“An hour at the most,” Smets said, withdrawing the probe and sitting up.
“Call when you have it open.” Koning left the room. He tossed the towel to the floor as he departed.
Twenty minutes later, Smets was beaming in the doorway of the master bedroom.
“I am a genius,” he said without irony.
Koning rose from where he was lying flat on his back on the bed. He reminded Smets of a character from a horror movie as he raised his head then his torso from the designer duvet. The twisted face looked like a malevolent half-moon in the glow from the stand lamp in the bathroom.
The door of the safe stood open. Rubber wedges had been hammered in place to hold it so. The safe was fitted with steel boxes set in place to fill the interior side to side. They pulled the boxes out by the handles and carried them into the other room to dump them out on the bed.
Bundles of bills. Dollars, Euros and pound sterling all circulated and with signs of use. Bound in increments of twenty thousand of each currency. Clean cash. Two particularly heavy containers held plastic tubes filled with gold coins. Austrian philharmonics. Hundreds of them. There were bearer bonds, boxes containing pearls, diamond bracelets and earrings. A square leather case held neat rows of paper envelopes containing unmounted diamonds. Two carats minimum. Another steel box was filled with Rolex watches still in their presentation cases.
Smets and Avi shared a wild-eyed glance. This was the biggest trove they’d found yet in a Blanco house. This was the motherlode. It held the promise of the grand prize they sought.
Koning maintained his cold demeanor. He slapped their hands away from the growing pile of loot. A glare from his good eye made the two men back silently away.
Systematically, Koning sorted through the treasure atop the bed. He swept the cash and bonds aside to concentrate on smaller containers, envelopes, clamshell cases and cloisonné cameo boxes that had tumbled from the boxes as they dumped them. He opened each, tossing aside gems, coins, mementoes, and letters. He examined each container until he was satisfied that it was bereft of the item he was seeking.
His hands brushed over a humble brown envelope. He undid the clasp and dropped the single item inside into his palm.
A plain black flash drive. Two inches long in its sleeve protector. Unmarked and unremarkable.
“Is that it?” Smets asked hoarsely.
Without answering, Koning grabbed up a padded case leaning by the bed. From the case he slid a seven-inch laptop and opened it atop a dresser standing against a wall. The other two men stepped closer, faces eager. Koning inserted the flash drive into a port and touched a few keys. The screen went white and a dense column of letters and numbers appeared. Each was sixteen characters in length followed by abbreviated codes in capital letters. NCB. SNB. GCBA. VZB.
“That is it, yes? That is it?” Avi said, hunger plain in his voice.
“We are leaving now,” Koning said and returned the flash drive back in its envelope and slid it into the padded case along with the laptop.
37
* * *
“We won’t tell anyone anything. I swear we won’t,” Danielle said to the man she knew as Sascha.
He was seated at the bar, his back to her, absorbed with reading the labels of dust-coated bottles stacked on the shelves.
“They won’t find us for days. You’ll be long gone by then.”
He sat unmoving.
“You don’t need to do this.” She whispered now, her words only for him. She didn’t want the children to hear, to know.
He rose from the stool and walked to her. Danielle raised her face to speak to him once more. He struck her an open slap, the latex stinging the flesh of her cheek. Her head rocked to one side only to meet the back of his hand in a return blow that tore her upper lip. She tasted blood.
“There are no words that will save you,” Simon said and turned from the sobbing woman to glare at the children who lowered their eyes, cowed by the threat of further punishment.
Through the glass doors behind the children a man walked toward the house over the snow. Black snowsuit with the hood pulled up tight. A rifle slung over one shoulder. Visser or Loman. It was Loman, Simon decided.
Simon went to the door, unlatched and slid it open. The man in the snowsuit stepped to the open doorway.
“Where did you go? Where is Visser? Koning is angry with both of you.”
