Lewis Perdue: Perfect killer

"Because if I can see them, so can Braxton's security people."

Rex summoned us with a stage whisper.

Kilgore and I jogged over and nearly slipped on the wet. The unmistakable fragrance of wine saturated the air. Red wine, to be exact. I bent over, wet my finger in the liquid, and tasted it.

"Young cabernet sauvignon."

Rex shook his head, then slid the bolt, eliciting a shrill, tortured sound that immediately attracted the beams of powerful flashlights and echoes of sprinting combat boots.

"Freeze!" someone shouted.

"I'm out of here."' Rex said as he muscled the door open. A thundering detonation showered us with wine and pieces of wood.

"The hell?" Rex yelled as he leapt back. Then another barrel exploded against the floor, followed by another and another.

"Jesus Christ, Joseph, Mary, and the donkey!" Rex cursed.

Braxton's security guards drew closer. Cautiously, we looked through the partly opened door at the carnage of expensive French oak and cabernet. Braxton's men closed to half a dozen paces.

"Hands up!" they shouted.

Heedless of the barrel barrage, Rex lunged over the priceless wreckage as Braxton's men grabbed my arm.*****

Colonel William Lewis paced calmly among his troops in the back of the shabby Napa storefront and listened intently to the radio traffic in his earbud. Lewis's troops were used to him communicating with the "Old Man," as they called Kilgore. They just had no idea where Kilgore was located.

"Sir, we've picked up some interesting stuff." Lewis turned and looked up into the face of Janet King, a fast-rising corporal, a Penn State lacrosse and rugby star (men's teams) with a computer science degree, who'd enlisted "because I was tired of the way politicians always piss on the military." She also hated being called "an Amazon." At sixone, 193 pounds, and a percent body fat she had to struggle to keep out of single digits, Corporal King had the wherewithal to make her objections stick. "What've you got?"

"They've gone to the equivalent of general quarters over what appears to be intruders."

Lewis said a silent prayer. "Could it be a faulty alarm or something?" She shook her head. "They've apparently made contact and have apprehended two people."

Lewis nodded and tried to appear calm.*****

"Whoa! Holy cow, holy cow!"

Tyrone leaped from the truck and ran around the back to Jasmine, who'd been pacing the hard-packed lane ever since she had finished connecting the electrical detonators to the accessory circuits of the aircraft. Jasmine turned.

"The security control screen has gone apeshit!"

"Show me."

"C'mon." Tyrone rushed back into the truck with Jasmine close behind. Inside,

Tyrone held up the laptop.

"Notice the red flashes? Those were all green a minute ago."

"This looks like a diagram of the London underground," she said calmly. "It's similar… part schematic, part spatial reality."

"I don't think this is a good sign." Jasmine shook her head and looked back at the screen. "What are those little icons?"

Tyrone took the laptop back and set it on the console between the two front seats so they could both see. He tickled the laptop's touch pad and used it to center the cursor over an icon. The mouseover text appeared on-screen.

"Security camera. If we click on the link, it gives details."

"This like a webcam?" Jasmine asked.

"Just like. They have lots of cameras hooked on an internal network. Lots of places are going to IP-based systems because they're cheap to build and can be programmed and implemented quickly."

"IP?"

"Internet protocols." He bent over the screen, working the cursor and keyboard. A moment later, the image of a deserted hallway appeared. "There!" Tyrone said triumphantly as he clicked from one camera image to another. His triumph lasted only seconds as a jerky video showed Brad Stone and Jack Kilgore being escorted by armed guards.

"Oh, God!"

Once through the hole in the barrel-cave wall, Rex pulled a tiny LED light from his pocket and squeezed the sides to illuminate what appeared to be a stairway landing. Directly opposite the hole, steps led up. To the right, stairs led down. Rex looked around and saw recent footprints in the dust going left. As a noisy posse gathered in the barrel cave, Rex made footprints to the right and the left, then scuffed up both sets before climbing up the stairs after Gabriel and Harper.

For all the good it would do, he thought. But what the hell, there was nothing else to be done.

He climbed rapidly, trying once to raise somebody on the radio, but the surrounding rock made that impossible. Just as well, he thought. Braxton's men obviously had Stone and Kilgore's radios.

"Sorry, Miss Anabel," Rex said under his breath.

"Do you hear somebody behind us?" Harper asked in a ragged whisper. "Hard to tell," Gabriel whispered as he half-carried the old doctor up the steps.*****

The restrained professionalism of Clark Braxton's security men surprised me. The handcuffs at my back were secure but not too tight, the grip on my arm firm but not uncomfortable. We arrived at an elevator as the doors opened and disgorged a big, beefy man with the face of an angry bull. The people holding us visibly stood straighter. The man's eyes burned sharp and mean. He stuck his face right in Kilgore's.

"You are so far out of line this time, Jack, you will never, ever take another breath as a free man."

Kilgore remained silent as the man stood back and adjusted his tie. "Take them up to the cellar," the big man said. "The General wants a word with them."

"You want us to notify local law enforcement, sir?" asked the man holding on to my biceps.

"I'll handle the county mounties when the time comes."

"Sir?" a voice came from the rear. "Sanchez wants to know if you want to send a search party into that hole in the barrel-cave wall."

"Tell him to wait for Jim Clayton. He knows those old tunnels like the back of his hand."

I didn't like what I heard; I had learned too much. Names, other things I would not expect professionals to reveal in front of captives. Unless it wouldn't matter.

When the elevator doors closed, I imagined the sort of "accidents" that could happen when two soldiers as capable as Kilgore and I tried to escape.*****

"There they are." Tyrone pointed at the screen. "Heading to that elevator, which has a camera"-he cursored around, clicked on another icon-"right here."

Jasmine's fear transformed into abject sorrow as she watched Brad Stone step into the elevator and look right up at the camera.

"I love you," she whispered to his image.

Dan Gabriel stumbled up the pitch-dark stairs, half-dragging Frank Harper behind him. He stopped periodically to rest and to listen for sounds of pursuit. He pushed on upward in the dark until suddenly his face hit a barrier and he almost dropped Harper.

"What happened?" Harper whispered.

"Dead end," Gabriel replied. "Can you sit on a step?"

"Yes."

Gabriel closed his eyes against the despair, although he saw nothing less, no more, with his lids open or shut, so complete was the darkness. Then, beyond the dead end, the sound of voices, footsteps. Gabriel ran his hand over the dead end, and under his fingers it felt like Sheetrock. Was there hope? He pressed his ear to the wallboard. Gabriel's hopes fell as he recognized the voice of Braxton's security chief. Then Jack Kilgore.

"We've got to do something," Gabriel whispered. "Even if it's a kamikaze charge, I can't just sit here and do nothing."

"Nothing-"

"Yes, Doctor, nothing is its own decision. They'll kill us if we sit here, so I might as well take somebody with me."

"What are you going to do? Charge through the wall like a madman and attack them with your bare hands?"