For better or worse—probably the latter—they were now trapped down there.
Derrick looked up at the rafters, as if he could see the men who trod on the floors above. He was counting the assailants who were systematically working their way through the first floor of the house.
“I think there are four of them,” he whispered. “Plus the guy out back.”
His father nodded.
“Please tell me you have a gun down here,” Derrick said.
Carl was immediately agitated. “Me? Christ, I thought you’d have a weapon on you. That’s the only reason I said we should come down here.” He bristled. “I’m just an old retired fart. You’re the damn superspy.”
“Where’s yours?”
“Upstairs. In the gun safe. Like usual.”
“Did you really have to be that responsible?”
“Look, between the kids who live in this neighborhood and the OxyContin addicts who don’t, you’ve got to—”
“Okay, fine, fine,” Derrick said, feeling his frustration mount. “Do you have any weapons on you?”
“Just my knife.”
Ever since Derrick could remember, his father had carried a folding knife with a three-inch blade. It was handy to have around on Christmas Day, when there was suddenly a package in need of opening, or for when he was doing chores around the house. It was substantially less useful as instrumentality for a homicide—particularly when up against firearms.
“Dad, that thing is like a half step up from a butter knife. I’m not making toast here,” Derrick said, then swore. “How did these guys even know where I was? I wasn’t followed here. I made sure of it.”
“Well, you’ve got your phone on you, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Let me see it,” Carl said.
As soon as Derrick pulled out the sleek silver device that came courtesy of a top secret government lab—and therefore had capabilities far beyond your typical iPhone—Carl struck it out of his hand. It didn’t break when it hit the floor, so Carl brought his boot down on it heavily and repeatedly until it was a shattered mess.
“You know damn well that snake Jones knows where you are every second when you have that thing on you,” Carl said. “You said he’s working for the Shanghai Seven. I’m sure he gave them your exact GPS coordinates. They were just waiting for you to stay in the same place long enough so they could assemble a team and make a move.”
Derrick nodded. He knew his father was very likely correct.
“So what do we have down here we can use to get rid of those guys?” Derrick asked. “We’ve got about three minutes, five tops, before they figure out we’re not upstairs bleeding to death.”
The Storm boys let their gazes sweep across the basement. There was a long workbench that took up most of the far wall. Tools hung neatly on a pegboard above it. Wrenches. Hammers. Screwdrivers. A laser level—the one modern gadget Carl Storm had allowed into his home, and only because even he grudgingly agreed it was better than The Old Way. Each utensil had its own spot that had been so unaltered over time it created a silhouette on the wood in its exact shape.
“Clear downstairs,” Derrick heard one of the thugs shout. “Let’s go up.”
“I’ll cover downstairs,” another replied.
The Storms were running out of time.
Underneath the workbench were a Shop-Vac, a bread maker that someone had given Carl long ago (and he had never even bothered to take out of the box), some milk crates filled with wires and other assorted junk, two flats of bottled water, a kiddie pool Derrick had reveled in as a child . . .
Great, Derrick thought hopelessly. We can fill up the pool with bottled water and then drown them one by one.
“Clear,” Derrick heard. Then, maybe five seconds later, again: “Clear.”
Derrick moved his eyes away from the workbench. There was a water heater. Could that be turned into a weapon? Not without a blowtorch and at least four hours to work on it. An old furnace. Ditto. A washer and dryer. Not bad for defensive purposes, but hopeless on offense.
And then, parked near the dryer, Derrick spied an air compressor large enough to come up to his knee.
Carl had bought it eons ago in defiance of the local gas station when it decided to start charging four quarters for use of its air hose. Carl, who was a fanatic about maintaining proper tire pressure, had been irate: Who charges for air? What kind of damn world is that?
Then he went out and bought a top-of-the-line commercial air compressor. Derrick had done the math and figured out that even if his dad filled his tires every two weeks, it would take seventy-seven years for the thing to pay for itself. Carl didn’t care. It was the principle of the thing.
Derrick had never been so grateful to have a stubborn donkey for a dad.
“Please tell me you have a nail gun that goes with that air compressor,” he said.
“I always found a hammer worked just fine. What would I need a nail gun for?”
“For when five mercenaries have you cornered in a basement with no hope of escape.”
“I hear you. But . . . Oh,” he said, having just figured out what his son wanted to do. Then he looked at it with a special glint in his eye, and a small grin appeared on his face.
“Son, we don’t need a nail gun. I’ve got a bunch of different size nozzles and all kinds of nails over there. If we rig it right, this thing could be a nail gun.”
Derrick didn’t wait for more. He walked quickly to the air compressor and grabbed it. Carl had already gone to the workbench and began scooping up boxes of nails in his thick hands.
They met by the stairs that led up to the kitchen. The box Carl settled on was filled with two-inch common nails. They were 11.5 gauge, with just the right weight to turn into a deadly projectile.
