house. "Find a place to hide," he heard Jill saying.
"The car," Mrs. Page said.
the rear of the house, Pittman crouched in shadows, his .45,
concentrating to hear the sounds of someone climbing through a window.
"Yes, the car," Denning said.
From the porch, shoulders slammed against the front door.
.,The car? Forget it," Jill said. "Some of those men are outside in
the back. They'll shoot us if we try to get to the garage. 1 9
"you don't understand," Mrs. Page said. "It's in the basement. "
Shoulders kept slamming against the front door.
"What are you g about? The basement?" Jill sounded hoarse, her throat
dry from fear. "What's a car doing in the basement? What good would-?"
From a room at the back of the house, Pittman heard footsteps scraping
on broken glass. He clutched his pistol tighter, aiming. '4The garage
is down there," Mrs . Page said. "The garage is under the house. If
we get to the car, we'll be safe - "
"No!" Jill said. "We'll be trapped. If we try to drive away, they'll
shoot through the windows and doors and-"
"Why must you be so stupid? Listen to me. Listen to what I'm telling
you."
Pittman heard Mm. Page's high-heeled shoes on the vestibules hardwood
floor. A door opened, echoing.
"Stop," Jill said.
"Down here," . Page insisted.
"I'm going with you," Denning said.
A man's footsteps scurried across the vestibule, joining the urgent
rapping sound of high-heeled shoes descending stairs.
"Wait for me!" The servant quickly followed.
"Matt!" Jill shouted.
From the back of the mansion, Pittman heard other footsteps scraping on
broken glass. A shadow moved. Pittman fired, his ears ringing from the
.45's fierce blast. The recoil threw him off balance. From the
darkness at the back of the house, he saw what seemed to be a spark.
Simultaneously he felt more than heard a bullet strike the wall next to
him. For a frenzied moment, he feared that the blast from his .45 had
deafened him. In a greater frenzy, he realized that he hadn't heard the
shot from the back of the house because the gunman had used a silencer.
The ringing in Pittman's ears had obscured the muffled spit. He fired
again, squirming backward, flinching from the impact of four soundless
bullets striking the wall where he'd been crouching.
"Matt!" Jill screamed.
We don't have a chance, Pittman thought, scurrying faster backward. We
can't possibly kill all six of them.
"Jill, come on!"
"Where! "
"The basement!"
As Jill rushed past him, hurrying down the stairs that the others had
used, Pittman fired once more toward the back of the house, spun and
fired toward the front door, then charged into the stairwell and slammed
the door shut.
Not that the closed door would do him any good, he suddenly realized. It
did have a lock, but the knob for the bolt was on the opposite side. He
couldn't possibly keep the gunmen from coming through.
Fear made him nauseated. Lights in the stairwell revealed stone steps
that led to a concrete floor. Jill had already reached the bottom.
Pittman backed down, aiming toward the closed door. He saw the knob
being turned and fired, his ears ringing worse as the powerful bullet
splintered the door, walloping through, a man on the other side
screaming.
The two men at the front door had been a diversion, Pittman thought.
They had pounded on the door to drive everyone toward the back of the
house, where the men who'd broken in waited with silenced pistols. 'The
slight commotion at the front probably hadn't attracted much attention
from the street. The silenced pistols couldn't be heard outside the
mansion.
No one knows what's happening in here! Pittman thought. The servant
was supposed to have phoned the police, but Pittman hadn't seen him do
it. Had the servant been distracted by fear? Nobody realizes we need
help! We're trapped down here! The only way someone outside can know
we're in danger ...
The blast from Pittman's .45. That could be heard outside. As he
continued to stare up toward the door to the basement, he saw the knob
being turned, and he fired again, his ears suffering from the pistol's
torturous blast, the confines of the basement magnifying the roar.
Someone outside is bound to hear, Pittman told himself. Although the
ringing in his ears was excruciating, he prepared to fire yet again. But
suddenly a warning instinct told him that he was almost out of
ammunition. How many times had he fired? He strained to remember. Six.
He had only one round left. If they try to rush us ...
Jill, he thought. She hasn't fired yet. Her pistol's still fully
loaded. He spun toward her, wanting to trade weapons, and froze in
surprise at the sight of the car in the basement. Its length and height
were totally unexpected. It was a silver Rolls-Royce, its paint and
chrome gleaming from obvious daily care. Someone had backed it in. A
pulley in the ceiling led to a garage door that could be raised
electronically.
Pittman's surprise was offset by dismay when he saw how panicked Mrs.
