Hard as Nails

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

As the big helicopter plummeted, Kurtz banished the blue-pill haze from his mind and body.

He willed away the false good-feeling and tinge of good humor that overlay everything. He willed away the cloud of painlessness and let both his headache and his resolve flow back in like black ink. He willed away the soft pharmaceutical fog and summoned the hard-edged core of Joe Kurtz back to duty.

The big Bell Long Ranger hit hard, jarring Kurtz's spine and sending the old familiar spikes through his skull, slid a few yards across slick grass, and came to a stop. Immediately Gonzaga and his man Bobby were out the side door and running. Angelina and her bodyguard, Campbell, followed a minute later, carrying Mp5s, the ditty bags filled with ammunition rattling at their hips.

Kurtz struggled with the four point straps for a few seconds, slapped them away, grabbed up his bag, set the folded aluminum and web litter over his shoulder on a sling, and went out through the side door just as Baby Doc stepped out his pilot-side door and pulled two long tubes from behind his seat. The pilot hung one of the tubes over his shoulder with a sling and carried the other. They looked like RPGs, the old Russian and Eastern European rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

"What're those?" whispered Kurtz. The two were jogging toward the house now in the dark, passing the dark shape of the Major's Huey.

"RPGs," said Baby Doc and turned in the direction of the driveway.

"Wait!" called Kurtz.

Baby Doc turned but did not stop jogging.

"I thought you were staying with the chopper," whispered Kurtz.

Baby Doc grinned. "I never said I would."

"What if you get killed?"

The grin stayed in place. "You guys will either have to take flying lessons or start walking." He turned his back and ran toward the head of the driveway.

There was a dead man lying in the guardhouse gazebo. Nothing stirred except the six of them jogging toward the house. The external security lights were on in the back, but the house remained dark.

Angelina Farino Ferrara set the C-4 charge on the door, triggered the tuned detonator, and stepped back with the other three just as Kurtz came jogging up. The blast wasn't as loud as Kurtz expected, but it was pretty sure to wake everyone in the house. The door flew inward, showing steel reinforcements blown off at the hinges.

Gonzaga went in first. His bodyguard followed a second later. Angelina and her man lunged in a second after that.

This is nuts, thought Kurtz, not for the first time that night. One did not assault a house without knowing the houseplans intimately. He raised the Browning and threw himself through the door.

The foyer and hall lights had come on, which was not good. The layout was as he remembered—the foyer opening on the center hall straight ahead, staircase to the right—Angelina and her man were already pounding up it—a dark, formal living room was visible to his left, closed doors along the hallway to the left and right.

Gonzaga kicked open the first door to the right of the foyer and tossed in a flash-bang. The explosion was very loud. Bobby, the bodyguard, kicked in the second door to the right and dodged back as a hail of automatic weapons fire slashed across the foyer, shattering the chandelier and tearing apart vases and furniture in the living room across the way. Bobby fired his shotgun into the room, pumped it, fired again, pumped it, fired again. The machine gun fire stopped abruptly.

Upstairs, two explosions poured smoke down the stairway.

Kurtz ran across the foyer, scattering crystal as he ran. Plaster was falling from the high ceiling. He could see the glass library doors fifty feet or so straight ahead and anyone in that dark room could see him. There were too many lights in this broad hallway, and they were too recessed to shoot out, so he felt like the target he was as he dodged from one side to the other and paused where the hallway began.

Gonzaga came out of the room behind him and fired up the staircase to Kurtz's right. A black-garbed figure tumbled down the steps and an M-16 fell onto the foyer tiles. Not one of ours, thought Kurtz.

"You take the left, Bobby and I'll take the right," shouted Toma Gonzaga.

Kurtz nodded and dodged left just as the library doors exploded shards of glass outward. Toma, Bobby, and Kurtz jumped against doorways. Two shotguns and Kurtz's Browning fired at the same time, smashing the last shards of the glass doors. Kurtz wanted to get to the Major's room, which opened off the left side of the library at the end of the hall, but right now he wasn't going anywhere as someone fired an M-16 again from the darkness of the library.

The second door on the left along that hallway opened and one of the Vietnamese bodyguards peered out, ducked back behind the door, held out an M-16, and sprayed the hallway. Gonzaga and Bobby were out of sight behind Kurtz, in the rooms along the opposite side of the hallway. Shotgun blasts roared and filled the air with cordite stink.

Kurtz pressed into the first doorway on the left—the door was locked—and waited until the spray of plaster and ricochets from the M-16 blast let up. Then he aimed the Browning at the center of the open wooden doorway and fired five slugs into it, about chest high. There was a cry and the sound of a body tumbling down the stairs.

