Ghost Rendition Page 20

  “What’s going on, Gib?” She sounded scared, and I didn’t blame her.

  “I can’t explain right now, but don’t move. No matter what you hear, don’t move.”

  “Tell me what’s going on right now,” she said.

  A hellacious explosion rocked the house. It was the rest of the gnomes going up at once.

  “You’re going to be okay. I’ll be back,” I yelled through the door, not sounding convincing even to myself.

  “That wasn’t me,” I heard Pratt say over the ringing sound in my ear.

  “They picked up the detonation signal after the first blast,” I said, telling him what he already knew.

  The next wave came from all four sides. They were outfitted exactly like the first, and they seemed to materialize out of nowhere. They must have taken position, while the first wave kept our attention.

  “Sprinklers,” I yelled to Pratt.

  “I’m not deaf,” he said.

  “We let this group close on us, and your hearing will be the least of your worries.”

  Pratt activated the in-ground sprinkler system. Sulfuric acid doesn’t look much different from water, but when it hits, it feels a whole lot different. It not only burns the skin, it actually sucks the water out of it. At the right concentration, it is also highly corrosive to metal, and it will burn through fabric like a hot knife. It would ruin the sprinkler system, but I thought Suzanne would forgive me. I didn’t know how I was going to explain any of this to her, but the sprinklers probably wouldn’t be the sticking point.

  The men who took hits on their exposed skin screamed in agony. The ones who took it in the body armor stripped as fast as they could before the smoking armor disintegrated. Caroline and I picked them off as soon as they dropped their armor. Where did Westfield find these guys? And how did he convince them that they weren’t going to be cannon fodder?

  “Any word from Todd and Ben on finding Westfield?” I asked Pratt.

  “I can’t contact them. Westfield’s guys are jamming our comms.”

  “You can’t break through?” I asked.

  “I’ve been busy,” he said. He was actually getting the hang of sarcasm.

  Our setup had done a good job of neutralizing their ground attack. It was the ones in the trees that were a problem. Westfield had sent over thirty men to their death to buy time for at least six others to climb trees. They hit us from two sides. I took cover below the window line, but Caroline was exposed.

  “Time for Rudolph,” I said to Pratt.

  Controlling a drone of Rudolph’s size and complexity wasn’t easy. From what I could hear, Pratt did a good job of flying Rudolph off the roof, laser targeting the tree lines with his red nose and spraying it with 20-mm ordnance. He got half of the snipers, but the rest lit him up. Poor Rudolph hit the ground, never to play reindeer games again.

  Caroline came down from the roof and joined me on the second floor. We set up on opposite sides and strafed the trees to keep the remaining snipers at bay. They were still only on two sides, which I thought was odd right up until I heard multiple thuds on the roof. I was about to ask Pratt what he saw on the webcams, but he beat me to it.

  “Four contractors in single man gliders on the roof and more on the way,” he said. “They’re coming from the back tree line.”

  “Come down to the second floor and give them a Christmas greeting.”

  Pratt joined us and did his usual fast typing into his laptop. I would have liked to have seen the look on the gliders’ faces when Santa pivoted and started firing a massive auto-cannon. It projected high-velocity 40-mm ordnance that could take out a jeep. It would make hash of their body armor.

  I looked over Pratt’s shoulder. The webcam on the roof shook violently, but I caught a quick glimpse of the carnage. The first gliders were shredded beyond recognition. Pratt looked like he was going to puke.

  “Are you okay?” I asked and ran back to the side window to fire at the tree snipers.

  “No,” he yelled after me.

  If we could keep the gliders at bay, we had a chance of slugging it out with the snipers. But Santa’s 50-mm helper, suddenly went silent.

  I ran back to Pratt. “Tilt the webcam up.”

  “The webcam on the roof blew.”

  “Try the one in the attic.”

  He hit a few keys and the screen showed nothing but black.

  “It must have blown too,” I said.

