Page 3 of The 9th Man

Someonewascoming for her.

And here they were.

He counted four on the street. Add a driver in the van and that made five. Clearly, they were trained and surely armed. The odds were stacked. But the hard way was like candy to a Ranger.

Whistler motioned.

At the van, Red Cap started toward the house.

Luke reached up and disabled his car’s dome light.

Whistler was walking faster now, hands moving. Luke saw the outline of a pistol with a sound suppressor, a big one too, roughly the size of a soda can. A rig like that was as close to silent as one could get. He kept his eyes fixed on Whistler and eased open the car door, slipping out without making a sound. He hunched over and backed up, creeping past the rear of the rental, swinging right and maneuvering behind his target. Whether the van’s driver would see him and raise the alarm was hard to say. Didn’t matter. He needed Whistler’s gun to even up the odds. He hadn’t brought his own weapon. Too many questions and lost time dealing with Customs.

He hastened his pace, trotting on flat feet, closing the gap.

Faster.

Almost there.

Now.

Whistler never saw Luke’s roundhouse hook, which landed squarely on the man’s temple, knocking him unconscious. The form toppled into the hedge and settled with only his legs visible, which Luke quickly stuffed into the foliage. Then he retrieved the gun, checked the magazine, and, after a bit of groping in the dark, found the man’s portable radio and earpiece, which he donned.

A voice was saying, calm and measured, “Preparing for entry.”

Luke took this to mean he hadn’t been spotted.

Perfect.

But that was about to change.

He eased forward along the hedge line, stopping at a waist-high brick wall, and peeked around the edge in time to see Red Cap unscrewing the front door’s lightbulb, plunging the porch into darkness. The guy then knelt before the door and began working the lock. Luke saw the other two men, the ninjas, rounding the corner of the house. Stacking up for entry. Each carried a weapon.

This party was about to get serious.

He heard a softsnick, then the front door swung open. Red Cap gave his partners a hand signal and they slid along the wall toward the entrance.

Jillian needed an alert.

He raised the sound-suppressed pistol and fired two shots through the upstairs window. As expected, the report was nearly silent, but in the relative silence of the street the shattering of glass was jarring.

The Ninjas looked up and aimed their weapons.

A light popped on in another window.

Then immediately the panes went dark.

Atta girl.

Jillian was a former marine, a night fighter, skilled in combat. Turning on the light had been impulse, but dousing it came from training. The ninjas mounted the steps to the front door. Luke raised his gun, hopped the wall, and charged. The first man vanished through the door, but the second saw Luke and turned to face him, raising his gun.

Luke shot him twice in the chest.

The body dropped backward.

He adjusted his aim to cover the door, then darted for the dead ninja, snatching up the man’s weapon and entering the house. Behind him, the van’s door opened. Luke spun. The driver was coming around the hood with a weapon ready.

Luke fired.