Carl fitted a hose to the compressor’s tank, then tried the first of several nozzle options. Derrick watched his father work, feeling like he was nine years old again and they had reached the part of some project that Daddy had to do for him.
“There,” Carl said finally. “Perfect fit.”
He held the hose aloft. It had roughly three-quarters of the nail sticking out of it, with the pointed end leading the way and the flat end anchored inside the nozzle. “Should be just tight enough that it’ll build a lot of pressure behind it and then, whammo, it flies out with deadly force.”
“You sure it’s going to work?”
“No,” Carl said. “In the Bureau we used to call something like this TITS.”
“TITS?”
“A Totally Insane Try at Something.”
“Perfect,” Derrick said. “How are we going to aim it? That thing doesn’t exactly come with a scope.”
They both looked around the basement for a moment. Then Derrick found himself settling on the one item down there that wasn’t old enough to rent a car.
“The laser level,” he said. “We can clamp it right on top of the nozzle.”
“And then just aim a bit high?”
“Exactly.”
“You think the nail is going to fly straight?” Carl asked.
Boring on rifle barrels was invented for that very reason—to give a bullet the rotation it needed to slice through the air on a line. Without that rotation, a projectile turned into a knuckleball, dancing and weaving as it reacted chaotically with the air around it. It was why muskets were so inaccurate that Revolutionary or Civil War–era soldiers could line up fifty feet apart, unleash volleys on each other, and still miss.
“Probably not,” Derrick admitted. “But we’re firing from such a short distance, it’s only going to go off by so much.”
“I wish we could test it.”
Derrick was shaking his head. “As soon as we start this thing,” he said, gesturing toward the air compressor, “those guys are going to know we’re down here. We’ll have company.”
“Right,” Carl said. “So this either works, or . . .”
“Or,” Derrick finished for him, “we’re dea
d.”
* * *
The compressor’s engine came to life on the first pull and was soon rumbling loud and strong, making enough of a racket that Derrick could no longer hear the footfalls of the men above them.
All he could do was wait for the first assailant to descend on him and hope like hell his TITS worked.
Derrick was crouched to the side of the stairs. He had hastily removed the cover of the water heater and was using it as a shield. It was a good, thick piece of aluminum, old and heavy. Whether it would actually stop a bullet depended on the kind of rounds the thugs were using and the kind of weapons firing those rounds, two factors Derrick couldn’t predict.
Only his arm and hand, which held the nozzle, were exposed if one of the thugs decided to lay down a blanket of cover fire before coming down the steps. Derrick’s job was to aim this crude weapon he and his father had created and to release the air pressure that had built up in the tank when he was ready to fire—the air compressor gun equivalent of a trigger pull.
Carl was next to him, slightly farther away from the stairs, and thus more out of the line of fire. His job was to be ready to reload the nozzle with another nail as quickly as possible after Derrick fired.
They didn’t have long to wait.
The door to the basement burst open with a crack loud enough to be heard over the racket of the compressor. But the door had been broken down by someone who immediately retreated, so there was no one filling the doorframe.
Then one of the thugs took a quick peek around the corner before quickly pulling back. What he would have seen in that glimpse was surely curious: an arm, with its elbow braced on one of the steps, holding a hose that had something—it’s unlikely he would have recognized it as a nail in that fleeting look—sticking out its end.
Whatever it was the thug thought he was seeing had not, apparently, scared him much. He soon whirled around the edge of the doorframe and assumed a shooting position, a long-barrel rifle nestled against his shoulder.
It gave Derrick a nice target. By his best guess, he had to aim the laser level two inches higher than where he wanted the nail to end up.
If the nail flew straight.
Or at all.
The real issue was what would happen to the air pressure when Derrick released it from the tank and it slammed into the head of the nail. All those pounds per square inch would need somewhere to go. If air could leak around the sides of the nail, it would—and the nail would either stay in place or lamely dribble out.
If, on the other hand, the nail was in there too tight, the nozzle itself might explode, probably taking a chunk of Derrick’s hand with it.
Everything had to be just right.
And there was only one way to find out if it was. As soon as the laser’s red line touched the start of the man’s hairline, Derrick released the pressure in the tank.
The air flowed through the hose with a tremendous burst and a loud whooshing sound until it hit up against the head of the nail, nestled firmly in the nozzle.
The pressure built in some fraction of a second that was far too small for a human to register in any meaningful way. But it would all come down to what happened in those nanoseconds. Would the nail give first or the nozzle? Or would nothing happen at all?
Derrick was just holding on as firmly as he could, which was a good thing, because the kickback soon thrust his arm backward, as if he had lost an arm wrestling contest with an invisible giant.
But not before the nail burst from the hose at supersonic speed and buried itself in the attacker’s forehead.
The man was thrown back into the kitchen by the force of the blow. Derrick could only see his feet. But from the way those feet seemed to have gone instantly still, he could tell the nail had done its job.
He let out a ragged hoot as he brought the nozzle back down to his father, who stuffed another nail in the end, sort of like muzzle-loading a shotgun. Then Derrick brought his arm back up into firing position.