A hand struck out, grabbing the front of Simon’s sweater. Simon was jerked forward with enough force to whip his head back painfully. A fist struck him in the face three times in rapid succession. Three piston blows. One. Two. Three. His legs went out from under him. The grasping hand shoved now to send him tumbling back.
The man entered the house. Not Visser. Not Loman. A stranger. He held a bloody handgun in his fist. A spray of blood stained the sleeve and chest of the snow suit.
Simon lay on the floor, vision spinning. Blood leaked from his ears and squirted in a thin arc from his ruined nose. The man stood over him and raised a boot over his face.
Danni Fenton watched in fascination as Mitch Roeder, her recent house guest, stomped again and again on Simon’s head with the heavy boot. He stopped only after a heavy popping sound signaled that any more blows would be redundant.
Mitch opened a clasp knife and cut the tape that held Danni’s wrists to the arm of the chair. Then he sawed at the bands holding her torso to the chair back.
“My God,” was all she could manage. Tears sprang to her eyes as he pressed the handle of the knife into her hand.
“You can handle it from here?” he said, eyes level, searching her face, appraising her.
“Yes. Yes,” she said and bent to slice at the tape around her legs.
“Free your kids and get away from here. Find a place to hide until it’s over.”
“Yes. I will.” Breathless. The tape came away from her legs.
“Where’s Merry? Where’s my little girl?”
“I don’t know. They didn’t take her.” Danni left the chair in a shot and dropped to her knees before Carl to saw at his bonds.
“Take the fingers,” Levon said.
Danni scooped up the little fingers from the pool of spilled blood and stuck them away in the pocket of her robe.
Giselle turned from watching her mother freeing her little brother to thank Mr. Roeder for coming for them. She opened her eyes wide and a scream emerged.
Levon turned, dropping low. The SKS came into his hands in one fluid motion. Framed in the doorway was a man in mechanic’s coveralls with a heavy leather tool bag in his hand and a tartan cap atop his head. The man threw himself backwards into the dark room as Levon opened up, sending three rounds after him.
A crash of furniture and glass from the interior of the house.
A voice calling out. Another answering.
“Run,” Levon called back to Danielle and launched himself through the doorway.
Danni ripped away the last of the tape holding Giselle to the chair. She pulled both of her children with her out through the open sliding door and into the cold, cold night.
38
* * *
Deke Bishop thought it would be okay to get drunk.
He figured no one would be on the roads tonight with the snow still pissing down at two inches an hour. Nobody in their right mind anyhow. By morning he’d be hungover but sober enough to drive the plow. So he helped himself to another forty of cold Yuengling and fell asleep in a thick beer drunk in the recliner, watching a rerun of River Monsters.
The room was dark when Candy shook him awake.
“That was Cecile down at Bellevue,” Candy was shouting. It set the dogs to barking.
“Suh-seel?” he said with a furry tongue. His head flopped forward when Candy tugged the chair lever to bring him upright with a sudden, nauseating jerk.
“Cecile Withers! They’re in some kind of trouble! You have to clear the road for the troopers, Deke!” She stomped off in her galoshes, the dogs following, leaping and
yipping.
“Shit, woman! I’m still shit-faced!” he said, leaning forward to put weight on his stocking feet, uncertain of whether or not he could stand without falling.
“That’s why I’m going with you!” She stomped back in from the mud room and threw his boots and coat at him.
Twenty minutes later he was high up in the cab behind the wheel of the tractor pushing the massive steel spear point of ten-foot rollover plow south down the county road. Candy was strapped in beside him, pouring hot black coffee down him from a thermos. Snow blasted by in fifty foot furrows off the twin blades that met in a ram set thirty feet in front of his grill. He gunned it as hard as he could, pegging the needle at sixty. Close behind, three state trooper cruisers and two county cars raced single file in his arctic wake, gliding along in the draft created by the big rig.
“What the hell kind of trouble are they in down in Bellevue?” he said, coffee roiling in his gut and sending a sour wash of reflux back up his throat.
