Omega Dog (25 page)

Their numbers seemed to give them confidence. A coordinated fusillade of gunfire made Venn duck away from the window once more. It gave him the chance to slam a new magazine into the Beretta.

A head appeared at the window. Venn fired and it dropped away in a red spray.

Behind Venn a crash made him whirl. He brought the shotgun up and was about to let loose when he recognized the stumbling figure picking its way through the wreckage of the connecting walls.

It was Stavros. Like Beth he was covered in dust, but he seemed to be intact.

He was charging toward the front door, rifle in hand, like some absurdly out-of-condition infantryman on a battlefield.

‘Don’t do it, you idiot!’ Venn shouted.

But the fat man had already flung open the door.

‘You blow up my god damn house!’ he roared. ‘I kill you fuckers!’

Venn heard the ratchet and punch of the rifle, and screams. He peered over the top of the window. Saw all visible guns trained on Stavros.

Venn stood, emptied the clip, dropping three more guys.

But it wasn’t enough, and the barrage of gunfire smashed into Stavros, jerking his enormous body this way and that like a grotesque marionette, he hit the ground with a thud.

Emboldened by their success in taking down one of the enemy, the remaining men began to creep closer to the cabin as Venn reloaded once more.

He wasn’t going to be able to keep them all back, he knew.

He dropped the shotgun, picked up the other handgun Stavros had provided.

‘Beth,’ he said. ‘Stay down. The moment anything appears in that window, fire at it. Don’t wait to see who it is.’

She nodded, her own gun extended before her in none-too-steady hands.

Venn crouched beneath the window and faced the wrecked rear of the cabin, waiting. If those guys were smart, they’d abandon their efforts to come in through the front, and instead spread around the cabin and get in at the back.

And sure enough, there came the first ones. He heard the kitchen door get kicked off its hinges.

Two men burst into the living room from the rear. Venn took them both down with a single shot each.

Ammo was going to be a problem before too long.

Beth fired suddenly, at a point above Venn’s head, and he heard a yell. He craned round.

‘Scared him off,’ she muttered.

And then Venn heard a sound he’d last encountered on the streets of Chicago. The clatter of automatic fire.

Jesus. They had assault rifles?

But there was shouting from outside. And screaming.

Venn duckwalked over to the front door, which hung ajar. He risked a peep out.

Men were cowering behind the wreckage of the cars in the forecourt as a sustained burst of fire chopped at the metalwork and gravel around the. The shooting was coming from somewhere off to the left.

Without speculating who might be firing, without pausing, Venn ran over to Beth at a crouch, grabbed her by the upper arm.

‘Come on,’ he yelled. ‘We’re going out the back.’

She rose and ran with him. Outside the firing continued, in shorter bursts now. Venn heard the individual shots as the men returned fire.

In the kitchen Venn hauled the door off the floor and lifted the trapdoor to the cellar. He called down, ‘Professor Lomax. We need to get going now.’

Lomax’s white face peered up from the gloom. He scrambled up the steps and Venn helped him through the opening.

‘Stavros?’ the professor asked.

‘Dead.’

Bracing himself, Venn stepped through the kitchen doorway.

––––––––

T
he projectile from the launcher had blown out one side of the log cabin, and must have done a hell of a lot of damage inside. Shelly stared, impressed.

But it didn’t do what she was hoping. Didn’t drive anybody out.

Instead, the mobsters, Rosetti’s boys, panicked. Stampeded like a herd of cattle frightened by a landslide.

Through the sight of the Panzerfaust, Shelly watched them emerge almost as one from their cars, in their shiny suits, guns in their hands. She saw confusion on their faces. They obviously didn’t know what had happened, but assumed they were under attack somehow, even though the cabin had been hit rather than them.

And then they stormed the cabin.

This was it, then. Whatever had been holding them back before, it wasn’t on their  minds now. Their numbers would prove overwhelming.

And they’d get Dr Colby. Which meant Shelly wouldn’t.

Shelly dropped the launcher and scrambled down from the roof of the Hummer. She slung the strap of the Armalite across her back, wincing at the jolt to her injured shoulder, and carried the weapon in a position for left-handed shooting.

