TailSpin (16 page)

Jack said, “Gillette, do you shoot as well as Rachael?”

“I’m a marine,” he said. “Who do you think taught her?”

“Good point. The two of you keep the guys out front contained. There are more, I know it, and I don’t want them coming in behind us. Back entrances, Gillette?”

“There’s only one back door. In the kitchen.”

“Keep your heads down,” Jack said, and kept low to the floor. He felt the heat of some of the bullets flying over his head on their way to thud into the walls. The gilded mirror finally crashed to the floor, wood and glass flying everywhere.

When Jack was out of the line of fire, he jumped to his feet and ran down the hallway toward the kitchen. He felt a stab of exquisite pain in his thigh, ignored it. He stepped into the kitchen at the exact moment a man came in the back door. Jack fell to his knees and rolled, four bullets stitching the cabinets behind him. He heard one dig into the beautiful marble floor.

And that really made him mad. He came up on his side and yelled, “Hey!”

The man fired again, but he was off by a good foot. Jack shot two rounds, both of them missing. The man was crouched behind the washing machine just inside the back door.

“What are you doing here?” Jack yelled over the pumping gunfire coming from the front of the house.

The man fired off another half-dozen rounds. Jack felt a sharp spear of wood hit his left arm. He gave a huge cry of pain and slammed his Kimber against the floor. He lay there, still and silent.

The man fired again. Then he slowly rose and looked beyond the kitchen table to where Jack lay, nearly under one of the kitchen chairs. He took a step, then realized he didn’t see the gun, but it was too late.

Jack reared up and shot him.

The man grabbed his shoulder and sank to his knees. His gun dropped onto the floor and skidded against the wall. He toppled over, moaning. Jack walked to the man, struck the back of his head with the gun butt. One down, but of course there had to be one more. Whoever ordered this wasn’t about to take any more chances with only one shooter. No, this was a full-scale assassination squad. He heard two shooters in the front, and likely there was still one more in the back.

Jack pulled a wallet out of the man’s jacket pocket, then looked at the expanse of green lawn that went back for perhaps thirty feet to the forest, a seemingly impenetrable thick, vibrant green. He looked for movement, shadow play, anything to help him locate the other shooter. Or shooters. He was patient. He waited. Finally he saw a flash of movement. A man was trying to slide between two oak saplings, being careful because he’d heard the shot and the yell. By now he had to realize his partner was down.

The man held something in his hand—not a gun or a rifle. Jack realized he was speaking on a walkie-talkie, telling the team leader one was down in the kitchen. Jack saw the dark blue of his shirt when he shifted forward, probably to get a better look at the house, to try to see him. Big mistake, Jack thought. He lined up the shot and fired, but the man was good. He’d seen Jack’s shadow, seen a whisper of movement, he supposed, and dove to the ground. Jack’s bullet went into a tree and spewed up a whirlwind of leaves.

No way was he going to let that man go back around front to join his team. He stretched his arm up and grabbed an apple from the bowl sitting on the breakfast table. He took aim at the trash can container off to his left and threw the apple. It struck hard. He saw the man jerk around, his gun arm swinging smoothly toward the container. Jack stood and fired.

The man didn’t make a sound.

Jack watched him pitch forward out of the forest and onto the grass.

He heard gunfire intensify at the front of the house. He prayed his one civilian and one marine were being careful. He thought the two of them could handle the front. He waited, listened. He was as convinced as he could be that there were no more shooters lurking in the forest. He ran flat out across the backyard, fanning his Kimber, so pumped with adrenaline he could hear his own heart thudding against his chest.

How had they found Slipper Hollow? Not hard, really. With the Internet, nothing was secret for long.

He fell to his knees and checked the man he’d shot. The bullet had gone straight through his heart. He pulled out his wallet, stuck it in with the other one in his pocket. He picked up the fallen walkie-talkie and clicked the speak button. He lowered his voice, crumpled leaves in his left hand to create the impression of static, and prayed. “Hey, it’s not going good here. What do you want me to do?”

“Clay, that you?”

He wasn’t expecting a woman’s voice. “Yeah, it’s me.”

He crumpled more leaves. “Hard to hear you.”

