Forty Thieves (37 page)

At the far end of the house, Ronnie pressed her back against the bricks as she aimed her pistol toward the backyard. That was almost certainly where the next panthers would be coming from. She had already stopped a group going out the back door toward her to reach the hidden cars, then turned back an incursion from the front of the house, and now it was time for them to try to trap her in a cross fire.

The first two stepped out from the back corner, as she had expected. She fired four shots rapidly, and they dived or fell back out of sight.

She began to turn her head to check the front again, when there was a burst of automatic weapon fire from the empty lot beside the property. At first Ronnie thought the person was firing at her, but then she saw splinters and chips of brick flying from the front corner of the house. Someone in that vicinity returned fire for a moment, and then the person in the empty lot fired again and the shots stopped.

Ronnie caught movement and strained her eyes to see a small person running toward the house carrying a short rifle with a long magazine protruding from the underside.

The woman dashed out of the field to where Ronnie crouched, and knelt beside her. She was small and blond, had an H&K MP5 in her hands. Over her shoulder was some kind of bag, which Ronnie assumed must contain ammunition. The woman said, “We can’t stay here. They’ll just keep coming. Come on.”

The woman trotted along the side of the house, her rifle raised to her shoulder. She stopped beside a small rectangular opening in the foundation with a metal screen over it. She glanced at Ronnie to be sure she was covering her, unlatched the metal screen, and tugged it off. She slid her body into the opening, feet first, and beckoned to Ronnie to follow, then grabbed her rifle and pulled it in with her. Nicole waited inside the opening. She had seen that Veronica Abel was trapped, and known she would die in a minute. She needed to keep her alive, for now. “Hurry,” she whispered.

When the woman disappeared, Ronnie hesitated. Out here she was exposed, but in there she would be protected from fire by the foundation of the house. She took a deep breath, crouched, went to her belly, then slithered into the dark rectangle.

The woman edged close to her, reached out, and pulled the metal screen back into place so it covered the opening. Then she rolled once and began to crawl away.

They were under the floor of the house on a dirt surface. Ronnie could see three other screened openings, because they were all slightly lighter than the crawl space where Ronnie was now. In the near darkness, she could make out a
plank surface above her with thick joists holding it to the foundation and to the planks running under the floor. There were copper water pipes running along above her, and a couple of thick ceramic drainpipes coming down from above to join the main drains that ran underground to the sewers.

The woman was crawling away from the foundation now, and Ronnie followed. They kept going until they reached a spot where the ground seemed to drop off. Ronnie peered over the edge, not quite able to make out much until the woman lowered herself into a small room, like a concrete box about ten feet on a side.

Ronnie lowered herself down beside her. There were a hot-water heater, a nest of telephone wires and cables, and a set of wooden steps leading up to a door. The woman whispered, “I’m Nicole.”

“Ronnie.” She held out her hand, but the woman ignored it.

“What we’ve got to do is go up there, step out, and clear the house to be sure they’re all outside. I’ll go right out the door, and you go left. Then we’ll move together toward the front door to clear the house. You know how to do that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” said Ronnie. She had been feeling dazed at the sudden appearance of this woman—or sudden reappearance. Nicole was definitely the woman who had been on the video recordings planting the bomb in the house in Burbank. She was carrying an MP5, roughly the kind of rifle that had been fired at Ronnie and Sid in the night attacks. It occurred to Ronnie that she could put her Glock to the woman’s head and handcuff her right now. But this Nicole had just pulled Ronnie out of a cross fire. And there were dozens of people upstairs who wanted them both dead.

The woman patted Ronnie’s shoulder. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

Nicole went up first and stood with her feet on the top step while Ronnie climbed up beside her. Nicole slowly turned the knob, and then, in one motion, pushed the door out and sprang out after it. She dashed to the right and Ronnie went to the left. Ronnie saw no targets—no movement, no human shapes. She waited, her weapon aimed up the hall toward the front of the house while Nicole checked the kitchen behind her.

