Paul Christopher - The Templar Cross

He looked at his watch again, then leaned down and picked up the five-gallon gas tank of outboard fuel mix he'd bought at the little upstream marina. It was time to go. He listened, his senses at full alert, nerves tingling. He swallowed, feeling his mouth go dry and his heart begin to pound.

The feeling was a familiar one: part fear, part anticipation and part rising bloodlust. It always surprised him that he felt so comfortable with the desperate feeling deep in his gut, and every now and again he wondered if there was a pathological need for it with soldiers-junkies for battle and the dangerous game of jousting with death. He'd known a few like that in his time, soldiers who re-upped again and again because they simply couldn't deal with the sudden withdrawal into the passive routine of life out of the kill zone.

Holliday forced all conscious thought out of his mind, tuning his senses to the world around him, willing every part of himself to fuse his actions into a slow-motion psychedelic dreamscape where everything he did was perfectly synchronized with everything else.

He heard the muffled sound of a man and woman arguing in the fish shack directly overhead, heard the squeak of a cable shifting in the breeze, saw the riffled feathers of a kite as the giant bird soared above the estuary water, heard the chatter of a motorboat far away and the constant pulsing whisper of the sea.

There were no windows on the side wall of the shack, only a rudimentary ventilation grille. If the workers in the shack fished through two turns of the tide per day it probably meant the catch was stored somehow, most likely in galvanized steel tanks. On a hot day like today the tin-roofed huts would be turned into ovens. The stink would be awful.

Carrying the gas can Holliday stepped out of the shadows and made his way between the two chiesettas, moving quickly but carefully beneath the stilts of the last shack in the row. Looking out across the breadth of the river mouth he could see the squat shape of the gray- and-white-striped octagonal lighthouse that gave the rocky beach its name.

The red-walled chiesetta was supported on a total of six stilts, three long, three short. The stilts were made of four-by-fours clewed together to make foot-square columns to support the weight of the floor above. Looking upward Holliday could see that the floor itself was nothing more than sheets of plywood laid over widely spaced fir rafters that were really only two-inch planks turned on end. Flimsy didn't begin to describe it.

He unscrewed the top of the gas can, reversed the spout and screwed it down again. He divided the contents between all three front columns, then set the empty can down beside the center post. He checked the time. Two minutes.

Holliday took out a package of matches and lit the posts one after the other without pause, leapfrogging across the boulders. He watched as the flames took hold, barely visible, little more than rippling heat vapors in the clear air. He turned away, scrambling up the rocks, then started to climb the makeshift ladder up to the trapdoor in the floor.

He reached the top of the ladder a few moments later and suddenly, blindingly, had a terrifying thought. He cursed himself for a fool. What if the trapdoor was bolted from above? It was the kind of stupid oversight that got men killed. He turned on the ladder. The flames had reached the tops of the columns and were starting to lick across the underside of the floor. Any second now. There was a quick, sharp detonation as the vapors in the empty gas can exploded. There was a second or two of almost deafening silence, then the sound of running feet overhead. Black smoke began to billow. A cry went up.

"Cazzo merda! Fuoco! Fuoco!"

One last time check. Thirty seconds. It didn't matter; the flames were rolling his way in long consuming tongues; if he didn't move now he was going to fry. He pulled the Tanfoglio 9mm out of his belt. The Italian weapons Vince Caruso had provided were commercial grade, mostly used for target practice and self-defense. Simple to use with sixteen in the magazine. A total of forty-eight rounds between them. Any second now and there was going to be a hailstorm of bullets upstairs. Holliday winced, thinking about it, then forcing himself not to. Like sticking your head into a hornet's nest. He took a deep breath, then pushed up on the trapdoor.

To Holliday it was like a series of snapshots taken at a billiard table, stuttering stroboscopic images connected like the cars on a freight train. It went far better than they had any right to expect.

There were five men in the shack and the call of Fire! had split them almost evenly, two men running toward the balcony and into the choking cloud of smoke and two men turning toward the sound of the crashing door as Rafi and Tidyman burst in through the rear, rolling left and right as Holliday had instructed. The fifth man, the bald Father Damaso, stayed exactly where he was, seated in a comfortable stuffed chair with a clear field of view toward their hostage, who was chained to an iron U bolt in the corner of the room.

The shack was divided into two areas separated by a flimsy plywood wall, the tank room in the forward area and the living and cooking area in the back. The trapdoor was set into the floor between the two and opened looking forward. Coming through the floor Holliday was facing back toward the river. Partway into the room he leveled the automatic and squeezed off half the clip without aiming, simply swinging the muzzle from right to left in a rapid arc. He hit both men, one in the face, the other in the chest. They both fell without a sound, thrown back into the smoke and flames.

Holliday pushed himself up and out of the opening in the floor, turning away from the fire, then rolled to his left, bringing his weapon to bear but not firing. Rafi was already up on his knees, his body between the guards and Peggy, who had flung herself down on the mattress she had been given by her captors. He had his pistol in one hand and the steel-pointed fish gaff he'd used to pry open the door in the other. Tidyman was directly opposite him on the other side of the room, creating the angled cross fire Holliday had suggested to them.

Both men fired a steady stream of fire into the two guards, both armed with some kind of compact machine pistols they were still struggling to remove from their sling holsters as Rafi and Tidyman began to fire.

Rafi, his clip empty, lunged toward Father Damaso with the fish gaff. The bald priest was unarmed except for what appeared to be a cricket bat balanced across his knees. He brought the bat up defensively as Rafi lunged, screaming obscenities. Damaso swiped at Rafi one-handed, clubbing the younger man aside as he rose out of the chair. Grasping the long flat instrument in both hands, the priest was about to bring it down like an ax on the back of Rafi's skull when Holliday shot him, putting half a dozen rounds into his chest, shredding flesh and bone and sending the dead man tumbling back over the stuffed chair.

The front half of the shack was an inferno and it was getting closer with each passing second. The first two men had been completely consumed and the flames would reach the rear half of the shack in an instant. Holliday rushed forward, retrieving the steel fish gaff, heading for Peggy, who was now curled up on the mattress, arms crossed above her head.

As Rafi groaned and pushed himself to his hands and knees, Holliday got the gaff through the U bolt shackling Peggy to the floor and started to pry it up. He got a good look at his cousin. Her face was streaked with grime and her short dark hair was matted, but under the circumstances she looked better than he'd expected.

"Peg?"

"Doc?" Her voice was parched and cracked.

He pushed the hair gently off her face.

"It's okay, I'm here now, kiddo."