“Terrorists. Home invaders. Something like that. Cecile said all hell’s broke loose down there.” Candy stared out the windshield down the tunnel of light the big overheads bored into the dark ahead.
“Cecile said that?” Deke said, taking his eyes from the road for a fraction.
“She did,” Candy said. She poured another mug of cowboy coffee and held it out for his open gear hand.
Deke said nothing.
After minute he made a toodling sound with tongue and lips in imitation of a cavalry bugle.
39
* * *
Levon rolled to a stop against a Queen Anne curio cabinet that tottered on dainty legs. It collapsed backward, sending ceramic pieces crashing to the floor. The room was dark. The echoes of shattering china bounced off the ceiling high above him.
It was too dark to see any blood. He couldn’t smell any through the oily reek of gunpowder. He’d missed the man in the tartan cap, only managed to drive him away. That worked for now.
The men in the house, four by his count, needed to focus on him. He had to be their biggest concern right now. The Fentons needed every second he could buy them.
The room lit up with muzzle flashes away to his right. He lay supine behind the fallen cabinet. He extended his arm above him and sprayed fire toward the flashes. The empty stripper clip flew away with the last round making a pronounced pronging noise. He rolled away from the cabinet to come against a leather sofa. A shower of upholstery batting dusted him as rounds punched through the chair back above him. Levon lay flat and swung the Sig Saur under the chair and fired a long volley.
He moved again. Up on his feet in a crouch, jamming a new clip into the open action of the rifle before skidding to his knees. No more fire. Boots on tile somewhere deeper in the house.
Levon stood and emptied the fresh clip in an arc in the direction of the echoing footfalls. Plaster flew from the walls in chunks either side of an archway. Powdered gypsum settled in the air.
He dropped the rifle onto its sling and charged through the door with the Sig in his fist again, held low and close to his body. He was in a wide foyer with a staircase rising along one wall. There were openings off the foyer into other rooms. The sounds before him stopped. The house was quiet enough to hear the snow driving against the window panes. He closed one eye, opened it. Closed the other, opened it. Restoring some level of night vision.
There was a source of light somewhere ahead refracting off walls, speckling the glass in the framed art prints that hung in a row down a long hallway. He moved down the center of the hall, feet sliding on the carpet to reduce noise. The hall ended in a cavernous bedroom suite. A bright glare coming in from an arched doorway threw the main room into a high contrast of shadow and light. An acrid chemical stink hung dense in the air.
Piled atop the bed was a bounty of cash and other valuables left behind by the thieves. He traversed the Sig from corner to corner, covering every hiding spot. The room was empty. He rushed to the opening to the bathroom, aiming the handgun at a sharp angle into the room. The stand lamp lit the room like a movie set. A wall of mirrors revealed the full range of the space within. The room was empty but for the mess of broken tile in the shower and the safe yawning open in the center of the floor.
Whatever they had come for was more valuable than the heap of loot they’d left behind, otherwise they’d have remained behind to defend it. Instead they’d be making their exit with whatever it was they’d come here for. Back toward the rear exit on the lower level or out through the garage. He’d passed a row of snow machines on his way down to this house. They were pulled up on the apron before the open garage doors. Four total. Two had sleds hitched to them with steel equipment boxes open.
If they reached the machines they’d be gone into the woods. It would turn from a hunt to a chase.
It would be a chase then. He could afford to give them a few seconds lead. Levon turned back to the pile atop the bed.
40
* * *
An engine stammered to life, the noise rising to a steady roar.
Levon rushed to the windows along the wall of a landing. From there he could see a figure straddling a snow machine that was racing for the roadway. The rider was in mechanic’s coveralls. Levon fired a string of snap shots through the glass. Gouts of snow marched after the machine as it rose to the flat road surface then out of sight on a straight course for the trees. The whine of the straining engine faded into the pines.