When Nicole came up beside her, they stepped forward together, moving from room to room, making sure nobody was left in the house. They returned to the living room. It was a large, open space with windows at intervals. Nicole crouched at the nearest window, reached around the blackout curtain and unlatched it, then slid it open. She knelt to the side of the window and moved the curtain a half inch to look out along the barrel of her weapon.

Ronnie opened the window across the room from the woman’s, so she could see the driveway and the orchard, the last spots where Sid had been.

There was another burst of automatic fire outside the house, and a moment later, five shots from a pistol. Ronnie swept the curtain aside and looked for a target, but saw nothing. She held her pistol ready, looking from side to side for a target.

Another burst of fire came from somewhere near the cars parked in front of the house. Nicole leaned out with her rifle and fired a burst out the front window toward the cars, and then ducked back in. Shots pounded against the front
of the house, and others punched the curtains on Nicole’s window inward.

Ronnie ran for the next side window, looked out, but still saw nothing. There was automatic fire, and she fired five shots at the muzzle flash, and then ducked back. Shots exploded through the window, and pounded the bricks outside.

Nicole said, “Try not to shoot my husband. He’s big—taller and heavier than the thieves. He’s wearing a black outfit like mine. Okay?”

“I know what he looks like,” said Ronnie.

Nicole froze, staring at her.

“I know you too,” said Ronnie. “You missed some of the cameras in that house in Burbank.”

“What are you planning to do?”

“Same as you—try to keep my husband alive.” Ronnie peered out the window at the dark yard.

Outside, at the rear of the house, Gavrilo kept low and hurried along behind the row of parked cars. He had his Scorpion strapped to his back because his hands were full. One of the intruders had shot Srdan and Tomislav from the orchard next door, and he had come upon them near the front corner of the garage. Gavrilo had taken Srdan’s pack and stripped off the vest Tomislav had on. The vest had about fifteen pockets, and each was filled with money or diamonds. The vest was a bit tight for Gavrilo and constricted his movements, especially with one backpack over each shoulder. When he had come upon the body of Jelena, he had taken her shoulder bag too. He tried the door of the first car, but it
was locked. He tried the next, and it was unlocked, but he couldn’t find the keys.

The plan had been to leave each of the cars with its keys on the seat, so where were the keys? He bent low, felt around on the floor in front of the seat, and ran his hand between the seats, but the keys were not there. He moved a few steps farther, burdened by the bulk of his own backpack and the extra packs and bags he had taken from his fallen friends. At least one of the cars had to have keys in it. The next car had to be the one.

He stepped to the passenger side to keep away from the line of fire, and he could see the car keys in the ignition. He slipped the first pack off one shoulder, the next off the other shoulder, and he felt lighter. Then he slipped off Jelena’s shoulder bag, opened the back door, and set them all on the backseat. He had gotten used to Tomislav’s vest, but if he was going to try to drive anywhere, he knew it wasn’t a good idea to wear it. He straightened to take it off. As he got the vest off, he heard something behind him. He turned and saw a tall man he didn’t recognize. He pulled the sling of his Scorpion submachine to bring it down from his back to his hands, but before he could aim it, the man’s shot hit him in the chest.

As he fell against the car, he looked up at the tall, muscular American. For a second he wondered about the man. Did American police officers use silencers? And then he died, leaning against the car.

Ronnie and Nicole crouched in the living room. There were more shots, all of them high, just above the level of
the bricks, piercing the wall and peppering the opposite wall above their heads.

Ronnie said, “You know this house, don’t you? Is it yours?”

Nicole said nothing.

Ronnie said, “Just answer one question. Why did James Ballantine die?”

“Who’s that?”

“The black guy in the storm sewer. You were hired to keep us away from that case.”

“I don’t know everything. I heard that he was dating one of the women. He figured out that she was somebody who had a lot of money and a lot of secrets. Maybe he knew what she was—that she was a jewel thief. He tried to boss her around and make her give him money. She didn’t like it, so she killed him.”

“Where is she? Do you know?”

“No. I don’t know any of them,” Nicole said.