Basement. Kurtz wanted to go down there—it was his job to—but he had to secure the library first. He ran, firing, to the basement doorway. There was no return fire from beyond the shattered glass of the library.

There was a light on downstairs and Kurtz could see the bodyguard's body crumpled at the base of the steps. Kurtz pulled a flash-bang grenade from his bag, flipped the primer, and tossed it down the stairs, stepping back behind the door while it exploded. When he peered around, the basement was full of smoke and the bodyguard's clothing was burning. He hadn't moved.

More explosions from the second floor. The gunfire up there was horrendous. Kurtz wondered if Angelina had survived the Battle of the North Bedroom or whatever the hell it was.

As Kurtz lunged around and crouched on the top step of the basement stairs, still focused on the library doors, Gonzaga and Bobby poked their heads out of their doorways.

"These rooms are clear," shouted Gonzaga. "At least two down here. What about the library?"

Automatic weapons fire exploded from the dark library again, stitching the walls along the wide hallway and making all three men duck back. Kurtz had caught a glimpse of two splaying muzzle flashes.

"It's not clear," he called from the top step. "Two machine guns at least."

"Throw a flash-bang," called Bobby.

I can do better than that, thought Kurtz. He took a wad of C-4 from his ditty bag, wadded it into a rough sphere, stuck in a primer detonator, and set it for four seconds. He lunged into the hall and threw it like a fastball through the shattered doors, jumping back onto the top step just as both M-16s opened up.

The blast blew the wide doors off their hinges and rolled a cloud of acrid smoke down the hallway.

Kurtz, Gonzaga and Bobby ran into the smoke, firing as they ran.

The last door on the right opened. An Asian woman looked out and screamed. Her hands were empty.

"No!" shouted Kurtz over his shoulder, but too late. Gonzaga fired at her with his shotgun at a range of twenty feet and the woman's upper body flew back into the room as if jerked away on a cable.

Kurtz kicked the hanging library doors open and rolled in among broken glass and splintered doorframe. The carpet was on fire. Smoke rose to the cathedral ceiling and a smoke alarm was screaming, hitting almost the same note the Asian woman had.

Trinh and another Vietnamese had been firing from behind a long, heavy library table they'd turned on its side. The C-4 blast had shattered the table into several chunks and a thousand splinters and thrown it all back over them. The bodyguard had been blown out through the glass terrace doors—a burglar alarm raised its whoop in chorus to the smoke alarm—and that man was obviously dead. Colonel Trinh was lying unconscious on the smoking carpet. His face was bloody and his left arm was visibly broken, but he was breathing. His red slippers had been blown off and one of them sat in a bookshelf ten feet up the high wall of shelves. The colonel's shattered M-16 lay nearby.

Kurtz rolled the colonel on his belly, pulled flexcuffs from his bag, and cuffed the man's wrists behind him. Tightly.

"Take him out to the chopper," he told Bobby, who was swinging his shotgun in short arcs, covering every opening, including the broken doors onto the lighted terrace.

"I don't take orders from you."

"Do it," said Gonzaga, stepping through the broken doors from the hallway.

Bobby grabbed the old Vietnamese man by his hair, pulled him halfway up, tucked a shoulder under him, hoisted him onto his shoulder without releasing his shotgun, and jogged down the hallway with him.

"Strong fucker," said Kurtz.

"Yeah."

The two men had each taken a knee and were covering different doorways. Upstairs, the rock 'n' roll gunfire had resolved itself into the occasional short bursts of full auto.

"That's the Major's bedroom," said Kurtz, jabbing a finger at the closed door on the south wall of the library. "You get him. I'm going to check the basement."

Gonzaga nodded and ran to the right of the bedroom doorway, jamming more shells into his 12-gauge as he did so.

Good idea, thought Kurtz as he went back out into the hallway. He pulled another clip from his pocket. He'd kept count of his shots out of old habit—nine fired so far. There should be two bullets left in the Browning, one in the chamber and one in the clip.

The bodyguard's body at the bottom of the steps was still on fire, but the smoke in the basement had dissipated some. Besides the burning carpet and books in the library on the first floor, something on the second floor was also burning—smoke poured down into the foyer. The shooting up there had stopped.

Suddenly there was a double explosion from outside, north of the house, where the driveway came up from the valley.

Well, Baby Doc got to use at least one of his RPGs.

Kurtz went down the steps, pistol extended. A glance at the heaped body at the bottom showed him that he'd managed to put three slugs into the Asian man's chest through the door. Kurtz moved into the basement.

