Patterson, James - Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

Occasionally, someone would pass by a window. The Asian women had both taken off their tops. The taller of the two stepped outside for a few minutes. She smoked a joint, taking greedy puffs.

Harris came out and joined her. They spoke English on the porch.

“I used to know your mama-san,” he said, and giggled.

“You're kidding?” the girl laughed and blew out jets of smoke. “Of course you're joking. I get it. Sort of.” She looked to be in her late teens, maybe early twenties. Her breasts were large and too round, augmented. She wobbled slightly on the high-heels.

“No, I knew her. She was my hootch mama. I made it with her, and now I'm going to make it with you. See the irony?”

The girl laughed again. “I see that you're stoned.”

“Well, there's that too, my smart little dink. The thing is, maybe you're my daughter.”

I tuned out on the conversation and stared at the outline of the A-frame cabin. It looked like some family's vacation house. We'd heard that the three of them had been using the place since the mid-eighties. They'd already talked about murders committed in these woods, but it wasn't clear who had been killed, or why. Or where the bodies were buried.

Jim Morrison was still singing' The End'. The TV was on too, a University of Georgia football game. Georgia versus Auburn. Warren Griffin was rooting loudly and obnoxiously for Auburn. Marc Sherman had apparently gone to Georgia and Griffin was breaking his chops.

Sampson and I stayed in a culvert, a safe distance away. It was getting even colder, the wind screaming through the large hemlocks and beech trees.

“Starkey doesn't seem to be partying,” Sampson finally said. “You notice that? What's he doing?”

“Starkey likes to watch. He's the cautious one, the leader. I'm going to move a little closer. We haven't seen or heard from the other girl in a while. Makes me nervous.”

Just then, we heard Marc Sherman raise his voice. “Jesus, don't cut her. Be careful! C'mon, man. Put away the K-Bar!”

“Why the hell not cut her? ”Harris yelled at the top of his voice. “What the hell is she to you? You cut her, then. Try it, you'll like it. You cut her, Counselor. Get your hands dirty for a change!”

“I'm warning you, Harris. Put the goddamn knife down.”

“You're warning me? That's pretty rich. Here take the knife. Take it! Here you go!”

The lawyer groaned loudly. I was pretty sure he'd been stabbed.

The girls began to scream. Sherman was moaning in excruciating pain. Chaos had taken over inside the cabin.

“Cockadau!” Harris suddenly yelled in Vietnamese. He sounded a little nuts.

“Cockadau means kill,” Sampson told me.

Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

Chapter Ninety-Four

Sampson and I were up in a flash and sprinting full-out toward the cabin. We reached the front door together. He went in first with his gun drawn.

“Police!” he yelled over the blaring rock music and TV. “Police! Hands in the air. Now!”

I was right behind Sampson when Starkey opened up with an MP5. At the same time, Griffin fired a handgun from across the room. The two Asian women were screaming as they scampered out the cabin's rear door. They had enough street smarts to get out of there fast. I saw that the smaller woman had a deep gash across her cheek. Her face was dripping blood.

Marc Sherman lay on the floor, motionless. There were dark splatters of blood on the wall behind the lawyer's body. He was dead.

The big gun erupted again, noise and smoke filling the room. My ears were ringing. I wasn't even sure if I'd been hit or not.

“Move out!” Sharkey yelled to the others.

“Di di maul” Brownley Harris shouted, and actually seemed to be laughing. Was he completely mad? Were they all insane?

The three killers bolted out the back door. Warren Griffin covered the retreat with heavy fire. They didn't want a final shootout inside the cabin. Starkey had other plans for his team.

Sampson and I fired at the retreating men, but they made it out. We approached the back door slowly. Nobody was waiting there, and no more shots were fired at us for the moment.

Suddenly there was the sound of shooting away from the cabin. Half a dozen hollow pops. I heard the shrill screams of the two women cut through the trees.

I peeked my head around the corner of the cabin. I didn't like what I saw. The two women hadn't made it to their car. Both lay on the dirt road. They'd been shot in the back. Neither of them moved.

I turned to Sampson. “They'll come back for us. They're going to take us out here in the woods.”

He shook his head. “No they're not. We're going to take them out. When we see them, we open up. No warnings, Alex. No prisoners. Do you understand what I'm saying?”

I did. This was an all-or-nothing fight. It was war, not police work, and we were playing by the same rules as them.

Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

Chapter Ninety-Five

It was awfully quiet all of a sudden. Almost as if nothing had happened, as if we were alone in the woods. I could hear the distant roar of the Jacks River, and birds twittering in the trees. A squirrel scampered up the trunk of a hemlock.

Otherwise, nothing moved. Nothing that I could see, anyway.

Eerie as hell.

I was getting a really bad feeling we were in a trap. They knew we would come here after them, didn't they? This was their turf, not ours. And Sampson was right, this was war. We were in a combat zone, behind enemy lines. A fire fight was coming our way. Thomas Starkey was in charge of the opposition and he was good at this. All three of them were pros.

“I think one woman is moving a little,” he said. “I'm going to check on her, Alex.”

“We both go,” I said, but Sampson was already slipping away from the cover of the trees.

“John?”I called, but he didn't look back.

I watched him run forward in a low crouch. He was down close to the ground, moving fast. He was good at this combat. He'd been there, too.

He was about halfway to where the women lay when gunfire erupted from the woods to his right.

I still couldn't see anybody, just whispers of gun smoke wafting up into tree branches.

Sampson was hit and he went down hard. I could see his legs and lower torso just over a bramble. One leg twitched. Then nothing.

Sampson didn't move anymore.

I had to get to him somehow. But how? I crawled on my stomach to another tree. I felt weightless and unreal. Completely unreal. There was more gunsmoke. Pinging off rocks, thudding into nearby trees. I didn't think I was hit, but they'd come damn close. The fire was heavy.

I could see sheets of smoke from the rifles rising to my right. I could also smell the gunsmoke in the air.

It struck me that we weren't getting out of this one. I could see Sampson where he lay. He wasn't moving. Not even a twitch. I couldn't get to him. They had me pinned down. My last case. I had said that right from the start.

“John,” I called. “John! Can you hear me?”

I waited a few seconds, then I called out again. “John! Move something. John?”

Please say something. Please move.

Nothing came back to me.

Except another round of heavy fire from the woods.

Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

Chapter Ninety-Six

I hadn't experienced anything like the explosive rage, but also the fear, that I felt. This happened in combat, I realized, and considered the irony. Soldiers lost buddies in the war and went a little mad, or maybe a great deal mad.

Is that what had happened in the An Lao Valley? There was a noisy buzzing inside my head, bright flashes of color in front of my eyes. Everything around me felt completely surreal.