  “Nope.” He moved the mouse and the black was bordered by splintered wood. A grenade had taken out Santa and half the roof. We were looking at the sky. And more gliders were headed our way. Tactically we were in tough shape. We couldn’t run or the snipers would pick us off. And once the contractors were in the house, we would be outgunned and pinned down.

  “Take Caroline and go down to the first floor. Try to pinpoint Westfield. This was phased too carefully. He has to be nearby directing. That means a computer, cameras, and comms. Find him.”

  “Ben and Todd are on that.”

  “Now you’re on it too.”

  I dropped my MSR, which was not good for close quarters. I wasn’t as familiar with the MTAR-22 as Caroline was, but Rob had secured two of them, so that’s what I had to work with. I raced up the stairs to the attic. I set the MTAR to fully automatic. I needed maximum coverage, not surgical accuracy. I hit the floor when I got to the landing, threw open the door to the attic, and sprayed the room. At close range, its 5.56-mm armor-piercing rounds could cut through body armor. More gliders than I had hoped had made it into the house. I hit as many as I could and rolled back down the stairs before they were on me.

  We had saved one gnome for emergencies. I put him on the stairs to the attic and hustled down to the second floor.

  “Blow the gnome,” I said into my comm.

  Pratt laughed. He was such a kid. I laughed too.

  I took cover under Devon’s bed. The blast sent chunks of plaster raining down around me. It would slow the gliders down, but not for long.

  “I’m coming down with Devon and Suzanne. I’m sending them out in the Camry,” I said into my comm. “We’ll need to cover them until they’re clear. And unless Westfield’s troops know Pratt is here with us, they won’t let them get far.”

  I moved Devon’s desk aside and threw the door to Suzanne’s bedroom open. She and Devon were cowering under the bed. They were too shell-shocked to speak. I took their hands and dragged them after me down the stairs. Caroline and Pratt were waiting for me on the first floor.

  “The Camry has bulletproof glass. When we open the garage door, you drive as fast as you can and don’t stop no matter what. Drive right to my house and into the garage,” I said to Suzanne.

  “Bulletproof glass? Gib, I don’t understand any of this. Why not call the police?” Suzanne said.

  “These guys would slaughter them. You need to go right now. My garage is a safe room. You’ll be okay there,” I said.

  “Come with us. I don’t know what they’re involved in, but it can’t have anything to do with you,” Suzanne said.

  “You’d never get clear without me covering you. They’d shoot out your tires,” I said.

  “Why you? You don’t know how to shoot.”

  “Actually he does,” Caroline interrupted. “I’ve been training him. I’m a government agent and I agreed to let him follow me for his next book, Spycraft for Morons. It turns out he’s a natural marksman.”

  It was a great lie, exactly ridiculous enough that it felt true. Suzanne opened her mouth, started to protest, looked around at all the havoc and had nothing to say.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you. I signed a strict non-disclosure agreement. Her work is classified and it was never supposed to affect our lives. Now you have to get out of here,” I said. “Drive right into my garage. Close the door behind you and don’t come out until I tell you.”

  “Todd and Ben are waiting for you,” Pratt said and handed Devon a thumb drive. “This is an analysis of the frequency-jamming algori
thm being used against us. They’ll know what to do with it.”

  Devon took Suzanne by the hand and led her to the garage. I had never seen him look more grown-up.

  “He would make an excellent agent,” Nachash said in my head.

  “Never,” I said aloud.

  “You’ll see them soon,” Caroline said.

  “We need to use the lights,” I said to Pratt. “Turn them on as soon as they come out of the garage.”

  “That’s our last resort, in case we have to run,” Caroline said.

  “We have nowhere to go,” I said.

  Caroline took her place at one side window, and I took my place at the other. Pratt cracked the front door and yelled.

  “Let the mother and son go, or I’ll wipe the program right now.”

  It was a meaningless threat. Pratt was the program. He and the boys could erase the code from their computers, but if Westfield grabbed Pratt, the program was going to be his, sooner or later. His yelling was meant to show that he was not in the Camry, giving Westfield less incentive to expend troops following it. I had no illusions that they would get a free ride, but if I could give them a good head start, they should be able to make it.

