Hot Target (42 page)

It was chilling that it was here like this—apparently Carl was confident that no one would be looking for him.

On the other hand, the fact that his truck was here was mildly reassuring. Surely Carl would have set up some kind of escape route if he was intending to target Jane here and now.

Either that, or this time he wasn’t intending to escape.

No way. This guy was not suicidal. He was a game player. He got off on outsmarting his opponents.

And it was hard to be smarter than the police and the FBI if you were dead.

Of course, searching the truck might provide a hint or two as to Carl’s intentions.

But first things first, and making sure Jane was safe was at the very top of Cos’ priority list.

He was just about to gun the station wagon and head for the gate, when a car pulled alongside him, the driver leaning on his horn.

It was Jules Cassidy.

Cosmo rolled down the passenger-side window.

“Got your message,” the FBI agent called to him. “Jane’s here. She’s safe. The rest of the team’s with her; Decker, too. He was a few minutes ahead of me—he’s probably already inside.”

“This is the truck I’ve been looking for.” Cos gestured with his thumb over his shoulder.

“You’re sure?” Jules asked.

“Positive.”

He nodded. “I’ll run the plates and call for a warrant.”

Yeah, like Cosmo was going to sit around and wait for that. “Do we need to wait for a warrant if the truck’s unlocked?” he asked. “What’s the rule? Unlocked and open? Or the evidence needs to be in full view, right?”

Jules had worked with Navy SEALs before, and he knew that they didn’t always follow the rules.

He should have been able to resist the temptation, but when Cosmo had said, “Why don’t you go down and tell those clowns to open the gate so we can drive right in, while I check to see if the truck’s open,” Jules had said, “Okay.”

The gate, however, was—as his Navy SEAL friends would say—a goatfuck of a different dimension. It was locked shut, with a chain and a big padlock. None of the guards seemed to know where someone named Steve was, and apparently Steve had the only key.

Jules was welcome to walk in, passing through the metal detector, but if he wanted to bring the car, he’d have to wait for Steve.

From the other end of the parking lot came the sound of shattering glass.

“Truck’s open,” Cosmo shouted.

Yeah, right.

“Find Steve,” Jules told the guards, a portly gent named Clarence and a clueless soul named Joe, “fast. Because in about thirty seconds, a Navy SEAL with an agenda is going to be in your face, ready to chew through this fence with his teeth.”

The difference between these guards and the personnel who worked for Troubleshooters Incorporated was like night and day. These boys didn’t have the training necessary to handle something big like this. The best of them probably only had experience catching shoplifters at the local Wal-Mart.

Clarence ran to see if Steve was in one of the Porta Potties.

About time.

Cosmo trotted up. “Check out what Carl Linderman had in his truck.”

An MP-5 assault weapon.

“Along with a fuckload of ammo,” he continued. “It was under the backseat, kind of sticking out. In full view of the unlocked, open door.”

“Is that a prop?” Clueless Joe asked nervously. “Because they told us that all the prop guns would be handed out once the actors were inside the gate—”

“Hope he doesn’t mind if I use it,” Cosmo added. “Look, I want to drive right in so you can get Jane the hell out of here. Can we take your car? I left mine blocking in the truck.” He looked at the gate, focusing on the padlock for the first time. “What the fuck?”

Decker was here. Jane saw him arrive, saw him deep in discussion with the other Troubleshooters, no doubt figuring the best way to get her home as quickly as possible.

So much for her triumphant return to the set of her movie.

“And . . . action!”

As Jane watched the video monitor, Robin launched himself forward.

The camera shot slowly widened to include Adam as Jack, who held on to his helmet with one hand and, looking totally and quite appropriately out of his element, raced after Robin for dear life.

This was a long, single shot that had been intricately choreographed, with soldiers falling and dying all around the two lead players as they crisscrossed up the beach.

But then it happened again. Just over halfway to the point where Robin was supposed to fall, he slipped.

Adam didn’t notice for quite a number of steps because his head was down, but then he looked over, realized he was alone, and skidded to a stop. He turned, saw Robin back on the sand, raised his face to the heavens as if seeking deliverance, then trotted back to him.

But Robin didn’t get up.

And Adam dropped to his knees next to him, his body language suddenly urgent. He jumped to his feet almost immediately, shouting something back at the cameraman, something they couldn’t possibly hear in the din.