There had been a burst of excited swearing from the kitchen, and it was coming from at least three different voices. It melded in such a way that Derrick couldn’t make out what they were saying.
But they were pissed. And maybe—hopefully—a little scared.
The next man who dared ease around the corner did so with greater caution. The first thing Derrick saw was the muzzle of what appeared to be either an AR-15 or an AK-47. Derrick flattened his arm against the step just as the gun fired a short burst of rounds that plowed harmlessly into the basement’s concrete wall. Chunks of the wall scattered on the basement floor.
The man repeated this procedure twice more, continuing to fire blindly each time, accomplishing little more than heaping greater injury on Carl Storm’s basement.
Derrick just waited. He didn’t have the luxury of spraying multiple shots all over in the wild hope of hitting something. He only had one shot at a time.
Finally, the thug—perhaps thinking his fire had sent the Storm boys hiding farther in the basement—cautiously edged around the corner.
Derrick held off until the man’s left eye was showing. Then he calmly brought his arm back up, aimed the laser level the same two inches high he had calculated before, and released the pressure.
The nail buried itself in the man’s eye. It didn’t kill him. But his howls of pain—loud, wracked, and agonized—were barely human. Then, suddenly, they ended with a single gunshot.
One of his comrades had decided to put him out of his misery.
In the meantime, Carl had already reloaded the nozzle. Derrick’s breathing remained steady and he deliberately did not allow himself to start calculating the odds. There were still three assailants upstairs trying to figure out how to kill him and his father. Their weaponry— with all due respect to what Derrick and Carl had rigged up—was far superior. They were now reassessing their options.
There was hushed conversation happening above them. Derrick did not dare take his eyes off the door.
The next attack didn’t come from that direction. A spasm of automatic weapon fire rained down on them from above. One of the thugs was trying to get lucky, shooting at them through the floor, attempting to find an angle of fire that would strike one of the Storm boys.
Really, all it was accomplishing was harassing them. Between the linoleum, the subfloor, and the two-by-tens that supported it, very few of the bullets were getting through. And even those were striking harmlessly into the basement floor.
Then the firing stopped. The chattering of the air compressor felt quiet in comparison, and Derrick was able to make out the noise of what sounded like three men fleeing the house.
And something else.
A police siren.
No, make that several of them.
“Are you buddy-buddy with the Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office by any chance?” Derrick shouted at his father.
“No. Does local law enforcement ever really like the FBI that much?”
“Fair point. I think we’re about to get a visit from them. Do you want to explain to them why there are two dead men in our kitchen?”
“Not really.”
“Me neither.
“Let’s get out of here.”
“Okay, but there’s one thing I need to do first,” Derrick said. “Let me see your phone.”
“What phone? The one in the kitchen?”
“No, Dad. The cell phone I bought you for Christmas two years ago.”
“Oh. I handed that thing back in. I couldn’t hear for crap on it. I never got any calls anyway.”
“Dad, I keep telling you, you have to turn it on before it can receive calls.”
“There’s a perfectly functional landline up in the kitchen. I promise you won’t have to worry about bad reception.”
“I’m not making a call. I need a camera, and you just smashed mine,” Derrick said, pointing to the shiny pieces of high technology in pieces on the floor. “I want to take pictures of the two guys we just killed.”
Ca
rl Storm recoiled in horror. “What are you, collecting souvenirs or something?”
“I’ll explain later. Do you have a camera or not?”
“Well, I mean, yeah, I got the old Polaroid. Still has film in it. Will that do?”
“Are you ever going to join us in this millennium?” Derrick said.
“Not unless I really have to,” Carl said.
The sirens were getting louder. They were running out of time.
“Fine,” Derrick said. “Get me the Polaroid.”
ELEVEN
HEAT
With her 9mm at shoulder height, Heat trained her eyes toward the interior of the apartment, where any threat might be coming from.
There were no lights on. The setting sun was now low enough behind the buildings to the west that the apartment was cast into a pre-twilight gloom.
She took one step forward, waiting for The Serpent—or whoever it was who sliced apart Bob Aaronson—to make his move.
Another step. She felt hyperalert, a surge of chemicals jangling in her bloodstream that came from knowing it was entirely possibly someone was about to die, her body having the innate sense to make sure it wasn’t her. She was ready to shoot at anything that moved.
Heat widened her eyes, trying to will her pupils into allowing more light in. Any intruder who had been lying in wait for some time would have the advantage of full dilation.
With her next step, Heat could now see partially into her living room. Another end table had been toppled. The lamp the table had held was on its side on the floor. The arm of the couch had been ripped. Chunks of stuffing were lying on the floor next to it. So were some feathers that looked like they had once belonged inside a pillow.
Heat was trying to stay connected to her every sense, to things as delicate as the tiny hairs on her cheeks, which might give her a moment’s warning that a stirring of air molecules had occurred, signifying an attack was imminent.