  The garage door opened and the Camry roared out. Pratt hit the lights and the Christmas decorations lit up with ultra-bight, blinding light. Caroline and I opened fire with eyes closed in the general direction of the snipers. Temporarily blind and pinned down, they would have a hard time taking out the Camry.

  It took the snipers less than half a minute to don combat goggles and shoot out the lights, but the diversion worked. The Camry got away, taking only minimal fire.

  Pratt, Caroline, and I retreated to the basement. I locked the door, not that it would mean anything. We had set up cover using a Ping-Pong table, two metal card tables end to end behind it, and some mattresses behind them. It was a pathetic last stand that we had hoped not to use.

  If Pratt had completed Tiresias in time, we would have had bargaining leverage, but the spyware on Devon’s computer had forced our hand. The cosmos were punishing me for spying on my son. Now our choices were limited. Caroline and I hadn’t talked about it, but I knew it was what she was thinking. She wouldn’t hesitate to terminate Pratt to keep him away from Westfield. The question was, would I let her?

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The door to the basement blew with a loud crack. The stairs were narrow. Caroline and I could fill them with fire using relatively little ordnance. The lights went out. We donned our night vision goggles. Two grenades landed in the middle of the basement and hissed out white smoke. We grabbed for our gas masks in case it was nerve gas. Rob had been thorough in supplying us. Where was he now? He was supposed to be tracking Westfield. At what point would he cut his losses and run?

  Six gliders came charging down the stairs in full assault gear—body armor, helmets, shields. We lit them up with heavy fire. We weren’t looking for kill shots, just trying to stop their charge. They hunkered down and returned fire. They were armed with AK-47s. They’re not high tech but they’re powerful and reliable. They peppered the Ping-Pong table, sending up a shower of woodchips. We fired at them in short controlled bursts to conserve our ammo.

  The windows shattered to either side of us, spraying glass shards. The surviving snipers had made their advance to the house. They fired through the blown windows. We had positioned ourselves far enough against the back wall that they didn’t have an angle. Caroline and I pressed together shoulder to shoulder to make sure. Pratt huddled behind us.

  A glider on each side advanced along opposite walls, their shields angled toward us. We had no clear shot without exposing ourselves to the snipers. The four gliders in the middle advanced in tandem, shields up. They were squeezing us from three sides.

  Caroline and I alternated fire without a word. We were well matched in a lot of ways if it weren’t for the fact that she might be a sociopath. The look on her face never changed. Even seasoned killers usually show some kind of reaction when they register a hit. Some get off on the adrenaline and don’t feel remorse until later. Some go into a kind of trance where the world feels like an arcade game. Some get angry to pump themselves up to wreak carnage. But they almost all show something. Caroline didn’t twitch. She was completely relaxed.

  “Anything from Todd and Ben?” I asked Pratt.

  “Suzanne and Devon are with them. They’re safe,” Pratt said.

  “If we stay here, they’re going to overrun us,” Caroline said.

  “Let’s not wait. He who dares, wins,” I said.

  “Plug this in,” Caroline said to Pratt, flipping him what looked like a thumb drive. “It will upload your hard drive to the cloud and then wipe it clean,” Caroline said.

  “It won’t get past the jammers.”

  “It opens a sixty-second tunnel to Mossad servers. It’s one way and it’s uncrackable.

  “That wasn’t the deal. You said I would be the one to develop the program. That I could choose what to do with it,” Pratt said.

  “The deal just changed. We’re probably going to die here. Do you want Westfield to have it?” she said.

  “I don’t want anyone to have it,” he said.

  “Activate it now, or I shoot you and I do it,” she said and pointed her rifle at Pratt.

  Pratt inserted the drive and started to type.

  “I can’t let you do that. Wipe the hard drive,” I said and pointed my rifle at Caroline’s head. I had insisted that she wear a vest, and for a change, she had listened. Pratt would call that ironic.

