Stephen Cannell - The Plan

"Could you guys come here a minute. .?" she called. Ryan came first, moving out of a guest room. "What is it?"

"I may have found something," she said.

Within seconds, they had all gathered in the living room. Lucinda held the open photo album out to them.

"These were taken right after the trial."

They huddled around the album and looked at the photographs of Gay working on the pedestal.

Kaz was already moving to retrieve the empty Haliburton suitcase from the pantry where Ryan had left it. He returned with it and set it on the coffee table, opened it, and started to look carefully at the inside.

"What're you doing?" Ryan asked.

"If he took the tapes out of here and put them into that pedestal, I was wondering if he got any plaster dust in here." Kaz licked his finger and pressed it on several specks of white powder in the bottom of the case. He pulled his finger out and showed it to the others. "Like this. ."

They all smiled at Lucinda.

"Pretty damn sharp, honey," Kaz said and Lucinda blushed. Cole had seen some tools in the garage and he and Kaz went off to get them. Ryan was waiting at the open front door. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement. He swung just in time to catch a glimpse of a man in a white shirt and khaki shorts running down the drive. Kaz and Cole reappeared with a. hammer and tire iron.

"Somebody was just here. I saw him running down the driveway," Ryan said.

"What'd he look like? Was it the guy in the ball cap?" Kaz asked.

"I hardly saw him. He looked slender. . In a T-shirt and shorts."

"Let's go check it out," Cole said.

"No," Kaz said softly. "Always assume the worst. That way we don't get surprised. Let's assume we were followed from Jerusalem. If we go down there, they're gonna know we saw him and we're gonna lose what little advantage we have. Hang on a minute." He moved to the taxi and started to look at it carefully. When he got to the front, he saw a handprint on the dusty chrome bumper. Kaz lay down on his back and slid under the car to examine the frame. Wedged in next to the gas tank, he saw about two pounds of plastic explosives connected to a detonator. He carefully reached up and pulled the detonator out of the plastic. It was a sophisticated radio unit with a "hot" wire that ran into the explosives. Kaz took his beeper off his belt. It was a state-of-the-art satellite communication system used by the federal government. He had stolen it when he'd been fired and faithfully replaced the battery every two weeks. It had never rung, but he was ready if they ever needed him. He knew it was stupid but it felt good riding on his hip. He removed the back of the instrument, yanked the hot wire off the detonator and twisted it onto the battery pole of his beeper. He pushed his beeper and the wire back into the plastic, shoved the detonator into his pants pocket, and shinnied out from under the car.

"Find anything?" Cole asked.

"Nope. Let's get that pedestal down."

While each took a turn holding the Uzi and scanning the driveway, the others went to work with the hammer and crowbar.

Little by little, they exposed the core of the pedestal. Finally, there was an opening big enough to reach through. Ryan had the longest arm and he stuck his hand down and grabbed hold of a bag, but he couldn't get it through the hole they had made.

"There's something in here," he said. "Get some more bricks out."

They worked until finally the hole was large enough and Ryan could pull out a large canvas sack. They rewarded the find with tight smiles.

"Let'sget inside," Kaz said, his eyes searching the perimeter as they moved back into the house and closed the door.

Even with binoculars, the Ghost could see only the front door through a growth of ficus trees on the west side of the property. He had decided the best way to eliminate all four was to get them into the taxi and take them all out at once. He looked at Yossi Rot and Akmad Jarrar.

"I'm gonna move up and see if we can snipe at them through the windows," the Ghost said. "That oughta get 'em moving. Yossi, once the cab starts to move, blow it. When it goes, we gotta be out of here in seconds."

The Ghost moved to the Mitsubishi, opened the trunk, and took out a blue steel Charter Arms Explorer-II.22-caliber pistol. He thought it was almost as ugly as the old broom-handle Mausers, but the Explorer-II was surprisingly easy to handle. The Ghost liked it because it could be silenced without distorting the shot. He secured the eight-inch silencer onto the threaded barrel, grabbed the twenty-five-shot ramline clip full of dumdums, and slammed it in. Then he attached the scope. He turned his ball cap backward, then jumped the wall, and moved toward the house.

In the living room, they examined the contents of the bag while Kaz kept an eye on the yard through the plate-glass window. The audiotapes, big and unwieldy, were on six-inch plastic reels. Cole remembered the old reel-to-reel odd-size tape recorders from the seventies. There was also some 16-millimeter film on four 800-foot reels. None of it was labeled. Cole held one of the reels up so he could try to see who made them, hoping it was government issue. "I'm really gonna feel like an asshole if these are movies of some kid's birthday party." The light wasn't very good on the far side of the living room, so he moved to the plate-glass window.

Just then, Kaz caught a flash of movement out beyond the pool. Then he saw the Ghost step out from behind a low wall on the far side of the pool with a deadly-looking scoped pistol. Flame shot from the muzzle.

"No!" Kaz yelled, throwing himself in front of Cole, pushing him as the window shattered and they both went down in a shower of glass.

Ryan leaped over the sofa and landed on his bad leg. It crumbled and he rolled on his shoulder. Regaining his feet, he grabbed the draperies and yanked them across the gaping opening, cutting off the Ghost's field of vision.

Cole was sitting up, a puzzled look on his face. He had blood all over him. He looked down at it, dazed, then slowly realized it wasn't his.

Kaz was lying on the floor, his legs splayed out in front of him. Blood was coursing out of a huge hole in his chest. He had taken the.22-caliber dumdum in the back. It had broken up on impact. The fragments traveled through his upper lung at the manufacturer's guaranteed velocity and exited in a five-inch pattern right below his collar bone. The wound was pulsating with thick arterial blood, draining Kaz's life down his shirt and onto the floor. Ryan pulled the Desert Eagle, scrambled to the window, and cracked open drapes. He saw nobody out there.

"Get a towel," Cole screamed, and Lucinda ran to the bathroom and grabbed some bath towels. On her way back., from the hall window she saw the man who had called himself Jerry Paradise running down the driveway, a baseball cap on backward. She ran into the darkened living room and thrust the towels at Cole.

"I saw him running down the driveway! It was him, Ryan. . It was Jerry Paradise!"

"Leaking like a Mexican fishing boat, ain't I?" Kaz's speech was coming slowly.

"Why'd you do that? Why'd you do that!" Cole kept saying over and over.

"I ain't gonna make it. Goin' to the big Howard Johnson's. ."

"Bullshit," Cole said, desperately.

"Get the car into the garage. Get me in. . I'll smash into 'em. Give you a chance." He was talking through clenched teeth.

"No, no, you're going with us," Lucinda said. "Dyin'," Kaz said, slowly. "Got one thing left to do. . "

Cole had been in the Marines and there was a moral commandment that you didn't leave a soldier in the field to be scavenged by the enemy.

Kaz knew what Cole was thinking, so he pulled his backup piece and pointed the nine-millimeter Beretta weakly at them. "You get the car." Kaz knew they had one chance to win the game, but he was running out of time. He could feel the strength draining from him. "Do it," he said, thumbing back the hammer.