He remained on the landing in the stairwell that led down to the lower level. Below, the last three snow machines sat in a neat row on the turnaround. A rectangle of yellow light was projected on the snow from the open garage doors out of sight from his vantage point. No movement. No sound. By his count three men remained.
At the bottom of the final set of stairs was a paneled wooden door. Shut tight, but the bolts were shot open. Fresh impressions of boots on the carpet led to the door. The door would open into the garage; a big one with five bays. Two of them were occupied by cars covered with tarps. He pictured the remaining men waiting below behind cover. The rider who got away was the key figure. The crew’s boss. The man with the loot. Whatever they’d found in the safe that was more valuable than a king-sized pile of cash, securities and jewelry.
Levon retreated up the stairs, footfalls silent on the thick pile carpet. He returned with a leather upholstered chair he found at a rolltop desk in a study. The chair was wheeled. He pushed it into the stairwell. It tumbled down, rebounded off the wall at the landing and continued on down the turn to the bottom. It dropped from step to step toward the doorway to the garage. As the chair came to rest with a bang against the door it was greeted by the thunder of gunfire from inside the garage. The door frame splintered. Rounds punched through the solid wood door, blasting chunks of fill from the leather chair.
Ragged holes appeared in the walls at the bottom of the steps. Buckshot. Someone was in a space parallel to the bottom of the staircase. The chair was peppered with enough force to throw it against the opposite wall. A blizzard of plaster hung in the air.
Out of the line of fire against the oblique wall at the turn of the stairwell, Levon waited for the gun fire to die down before extending one hand around the corner and emptying the remainder of the Sig’s clip down at the door and the wall. He dropped the handgun to the stairs and moved to the landing windows. A man in mechanic’s coveralls raced stumbling into the yellow light cast from the open garage doors toward the row of snow machines.
Raising the rifle to his shoulder, Levon dropped him with three rounds aimed low to catch the runner in the legs and lower back. The man fell, flipping on his back onto the snow. A shotgun dropped from his fists. The man was clutching his side, hands clamped over an exit wound turning the snow beneath him pink. A tartan cap lay near him where it had flown from his head when he fell.
The wounded man called out a name in a croaking voice. It sounded like “Avi” to Levon. There was no answer from the garage. No shadow crossed the rectang
le of light.
Levon shoulder slung the rifle and grabbed up the Sig and charged it with the last magazine from his pocket. He ran up the stairs and through to the great room for the sliding glass doors. The three chairs were empty now, hung with ribbons of tape. Sascha lay where Levon had left him, his head crushed into a crimson Rorschach.
Out on the deck, Levon followed the slipper prints through the snow and down a set of steps. He had the SKS to his shoulder and traversing the field of fire left to right over the triple path left by Danni and the kids that followed the wall of the house. She was leading them home. Like an animal panicked in the hunt and heading for the safety of its lair.
He dropped to the snow and followed the trail of the Fentons up the slope. At the corner of the wall he stepped clear of the turn with the rifle raised.
Danni Fenton lay unmoving in the snow. Carl knelt by her, the bloody bundle of his right hand resting on her hip. Backing away from them was a young man in a coveralls. A man with Arab features. An Algerian maybe. A puckered scar on his chin. He had Giselle in a chokehold, a handgun pressed into the curve of her neck.
“Je pistool. Laat het nu,” the man said. Eyes wide. Teeth clenched in a feral grin.
Levon stepped forward, rifle to his shoulder, the ring tang at the end of the barrel trained on the man’s face.
“Je pistool! Laat het! The gun! Nu!” The man’s voice rose an octave. Giselle stiffened as he jammed the gun tighter against her collar bone.
Levon continued his steady walk forward. The man high-stepped backward through a drift mounted against a wall of the house, dragging the petrified girl with him. He slipped. A knee began to go out from under him. He righted himself, yanking Giselle tighter to him.
“Je pistol laat! Motherfuck!” His eyes were wide, fixed on business end of the rifle.
Levon stalked closer. The barrel unwavering in his fists.