Overfall

Thirty-nine

“We have a problem,” Benoit said when she reached Gaudet.

“Well, I have a few myself. Why are you calling me?”

“Samir Aziz has Jacques at gunpoint in the laboratory and he’s gotten all the hormone he needs to be fearless for the next decade.”

“We’ll deal with it tomorrow. Any more good news?”

“The lawyers are in court. They’re anticipating Anna’s people, and they are filing papers saying that we want an order halting any interference with Jason’s guardianship. Roberto is of course asserting that he is the lawful guardian. What we really need is Jason in our custody back in France. That way we can get someone here appointed even if it isn’t Roberto. Someone with ties to Grace.”

“I know you need Jason back in France, but it will be hard to explain a war over here in Canada, and he is heavily guarded. I’m trying to do it quietly.”

“The lawyers say we need him on French soil now. Do whatever it takes. We’ll explain that some mercenary got out of control if we have to. That’s better than not having him at all.”

“That’s a messy way to handle things. And I’m the one who stands to lose when the authorities decide to hunt this ‘mercenary.’ ”

“We’ll blame DuShane’s men. Or Aziz. But we can’t continue on without Jason. So get him or we’re finished.”

“What do you mean finished? How can one man-”

“His work is worth billions and it’s not complete.”

“This can’t be done ‘now.’ ”

“If you don’t do it we’re beaten.”

“You know what we’re risking if I use maximum force.”

“I know.”

She hung up furious, wondering if Gaudet would get her condemned to a French jail for the rest of her life. She picked up the phone. She had exaggerated Jason’s importance, but not by much.

“Claude. Claude Balford. Head of security. We need to talk about his mental stability.”

“Huh?”

“I think he’s become unstable. He’s off in Canada. I’m worried he’ll do something crazy. We will need evidence of his instability. Do you understand me?”

Sam was sitting on a ridge across the valley from an ancient cave known to the Tiloks as Man Jumps. The cave was in the side of a formidable gray cliff spotted with the green of stubborn trees that had crammed their toes in the rock and made a home of a seeming vertical wasteland. Sun glistened on the mountain’s face and poured down her blue-gray flanks. There was green in the wet algae near seeps as if nature had thrown Irish sparkles. Around him on the ridge it was quiet. Strewn at his feet were wild-flowers whiter than an eagle’s crown spread over grasses lush from spring rain. As he watched the cave a woman, Anna, appeared. She called to him in her trouble and was frantic about the sheer drop and the death awaiting her if she fell. He tried to call to her, to beckon to her, but she did not see his hand or hear his call. He rose, frustrated at the vast gulf that lay between them.

Two men appeared behind her, grabbing her. They fought, and he saw her arms flying as the man tried to draw her away, back into the cave.

The alarm filled Sam’s ears. He grabbed for Anna, who was coiled around him, then jumped at the sounds of automatic rifle fire and nearly threw her from the bed. The shooting was on the perimeter. The digital clock read 4:00 A.M. He had been sleeping in his flak jacket and had made Anna, Grady, and Jason wear them fully clothed to bed.

“Come on,” he said, his head still full of the dream.

“All right. To the safe room?”

“Yes.”

They took Grady and Jason and went toward the living area, then down a narrow hall. The safe room had been built like a bank vault, but with human habitation in mind. It contained air bottles and masks, enough for twelve hours of isolation. Ventilation could be totally sealed. The insulation inside was more than a foot thick. To get somebody out would take a blast that would kill them.

The safe room stood freely except for its back wall, which fit snugly against the back wall of the utility room and its base that was sunk in concrete. Sam had been told that even the utility room walls had been reinforced with multiple layers of plywood to shield the box from external explosions.

“Put them in. I can shoot,” Anna said. Sam just nodded, unwilling to waste critical seconds arguing. They put Jason and Grady through the six-inch steel door and according to instructions it was then locked from the inside.

Before they got to the living room, T.J. had all the lights out inside the house.

They found a man on watch with a radio, and T.J. alternately barking orders into a microphone and nervously chewing on a plastic coffee stir-stick. They had turned the living room into a command center by moving back sofas, storing furnishings, and placing an old dining table from a local furniture store in the center of the room. It struck a discordant note, like discount fiberboard furniture in the lobby of a Four Seasons hotel.

An umbrella rack by the front door held four M4s and on the hat rack above several pairs of night-vision goggles and a half-dozen gas masks. The two-acre grounds were normally lit by hundreds of walkway and shrubbery lights that actually created the feeling of perpetual twilight. Now the outdoor lighting was being knocked out with bullets. They took up night-vision goggles and placed them on their foreheads, ready to use. Each of them, including Anna, held an M4. Sam handed Anna a gas mask.

The weapons fire was deafening. Muzzle blasts flashed everywhere. Men screamed. Men swore. The radio crackled constantly.

“Did you get the Mounties on the phone?” Sam said.

“I’ll do it now,” T.J. said.