Surprisingly for such a fancy house, the basement wasn't finished. The central part was open and carpeted, there was a big screen TV and some cheap couches near the far wall a small kitchen and bar area showed a refrigerator and booze, but part of the floor was bare concrete and the place smelted of sweat and cigarettes. It looked to Kurtz like a place where the bodyguards might hang out. More smoke was roiling down the stairway.

There were three small rooms and a bathroom off the open room, and Kurtz kicked all the doors open.

He found Rigby in the last room.

She was lying half-naked on a bloody mattress set on the concrete floor and she looked dead. Then he saw the crude IV-drip and wad of bandages on her left leg and he went to one knee next to her. She was unconscious and very pale, her skin felt cold and clammy, but when he put fingers to her throat, he could feel the faint pulse. They'd been trying to keep her alive until tomorrow when they could finish the job in Buffalo with Kurtz's gun. Rigby's eyes fluttered but did not open.

He unslung the litter from his back, unfolded it, and then wondered what the hell he was doing. He wasn't going to get anyone else down here to help him carry the stretcher.

"Sorry, Rig," he said, and tucked the Browning in its holster, folded her over his shoulder in a fireman's carry, grabbed the slung IV bottle, and carried her up the sleep stairs. She moaned when he moved her but did not regain consciousness.

The house was definitely on fire. There were shots from the library, but Kurtz didn't turn that way. He went down the hall and into the smoky foyer.

Movement on the stairs made him shift the small IV bottle and draw his pistol.

Angelina Farino Ferrara came down the stairs through toe smoke, staggering under the load of a man's body on her shoulder. Her face, arms, hands, and sweater were drenched in blood, and she still carried the Mp5 in her right hand.

"Jesus," said Kurtz as they both went out the front door with their burdens. "Your man?"

"Yeah," panted Angelina. "Campbell."

"Alive?"

"I don't know. He took one in the throat." She paused under the porte cochere and nodded toward Rigby's pale, bare legs and white underwear. "Your girlfriend? She'd have a nice ass if it wasn't for the cellulite."

Kurtz said nothing. He drank in the fresh air. Flames crackled from the upper stories. A figure moved in the driveway and both he and Angelina swung, weapons coming up.

"Don't shoot," said Baby Doc. He had his own Mp5 slung over his shoulder and was carrying one of the RPGs with its grenade still on the muzzle.

Kurtz looked to where the driveway came up to the last guard barrier and saw an SUV and a sheriff's vehicle burning in a single conflagration. "All that with one RPG?" he said as the three turned and began moving quickly toward the helicopter.

"Yep," said Baby Doc. His face was smudged with soot and there was a burn or cut on his right cheek. He looked at Angelina staggering under the weight of her bodyguard but didn't offer to help. "You two go on," he said as they passed the dark Huey. "I'll be right there."

Halfway to the Long Ranger, Angelina had to pause to shift Campbell's weight on her back, but Kurtz didn't pause with her. Rigby was moaning. Blood poured down her leg and sopped through his sweater and ran down his left arm.

A loud blast made him turn. Baby Doc had fired the remaining RPG into the Huey and the black machine was burning strongly. The Lackawanna boss jogged past him, carrying only his rifle now. "Old Israeli commando rule—don't leave their air force behind," he said as he ran past. "Or something like that."

Baby Doc had already clambered into the chopper and fired up the turbines when Kurtz reached the open door and laid Rigby on the plastic-sheeted floor next to where the Yemeni doctor was working on Colonel Trinh where he lay, still flexcuffed and bleeding. Dr. Tafer moved away from the colonel, leaned over Rigby and shined a flashlight into her eyes and then on her wound.

"How is she?" asked Kurtz, leaning against the open door of the helicopter to catch his breath.

"Barely alive," said Dr. Tafer. "Much blood loss." He pulled the IV needle out and tossed the almost empty bottle out into the grass. "This is saline solution. She needs plasma." He pulled a plastic bag of plasma from his box and slid the needle into Rigby's terribly bruised arm.

Angelina staggered up with her man and dumped him onto the floor next to Rigby. The floor of the Long Ranger was filled with bodies. "Triage," she gasped and sat down on the grass.

Dr. Tafer shone his flashlight into Campbell's open, unblinking eyes and inspected the neck wound. "Dead," said the doctor. "Get him out of way, please."

"We're taking him home," said Angelina from the grass.

Kurtz leaned and shoved the bodyguard's body against the rear bulkhead, tucking him half beneath the bench there.

"It sounds like Napoleon's goddamned retreat from Moscow back there," called Baby Doc from the pilot's seat.

"Shut up," said Angelina over the rotor and turbine roar. She got to her feet, dropped the empty banana cup out of her rifle, and slapped in a new one from her ditty bag. She and Kurtz both began walking back toward the burning house.