The Diaries - 01 (51 page)

“Stupid fucking
dog!” Nicky snarled as he ejected the spent cartridges and snapped the Beretta
shut.

Marcel was incensed.
 
After yelling at Nicky he was now simply drained,
bent over with his hands on his knees.
 
He gestured to the fatally wounded animal he so loved.
 
“Nicky, at least put the dog out of his
misery.
 
He’s bleeding heavily.”

“No, and don’t
you
touch him either.
 
Let that damned mongrel lay over there and
feel
my
pain until he dies.”
 
Nicky tossed the warm Beretta to Marcel and
walked into the house.

Marcel turned to
look at the dog that was his only real joy when he was at Nicky’s compound.
 
He was quiet now, his chest heaving as he
stretched his ravaged body into the high grass and awaited death.
 
Marcel jerked his head back to the house,
considering all the things Nicky had done in their time together.
 
All of the killings, the sexual assaults, the
beatings, the verbal abuse—the man was out of control.
 

He petted Napoleon,
murmuring words of comfort to the dog.

As he walked back
inside, Marcel wiped a rare tear from his left cheek.

 
 
***

Gage held the
Walther on Nicky as he walked across the lawn and onto the porch.
 
He applied several pounds of pressure as
Nicky neared the door, but at the last second—perhaps his final chance at a
clean shot at Nicky—he released his finger from the trigger and simply stared
at the man, seething.
 
He would
wait.
 

Nicky Arnaud deserved
to see his personal death coming.
 
Needed
to feel it.
 
Needed to taste it.
 

Gage wanted to see
the fear in that bastard’s eyes.
 
He
wanted to smell Nicky’s piss as he lost control of his body when he realized
there was someone alive more ruthless than he.

Now Gage just had
to get to him.

 
 
***

Twenty minutes
later, while Nicky showered, Marcel retrieved a snub-nose .38 from Nicky’s
unlocked gun cabinet.
 
He walked outside,
crossing the lawn to where Napoleon had lain.
 
The sun was nearly down and he was afraid he wouldn’t find him, but he
hadn’t moved.
 
He was right where Marcel
had last seen him.

His body a bloody
mess, Napoleon lay panting raggedly in the grass, looking upward at Marcel with
his one good eye.
 
Marcel leaned down and
patted the dog gently.
 
He was too far
gone to be helped.
 
His skull, eye,
chest, and left leg were shattered beyond repair.
 
But even in his pain, the dog licked Marcel’s
hand in gratitude for the final visit.

Choking back
tears, Marcel patted him one final time.
 
He stood upright, aimed the pistol at the dog’s head and put him out of
his misery.
 
Then he wiped his eyes and
went back into the house.

And Gage Hartline,
who was nearly ready to advance, watched the entire scene.

Chapter 13

The
hill was steep between
Gage’s vantage point and Nicky’s house.
 
It reminded Gage of the terrain in California, a place he had trained
many times.
 
Dusty earth and high scrub
brush.
 
In the dark, any fall could
result in a serious injury.
 

The house was
surrounded by a stucco wall that was nearly eight feet high, topped by a single
strand of concertina wire.
 
He negotiated
the rough slope, dodging rocks, and now stood at the base of the wall, staring
upward, a sliver of moon aiding his vision.
 
The clear night sky allowed the warm day to dissipate rapidly, making
the night quite chilly.
 
Puffs of breath
erupted in front of his face while he determined the best way over the
wall.
 
As Gage did a mental walk-through
of what he planned once the wall was negotiated, he didn’t think a motion
detector should be a concern since the mobster owned a dog—
or once did
.
 
After five
hours of surveillance, Gage had seen no other people, no other animals, so it
was a chance he would have to take.
 

From his bag he
produced a small foam-padded case, containing three rifle lasers with
protruding wires and attached handheld radios.
 
Since the entryway was covered by only two cameras, Gage left the third
laser in the bag, ready in the event he located another camera.
 
Using a weathered log for a boost, Gage
positioned each laser on top of the wall, touching the power button and
carefully sighting each laser directly into the lens of the corresponding
security camera.
 
He only held the red
beams on the cameras for a moment, switching them off once they were firmly sighted.
 
He turned on the power switch of each
handheld, each set to the same digital frequency, then made sure they were both
set to mute.

That done, Gage
was also concerned that the wall’s concertina wire might have a charge—not so
much that he would be shocked—but that an alarm system would recognize if the
wire was cut or the circuit grounded in any way.
 
In more advanced systems, some can even
detect if the wire is stepped on or handled roughly.
 
To defeat this, Gage affixed a thin strand of
climbing rope to a tree twenty meters up the hill.
 
Before he climbed the wall, he pulled the
rope tight and held it in his teeth.