Quickly she loped through the dense trees, hearing the gunfire and shouting growing nearer as she approached. She saw the cabin emerge, the men advancing across the forecourt using two increasingly trashed cars as cover, exchanging fire with somebody in the cabin.

A fat guy suddenly came lumbering out of the cabin, a hunting rifle in his hands. Bellowing abuse, he fired, once, twice, scoring a hit each time. Then he was cut down.

By the look of it, Rosetti’s goons were coming off second best. Bodies lay either screaming or still, all over the forecourt and driveway.

Well, their problems were about to increase.

Staying back among the trees, Shelly opened up with the Armalite.

The recoil was hell on her shoulder, even though she was shooting left-handed, but Shelly ignored it. She was mesmerized by the power of the machine she held bucking in her hands. The way it fed death from its muzzle in a spraying arc that stitched a swathe back and forth across the forecourt.

Bodies leaped and spun, blood gouting. Most of the remaining men turned their fire in Shelly’s direction. They had little chance of hitting her. With her assault rifle and her position partially shielded by trees, she had the upper hand.

Suddenly, there was no more shooting. The aftereffects of the gunfire hung in the air, in the form of a haze of smoke and the stench of cordite. Shelly’s ears rang as though somebody had just clapped their palms hard on either side of her head.

Most of the bodies littering the forecourt were completely still. One or two were twitching. Shelly ignored them and stepped toward the cabin.

Armalite raised, she darted a peek through the open door. Seeing nobody, she kicked it fully open and swung the rifle to cover the living room beyond.

The place was a wreck, courtesy of all the gunfire and her own RPG warhead. But it was empty of people.

Shelly moved to the rear of the building, picking her way through the rubble. In what was left of the kitchen, an open trapdoor beckoned. Steps led down to a cellar.

Surely they weren’t hiding out down there?

Then a noise penetrated the ringing in her ears. She raised her head to listen.

It was the sound of a car’s engine.

Damn.

She raced back through the cabin. Through the front door, she saw a Land Rover reversing away from the semicircle of vehicles on the driveway.

Through the driver’s window she saw him. The big guy with the goatee. The man who’d shot her in the shoulder back in Brooklyn.

Venn.

Shelly raised the Armalite to draw a bead on him. As she did so, Venn reached his arm out through the window.

She leaped back inside as the shot ricocheted off the door jamb, scarily close.

By the time she peered out again, the Land Rover was on its way down the driveway.

Shelly sprinted toward the row of cars. Her Hummer would be better, but it was too far away.

––––––––

‘S
he’s coming after us,’ Beth said.

Beside her, Venn grunted. He had the Beretta in his hand, propped on the steering wheel. The forest road wound away and downward ahead of them.

Venn pressed down on the accelerator.

In the rearview mirror, he saw a car peel away from the stationary fleet. A Lamborghini.

Yes, those guys had been mobsters, all right. Only a wiseguy would bring a sports car to a hit.

They’d stepped out at the back of the house and, seeing nobody around, Venn had led them along the wall, farthest from the sound of the shooting. By the time they reached the front, the shooting had stopped. Corpses were strewn all over, and Venn heard movement inside the cabin.

They’d run for the cars.

Glancing back as he was pulling out, Venn had been so surprised to see who it was at the cabin door that he’d paused.

But only for an instant.

‘It’s her, isn’t it?’ said Beth, in the passenger seat. ‘That detective. Shelly Anderson.’

‘Yes,’ said Venn. ‘Get down. Both of you.’

Beth crouched down in the footwell. In the back, Lomax did the same.

The Lamborghini was gaining on them. Easily.

Venn put his foot down.

Ahead, the road swerved suddenly and Venn gritted his teeth, barely keeping the Land Rover’s wheels from the edge.

On the right side of the road was a dense wall of trees.

On the left was a plunging drop into the forest.

In the rearview mirror, the woman’s arm was coming up outside the window of the Lamborghini, the Armalite gripped in her hand.

She’s got to be immensely strong
, Venn thought.

Or maybe she’s just crazy.

