Forty-three
The doubt and the twinge of regret never came between the idea and the reality, when the decision to kill was reversible. At the moment between the motion and the act, I had the capacity only for fear and for a wild delight in my commitment to this hazardous deed. No, there was one thing more. I felt as well a terrible pride in my cunning, in my boldness.
From behind the patio culinary center, I rose to full height. The recoil proved to be not as bad as I expected. The weapon was set on burst-fire, after all, but the burst seemed to be three shots per trigger pull, which didn’t produce quite the vicious spray of bullets that I envisioned. Nevertheless, the man on the left went down at once, and I targeted the second cultist.
His reactions were fine-tuned. He squeezed off two bursts as he swung toward me, though he had no chance of scoring a hit in the turn. He hoped to make me duck and thereby gain for himself a fateful second. I didn’t duck, but returned two bursts for two, nailing his left side. He lost strength in his arms, so that his third and final volley went low, shattering through the ceramic-tile front of the outdoor kitchen, through the plywood or pressboard underneath, its energy spent in the guts of the under-the-counter refrigerator. I let off a last burst, and he was finished with his adventure at Blue Sky Ranch.
The racket had been louder than gunfire alone. If I was right about each pull of the trigger releasing three quick rounds, I had expended twelve. Perhaps fewer than half of those had been stopped by the two cultists. Others had split the wood siding on the back of the house and shattered windows and damaged the well-lighted kitchen that I could see through the missing panes of glass.
All of this had happened the instant after the two cultists at the front of the house had kicked open the door, alerting them that something had gone terribly wrong with their plan. They would either bail out or they would stay the course; and if the latter, they could no longer be taken by surprise, as the first two had been.
Unless I moved fast.
And had a little luck.
These people weren’t Navy SEALs or Army Rangers, weren’t trained by the best professional warriors in the world, weren’t seasoned by a real war in which they had encountered an enemy who fought back. They lacked the honor of SEALs and Rangers, lacked ideals that stiffened the spine in times of peril. They were fanatics, driven by emotion rather than reason. Their commitment was to destruction instead of to the preservation of what was good, and this commitment made them feel dangerous, therefore powerful and superior. Being dangerous, however, wasn’t the same as being powerful and certainly didn’t support a claim to superiority. Like all barbarians, they were vulnerable to panic and confusion when the destruction they wished to wreak was visited instead upon them.
Even a fry cook in a powder-blue sport coat, who was unable to figure out the true and hidden nature of the world in spite of having been given plenty of hints, even I might triumph over them.
As the second cultist fell, he slammed his head against the edge of a patio table, incurring a superfluous final wound. By the time he kissed the flagstones, I was already running back the way I had come. This time I didn’t rely on the cover of shrubbery, but stayed close to the house.
Most if not all of the downstairs lights were on, and as I passed each window, I scanned the room beyond. At the last one, I found what I wanted. The door-busting pair had moved out of the foyer but had gotten no farther than the living room, where the gunfire at the back of the house had surprised them and brought them to a brief halt. One of them started moving toward the archway that led to the hall.
I spent the eighteen rounds remaining in the magazine, and then dodged to the left of the window, standing with my back pressed to the house. I fumbled a spare magazine out of a sport-coat pocket, slapped it into the rifle.
As I looked up from that task, I saw headlights on the driveway, between the flanking oaks. But the cult’s vehicle wasn’t approaching. Backup wasn’t on the way. The driver reversed as fast as he dared toward the county road. All the gunfire must have made him reconsider what duty required of him.
When I leaned to the shattered window and eased my head past the jamb, I saw a dead man lying in the living room. He must have removed his ski mask and goggles before entering the house. Shaved head. Face turned toward me. Mouth open. Eyes open. His expression wasn’t one of pain or fear. He appeared to be puzzled.
There was no sign of the fourth cult member.
I didn’t want to enter the house. I had nowhere else to go.