Just as he was
about to climb the rope, Gage depressed the talk button of his handheld radio,
utilizing the always-on feature.
 
He
climbed.
 
Upon reaching the top of the
wall, Gage grasped the rope and leaned backward, using his weight and the
tension of the line to give him balance.
 
A quick glance revealed the red beams in the lens of each camera,
effectively blinding them.
 
Anyone
monitoring the camera would see only a white screen.
 
Hopefully no one was watching.
 
Delicately, he stepped over the concertina
wire, getting both feet across before he tossed the rope to the ground on the
outside.
 
His plan had worked, but the
fall to the inside of the fence was longer than he thought.
 
He hit and rolled, stifling a pained grunt as
his landing was off-center on a rough patch of lawn.
 

Rubbing his leg,
he waited on any other dogs or an unknown alarm.
 
Seeing and hearing none, Gage removed Bruno’s
freshly cleaned .44 Auto Mag from his pack and limped across the lawn.
 
He used a tactical pattern and was as quiet
as a shadow, turning right and going to the back of the house where he had seen
the servant leave by bicycle.
 
A cloud
had moved over the moon, enveloping the lawn in a blanket of blackness.

The back of the mansion
was dominated by two enormous, freestanding columns.
 
Between the columns was an ivy covered
archway, leading to a heavy double door of rough-hewn wood.
 
Gage glanced into the portico, aided by light
coming from the windows above.
 
There
were no cameras that he could see.
 

As he knelt by the
stairs, hidden by a bush, Gage felt a burning pain in his left leg and had to
use all of his willpower not to jump.
 
He
strained his eyes to see that he had been crouching in a winter ant hill.
 
European red ants.
 
He pressed at his leg, doing his best to crush
the infiltrators as the searing acid from their bites registered up and down
his leg.

After stepping
into the cover of the portico, he switched off his radio, making the outer
cameras again active.
 
Then he checked
the door.
 
Locked.
 
From his pack he removed the small package
Kenny had given him, going to work on the expensive, double-bolt lock.
 
Gage remembered a training block under
Colonel Hunter, learning to defeat all manner of locking mechanisms from techniques
as coarse as hitting a door with a sledge hammer ascending to the art of silently
picking a round Zeiss lock with a three-piece pick set.
 
Hunter had brought in two of Beverly Hills’
finest cat-burglars, the articulate men relaying their knowledge of picking
locks so well that they made it sound like a high art form.
 
The lock on Nicky’s door was somewhere in the
middle of the difficulty scale, and Gage was pleased that he and Kenny Mars had
practiced several times in preparation.

Picking the dead-bolt
would be a two-handed job, meaning Gage would have to place the .44 on the
ground.
 
Being temporarily unarmed made
speed imperative.
 
He inserted the torque
tool, nothing more than a small, ninety-degree hex-tool, applying clockwise
pressure.
 
Next, Gage inserted the thin
rod from the manual pick gun, tilting it upward and quietly shaking it until he
felt it clear the last pin.
 
Then,
rapidly, Gage pumped the trigger on the pick gun, wiggling it as he kept the
clockwise pressure on.
 
After two restarts,
and only fourteen seconds of total time, the lock turned.

Gage stowed the
tools in his bag and pushed the door open, diving inside and immediately
rolling behind a sectional sofa, stopping to listen.
 
He smelled food, something heavy on garlic,
and could hear what sounded like a television coming from the second floor.
 
After a tense minute of waiting with the Auto
Mag at the ready, the pistol outstretched, he crept through the den and padded
up the stairs.

At the top of the sweeping
ascent, crouched by the balustrade, Gage chanced a look down the long hallway,
seeing a door open with light emanating from what appeared to be a
bedroom.
 
When he changed his angle he
saw an enormous poster bed with an oil painting behind it and, just as Gage was
about to cross the hallway, he saw the portly Nicky Arnaud flash by the door
with a towel around his waist.
 
Gage
jerked backward, peering.

The sound of the
television was coming from the room Nicky was in.
 
Gage shot across the hallway, disappearing
into a room that he immediately discovered was a mop closet.

It appeared that
Nicky was readying to leave, but Gage was concerned about the other man, and
where he might be at the moment.

 
 
***

Just as Nicky had
pulled on his underwear and was about to apply gel to his wavy black hair, his
eye was drawn to the bank of monitors in the small closet between the bedroom
and dressing room.
 
The cameras appeared
to be functioning normally; there was nothing showing other than the standard darkened
scenery around the mansion.
 
But blue
dots were flashing on the rearmost estate monitor, a sight not uncommon when he
had guests or when Napoleon was running around.

The motion
detector could be reset every minute, hour, day; or whatever slice of time the
operator so chose.
 