Page, Denning, and the servant were. They had.scurried into the car,
slamming the doors, evidently locking them. Jill was trying to open the
driver's door while Mrs. Page struggled to shove a key into the car's
ignition switch.
"Mrs. Page, unlock the door! Let me in!" Jill's shout was muffled by
the ringing in Pittman's ears.
Pittman redirected his attention toward the door at the top of the
stairs. Again the knob turned. Again he fired. The ejection slide on
top of his pistol stayed back, indicating that the weapon was empty.
No! He shoved the .45 into his coat pocket and ran toward Jill. "I
need your gun!"
She was so preoccupied, pounding on the driver's door, g to get into the
Rolls-Royce, that she didn't seem to notice when Pittman took the
pistol.
It held more ammunition than the .45. As a consequence, Pittman felt
briefly confident. But then he realized that he was still trapped. If
Mrs. Page started the car, opened the automatic garage door, and sped
away, it wasn't possible for Jill and himself to defend themselves
against six gunmen.
The door at the top of the stairs opened slightly. Pittman fired, the
recoil from the 9 mm less violent than that from the .45. It was
obvious what the gunmen were doing-holding back, staying on either side
of the door, taunting Pittman by moving it, trying to entice him into
wasting all his ammunition.
Sickeningly, his heartbeat surged as he wondered why the police hadn't
arrived. Surely a neighbor must have heard the shots and phoned for
help. Why were the police taking so long?
Jill kept pounding on the driver's door. "Let me in!"
Abruptly Mrs. Page pushed a button that caused the locks to disengage,
making a thunking sound. She opened the door. "I can't get the car to
start!"
"My father owns one of these! Let me try
! Move over!" Jill shoved at
her, squirming behind the steering wheel.
Pittman ran to the car and saw that Denning was scrunched next to Mrs.
Page and Jill. He yanked opened the passenger door, dragged Denning
out, and shoved him into the backseat with the servant.
As Pittman dove into the back with them, he yelled to Jill, "Let's get
the hell out of here!" Jill slammed her door and turned the ignition
key. "It doesn't work!"
"Try again!"
"It doesn't want to turn all the way!"
Pittman scurried from the car and aimed toward the stairs. "Hurry!"
"The key!" Jill said. "This isn't the right key!" Hands shaking, she
sorted through other keys on a ring.
Even with his protesting ears, Pittman heard sounds on the stairs.
Shadows, then shoes came rapidly into view - He fired Splinters from
concrete spattered the shoes. The gunmen scrambled back out of sight.
Jill shouted, "Got it!"
The Rolls-Royce's engine roared.
"Hurry!" Pittman fired once more at the stairs and dove back into the
car. "Lock all the doors!"
Jill pressed a button that engaged the locks. She pressed another
button. With a rumble, the garage door began to rise.
Pittman glanced in dismay through the car's rear window. The gunmen
were charging down the stairs.
"They'll shoot out the windows!" Pittman yelled. "Stay down!"
"They can't!" Mrs. Page shouted.
A bullet struck the rear window, ricocheting.
4i4
"My husband was afraid of terrorists!" I 'What?
Jill revved the Rolls-Royce, speeding forward as the garage door rose
above the hood. With a crunch, the car's roof struck the rising garage
door. But the Rolls kept hurtling from the garage. It soared up an
incline-and jounced down onto ground level. Through the windshield,
Pittman saw three of the gunmen crouched in a shadowy lane behind the
house. They were waiting, aiming toward the car. He couldn't hear the
shots from their silenced weapons, but the upward jerk of the pistols
showed that the gunmen were firing. Bullets struck and deflected off
the hood and the windshield.
"What the-?"
"The windows are bulletproof"' Mrs. Page said. "The whole car is!
That's what I've been trying to tell you!"
Jill swerved, increasing speed, veering past the gunmen, who now fired
at the side of the car.
Pittman felt the vibrating impact of the eerily muffled bullets hitting
the Rolls.
Jill struggled with the steering wheel. "This thing handles like it's a
tank!"
"At the time, I thought my late husband was insane to want an armored
car!"
A gunman appeared ahead of them, firing directly at the windshield,
diving for cover as Jill sped past. She swerved from the narrow
tree-lined lane and reached the side of the house, aiming the Rolls
along the brick driveway toward the street. There hadn't been time to
turn on the headlights, but the glare of lights in the shrubbery at the
front combined with the glow of streetlights, showing that the dark
Oldsmobile the gunmen had arrived in was parked directly in front of the
exit from the driveway. There wasn't any way past it.
Other cars were parked everywhere along the curb, preventing the Rolls
from veering off the driveway, across the sidewalk, and onto the street.