“What about Donley? You said he went in the back and you heard a shot. What happened?”

“He . . . got . . . clocked.”

“All right, all right, dammit, we’ll have to wait until dark to go in. They’re hillbillies, of course they’ve got weapons, probably coon rifles, so a frontal assault is out. Do you think you can get in the back?”

He rubbed his palm over the receiver. “It’s tough, I . . .”

“Clay? Hey, wait, you’re not Clay—”

He heard her cursing, then the walkie-talkie went fuzzy.

Jack quickly began making his way around to the front, in a wide circle, hoping to come in behind the shooters, but truth be told, he wasn’t holding out much hope.

He heard a few more rounds of gunfire, then silence. He pictured the woman and her partner—they were pros, they wouldn’t panic, but they were facing a full-blown screwed-up fiasco. They’d know enough to get out of there fast. Somehow they’d been spotted, and their prey were armed and shooting back. They’d probably believed it would be easy, even though the shooter they’d sent to Parlow was presently residing in Franklin County Hospital. Did they know that? Probably. But what they couldn’t know was that an FBI agent was here with the
hillbillies.
And one of the hillbillies was a marine, the other a crack shot. What a nice surprise.

If they had a contingency plan, it was shot to hell now. He ran, hunkered down, ignoring the leaves whipping his face, ignoring the pain in his thigh, the blood seeping from the cut in his left arm, and tried to move as quickly and quietly as possible.

He heard something, and stopped on a dime. It sounded like a footstep, a single footstep.

Sunlight speared through the leaves overhead. Silence. Nothing. Then he heard an animal, probably a possum, running away, running from him, he knew.

No footfalls, no one was near. How much farther?

He heard some fresh gunshots coming from Gillette and Rachael, but no return fire.

They were gone.

He ran straight out toward the edge of the forest until he saw the front of the house. He had to be close to their last position. They could still be nearby, see what he was going to do, kill him if he showed himself. Jack didn’t want to get shot. He nearly ran over their former position—saw the flattened leaves, the shells.

They were gone.

He ran all the way back to the road. When he burst out of the woods, he saw two figures in a late-model black Ford Expedition burning rubber down the road.

They’d had to leave their companions. Not a good idea—but they didn’t have a choice.

He ran back as fast as he could, yelled before he broke through the woods in front of Gillette’s house, “It’s Jack! They’re gone. Don’t shoot! I’m coming out!”

Rachael flew out the splintered front door. “Jack! Are you all right? They ran?”

“I’m fine. You?”

“Some glass in my arm and neck, nothing bad. Gillette’s okay, too. He went to check out back.”

“One of the guys is alive. I left him on the kitchen floor. Let’s get in the house,” he said, and grabbed her arm and pulled her inside.

Gillette came running out of the kitchen. “There’s blood on the floor, Jack, but the guy’s gone.”

He was a moron. He should have shot the goon in the leg. “He won’t get far,” Jack said. “There were two of them, actually. One’s dead at the back of the yard, right at the tree line. I took both their wallets. I’ll bet you these guys are in the system.”

Rachael said, “I’ll call Sheriff Hollyfield, tell him what happened and get him out here.”

“I’m going to look outside.”

When Jack walked into the kitchen five minutes later, he said, “The body’s gone. Our wounded guy carried him out. They must have another vehicle.”

“The sheriff will be here in thirty minutes, tops,” Rachael said.

“I forgot, I’ve got some critical information for him,” Jack said, and dialed him up, managed to catch him on the point of leaving his office. Jack gave Sheriff Hollyfield the license plate of the Ford Expedition.

Rachael ignored the objections of the men and went with Jack to track the shooters through the woods, the rifle pointed down at her side. Jack wasn’t happy, even though he knew she was a good shot. “There’s got to be blood,” he whispered. “Keep as quiet as you can.”

They found the blood trail quickly enough. “Look,” Jack said, going down on his knees. “He’s carrying his dead buddy. They can’t be too far ahead.”

The blood trail led back to the road, some thirty feet farther beyond where the Ford Expedition had peeled out.

Jack said, “They were careful enough to have two vehicles. The guy I shot in the shoulder, he needs major help fast.”