“Sweet Jesus, did your little brother whack himself in the family jewels again?” Harve shouted over the sounds of war. “Tick, tock! Clock’s running, children!”

The extras fought on—only those closest to Robin and Adam had an inkling that anything was wrong.

But then Harve stared up at the tent, where little bits of sunlight were suddenly appearing in the fabric overhead. “What in heaven’s name . . . ?”

“Jane!
Jane!
” Jack—the real Jack—came running.

She’d had no idea the elderly man could move that fast.

“The helicopter pilot,” he wheezed. “We were talking, and . . .” He gasped for air. “He’s been shot!”

Those were bullet holes in the tent. Someone out there was shooting real bullets.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-SEVEN

Robin was bleeding.

And that was the understatement of the century. He’d bled before— from a punch in the nose, from a paper cut, from the time he’d put his fist through that window when he’d first gotten drunk at thirteen years old, from his run-in with Eliza Tetrinini’s older brother just last year.

He knew what bleeding was.

This was something else entirely.

Blood was pouring from his leg. His thigh. Which freaking hurt like a bitch.

One minute he’d been running and the next—

“You’re way too early,” Adam admonished him, but then was sympathetic. “Oh, shit, you had a blood pack malfunction? God, what a mess. Damn, that looks . . . real.” His voice went up an octave. “Jesus, Robin, what did you do to yourself?”

“I don’t know,” Robin gasped. Oh, fuck, it hurt.

“Jesus!” Adam leapt to his feet, waving his arms at the director, trying to get them to stop.

And right where he’d been kneeling, a puff of sand went into the air as if . . .

What the fuck had happened? Had they somehow accidentally crossed into an area where explosives were set to go off, imitating the impact of bullets into the sand?

The stunt director and Harve both had assured him that these miniature explosions weren’t dangerous.

But accidents obviously happened and—

“Motherfucker!” Something hot and piercing slapped him in the arm, pushing him back onto the sand. His hand came away covered with even more blood, and he suddenly knew. “Someone’s shooting real bullets,” he shouted to Adam, who turned tail and ran—the coward—leaving him to bleed to death on their make-believe version of Omaha Beach.

Jules knew that the sound of automatic gunfire from the mock battle scene was driving Cosmo crazy.

Steve with the key still hadn’t appeared, and the time for playing nice was drawing to an end.

Fortunately, Jules had learned from past experiences and had gotten complete insurance on the rental car, which, he could tell from the grim line of Cosmo’s mouth, was about to be used as a very expensive set of wire cutters.

But then his cell phone rang.

It was Tess Bailey. “Jules! Code red! Shots have been fired. At least two men are down, including Robin Chadwick—”

No.

“Get in the car!” Jules shouted at Cosmo as he slid behind the wheel. “Code red!”

Please, God, don’t let Robin be fatally wounded. Not while they were standing out here, stopped by a nine-dollar padlock and chain . . .

Tossing the phone to Cosmo, who climbed into the passenger side, Jules jammed the rental car into reverse. The tires squealed as he backed it up enough to get the distance for the speed he’d need.

“Keep Jane covered! We’ll be right there,” Cosmo told Tess, bracing himself on the dash as Jules gunned the car directly for the gate.

Her brother had been shot.

Someone—Jack maybe—fired the flare that called for a cut in action, and the sudden silence was eerie.

But it wasn’t completely silent—it just seemed that way compared to the sounds of battle.

Without the rattle of gunfire to cover them, Jane could hear voices crying out in pain, calling for help.

And, just like in the real aftermath of a battle, there were sudden frantic calls for the medic.

A military company usually had a handful.

They had only one.

Jane had been pushed onto the ground, behind a stack of boxes even though no one knew where the gunman was. He could be anywhere, couldn’t he? Any one of those guns carried by the extras could be real, capable of delivering death.

And, obviously, she was not the only target.

She could hear Adam, still shouting, “He’s bleeding, God damn it! Someone help me—I can’t carry him by myself!”

“I’m staying down,” Jane told PJ, Tess, and Nash, who were all but sitting on her, weapons drawn. There was no way she could fight her way past them to her brother’s side. Obedience was her best bet in terms of helping him. “See? I’m very safe, I’m being very good—now go help Robin and the others!”

God, how many of the extras had been hurt? How could this have happened?

“An ambulance is on its way,” Tess told her.

Decker had appropriated the director’s megaphone. “Drop all weapons! I repeat, all extras drop all prop weaponry immediately!”

