Chapter 5 - RETALIATION
The hail of lead chewed through the cabin with terrifying efficiency. Splinters flew like shrapnel, buzzing through the air and slicing across my right cheek. I crawled on my belly across the floorboards, dragging the Remington behind me, keeping below the three-foot line where the stone foundation met the cinderblock wall.
Behind the stone hearth, Emily was curled into a ball, her hands clamped over her ears, tears cutting clean lines through the soot and dust settling on her face. Her body shook with uncontrollable spasms of terror, but she didn't scream. She had inherited that from her mother—the ability to hold the panic behind her teeth when the world was coming apart at the seams.
"Stay flat, Em!" I roared over the deafening cacophony of carbine fire ripping through the room. "Don't lift your head!"
The firing abruptly stopped. The metallic clink of fresh magazines seating into rifle receivers echoed across the clearing.
They were reloading. They had three seconds of downtime.
I didn't wait for them to push through the door. I scrambled to the back of the cabin, kicked open the small utility exit that opened directly against the granite bluff, and slipped into the rain.
The downpour was merciless, cold water plastering my gray hair to my skull and stinging the open cut on my cheek. The mud was ankle-deep, slick as grease. I moved along the side of the cabin, staying in the deep shadow of the overhanging roofline, the Remington held tight against my hip.
Around the corner, near the edge of the clearing, one of Kane's men was moving forward in a low crouch, his suppressed carbine scanning the ruined front doorway. He was completely focused on the interior, waiting for his partner to circle from the right.
I closed the distance in four silent strides across the wet pine needles.
Before he heard my boots in the mud, I drove the steel buttstock of the shotgun hard into the side of his ballistic helmet. The impact sounded like a baseball hitting a tree trunk. His knees buckled instantly, his rifle slipping from his fingers as he collapsed face-first into the red clay.
I didn't pause. I reached down, grabbed his carbine by the sling, snatched two spare magazines from his tactical vest, and threw the weapon into the thick brush where he couldn't reach it if he woke up.
"Kane!" I yelled into the darkness of the trees, my voice cutting through the roar of the rain like a rusted saw blade. "You're trespassing on private property! The next round doesn't hit a vest!"
A dry, mocking chuckle floated out from behind the heavy bulk of an old Ford diesel truck idling fifty yards down the path.
"You're a relic, Daniel!" Kane shouted back, his voice amplified by the trees. "You think you're still running an SBI task force? You're an unemployed old man with a broken daughter! Nobody is coming to pull you out of this hole! The Sheriff has the road blocked five miles out! By sunrise, you're both going to be listed as tragic casualties of a domestic hostage standoff!"
"Is that what Margaret promised you?" I yelled back, circling slowly to the left through the dense loblolly pines, using the trunk of a massive oak for cover. "How much is she paying you to murder an SBI agent's family, Marcus? A hundred grand? Two hundred? You think that shell company in the Cayman Islands is going to wire the money after you're named as a co-conspirator in a federal capital murder indictment?"
A moment of hesitation hung in the wet air. Kane was a dirty cop and a mercenary, but he wasn't completely stupid. He knew how the Whitmores handled loose ends.
"Shut up, old man!" Kane barked, but the absolute confidence in his tone had slipped just enough for me to hear the fracture.
Suddenly, a bright flare hissed into the night sky, launched from the woods behind the truck. The blinding magnesium light drifted down beneath a tiny parachute, illuminating the clearing in harsh, stuttering white glare and casting grotesque, elongated shadows across the pines.
In the sudden brightness, I saw Kane. He was crouched beside the rear tire of the truck, raising a heavy semi-automatic rifle equipped with an extended magazine. And beside him stood Grant Whitmore.
Grant wasn't in tactical gear. He wore a heavy wool overcoat, his blond hair plastered to his forehead by the rain, his handsome face contorted into an expression of rabid, unhinged fury. In his right hand, he held a sleek black polymer pistol.
"Where is she, Daniel?!" Grant screamed, stepping out from behind the truck, completely disregarding Kane’s attempt to pull him back into cover. "Give me my wife! She belongs to me! She signed the prenuptial agreement, she signed the non-disclosure covenants! Everything in her head belongs to the Whitmore family!"
"She's not a piece of real estate, Grant!" I roared, stepping out from behind the oak, the Remington leveled squarely at his chest. "Drop the weapon, or I swear to God I'll end this right here on the dirt!"
Grant didn't drop the weapon. His eyes were wide, glassy with a mixture of cocaine and aristocratic panic. He raised the pistol, aiming it directly at my head. "You ruined everything! She was going to keep her mouth shut! We were going to transfer the port funds by Friday! You brought the law into this, you miserable, broke old bastard—"
Crack!
A high-powered rifle shot shattered the wet night air.
It didn't come from my shotgun. It didn't come from Kane’s carbine.
The bullet struck the red clay six inches in front of Grant’s designer boots, sending a geyser of mud and gravel flying into his face. Grant shrieked like a scalded animal, tumbling backward into the muck, dropping his pistol as he scrambled frantically behind the rear bumper of the truck.
From the tree line at the entrance of the driveway, two sets of heavy searchlights flared to life, cutting through the magnesium smoke with blinding, four-million-candlepower beams.
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A voice boomed through an external PA system—cold, authoritative, and backed by the sound of twenty tactical boots hitting the wet ground in unison:
"This is Special Agent in Charge Reynolds, North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation! All individuals drop your weapons and hit the ground face down! Do it now!"