When they returned to the house, Jack called the nearest hospital. They’d already been alerted, he was told, by Sheriff Hollyfield.

“Gillette, are there any physicians close by that our wounded guy could find easily?”

Gillette shook his head. “No, unless he knows of one personally. Or has a phone book. Parlow’s the closest town. Everything’s so spread out around here, someone not familiar with the area couldn’t find his elbow.”

Jack phoned Dr. Post at the clinic, just in case. Nurse Harmon agreed to alert all the hospitals in the area. Then he called Savich.

Rachael listened to him with half an ear as she swept up the glass from the shattered front windows.

“We’re beyond lucky,” Jack was saying to Savich. “Without that perimeter alarm the shooters tripped when they came in, we’d have been in bad trouble since Rachael and I were out in the open.

“They didn’t know I was here, probably didn’t know Gillette was a marine, or that Rachael can shoot a quarter out of the air. Sheriff Hollyfield should be here soon, so everything seems covered.” He listened, then said, “I got wallets out of both guys I shot, but it’s like the shooter at Roy Bob’s garage—they removed all ID, credit cards, likely left everything in their vehicles. I can get some blood from the kitchen floor and from some leaves in the forest, get us some DNA. Yeah, all right.” Jack hung up. “Savich says enough is enough, said he never liked the idea of third time’s a charm. He wants Rachael back in Washington. And he wants you, Gillette, to take a vacation.”

“Yeah, like that’ll happen,” Gillette said. He sighed and looked around. He bent down, picked up a large hunk of glass. “I guess I’m not through with my house.”

“They’re going to put me in the same hospital room as Dr. MacLean, are they?” Rachael wondered aloud. “Well, forget that. I’ve got to call my mom. If they didn’t do a pretty good search to find out about Slipper Hollow, then they could have gotten to her.”

Gillette said, “I called while you and Jack were tracking blood in the woods. Everyone’s fine. I didn’t tell your mother about any of your trouble.”

Rachael said, “But shouldn’t we warn them? Shouldn’t they take a vacation?”

Jack shook his head. “Whoever ordered this hit doesn’t want more collateral damage than absolutely necessary. Parlow must have scared them but good. Limit the risks, limit the exposure. They knew it’d be beyond stupid to go after your mom and her family. And so they did something else.”

Rachael said, “Fine, aren’t you brilliant. Just what did they do? I didn’t think anyone knew about Slipper Hollow.”

Gillette sighed. “It wouldn’t be hard, Rachael, think about it.”

Jack said, “Gillette’s right. Not hard at all. They researched you, Rachael, found out about Gillette and where he lives. After the failure in Parlow, they must have looked for another destination, and found it.”

Gillette said, “I guess I wanted this place to be off the map. Nothing’s off the map in this day and age. I’m an idiot.” He shook his head. “Oh yeah, there would be FedEx records, property records, asking at the local post office where my P.O. box is, any number of ways to track me down.”

Jack said to Rachael, “I should have hauled your butt to the Arizona desert.”

Gillette looked over at his bullet-riddled front door, at all the beautiful windows, now shot to pieces, the gouges in the walls, the shattered hall mirror.

Jack said, “While we’re waiting for Sheriff Hollyfield, let’s start fixing that door and boarding up the windows. You gonna use FedEx to deliver new windows?”

“Probably, but I might take myself off their database,” Gillette said.

“I’m so sorry, Uncle Gillette,” Rachael said. “It’s all my fault.”

“Don’t piss me off, Rachael,” Gillette said, and tugged her braid.

It wasn’t until that evening, right before dark, that Jack discovered the gunmen had found and disabled Rachael’s Charger.

TWENTY-ONE

 

 

 

 

 

 

D
r. MacLean’s eyes weren’t drug-bright anymore; he was alert and laughing with a nurse when Savich and Sherlock came into his room.

He looked over at them, smiled. “I remember you two from yesterday. You’re the FBI agents who work with Jackson.” He shrugged. “Jackson told me the young lady with him—Rachael, I believe her name is—saved our hides after he brought the plane down. They left ten minutes ago, said you were on your way.”