There was a huge crash—the sound of metal against metal—as a car blasted through the main gate.

And then she heard a familiar voice: “Jane! Where’s Jane?”

Cosmo had arrived.

Adam came back.

He hit the ground as he reached Robin, as if he were sliding into home plate.

He’d also brought Wayne with him. Wayne, whose day job was in a hospital.

Wayne, who hated Robin’s guts.

“Get out of here—get to cover,” Robin gasped.

They were out in the open, completely vulnerable. All of the other extras had stayed back, afraid that this was some kind of improvisation, some additional scene that they hadn’t been warned about. Some of them actually thought that the cameras were still rolling.

“It’s okay, Robin, everyone’s put down their guns. Whoever was shooting has stopped. We’re gonna move you up the beach,” Adam told him, “to the tent. An ambulance is on its way.”

There was a crack—a gunshot—and Adam and Wayne both covered Robin with their own bodies.

“Well, aren’t I the big liar,” Adam said when he lifted his head. He looked at Wayne. “Let’s get him out of here, Doc.”

Wayne was looking at the tourniquet Robin had tried to tie around his leg—which had been freaking hard to do with a bullet in his left arm. “That needs to be tighter. This is going to hurt,” he told Robin, “and I’m glad for that. I hate you for what you did to Patty, you asshole, but I’m not going to let you die.”

“Just do it,” Robin said through gritted teeth.

And then there was only pain.

Pain, and Adam hanging on to his hand despite some lunatic shooting at them.

“It’s gonna be okay, babe, you’re going to be okay,” Adam said over and over as Robin heard himself scream.

Mercifully, the world went black.

Cosmo held tightly to Jane behind the barrier of those crates. What the fuck had she been thinking, leaving the house like that before checking with him?

Of course, he hadn’t exactly been easy to reach, with his cell phone back in his truck.

“It was over,” she told him, her face buried against his chest. Had he spoken aloud? She answered as if he had. “Patty’s safe, and it was over—”

“We have to get you into the car,” he told her. Into the car and then out of here, as quickly as possible.

She lifted her head, and from the look in her eyes he knew this wasn’t going to be easy. Why should it be? Nothing else had been up to this point.

“My brother’s out there,” she said. “I’m not leaving him!”

“Yeah,” Cos said. “You are. If I have to throw you in the car and drag you out of here.”

She bristled. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Just watch me,” he fired back at her.

But another rifle shot echoed, and Cos pulled her down instead, even closer to the ground.

“Oh, my God,” she said, “Oh, my God. He’s just shooting innocent people! We have to make him stop! Cos, I can make him stop!”

“Oh, no, you can’t,” Cosmo told her. “Your job right now is to keep your head down and do what we tell you to do.”

“It’s me he wants!” she told him.

“Yeah, well, I want you, too, Jane,” he said. “I need you to hold on just a little bit longer. We have him cornered now.”

“What?” She was incredulous. “He’s the one with the gun!”

“Yeah, but we’re the ones with the helicopter,” he pointed out. “Stay here, do you hear me? I need to take a look at that beach. Tess!” he shouted, and the woman came closer, ready to jump on top of Jane if she moved an inch. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t trust Jane. He just knew that she found the growing body count unbearable.

“Do we have a visual on the shooter?” Cos shouted as he hustled to a pile of boxes over at the far edge of the tent. Christ, were those bullet holes above them in the red-and-white circus pattern?
Crack!
They were—a new one appeared as he watched. There had to be some kind of raised terrain in this area—that’s where the shooter would be positioned.

“Negative on the visual,” Decker shouted back as he crossed the tent, too. He lowered his voice to normal conversation level as they met behind that barrier. “But five men are injured, all across the beach. My guess is he’s somewhere on that hillside.”

Hillside. Jackpot. And there it was. Covered with brush. Cosmo’s eyes were good, but he would’ve given his left nut for infrared binoculars right about now.

Jack appeared. The old man was one of the few people besides the Troubleshooters team who wasn’t on the verge of losing his cool. “I saw a Nazi—an actor in a brown uniform—climbing up that way with a Springfield rifle,” he reported. “Range on that thing is huge. There’s nowhere on this beach that’s safe. Most of the extras still don’t know what’s going on. They think it’s some kind of stunt we’ve set up for the news cameras. But as soon as they figure out that it’s not, there’ll be a stampede, probably for this tent. With your permission, I’d like to start leading them into the parking lot.”

