Three Mississippi. Decker risked a quick look through the doorway where the flashbang had gone off, then withdrew his head swiftly, so he wouldn’t be exposed during the split second it took his brain to process the images his eyes had captured.
Four Mississippi. He’d glimpsed a wall-sized entertainment center filling one wall, the big TV shattered by the flashbang. Shredded curtains dangling beside the missing window. Five Mississippi. A human figure—a man!— sitting in a recliner in the center of the room. At six Mississippi, Decker made his move. “Police! Don’t move!” he shouted, pivoting into the doorway, the H&K up and trained on the seated figure.
Seven Mississippi: The fist of God slammed into Decker, knocking him back, hurling him across the foyer, slamming him against the front wall. Stunned but still running on reflex, he reset his mental stopwatch: One Mississippi, two Mississippi . . . The cadence seemed slow and irregular, he noticed with an odd, detached objectivity, as if he were somehow outside himself as well as inside. Gradually he became aware of a second voice in his head—this one his as well—shrieking, What the hell? Why did E.J. use two flashbangs instead of one? Then: Shit. That wasn’t a flashbang. That wasn’t us. That was him. He shook his head to clear the cobwebs, struggling to piece the fragments into a picture that would explain why he was lying here in a heap against the wall. Either the flashbang hadn’t fully incapacitated the guy—had it landed behind him? Did the recliner shield him? Or Decker had screwed it up—counting too slow, moving too slow, giving the guy time to recover? Time to recover and do what, though? Had he fired a weapon? Was Decker shot—thrown across the room by a bullet or a shotgun blast slamming into his vest? No, not a shot, he realized. A blast. An explosion. But what—a grenade? Not the flashbang, but a real one, a frag? “Fall back, fall back,” Decker shouted. “Take cover.”
He took inventory: I’m alive. I can see. He wiggled fingers. Toes. Everything seemed to be there, unless he was already feeling phantom pain in missing limbs. He glanced down, saw arms and legs where they belonged, still attached. A chunk of splintered wood, three inches long and a quarter-inch thick, jutted from his right deltoid. Decker reached across with his left arm—not easy to do, as bulky and confining as the flak jacket was—and gave an exploratory tug. A flash of pain seared his shoulder, but the wood slid out, wet and shiny with blood.
Decker heard more words, muffled and faint, and he realized these were coming from outside his own head, not inside. “Lieutenant! Lieutenant!” It was Fireplug, crouching against the foyer’s inside wall. “Hang on—I’m coming to get you.” Decker held up a hand to stop him, but Fireplug was already scuttling across the room, and Decker felt strong hands gripping the shoulder straps of his vest, then felt himself being dragged backward, back toward the front door. “Holy fuck,” Decker heard Fireplug say. Just before the wall blocked his view, Decker managed to turn his head and catch a quick glimpse through the doorway and into the room beyond.
“Holy fuck,” Decker echoed.
The man was still seated in the recliner, arms dangling. The man no longer had hands. The man no longer had a head.
The woman was screaming—again, or still? Decker didn’t know which. Her shrieks filled the air, piercing the smoke that clouded the rooms, piercing the haze that clouded Decker’s brain.
DECKER WINCED AS HE eased his butt onto the low wall at the end of the garage, leaning back gingerly against the suspect’s house. Inside, the bloodcurdling shrieks continued—emanating, E.J. had reported, from a pair of stereo speakers. A goddamn recording, Decker had realized the moment E.J. had relayed this information. A trick. A trap. A lure. And Decker had gobbled down the bait, the hook, the line, and the sinker. In the distance, as if answering the screams, two sirens—no, three—wailed louder as they approached.
Decker took inventory of his aches. Ringing ears. A couple sore ribs, cracked or possibly broken; maybe a mild concussion, too. And an oozing puncture wound in his right deltoid, where the sliver of splintered wood had burrowed into him. One of the sirens was probably an ambulance, but Decker was damned if he’d leave the scene except under his own steam, with his own team. The bomb squad was on the way, too, or would be soon, but they moved slow; Kevin’s team had even more crap to carry than the SWAT team did.
God, he thought suddenly, almost sick with fear. Kev. Please not Kev. Please let Kev be off today.
THE BOMB SQUAD’S TRUCK lumbered into the driveway. Decker stood, and the instant he saw the driver’s face—his brother Kev’s face—he knew that his prayer had been ignored.
The truck lurched to a stop and Kevin Decker—“Boomer,” to his bomb-squad colleagues, “Kev” to his big brother Brian—leaped out and ran to him. “Jesus, Bry, you okay?” Before Decker could answer, Boomer wrapped him in a hug. Decker grunted from the pain in his ribs, and Boomer released him. “Shit, you’re hurt?”