Дэвид Балдаччи - End Game

“Let’s go.”

She looked terrified. “I don’t like heights. I might fall.”

“Do you like bullets better than heights?”

She appeared to get his meaning. She looked down at her nearly naked body. “Can I get something to cover myself?”

Robie took off his jacket and handed it to her. “Use this. Hurry up.”

She slipped on the jacket and zipped it up. “I don’t think I’m strong enough to climb down there.”

“I’ll give you a piggyback ride.”

“What?”

He grabbed her arm and pulled her behind him. “Jump up. Arms around my shoulders, legs around my waist. Do it!”

“But what about the guys outside?”

“They’re going to be preoccupied in about five seconds.”

Robie counted down in his head until he heard the first report of Reel’s rifle.

“Let’s go.”

She climbed up on his back, grabbed his shoulders, and locked her thighs around his waist.

He moved to the window. “You ready?”

She nodded, but looked scared.

“So long as you hold on you’ll be fine,” he said. “I can do this and so can you, okay, Sheila?”

She finally nodded.

“Don’t look down, and don’t close your eyes, understand?”

She nodded again.

Robie ducked down, gripped the sheet rope with both hands, and climbed out the window. He could feel Sheila’s heart pounding against his back.

He made his way down, hand over hand, keeping his feet planted against the side of the building as both a guide and a brake on his downward momentum.

His feet finally touched down and he said, “Okay, we’re here. You can get off.”

Sheila gingerly lowered her feet down to the ground.

Shots were still coming from the front.

Robie pointed behind him. “You run that way and keep going for about a minute, okay. Then just hunker down and stay there. I’ll come get you when it’s done.”

“Mister, there’re a lot more of them than there is of you.”

“Not anymore. Now go!”

She turned and ran off.

Robie hustled to the right and came up around the building adjacent to the one he had just been in.

He peered around the corner to see the men taking cover behind the two trucks. Robie figured that was how the group had arrived in town.

They were firing back at the hotel.

Robie phoned Reel.

“You good?” she asked.

“I’m good.” He told her his position. “I’m the brush beater. You’re the cleanup. Aim low, no use killing any of these assholes. Too much paperwork.”

“Roger that.”

“And take out the wheels.”

“Roger that too.”

Robie put away his phone, pulled his M11, and attached his night scope to the rail. He sighted through it and opened fire. His bullets pinged off the truck metal.

The result of this was instant chaos on the skinheads’ side. They were obviously not seasoned soldiers, because seasoned soldiers did not panic when caught in a crossfire.

They started firing wildly around and running in all directions.

And Reel mowed them down as soon as she had even the narrowest of firing lanes.

All six men went down grabbing their ankles and calves where she had shot them, and screaming bloody murder.

Then Reel turned her attention to the trucks and shredded two tires on each. For good measure she drilled holes right through the radiators, and next the windshields, where her shots tore off the steering wheels of both vehicles.

Robie, keeping to the shadows, called out, “The state police are on their way. If you put down your weapons, lie on the ground, fingers interlocked behind your head, you’ll get triaged. Keep your weapons and we let you bleed out.”

Weapons were tossed aside as men groaned and collapsed fully on the ground, hands behind their heads.

Robie stepped out, and under cover of Reel’s rifle made his way to the fallen men.

As he bound their hands with zip ties he received a steady stream of invectives.

The older man who had bantered with him before swore to Robie, “I’m gonna see you dead, asshole!”

“I think you got that backwards,” replied Robie.

It might have been the most excitement Grand had seen in decades.

Malloy had shown up with her uniform shirt untucked and her boots unlaced, but her service weapon was out and her features were grim.

Reel and Robie had triaged each of the men, stanched the bleeding, and bandaged the wounds using a kit Reel had gotten from the hotel. Ambulances were on the way to take the men to a hospital that was about an hour away.

Derrick Bender showed up five minutes behind his boss.

Luke had been revived and came outside to confront the men who had tried their best to kill him.

After screaming matches back and forth, Malloy had cuffed Luke and stuck him in Bender’s cruiser.

But both Robie and Reel saw Malloy say something to Luke, and she didn’t look remotely happy.

When the state police showed up in the form of four troopers in a Humvee, things started to get interesting.

The skinheads claimed that Robie and Reel had opened fire on them first and they had fired back to defend themselves.

When Luke was questioned, all he would volunteer was that Robie had sucker punched him when he’d confronted him after Robie had broken into the building.

While the troopers were interviewing the men, Robie and Reel pulled Malloy and Bender aside.

“What is that building?” asked Robie.

Malloy said, “It was a B and B, or it was planned to be one. Then the hotel came to town and the B and B plans got torpedoed and the owners ran out of money and the project went bankrupt. The bank owns it now, but people, from time to time, were using it for a certain, specific purpose.”

“You mean as a hookup place,” said Reel.

“Among other things.” said Malloy. “Until I put a stop to it. I locked it up tight and put up the NO TRESPASSING sign.”

“Well you didn’t lock it up tight enough. There was a woman named Sheila in there with Luke. She climbed out the window with me. I gave her my jacket because she was half naked. I told her to hoof it a few blocks over and wait for me to come get her. But all I found was my jacket on the ground behind the B and B and no Sheila.”

Reel looked at Malloy. “Who’s Sheila?”

“I don’t know a Sheila. Describe the woman to me.”

Robie did.

Malloy let out a long sigh while Bender frowned and said, “Damn, Valerie, that sounds like your sister.”

Robie and Reel stared at Malloy. “Your sister?” said Reel. “You said her name was Holly. Why would she call herself Sheila?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she didn’t want you to know her real identity because of all the crap going down.”

Reel said, “We were told your sister had a drug problem and was in rehab. And that maybe she was the reason you came out here. Is that true?”

Malloy leaned against the front fender of her cruiser and rubbed her eyes.

“Holly was the baby of the family. She came out here five years ago because she said she wanted to live in the outdoors and just get away from civilization. And family expectations.”

“And what were those expectations?” asked Robie.

“Holly graduated magna cum laude from MIT. She was a brilliant student. She was offered a position at NASA and another one at Google. She turned them both down and moved out to this godforsaken place.”

Robie glanced at Bender to see his reaction to the harsh words about his hometown, but his expression didn’t change. Maybe he’d heard this before from his boss.

“Burnout?” said Reel.

“I guess, although she never showed any indications of it while she was in school. But as soon as she got the sheepskin it was goodbye.”