Thirteen Million Dollar Pop

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Behr freight-trained through the French doors into the kitchen, splintering them in a shower of wood and glass, and landed on his face. Images flickered in front of his eyes as if played by an old film projector with a bad bulb. What was once a high-tech kitchen was destroyed. The table was upended, same with the chairs. Water sprayed out of a small sink, its faucet snapped off. A heavy black shotgun and shells were scattered across the floor. Bullet holes in the Sub-Zero refrigerator and a shotgun blast pattern in cabinets on the opposite side explained the popcorn sound Behr had heard as he entered. Somehow he found his way to his feet again, just as he had in the driveway. If this was the end of it, at least he kept getting up.

Decker was there, having arrived after the first gunshots, and was fighting on the ground with a tall man whose hair was buzzed military close. Both were bloodied, climbing to their feet and squaring. The tall man had a pair of round holes, a tight double tap, torn into his T-shirt, which revealed personal body armor underneath. Decker’s Glock was nowhere to be seen. The tall man’s hand went to his belt buckle in the instant before they lunged at each other with near simultaneous Superman punches. Decker’s landed hard, stunning the man. But the tall man’s landed too, and caused a geyser of blood to spray from Decker’s throat. A glint along the metal loop around the man’s knuckles revealed a HideAway knife, a razor-sharp two-inch point that had been camouflaged as a belt buckle. Decker sagged for just a moment and the man yoked him behind the head, raising his fist for a carotid punch with the blade. Behr blinked away the blood, sweat, and rain running down his face and emptied all five.44 special rounds from his Bulldog into the man, who went down bucking, like a sledgehammered farm animal.