"Brace yourselves!"
Jill tightened her grip on the steering wheel, directing the Rolls
toward the front fender of the Oldsmobile blocking the driveway. "I
hope this is a tank '
In the backseat, preparing himself for the collision, Pittman felt the
Rolls increase speed. The Oldsmobile grew alarmingly, seeming to fill
the windshield. The Rolls struck it with such force that the Oldsmobile
jerked sideways.
Pittman felt as if his chest had been punched. His head snapped back.
Next to him, Denning slammed onto the floor. As the Rolls kept heaving
forward, sliding the Oldsmobile farther sideways, the servant groaned.
In the front seat, Mrs. Page shoved her hands against the dashboard to
absorb the shock.
Even though Pittman's ears kept ringing, he couldn't help hearing the
crunch of metal and the crash of glass. The Oldsmobile had been jolted
sufficiently sideways that the Rolls slammed past it, scraping an
hurtling forward, reaching the street and streaking across it. Jill
stamped the brake pedal. But the heavily armored car barely slowed.
Jill swung the steering wheel to avoid the cars parked on the opposite
side of the street. But the Rolls never meant to be so heavy-responded
sluggishly. One Of the cars across the street seemed suddenly huge. The
Rolls struck it, more glass shattering, metal crumbling. The Rolls
rebounded, its distinctive winged woman hood ornament and thickly
slatted, shiny grill falling onto the pavement.
From the backseat, jolted by the two collisions, Pittman watched Jill in
dismay as she tugged the car's gearshift into reverse and stared behind
her. Working the steering wheel, she tried to maneuver the car so '
that it wasn't positioned diagonally across the street, blocking both
lanes. Too late. Pittman was suddenly knocked sideways by the jolt of
another collision. A car coming along the street hadn't been able to
stop in time to avoid hitting the Rolls. Headlights glaring, a car
coming in the opposite direction squealed to a stop before it struck the
other side of the Rolls.
No! Pittman thought. We're boxed in! Drivers got out of the cars.
Alarmed by the din of the multiple collisions, men and women hurried out
of houses on both sides of the street. Pedestrians watched in shock.
The sidewalks became rapidly crowded. Horns blaring, cars lined up in
each direction, blocked by the accidents.
"What are we going to do?" Denning whimpered.
"One thing's sure. We're not going anywhere in the Rolls," Jill said.
"Get out of the car," Pittman said.
"They'll shoot us," the servant said.
"We can't stay here. Hurry. Everybody out." Pittman helped Denning
rise from where he'd been thrown to the r. "Are you all right? Mrs.
Page, what about you?" Pittman shoved his door open. "Mrs. Page, I
asked if you're all right." Stunned, slumped in the front seat, Mrs.
Page groaned. Jill leaned over, examining her.
Outside the car, Pittman rushed forward and opened the passenger door.
"How is she?"
The drivers of the cars that blocked the Rolls crowded toward Pittman.
"What the hell did you think you were doing?" a man yelled. "You came
out of nowhere."
"She's shaken up," Jill said. "But I don't see any bleeding.
4i7
"We have to get away from here!" Denning wailed.
Pittman spun to study the driveway next to the mansion.
the commotion of numerous onlookers, he saw solemn faced men wearing
windbreakers running down the shadowy driveway, dispersing into the
crowd.
"Jesus, buddy!" a bystander said, stumbling back in terror, pointing
toward Pittman's right hand.
Pittman didn't understand why the man behaved as he did.
Then,
squinting down at his right hand, Pittman saw that he still clutched the
pistol he had taken from Jill.
The panicked man who'd seen the pistol bumped against the driver of one
of the cars that had struck the Rolls. Now the driver, too, saw the
pistol and reacted the way the first man had, stumbling to get away.
"Jesus, he's got a gun!" somebody yelled.
A woman screamed. The crowd around Pittman bumped into one another in a
frenzied effort to get away from the gun.
Pittman kept darting his gaze past them, toward the driveway and
sidewalk at Mrs. Page's mansion. The solemn-faced men wearing
windbreakers were no longer in view. He scanned the panicked
bystanders, afraid that the gunmen might be using them for cover,
stalking nearer.
"She's all right," Jill said abruptly behind him. Pittman spun, seeing
Mrs. Page next to Jill.
"Let's get out of here!" Denning yelled.
"The Duster. " Pittman ran toward the front of the mansion where he had
parked it. He pulled out his car keys and unlocked the driver's door,
frantically opened it, then pulled the passenger seat forward, wishing