The Shop (31 page)

Protect her family.
Whatever their flaws, whatever they had done in the past, they were her responsibility now. They belonged to her, and she would see them through.

She held the chain, let it down to the floor quietly. She didn’t want to attract anyone to this building. Jolie debated turning on one of the flashlights, but decided against it. She felt around for the gear bag with the arsenal Cyril had brought with him. She took a knife along with its scabbard and hitched it to her belt. She strapped her own Walther PPK to her ankle. She pulled on a dark windbreaker, took another .45 and stuck it in one pocket, and put the walkie-talkie in the other. She emptied the gear bag of everything but the remaining weapons and added three Maglites. Took one of the sound suppressors and screwed it onto a Heckler & Koch .45 semiautomatic. Time to go.

Her eyes had adjusted to the gloom. There was nobody in the doorway. Jolie wished she had power, wished she could watch the cameras, but they were useless to her now.

She remained crouched—a smaller target—and followed the wall to the doorway. Worried. Wondered if the men coming for them had FLIR scopes. Any minute, she could be dead before she heard the crash of the bullet—

Couldn’t think like that. And in fact, she encountered no one. The shifting wind blew the rain against her back and then into her face, needles that were warm but somehow chilling, water trickling down her neck, but the windbreaker was good. She kept to the sides of the buildings, concealing herself wherever she could by bushes or trees, duck-walking where there was empty space.

She reached the octagon house and leaned against the side of the building away from the beach, away from the boat in the inlet. She’d have to work her way around to the basement entrance.

She heard something coming from the kitchen area directly in front of her—chains jingling, a ticking sound on the brick.

Small shapes, larger shapes, emerged from the gloom and into the blowing wind, coming through the mist toward her.

The dogs. They didn’t bark. They wriggled, they panted, they surrounded her.

They followed her as she made her slow half circuit of the octagon house.

Worried they would attract attention, she moved faster.

She reached the steps. Followed by the dogs, she went down into the darkness.

Maybe she
should
have used a flashlight. Creeping her way through the gloom, dogs at her heels, Jolie aimed for a slit of light ground-level in the approximate direction of her grandfather’s room. Their generator was still working. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness quickly, and she made out the heavy piece of furniture—a dresser—barricading them in.

She pushed away the dresser and opened the door.

Five pairs of eyes stared at her. Like a snapshot. Four of Cyril’s captives sitting on the floor against the wall. Kay with Zoe, Riley next to her by a body’s-width distance and still snuggled up close to her father. All of them stunned, except for Granddad in his hospital bed, sheet pulled up to his chin. His expression was vague—Jolie got the strong impression he’d gone back to wherever he’d come from.

For a moment there was silence. Jolie could smell the fear in the room and the undercurrent of desperation.

Then Riley said, “It figures that
you
would be okay!”

Jolie walked over to Riley and said, “Be quiet.”

“You can’t—”

“Riley, you might have a problem with me, but now is not the time. There are people out there who are trying to kill us. You need to listen to me like your life depends on it, and do exactly as I say. I am not kidding you about this. Do we understand each other?”

Riley stared at her, open-mouthed.

“Good.” Jolie leaned down and sawed through the tape binding Riley’s hands with her knife.

Jolie went around the room, cutting her family’s bonds. Her family. She wished she could come up with another description of the people in that room. Other than Kay and Zoe, these people were nothing to her. But face it: they were linked to her by blood—she had to help them. When she came to Franklin, she said, “How did he get you to give that statement to the press?”

“He said he’d kill Riley.”

“Do you know what his plans are?”

“He wants to lure someone here.”

“Who?”

“Mike Cardamone.”

“Did you know about the teams?”

“Teams?”

Jolie stepped into his space, and he stepped back. “Frank, this is not the time to play games. Do you know about the teams?”

“Yes! Yes…but I didn’t run them. That was Mike’s thing, not mine. I told him it was crazy.”

“How many teams?”

“Two. It was a small part of the business.”

“How many to a team?”

“I’m not sure.”

“What kind of guys are they?”

“When it comes to something like this,” he said, “they’re the very best.”

Jolie hustled them out of the room. She could hear a helicopter now, overhead, hovering. Not only that, but she heard automatic fire. That sobered up everyone in a hurry.

It took a while to get the old man to understand what she wanted. They had to pull along a portable oxygen tank. Jolie didn’t know what a stray bullet might do, but she couldn’t leave him behind.

He argued with her and quickly escalated to shouting. Jolie took hold of his shoulders and leveled her gaze at him. “Senator, please listen to me. You have to be quiet. I know you can do it. There are people coming to kill us, and you owe it to your family to take care of them. They are your responsibility. You all need to be quiet so they won’t hear us, and you need to lead the way. Can you do that?”

He nodded. Then he zipped a finger across his mouth, pretended to turn an invisible key, and threw it over his shoulder.

“Thank you, Senator.” She said to Franklin, “Where’s the entrance to the tunnel?”

“It’s through the pantry.”

“This floor has a pantry?”

He motioned to a doorway ahead in the gloom.

“How do we get in and out?”

“There’s no lock on the door. It’s just hidden.”

“What about on the other end?”

“They’re hidden, too. No locks. We didn’t install locks because someone could get trapped in the tunnel that way. Nobody’s supposed to know about the tunnels.”

“Luke Perdue did.”

He glared at his daughter. “Yes, Luke did.”

Jolie decided to park them in the tunnel between the pool shed and the boathouse. That way, should anyone come into the tunnel, they’d have at least one place to run, and possibly two.

She hoped the killers didn’t know about the tunnels. But if they had a schematic of the island, they would.

