Lynne Heitman - The Pandora Key aka The Hostage Room

The blinds were closed. Damn. They must have just closed them.

“Blinds closed,” I whispered into the radio. “Moving closer. Hold on.”

I turned the radio down and crawled on my belly back to the fence and toward the house. When I got there, I flattened against the back wall. As I inched toward the window, I could hear them. There were two distinct voices. They were speaking something besides English. It sounded Slavic and guttural. There was a sliver of space between the sill and the lowest blind. I crept close enough to get my eyeball to the window to look inside the house.

There were two in the kitchen, not three. The one closest to me was balding. He wore the long and greasy strands of his remaining hair in a mutant ponytail that sat too high on the back of his head. The bigger man had on a black Judas Priest T-shirt. He was Bo-sized, if not larger. He was talking on his cell phone, holding the tiny silver device against his massive head. Bo had declared him the priority. I could see why.

I crept back to the cover of the crumbling wall, turned up the radio, and gave my report. “Two in the kitchen in the back. Repeat…only two in the kitchen. No sign of number three.”

“Positions?”

“Ponytail is standing…leaning against the sink with his back to the window…facing the inside doorway. Judas Priest is sitting at the table…back to the inside doorway…talking on a cell phone. Both have their hands occupied with pizza, beer, cigarette, or phone. No third man. Repeat, no third man in the kitchen. Over.”

Bo came back. “Third in the front room watching the door and the television. I will take care of this one. On my signal…”

I waited. The next thing I would hear would be the go sign. When it came, it was a short but ferocious burst over the radio that must have been something like Go! Go! Go! in Bosnian.

The shouting started almost instantly. Then came the shooting. I couldn’t see anything, but I could hear. I knew when the bad guys were firing, because all our weapons had suppressors. The blinds crashed back against the window. It must have been Ponytail. Whoever it was, when he fell, he pulled the blinds down with him. From my position, it was like a curtain rising.

Judas Priest was hunkered down beside the refrigerator, clutching what looked like some kind of fully automatic, magazine-fed assault rifle. Timon and Radik were firing from outside the kitchen door. They had him pinned down, but every time they tried to advance, he’d step out and blast away. Judas Priest had only one real chance to make it out of there, and it was through the back door directly across from his position. He knew it, too. He kept glancing that way. The only question was whether they would get him before he ran through it and right into me.

I got ready.

He jumped out again and laid down another barrage, but this time, instead of moving back to the safe corner behind the refrigerator, he crashed toward the door and opened it, firing the whole way. The second he moved onto the small concrete patio, both Timon and Radik advanced through the kitchen toward the door. The way he staggered down the steps made it clear he’d been hit, but he was still coming straight at me, which meant I either had to roll out of the line of fire from the house or stand up and shoot him, but he was still moving with such power and authority that I had real doubts about whether I could stop him. An image flashed of me rising from behind the safety of my wall, emptying a clip into him, only to have him keep coming. But then he saw me and raised his rifle, and the adrenaline surged and instinct took over, and I was standing to take my shot when someone yelled, “Down! Down! Down!”

I dropped to my belly behind the wall and rolled. Five straight shots followed, presumably into the back of Judas Priest. The sound of the shots was subdued, like someone blowing five quick darts through a long pole, which is what a suppressor is supposed to do. Make death quiet.

I didn’t hear him die. I didn’t hear him gurgle or cry out. But he was dead, lying in the yard, facedown with the rifle still in his hand and blood soaking into his black T-shirt. Bo was the one who had shot him. He was coming toward me now.

“Are you all right?”

“Fine,” I said, staring down at the corpse. “You?”

“Good. Everything is good. Go inside and find Harvey.” He looked around. There was one house that backed up to the alley from which someone could have seen the show. “Go. Go now.”

Inside the house, the light that bathed the room was too warm for such a cold scene. Radik was standing over Ponytail. Judging by the blood smears, he must have been blown back against the window, turned, grabbed the edge of the sink, and slumped to the floor.

“We need to turn off the lights,” I said. “Anyone can see in here from the back.”

Radik didn’t understand, so I pulled out my flashlight to show him and flipped off the overhead light. He got it.

With my flashlight in one hand and the Glock in the other, I started toward the side of the house where Bo said he’d seen Harvey. It was a rambling floor plan that didn’t make any sense to me. All I knew was that the doors were all closed, and every time I cracked one of them open, I expected to find something bad behind it-either someone coming at me from out of the dark or, worse, Harvey’s body. By the time I got to the last door, my heart was pumping out of control and my lungs straining for breath. It was controlled, but it was still panic. I had to stop. With my back to a wall, I leaned over and put my hands on my knees. Generous drops of sweat rolled from my forehead and dripped onto the floor. When I felt a little less likely to collapse, I opened the last door, shone my flashlight across the room, and found Harvey.

He was lying in a heap in the corner, still wearing the suit jacket he’d had on that morning. I stumbled into the doorway, but something stopped me there. It was the sight of him, so still and crumpled, that kept me from rushing to his side, because if I did, if I reached down and turned him, I might find his eyes fixed in a death stare. I might find his skin long cold. Maybe not even murdered, just dead from the stress on his weak system. I was so afraid that I was too late. But when I saw his chest rise, fall, and rise again, I went and knelt beside him. I put my hand on his shoulder and felt the life still in him. He moaned when I turned him. It was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard, and when he opened his eyes, it was a smile that he saw and not just the tears.

“Harvey, it’s me. We’re taking you out of here. We’re taking you home.”

He blinked at me, and I knew he recognized me. “Leave me alone.” He tried to roll away from me. “Let me go. Let me die.”

Not what I expected. It ticked me off. “Goddammit, Harvey, you are not giving up. Not here and not now. Die at home if you want, but right now we’re getting out of here.”

I grabbed his other arm and pulled him up into a sitting position. His head and shoulders flopped forward. He was in full rag-doll mode. I slid behind him, put my arms under his, and locked my hands across his diaphragm.

“Help me as much as you can,” I said, hoping he could-and would. When I finally got him upright, he wasn’t steady on his feet, but I needed only a second or two. All in one maneuver, I let go with one hand, slipped under one of his arms, and draped him over my back. I huffed and puffed a few times and lifted. He wasn’t as heavy as he used to be, but he was still deadweight, and I staggered until I found my equilibrium. Then I carried him out of there.

When I got to the front room, Timon was gathering weapons into a pile on the floor. Bo was there, standing very still over the body of the third man, the one he must have dispatched when he came through the front. He was looking at the corpse with an expression I had never seen, and I wondered if he knew his victim. Slowly, he crouched and pulled at the man’s shirt, baring his chest and an amazing webbing of tattoos that covered him practically from head to toe.