“That will have to be good enough. I’ve got to get out there now and help my husband.”

Ronnie rose to her feet and stepped through the back door, off the steps to the ground. She dashed in the direction where Sid had been, along the side of the orchard. She saw him break from cover. She felt relief and fear in the same instant. He was alive, but what was he doing?

As Sid came over the fence, he saw her, stopped with his gun in both hands, and aimed ahead to cover her. When she caught up they ran around to the front of the house.

At the front of the house was chaos. There were bodies on the ground, and people running to get into the waiting cars. In the distance they could hear sirens. Sid sensed motion behind him and turned his head, but what he saw didn’t
make sense. A large man was carrying five bundles—three backpacks and a couple of shoulder bags slung over his shoulders. He climbed into the big pickup truck. A second later a blond woman dashed up from the other side and threw herself into the passenger seat. Sid raised his weapon to aim, but Ronnie held his arm and said, “Not them. I promised.”

There was a wail and then the whoop of a siren at the far end of Quillivray Way. The two people in the pickup truck ducked their heads below the windows. Two of the panthers’ SUVs at the curb pulled out, swung around, and roared off. The first three police cars to reach 2995 kept going, speeding after them.

When he’d ducked down, the man in the black pickup truck seemed to have noticed the popped lock and loose wires on the steering column. The starter motor kicked in, the engine started, and he sat up and pulled out of the driveway. He turned the first corner as though he were trying to chase the police cars, and disappeared.

Sid and Ronnie hurried toward the first of the men lying on the front lawn. Sid knelt beside him to see if he was alive while Ronnie stepped to the next person. Another group of police cars arrived, lighting up the houses along the street with flashing red and blue lights and glaring white spotlights.

It was in that second that the explosives in the house went off. Even as Ronnie was thrown off her feet to the ground, she knew that Nicole had done this. Nicole had come out of the basement first so she would have a moment while Ronnie could not see her. She had turned right toward the kitchen.

As Ronnie sat up, she saw that a fire had begun behind the open windows, and watched it rapidly flare up and begin to
devour the house. The kitchen, Ronnie reminded herself. Nicole had probably pulled a pipe bomb out of her ammo bag and placed it behind the stove, where the gas would catch and help the fire spread quickly. This had been Nicole’s house, and she’d known exactly how to obliterate it.

“Are you okay?” It was Sid.

She nodded and got up on one knee. Sid waved his arm at the paramedics, pointed, and called out, “This man is alive.”

He said to Ronnie, “Come on. We should give the paramedics room to work.” He helped Ronnie up and began to guide her toward the street.

Ronnie said, “I know what happened to him.”

“Who?”

“Ballantine. Mira killed him. Tomorrow we can write our report and get paid. Then I want to go and see Janice, and then Mitch. When that’s done, I don’t know. I guess we can go rent a house while we rebuild ours. I’m sick of hotels.”

33

Outside the suite at Many Glacier Hotel in Glacier National Park in Montana, Nicole Hoyt sat on the balcony and looked at Swiftcurrent Lake and beyond it, at the jagged mountain peaks and pine forests. It all looked to her like a picture puzzle, the thousand-piece kind she had loved as a kid. It occurred to her it was possible that she’d seen exactly what she was looking at now in one of the puzzles. Just north of here was Waterton Lakes National Park, and that was in Canada, but looking out at a stretch of woods in a bunch of mountains didn’t tell her where the line was. She supposed that was the point of being here.

Ed came out of the shower and tromped around the room with his towel hanging from his neck.

“I might remind you that the drapes are open.”

“I don’t mind,” he said. “I’m not shy.”

“Walking around naked like that, people might think you’re a bear and take a shot at you.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time, and won’t be the last.”

“If they hit your fat ass, that would be a first,” she said.

Ed went back into the bathroom.

Nicole came inside and slid the curtains across the window, then followed him in. She watched him unscrew the top of her lotion bottle and pour a pile of loose diamonds out onto the counter.

“Stop playing with those things,” she said. “You lose one in the room, and we’ll have FBI agents following us forever.”