The old man was losing focus, although he remained quiet. He sat with his back against the wall of the tunnel, zoning out. She didn’t like his color. He seemed to be sucking at the air. The tunnel was stuffy and damp; it smelled of mold.

But she had done the best she could. She needed to know what was happening above-ground. The bursts of automatic gunfire meant that Cyril had already engaged the enemy. He might be dead already. She had no illusions about her own ability. She was a sharpshooter, but that was a long time ago. Her training was that of a cop, not of a soldier or an operative. She relied on the authority of the badge. That would be no use to her now.

She handed Kay the extra .45 she’d brought along.

“You’re not going to leave us, are you?”

“You know how to shoot, right?”

Jolie knew that was true; Kay used to hunt with her dad.

“Where are you going? Why can’t you stay here with us?”

“You should be all right here. I’ve done all I can.” She realized she sounded just like Cyril. Felt it important to add, “If you have to shoot, shoot to kill.”

The helo circled once, then flew away. Landry trained his rifle on the front hatch of the Carolina skiff, just in case someone was inside. The storm was getting worse. The water was pea-green, and swirling a mixture of tannin bark, foam, and trash washed in with the waves. Visibility was poor. The rain was a curtain, falling so hard on the dock it created a mist that rose into the gray sky like gauze.

His mind ticked over what he’d learned. First thing: a head count. There was the swimmer, the driver of the SUV, at least two men in the helo—the pilot, and whoever had shot at him. The helo would be for reconnaissance, surveillance, and communications relay. Command and control. If Cardamone had come with his men, he would be in the helo.

That was four people right there. Landry figured anywhere from two to four in the skiff. He’d take the higher number. If there were more than that, he probably wouldn’t get through this, but where was Cardamone going to get those kind of operatives at short notice? So he’d guess there were eight total.

With the swimmer dead, that left seven.

The driver of the SUV had parked the vehicle somewhere nearby and come back on foot. Landry was sure of that.

The swimmer
had
managed to cut the cables to the lights and phone before Landry’d got to him, but at least one generator was still going—he could hear it. The helo was a diversion to pin Landry in one place while the rest of the team landed—probably one or two of them were disabling the generators now.

They would know he had access to a cell phone, that the people in the house had them, too.

But Cardamone also knew by now that Landry didn’t plan on calling in the cavalry. He knew it was between the two of them.

With Franklin in the middle.

Because they would take into account the fact that there would be cell phones, they would go in fast, before the family knew they were in immediate danger.

Cardamone’s team would fan out to all the structures on the island. The first place they’d go to was the main house. Two operatives, because they expected to encounter at least three people: Franklin, Riley, and the senator, and possibly the hired help.

The only question was, did they leave a man to guard the skiff?

The answer was no. If they had, Landry would be dead by now. The helo drove him here, into the boathouse—the obvious place to hide. Whoever was waiting for him would have picked him off like pheasant with its wings clipped.

It was the gap in their plan. They should have anticipated he would run for the boathouse, should have left someone there to kill him.

He made his way to the main house. He knew the enemy would have a simple diagram of sectors to search, and he also knew they’d stay within close enough distance to one another to offer support.

The rain fell harder. It seemed as if there was nobody on this earth other than himself. There was no movement except for the spatter of raindrops on foliage. The main house was dark—the generator out.

He went quietly into the dark house. The rain was loud, even from inside.

The operative almost blundered right into him. Landry saw his bulk, slightly darker in the half-light of the hallway, and stepped into the doorway of the room off the hall. The man sensed movement and crouched, pulling his knife and plunging it into Landry’s side.

By that time Landry had his hands around the man’s throat and broke his neck.

The man slumped, legs spread out in front of him. Landry’s wrist hurt so badly he sank to his knees afterward, seeing little yellow dots against a sea of darkness.

The knife’s blade had bounced off his Kevlar vest but grazed his armpit, and he could feel the blood leaking. Not serious, but it stung. He tore off his assailant’s watch cap and shoved it hard against the flesh under his arm, holding it there for what seemed like an eternity.

The man’s portable comm crackled. It was Cardamone. Landry thought about asking Cardamone’s position, but he didn’t think he could fake the voice. If the other op was near, he sure as hell didn’t want to give away his location.

Two down, he thought. Five to go? Five, or maybe just three. He hoped it was three.

He was getting tired of the carnage.

He was getting just plain tired.

Landry hoped Jolie had taken the family down into the tunnels. Although Cardamone knew about the tunnels, and he surely knew about the three entrances, it was still their best chance. Like trying to kill a gopher in that old arcade game. Whac-A-Mole. Hit him here, he pops up there. Mole or a gopher? He realized his mind was wandering, he was getting a little off-kilter. It was the pain. He cradled his wrist against his other elbow, realized he needed to clear his head. Had to move this guy, now.

He dragged the man through the doorway into the small bedroom and into the closet. Closed the door quietly. Listened. Nothing but the rain drumming on the roof. Could hear his heart beating, the quickening inside him as he got closer to his goal.

What he wanted was Cardamone.

His eyes adjusting more to the light, he now concentrated on another sense: his hearing. Try as he might, Landry could not hear the helo.

He guessed that Cardamone had touched down somewhere, met up with the SUV. Or maybe a boat. He guessed this was the endgame.

He made his way slowly through the house—no one inside. Came out by the pool. The rain was coming in gusts now, blowing into his face. Sharp as needles. It seemed to wake him up, and he realized his mind had started to wander again. It was the wrist. The wrist was driving him crazy.

Landry had to discipline himself, remember his training. He made his way to the pool house, to the closet and down the steps into the tunnel.