His was programmed to
reset each hour, except after midnight, when it would display any
movements—with an audible alarm—until 6 a.m.
 
The blue dots were tethered together by a
line, the
zig-zag
pattern of a man trying to prevent
being seen as he ran in a dodge and cover pattern.

Other than Marcel,
there were to be no guests on this night, and he would be beyond shocked if Napoleon
were to ever get up and run around again. Nicky had no idea that Marcel had
euthanized Napoleon, so he felt it was at least
possible
that it might be the dog wandering the yard in a
daze.
 
But no, that’s not possible, because the first dot is at the northern
wall, the last one
, occurring a minute later according to the monitor,
terminates at the back door
.

The damp hairs on
Nicky’s back stood on end as he reached into the cubby and retrieved his cell
phone.
 
Now backed all the way into the
darkness of the bathroom, he pressed the number one to speed dial Marcel.
 
Marcel picked up on the first ring.

“Where are you?”
Nicky whispered through clenched teeth.

“In your office,
going over the October numbers from Paris.
 
They’re off, by the way.”

“Shut up and
listen,” Nicky hissed.
 

“What’s wrong?”

Nicky chewed on
his lower lip, absently wondering whether the water dripping from his hair was
from the shower or perspiration.
 
“Have
you been outside, moving from the north wall to the back door?”

“What?”

“Have you?” Nicky
growled, using all his restraint to keep his voice down.

“No.
 
Why?”

Nicky pressed
himself farther into the back corner, feeling the hard, cold tile contrasting
with his burning skin.
 
He glanced back
at the monitors, and the cabinet underneath.
 
An idea came to him.
 
His heart
was thudding against his ribs, making it hard for him to speak.
 
“Someone’s in my house, Marcel.
 
Someone has come for me.”

 
 
***

Gage peered from
the mop closet, waiting.
 
He was hoping
the other man, the one who put the dog out of its misery, would pass by at some
point.
 
If so, he could disable him and
rush the bedroom.
 
Or, if Nicky came by,
Gage would grab him and pull him back to the bedroom, shutting the door.
 
It wouldn’t be hard to control Nicky as long
as they were in the bedroom or a bathroom: some place with only one way in and
one way out.

A metallic click
followed by a jingling sound made Gage stand on his toes to gain a view of the
main foyer.
 
It was the portly man in the
blue suit.
 
He had opened the large front
door that led to the patio, stopping in the threshold as he fumbled with his
keys.
 
After finding the key he appeared
to have labored to locate, the man pulled the door shut, locking it.

Very good.
 
The portly man was gone, and now Gage and
Nicky Arnaud were all alone.

Gage gripped the
pistol as he had done with so many others, hundreds of times, thousands—never too
tight, like one would handle a baby bird.
 
After a deep breath, sucking in diluted fumes of bleach and window
cleaner, Gage’s mind focused on the objective, visualizing the killing in the
way he wanted it to happen.
  
Be tactical.
 
Be thorough.
 

Be brutal.
 

He eased open the door,
spinning into the hallway with the pistol leading the way.
 
Gliding down the long Oriental runner, he waited
outside, watching.
 
When he saw nothing,
not even a moving shadow, he entered the bedroom low, sweeping the pistol in an
arc from left to right.

There was no sign
of Nicky.

There was no sign
of anyone.

Shit.

Heart hammering in
his chest, Gage rushed across the room, taking cover behind the bed with only
the wall to his back.
 
He wasn’t able to
hear anything; the built-in television displayed an English soccer match and
the volume was up.
 
The sound came from
all over, no doubt played through a surround-sound system.
 
Leaning against the silken coverlet, Gage
could smell soap and shampoo, and he felt the sticky steam from the hot shower.
 
He glanced at the windows; condensation
trickled down their glass like it would on a warming beer.

Nicky must be in the bathroom.

To the left of the
television was a cavernous walk-in closet with the light on.
 
To the right of the TV was the door he had
just entered through, then a painting that looked like a Picasso.
 
After that, in the far corner, was what had
to be the bathroom.
 
But the light was
off
.

Does he know I’m here?
 
Is he in there waiting?

Gage gnawed on his
lip, thinking.
 
He had watched the
hallway from the utility closet and no one had passed to leave.
 
Unless Nicky had an exit in the closet or the
bathroom, he was still in here, somewhere.
 
Gage held the pistol at an angle allowing coverage of the bathroom as
well as the entrance from the hallway.
 
He glanced inside the closet, clearing it
before moving across the room.
 
When he
reached the entry from the hallway, he looked left and saw no one.
 
Finally, he inched forward to the bathroom,
his shoulders sliding across the six-foot Picasso as he moved.