“Do it,” Decker ordered. “But keep your head down.” He raised his voice. “PJ, Nash, keep your eyes on that hillside, watch for a muzzle flash.”

When Robin opened his eyes, Wayne had been replaced by an angel who looked a lot like Jules Cassidy.

Didn’t it figure?

“Am I dead?” Robin asked, reaching up to touch the angel’s face. His fingers left a streak of blood.

“Now!” the angel said and Robin felt himself being lifted.

The pain came smashing back—this definitely wasn’t his ascension to heaven—as he was half carried, half dragged up the beach.

Holy God! He was so cold his teeth were chattering, so this probably wasn’t hell, either.

But it was damn close.

Crack! Crack!

They stopped moving, dropped back to the sand.

“Shit!” Adam said. “That was too close!”

“Wayne, are you hit?” Jules asked.

“No, sir. Are you?”

“No,” Jules said. “But it sure seems that this guy doesn’t want us going anywhere, does he?”

“Me,” Robin managed to gasp. “He doesn’t want
me . . .
”

Wayne, gutsy bastard, experimented, crawling several steps toward the tent.

“Keep going,” Robin begged him. He looked at Adam, who’d run to safety, but then come back for him, and Jules, who should’ve been up in that tent, taking care of Janey. “All of you. Please . . . I don’t want you to die, too.”

“If he wanted to kill us,” Jules said, remarkably calmly, “he’d have done it already. I have a feeling he’s got a different agenda.”

Jules’ rental car had been moved right in under the tent, but Cosmo quickly realized that the sand was too soft to use it to get Jane to safety. It would take too long for the car to get up any kind of speed—and that was provided it didn’t just sit there, tires spinning.

Meanwhile, the shooter would Swiss-cheese it.

It served a better use here as an additional barricade.

Jane—having been admonished repeatedly not to move—was hunkered down behind it on the far side of the tent, along with Harve and Gary and other members of the production crew and quite a few extras who’d figured out that those bullets were real and had run for cover.

Decker had moved the crates, positioning them to be used as protective barriers, so the Troubleshooters team could move from one side of the tent to the other.

The shooter took random potshots at them, no doubt hoping to hit Jane through sheer luck.

This was like some kind of unreal freak show, with old Jack Shelton manning the megaphone like an ancient master of ceremony, instructing the extras to move slowly and calmly off the beach and into the parking lot, where they’d be safe.

There was a bottleneck at the gate, which meant there were quite a few sitting ducks still on the beach, not to mention a crowd heading for the fence at the far end.

There was another fairly large group huddled at the base of the hillside, protected by an outcropping of rocks.

Crack! Crack!

“He’s on that hill,” Nash announced. “About three-quarters of the way up.”

“PJ!” Cos grabbed several coils of heavy-duty extension cords from a pile of equipment. “Can you fly that helo?”

“That toy?” PJ laughed. “With one hand tied behind my back, baby.”

Cosmo shouldered the weapon he’d taken from Carl Linderman’s truck. “Let’s go end this game.”

Robin needed a hospital.

He’d gone into serious shock, and Jules tucked his jacket around him, wishing he could do more.

“I’m sorry,” Robin whispered.

“You’re not quitting on me, are you?” Jules asked.

“Go,” Robin begged. “Please. I don’t want you to die, too.”

“I’m not going to let you die.” But Jules could hear distant sirens. Ambulances and police approaching.

This was the moment of truth. If the shooter was intending to get away, he was going to have to make his final move now, before the SWAT teams arrived.

And whatever it was he had in mind, Jules was certain it involved using Robin as a bargaining chip. The shooter obviously had him sighted in his rifle scope, and Jules knew that the man had Jane’s cell phone number. He’d called her before—he’d call again.

“Adam,” he said, “act! Wayne! Make it look like Robin’s dying.”

They both sat up, not quite understanding.

“We’re losing him!” Jules said loudly, leaning over Robin, pretending to give him CPR.

Wayne leaned in, touching Robin’s neck. “I don’t have a pulse!”

Adam hovered, looking distressed.

“He might be watching through a scope.” Jules turned his face away from the hillside where the shooter had to be positioned. “Let him read your lips. Robin, listen to me—only pretend to die, sweetie, all right?”

When he leaned in for one last round of fake mouth-to-mouth, Robin kissed him.