Her aim was off, largely because of the awkwardness of firing one-handed, but the slugs ripped through the air around the Land Rover, singing and whining off the trees.

There was no point in firing back at her, Venn knew. He’d have to slow down to take any kind of proper aim.

Plus, if he didn’t keep his eyes on the road, they were going to go over the edge.

The second salvo came, the noise chattering off the forest walls.

This time Venn felt the Land Rover rock, and he heard a couple of sharp pops as the rear tires blew out.

The Land Rover fishtailed wildly, and Venn fought desperately to retain control, avoiding the mistake of locking the brakes but rather trying to contain the natural movement of the vehicle. The horrible yowling of tearing rubber was followed by a banshee shriek of naked metal wheel rim on blacktop.

He was dimly aware that the Lamborghini was almost on top of them, and he braced himself for the impact even as he struggled to hold the Land Rover on the road.

Then the sports car flashed past, its side scraping the Land Rover’s with a screech, one side mirror busting off and spinning high.

Venn understood. She’d shot past to avoid a direct collision.

Now she was in front of them, and as Venn took the unruly, swerving vehicle round the next curve, he saw the Lamborghini up ahead, maybe a hundred yards down the road.

It had swung round to face them, and was heading back in their direction, picking up speed at a terrifying rate.

The road here was so narrow that two cars would have difficulty riding abreast, even at a crawl.

To the right, the wall of forest.

To the left, the almost sheer drop into the trees.

Well, if she wanted a game of chicken, she could bring it on.

Venn trod on the accelerator once more.

He heard the bare rims of the rear wheels scream in protest. Felt every rut and pothole in the blacktop.

Glancing down, he saw Beth’s face staring up at him from the footwell.

It was time to end this.

He watched the Lamborghini growing larger through the windshield.

Could see the woman’s small face becoming clearer and clearer above the wheel.

She wasn’t aiming the gun. Was focusing all her attention on the game.

And he saw, at the last moment, as the vehicles hurtled toward one another, that she was grinning.

It was a move he’d heard of, but never seen performed. He’d certainly never tried it himself.

Venn spun the wheel clockwise, riding the brake at the same time.

The Land Rover swung through a sideways arc, through more than ninety degrees. Its front fender hit the trunk of a tree on the right hand side of the road.

The rear smashed into the nose of the oncoming Lamborghini with such force that the wheel was almost torn out of Venn’s hands.

The impact spun the Lamborghini sideways, in turn.

And, with an awful, rending noise, the sports car toppled backward over the edge of the slope.

Venn sat for an instant in the stalled Land Rover, stunned. Then he looked down at Beth.

She’d screamed, he vaguely remembered. But her eyes were open, and her face was contorted in fear, not pain.

He craned his neck round, saw Lomax huddled behind his seat, hands over his head. He too looked intact.

It had been a close thing. The other side of the Land Rover was concertinaed inward. A few inches more and Lomax would have been crushed.

Venn leaped down from his seat onto the road. As he did so, a
boom
rose from down in the trees below, as did an orange and black fireball.

He went to the edge and peered down. Saw the path of smashed branches and wrenched-out trunks, leading way down to the forest floor, where the car was a black metal skeleton engulfed in flame.

––––––––

L
omax’s ankle was twisted. When he stepped from the wreckage of the Land Rover he stumbled and fell before Venn could catch him.

‘Can you make it back to the cabin?’ Venn asked.

‘I think so,’ the professor said, wincing.

He hobbled between Venn and Beth, leaning on their arms for support. It was nearly a half-mile walk. Venn bit his tongue, not wanting to rush the injured man but at the same time aware of the dangers of even a minute’s delay.

The emergency services would be there soon, alerted by the explosions and gunfire.

And reinforcements might also be on their way.

Finally they reached the cabin. The log structure was a smoldering ruin. The carnage in front was sickening, like the battlefields Venn had seen in Bosnia and Kosovo.

Venn chose a BMW sedan. Like all of the other vehicles, the keys were still in the ignition.

He looked around for Lomax, saw him near the cabin, crouched down by the body of Stavros.