  “It will take a lot longer to finish it without Pratt, but if we do, we’ll share the code with your country in one year, as I promised,” Caroline said.

  “Like you said, the deal changed. If we’re going to die, I want to make sure this thing dies with us,” I said.

  “It’s okay,” Pratt said. “We’ll get out of here, and we’ll all go out for an orange soda.”

  He did everything but yell, “That’s our code word!” Caroline just thought he was being goofy Pratt.

  “In that case, let’s make sure we don’t die,” I said.

  “He who dares, wins,” Caroline agreed, giving me one of her best smiles. Nachash smiled too.

  Pratt finished his upload, put his computer on the ground, and wedged in between Caroline and me. We dug our hands under the mattress, Caroline silently counted three, and we lifted the barrier and charged straight ahead.

  Caroline and I focused our fire on the gliders on the side. We aimed for the thighs. Body armor isn’t seamless. Shoulders, sides, and thighs are exposed. I hit mine in the upper thigh and saw blood spurt. Then the impact of slamming into the front four gliders in front of us rocked my head back and I saw stars.

  We knocked the gliders off their feet and shoved the barrier down on top of them. As soon as they were down, Pratt bolted up the stairs. I wasn’t sure it was the right move. The snipers were still outside. The gliders would follow us up the stairs and we would be caught in a crossfire. We probably would have been better off trying to win a close-quarters fight in the basement and hope we weren’t too damaged to fight off the snipers. But if they got Pratt, the game was over, so Caroline and I followed him up the stairs. My guts, where my father had sewed me up, felt like they wanted to come out and crawl on the floor.

  Pratt dove under the dining room table. I dove after him, which my guts didn’t appreciate, and Caroline was right behind me. I heard a high-pitched whine, and then the floor shook under us with an ear-splitting explosion.

  “I set my computer to blow on a timer,” Pratt said.

  “When were you going to tell us that?”

  “Now, I guess,” he said.

  “Do you have any more tricks that you want to share?”

  “No.”

  “None that you have or none that you want to share?” I said.

  “Either.”

  “Then we better get ready to fight,” I said.

  I tipped the table over and an
gled it to provide cover from the snipers who would be coming through the door and from any surviving gliders coming up the stairs. The snipers arrived first. There were four of them, and they burst in firing. If it had been only them, we might have been okay. They weren’t meant to fight in close quarters, so they weren’t wearing body armor. But within minutes two gliders came up the stairs from the blazing basement. Taking fire from two angles, we had nowhere to move. And we were running low on ammunition. Caroline focused her fire on the gliders. I tried to keep the snipers at bay.

  “Todd and Ben have pinpointed Westfield. Rob has the coordinates,” Pratt said looking down at his phone.

  “They broke the jamming protocol?”

  “How do you think they told me that Suzanne and Devon were safe?”

  “If we live through this, we’re going to have a talk about when it’s appropriate to use sarcasm and when it isn’t,” I said.

  “Less talking and more shooting,” Caroline said.

  Pratt kept talking, reading off rapid-fire updates. “Rob is almost at the house where Westfield’s hiding. It’s the nicest one on the block. Rob says he should have guessed.”

  “Tell him texting and driving is dangerous,” Caroline said.

  “Westfield has only one guard. Rob says that’s his weakness, overconfidence,” Pratt said.

  “One guard can kill you as quickly as two. Maybe Rob should worry about his own confidence,” I said.

  “I’m out,” Caroline said. She discarded her MTAR and pulled her Browning.

  “Rob ambushed the guard. He got him,” Pratt said.

  “I’m out, too,” I said and pulled my Browning. “Tell Rob to force Westfield to make his team stand down.”

  The snipers had us pinned down. And the gliders were almost on us. Our Brownings were almost useless on their body armor, like gnats buzzing around a tank.

  “Now would be a good time,” Caroline said.

  “Westfield’s gone,” Pratt said.

  “What do you mean gone? You said he got him,” I said.

  Pratt’s thumbs were a blur, but he didn’t say a word.