Heavy fire poured through the house. All over the groundsmen were shooting, each man with his own personal war.

“They’re everywhere,” a harried voice shouted.

“Roger that.” There was a roar of shots running together.

After a second of fiddling, T.J. shouted: “Lines down. I’ll use the cell.”

After a minute he spoke again. “Nothing.”

“Let me try.” Sam pulled out a cell.

“Hello, hello,” the police dispatcher said.

“We have a firefight up the hill from Ganges,” Sam said.

“Mister, I got a whole war up there.”

“That’s right. Send officers, tell them to be careful.”

“There are three Mounties on the island, a boat at Galliano. Won’t be much. Won’t be fast.”

“We’re losing good guys up here.”

“I know, I know. We’ll do what we can. I’ll have them call you.”

The cell lost the signal before he could give her the number. The place wouldn’t be hard to find.

“These assholes won’t quit,” somebody shouted.

“Just blow them to pieces,” another man replied.

There were three explosions. The first blew out the windows. The second knocked the texture from the walls and buckled the ceiling and Sheetrock. Dust was everywhere. With the third explosion the entire structure shook and strained like a groaning old man. Two fighters came through the windows, and their bodies were ripped with bullets from outside and in. One of them lost at least half his head, but for seconds the breath of him still wheezed bloody froth out the trachea.

“We have a shrinking perimeter. Our men are withdrawing to their clusters around the house and grounds.” Sam saw Anna shooting next to him. Something in him reacted and he pulled her low to the ground.

“Be careful.”

As if to punctuate his words, rifle bullets began popping through the room and blowing holes in the wall. They remained hunkered behind the sandbags except when Sam rose, looking for shadows in the half-light. Outside it might have been Gettysburg, the way the smoke drifted in the night breeze. Men were down and screaming, calling out their anger as blood ran from ragged wounds and the cold of death crept through their bodies.

Bullets continued pouring through the windows, shattering remaining shards of glass. Sam could feel the jolt of the sandbags as they took rounds through the wall. Tear gas sailed through the window, streaming a picturesque arc of noxious balls of light before it hit the floor. They threw on the masks.

Then a. 50-caliber machine gun began answering from just outside the house, and soon a similar gun responded, shaking the walls, blowing apart the studs. Wood flew from the ceiling as it knocked chunks out of the timbers. Then more huge explosions.

“They’re back into the rockets,” Sam said. “What have they got?” he shouted into the radio.

“No armor. All stuff you can carry. Rockets, fifty-caliber stuff. These bastards are crazy. You blow parts off ’em and they keep coming.”

Just then the wall behind them exploded and a cloud of white went everywhere.

“I got him, I got him.”

Sam knew that some soldier meant the guy with the launcher. Then a second rocket hit the house above their heads. “Must be more than one,” he muttered inanely. The concussion was bad and they were swathed in cotton-white dust clouds. Without the masks they’d have been choked nearly dead.

As the dust cleared, one of Sam’s men jumped through the window. His arm came off in midflight, leaving only red muck and the white of a blood-spurting artery.

Anna screamed from down the wall. In the confusion she must have moved away from him.

“Everybody out,” T.J. cried.

Sam knew he was right. The house was a target and the enemy had rockets. Either they were not that worried about Jason or they knew about the safe room.

Sam crawled after Anna just as another explosion ripped through the room. Able to see nothing, he crawled ahead, grabbing for her, but somehow she must have moved away from the wall. He could see nothing.

“Anna,” he called.

“Out, out,” T.J. said. “I sent her out.”

Sam scrambled, hoping Anna had indeed run out into the night. Grady and Jason would be safe in the concrete and steel.

He leaped through the window and crawled clear of the house for maybe thirty yards, shouting, looking for Anna. Finally he lay in the winter grass. Shots were being fired on every quarter. There were pockets of light and fleeting shadows, the rush of adrenaline, the craze of killing. One of Sam’s men sat on the grass holding a torn arm and wrapping a belt around it, trying to stop the blood. One of the enemy crawled with only his arms, his back obviously broken by a bullet, but undaunted.

Soldier profile.

Sam aimed at his head, but couldn’t or wouldn’t shoot. He wasn’t sure which. The man had no rifle but wore a pistol on his belt. Sam crawled over and yanked it away as the man struggled for it. There was a grenade belt that Sam also stripped. The man continued on. It appeared he was still attacking the house.

“You’re going soft,” T.J. said.

“Without a doubt.” Sam’s men were in little clusters, making no line that could be charged. Approaching the house could be a deadly sport and going inside worse-just as it had been for Sam. Now the enemy would have to slow down or be shot to pieces.

“Have you seen Anna?”

“No. I thought she was ahead of us. She could be anywhere around here,” T.J. said.

He looked at the cavernous black of the blown-out windows. Then his dream came back to him. Anna calling from a cave. He knew what was happening.

“You manage things from out here,” he said to T.J., and ran for the house.

“Like hell,” he heard T.J. say.