Bestiary

CHAPTER FORTY

By the time he got to the back gates that provided the service entrance to the estate, Sadowski was huffing and puffing so hard he thought his chest would explode. He swung them wide open and, once safely outside, stopped and leaned against the wall, his head down, his palms flat against the vine-covered stone.

Jesus H. Christ, what had happened back there?

The plan was just to stage a little raid, kind of like the one al-Kalli himself had sponsored back in Mosul. But Sadowski had been cheated on that one — he knew that Greer took home a whole lot more, in that big sealed box, than he’d ever shared up with the other guys on the mission — and this was going to be Sadowski’s chance to even up the score. And maybe screw up whatever new moneymaking deal Greer had struck with the Arab now.

But that just wasn’t how it had turned out so far. Man, was it not. Florio was dead — that gigantic bird had stuck a claw right through his chest cavity — and there was no telling what had happened to Tate, that cowardly piece of shit. Sadowski swallowed hard — his mouth was so dry he had almost no spit — and glanced at his watch. What was supposed to have taken no more than ten or fifteen minutes had consumed the better part of an hour. And if he didn’t get out of there fast — very fast — he’d be cooked right along with everything else that fucking Arab owned.

Those goddamned animals included.

He took a long, ragged breath and looked down the road, fully expecting to see the Explorer gone. Everything else had gone wrong, why not that? But there it was, parked where he’d left it, in the shade of some old oaks.

And if he wasn’t mistaken, that was Tate, sitting in the driver’s seat and fiddling under the steering wheel… trying, no doubt, to hot-wire the engine.

Sadowski slung his backpack higher on his shoulder and tromped over to the car. Even with the door open, Tate didn’t hear him coming, and only looked up from under the dashboard when Sadowski shook the car keys and said, “I ought to leave you here to burn.”

“Stan!” Tate exploded, with patently fake enthusiasm, “you made it! That’s great — I mean, I was really worried!”

Sadowski grabbed him by the collar and dragged him out of the front seat. He tossed his Browning onto the passenger side, but before he stepped up into the car, he sniffed the air. The acrid smell of smoke was already wafting up from the dry scrub a few yards down the hill. He checked his watch — the first firebomb had ignited at precisely the right time, but the flames were moving even faster than he’d planned. He could see them now — orange licks crackling through the brown grass and racing up the trunks of the dry trees. Like fireworks going off, the tops of the oaks and eucalyptus trees burst into balls of flame, first one tree, and then the next, and before he could even get the Explorer into gear, a huge flaming branch crashed down onto the road about ten feet in front of the car.

“Wait for me!” Tate shouted, running around to the passenger side.

But Sadowski was already backing up, hoping to get enough room to maneuver around the burning branch.

“Wait! Stan!” Tate was shouting, as his hands scrabbled at the side of the car. “Give me a break!”

He should have thought of that, Sadowski figured, before he ditched his bat and left him alone in that zoo from hell.

He switched gears and started forward again, but Tate had run right in front of the car, screaming and waving his arms back and forth. Billows of black smoke were starting to drift across the road and over the stone walls of the estate. Sadowski shook his head and motioned for Tate to get out of the way. He blasted the horn, but Tate threw himself on the front of the car and clung to the hood ornament — a Liberty Bell that Sadowski had special-ordered from Philadelphia.

Sadowski drove ahead a few yards, Tate still hanging on, when everything suddenly went crazy — a whole tree must have toppled onto the hood of the car. The windshield shattered, the roof caved in, and a thousand angry red sparks zipped around the interior like fireflies. Any second the gas tank could explode!

The door was dented and jammed; Sadowski had to shove his shoulder against it three times before he could even get it open. Toppling onto the pavement, he scrambled through a maze of burning leaves and twigs. He didn’t even know which way he was running — the smoke was too thick and he could barely stand to open his eyes — but he knew he just had to get away from the car. The explosion, when it came, knocked him head over heels. He lay where he fell — there was earth under him, not concrete, that much he could tell — but there was no time to dig any kind of trench or hole; with his eyes shut, he dug the asbestos sheath out of his backpack. He fumbled to open it, then pushed his feet down into one end, pulled the rest of it up and over his head, and with singed fingers yanked the zipper up from the inside. If the fire passed over him quickly enough, and he could just catch enough oxygen, he’d survive. If it lingered, he’d wind up like Tate, who was surely nothing but a cinder in the middle of the road by now.