Greg Rucka - Patriot acts

To make matters worse, Vadim was getting very worried about the three he'd seen breaking for the side of the house. From his vantage point, with the beginnings of dawn's light starting to flow out of the forest, he could see the treeline surrounding the backyard, but not much of the yard itself. With the remaining shooters outside, throwing occasional bursts of fire at him, he couldn't risk switching targets, nor picking up the cell phone resting by his knee.

Then smoke had started pouring from the front of the house, and the two shooters that Vadim couldn't get a bead on saw it, and one of them wheeled back to the door, bringing his MP5 to his shoulder.

(Vadim wasn't sure why he did this, and Alena explained the reasoning before I could. Until the smoke began pouring out of the house, the shooter could believe that his back was covered. But once the visibility behind him went, there was no way to determine what might be happening inside. More importantly, it meant that there was no way for the shooter to visualize anything that might come at him. Therefore, not wanting to leave his back exposed, he'd turned around, hoping that the Suburbans would provide an adequate defense against Vadim's sniping.)

Regardless, in turning he showed Vadim the back of his head through the side windows of one of the Suburbans. Vadim fired once, and the man fell forward, the top of his skull turned to mist. The remaining shooter returned fire, trying to suppress Vadim, then broke for the side of the house. Vadim dropped him before he made the corner. In the house, they'd reached the hallway on the ground floor, and Natalie was leading Alena along, towards the back door. She'd let go of her, holding the Sig with both hands, in a high-ready position, being careful to clear each room before they passed through it. Miata had trotted close beside Alena as she'd struggled along. Her damaged leg made the going much slower than she'd have liked, but the brace running from her ankle to her knee kept it from becoming impossible. Dan stayed at the rear, covering their backs, having switched to his main pistol, a Springfield Armories TRP, which he, too, was holding in the high-ready position. Smoke from the grenade was everywhere, and while it didn't actually make it harder to breathe, the visibility in the house was next to zero, and it made for a tense trip through the ground floor.

They reached the door into the yard, and Natalie had thrown it open, then stepped back into cover. Nothing happened, and she looked back to Alena and Dan, and they both nodded, and all of them, including Miata, started out into the creeping dawn.

When they were all five, maybe six feet outside, Dan's Nextel squawked inside his jacket, Vadim trying to raise him over the radio. Almost instantly, probably cued by the sound of the transmission, two of the three who had gone to flank came around the side of the house, on the right, bringing their MP5s to bear. Natalie turned, putting herself in front of Alena, half blocking her with her own body, as Dan stepped forward, each of them preparing to fire. It's likely, in that instant, all three of them thought they were going to die.

It was Miata who saved their lives, because before any of them had even realized the two shooters were coming around the corner, Miata had known. Either he'd caught their scent or he'd heard their movement, but for whatever reason, when the two with MP5s made the corner, Miata was already halfway to them, running hard.

The result was that the two shooters each had to switch targets, because neither of them knew which of them Miata was aiming for, and waiting to find out would have been too late. When you have eighty-seven pounds of furious Doberman bearing down on you, teeth bared and making not a sound as he charges, panic isn't just a reasonable response; it might well be the only response.

One of the two fired off a burst, but it was panicked, and his shots went low, passing beneath Miata as he leapt at him. The shooter screamed, dropped his gun, and fell, pretty much all at once. The second shooter, who had been pivoting out of Miata's way, now realized what he'd done and tried to self-correct. Before he had a chance, Alena and Dan opened up on him, each of them firing double-taps that scored hits in the face and neck.

In the cascade of their shots, then, came the other one, and the part of Alena's consciousness that tracks these things in the middle of gunfights thought it was Vadim's rifle, but thought also that the shot had come from the wrong direction. She turned, trying to locate the source, and that was when she saw that Natalie had gone down, and that was when she saw the last shooter, with his rifle, just inside the treeline, and she knew that the rifle was pointed at her.

(What must have happened, Alena said, was that the shooter on the rifle had lined up a head shot on her, and most likely had been about to take it, when she, Natalie, and Dan had reacted to the other two coming around the corner. Natalie's attempt to shield Alena from the two shooters and their MP5s had moved her into the sniper's path of fire, as well. Alena was adamant about this, and I was inclined to agree with her; if Natalie hadn't moved when she had, the way she had, the bullet that struck her would certainly have hit Alena, instead.)

Dan checked Alena with his shoulder, sending her onto the ground, practically falling on top of her, firing the TRP as he fell. With the range and the motion, if he had managed to hit anything, it would have been a miracle, and since people like us didn't rate miracles, he didn't hit anything at all. The shooter with the rifle fired again, missing, then readjusted and reacquired, readying to make his third shot. This time, he'd score a hit, whether on Alena or on Dan they didn't know, but they were on the ground, and the next bullet was going to kill one of them, certainly.

Then, from the tree house came the sound of shots, Vadim firing his last two rounds at the man who had killed Natalie Trent, doing to him what he had done to her.

Vadim found a bottle of champagne and three micro pizzas, pepperoni, in the galley when he went to look for lunch. He seemed genuinely surprised that Alena and I would decline to share such a feast with him, returning to his seat and his iPod with a rolling of the eyes that did more to convince me of his nineteen years than anything else had thus far.

After a moment, Alena pulled herself to her feet and put on water for tea. I looked out the plane window and saw land beneath us, painted in white. Ice or snow. We were headed for Europe, I knew that, Eastern Europe almost certainly. I wasn't sure of the range of the Gulfstream V, but supposed we'd have to land to refuel at least once before reaching our final destination.

Alena made two trips back from the galley, traveling slowly and carefully so as to keep from spilling the hot drinks. She brought mine first, then returned with hers, and took her same seat once again.

"Black tea," she said, making a face. "No herbal, nothing without caffeine. I'm sorry."

"We'll survive," I told her, thinking about how, once upon a time, I'd thought caffeine was a major food group all its own. Now it was no longer a part of the diet, neither mine nor hers, at the top of the list of verboten stimulants, in fact. Aside from being addictive as, say, nicotine, caffeine drains the adrenal gland. Considering how much Alena and I relied on adrenaline to do its job, that was something neither of us wanted.

"How many days have I lost?" I asked.

"Three and a half. Dan wanted to move you sooner, but I wouldn't let him. You lost a lot of blood. You almost died."

"We could have made the trip sooner."

"It was not in my mind to risk it. You nearly died, Atticus."

I considered that, then said, "And you wanted to see how what happened in Cold Spring would play out. See what got reported in the media, maybe."