side and came up toward the front, looking for a way inside.

Winter heard conversation and the sounds of dining, so he passed a sliding glass door and peered into the lit kitchen from the cover of night. He counted four guards, all wearing handguns. A pair of shotguns leaned like umbrellas against the wall by the door. He figured perhaps there might be more men upstairs and probably more watching the road.

Winter carried three full ten-round magazines for his .40-caliber SIG Sauer. He had loaded Yul's second magazine into the man's Browning Hi-Power giving him fifteen 9-mm rounds, which in addition to the partially used magazine gave him another eleven. He had eight rounds in the old Walther PP, giving him a grand total of sixty-five bullets, each one a potential death sentence. Winter doubted that Sam would have more men than he had bullets for.

He had not considered taking up any of the long guns, because he knew before he left the boat shed that he was going inside the lodge and any shooting would be at close range. If Sean was alive, she was going to stay that way—not be killed by Sam in response to Chet's assault team arriving or by an errant shot from a long gun. Inside the building, a rifle bullet could go through a man and still travel through walls to hit something. Indoors, a shotgun blast could spread .30-caliber lead balls until something solid stopped them. That something solid was not going to be Sean. And, the fact was, he was a far better shot with a handgun.

Without backup, he couldn't walk straight in through the front door with a gun in each hand—there was no way he could control so many men at once and be free to do anything but guard them. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and allowed himself a mental picture of finding Sean alive and well, of taking Sam Manelli hostage and using the threat of killing the old bastard to hold off his guards until Chet's assault force arrived.

Winter went back to the door leading into the darkened room next to the kitchen and slid it open silently. He had the SIG in his right hand already, so after he closed the door, he pulled Yul's Hi-Power from inside his belt. Illumination coming into the bunk room from a slightly open hallway door allowed Winter to make out the line of bunk beds and the shape of a man lying asleep in one of them.

After crossing the room, Winter stood at the hallway door, listening. A split second before he moved out into the hall, he heard the hard-soled shoes of someone entering the hall from the kitchen.

He moved quickly aside, flattening himself against the wall beside the door.

The man pushed open the bedroom door a few inches and called in, “Angelo, get your ass up!” before he returned to the kitchen. Angelo got up and ambled into the bathroom, closing the door behind him.

Winter slipped out from the bunk room, crossed the hall, and started carefully up the staircase that led up to a central hallway. At the top of the stairs he peered to his left around the corner. The opposing walls rose to the vaulted ceiling that peaked twenty feet above. There were two doors on each side of the hall. Beyond the hallway's throat, edged with vertical rough-hewn cypress beams to support an arch of the same material, was a great room. What Winter could see of the living room included the back of a couch and overstuffed leather armchairs arranged before a massive fieldstone fireplace centered in a wall of window glass. Winter decided to find a door that would allow him to get out onto the porch so he could see into the great room. The acoustics were such that Sam's loud voice filled the hallway as if he was using a public address system.

“Where's Spiro? I thought you went to get him,” Sam growled.

“He's with two of the new guys watching the back gate. He'll be back soon.”

“I think the boy should have paid more attention to his school and less to that weight-lifting rigmarole.”

Winter was almost at the closest door to the stairwell when Manelli crossed the room and stopped, framed in the archway. In person, Sam Manelli was a living illustration of dynamite coming in small packages.

All the aging gangster had to do was turn and he would be staring at a stranger thirty feet away holding a pair of pistols. Winter didn't want to do anything until he had located Sean, but if Manelli turned, he would take the man hostage. If there were more people in the great room sitting silently, or if Sam was to yell out for the downstairs guards, it could get bad. If Sam yelled, Winter would run into the room and perhaps shoot everybody there. Sam walked away without turning. Relieved that he didn't have to shoot Manelli yet, Winter put the Hi-Power in the small of his back and slipped through the nearest door.

He entered a dimly lit bedroom, stopping beside a partly opened closet door. Ahead, he saw a bed with the covers disturbed. What must have been a bathroom door was closed, but light leaked out from under it and he could hear water running in the sink.

He heard footsteps moving down the hallway and someone tapping at the door before opening it. Winter slipped into the closet, eased the sliding door almost closed so he could peer out through the crack and ready himself. As the door closed, Winter saw Sam Manelli's profile, less than two feet away.

101

Shadows among shadows, the quartet of cutouts moved west through the narrow line of trees along the drainage canal. They cut a hole in the eastern ILS fence and slipped through. Their starlight goggles painted the world a Saint Elmo's fire green. They wore sensitive, sound-activated headsets and could talk to each other in an emergency.

Nearing the gate separating the tank farm from the lodge property, they slowed and crept to the edge of the road, where it exited the tank farm and entered Manelli's property. A clot of four guards, who couldn't have been more visible to the cutouts if they had been on fire, stood just inside the gate. As one of the men waved his hand in the darkness, his lit cigarette looked like an acrobatic firefly.

Lewis took up his position not fifteen feet away from the four guards.

Tomeo, Mickey, and Apache kept going toward the lodge.

Normally they would have taken out the four guards and moved on, but Lewis was not going to put a single team member at unnecessary risk. He wanted a lightning strike whereby all of the exterior guards were neutralized at once. He didn't want any of the guards to have an opportunity to resist—or for a shout or a gunshot to alert anyone inside the lodge. The body armoring all but removed that risk for Tomeo and Apache, but his and Mickey's lighter suits offered superior maneuverability with full protection of only their torsos. Even if the inserts were missed, the latest version of Kevlar would take multiple rounds in the same spot without failure.

According to Russo, there could be as many as fourteen guards there, all of them aware that they were not to fire at anyone without Russo's orders. Russo thought the cutouts were going to erase only Sam and Sean.

Despite what Lewis had told Russo, Fifteen's orders had been clear. “Erase everybody there and leave no witnesses.” As Lewis had put it to his people, “If they didn't come here with us, they're staying after us.”

Figuring his team was in position up the road, Lewis raised his MP5 SD and fired at the men standing like cows in the curve of a nameless dirt road.