"It's not clear," he called from the top step. "Two machine guns at least."
"Throw a flash-bang," called Bobby.
I can do better than that , thought Kurtz. He took a wad of C-4 from his ditty bag, wadded it into a rough sphere, stuck in a primer detonator, and set it for four seconds. He lunged into the hall and threw it like a fastball through the shattered doors, jumping back onto the top step just as both M-16s opened up.
The blast blew the wide doors off their hinges and rolled a cloud of acrid smoke down the hallway.
Kurtz, Gonzaga and Bobby ran into the smoke, firing as they ran.
The last door on the right opened. An Asian woman looked out and screamed. Her hands were empty.
"No!" shouted Kurtz over his shoulder, but too late. Gonzaga fired at her with his shotgun at a range of twenty feet and the woman's upper body flew back into the room as if jerked away on a cable.
Kurtz kicked the hanging library doors open and rolled in among broken glass and splintered doorframe. The carpet was on fire. Smoke rose to the cathedral ceiling and a smoke alarm was screaming, hitting almost the same note the Asian woman had.
Trinh and another Vietnamese had been firing from behind a long, heavy library table they'd turned on its side. The C-4 blast had shattered the table into several chunks and a thousand splinters and thrown it all back over them. The bodyguard had been blown out through the glass terrace doorsa burglar alarm raised its whoop in chorus to the smoke alarmand that man was obviously dead. Colonel Trinh was lying unconscious on the smoking carpet. His face was bloody and his left arm was visibly broken, but he was breathing. His red slippers had been blown off and one of them sat in a bookshelf ten feet up
the high wall of shelves. The colonel's shattered M-16 lay nearby.
Kurtz rolled the colonel on his belly, pulled flexcuffs from his bag, and cuffed the man's wrists behind him. Tightly.
"Take him out to the chopper," he told Bobby, who was swinging his shotgun in short arcs, covering every opening, including the broken doors onto the lighted terrace.
"I don't take orders from you."
"Do it," said Gonzaga, stepping through the broken doors from the hallway.
Bobby grabbed the old Vietnamese man by his hair, pulled him halfway up, tucked a shoulder under him, hoisted him onto his shoulder without releasing his shotgun, and jogged down the hallway with him.
"Strong fucker," said Kurtz.
"Yeah."
The two men had each taken a knee and were covering different doorways. Upstairs, the rock 'n' roll gunfire had resolved itself into the occasional short bursts of full auto.
"That's the Major's bedroom," said Kurtz, jabbing a finger at the closed door on the south wall of the library. "You get him. I'm going to check the basement."
Gonzaga nodded and ran to the right of the bedroom doorway, jamming more shells into his 12-gauge as he did so.
Good idea , thought Kurtz as he went back out into the hallway. He pulled another clip from his pocket. He'd kept count of his shots out of old habitnine fired so far. There should be two bullets left in the Browning, one in the chamber and one in the clip.
The bodyguard's body at the bottom of the steps was still on fire, but the smoke in the basement had dissipated some. Besides the burning carpet and books in the library on the first floor, something on the second floor was also burningsmoke poured down into the foyer. The shooting up there had stopped.
Suddenly there was a double explosion from outside, north of the house, where the driveway came up from the valley.
Well, Baby Doc got to use at least one of his RPGs.
Kurtz went down the steps, pistol extended. A glance at the heaped body at the bottom showed him that he'd managed to put three slugs into the Asian man's chest through the door. Kurtz moved into the basement.
Surprisingly for such a fancy house, the basement wasn't finished. The central part was open and carpeted, there was a big screen TV and some cheap couches near the far wall a small kitchen and bar area showed a refrigerator and booze, but part of the floor was bare concrete and the place smelted of sweat and cigarettes. It looked to Kurtz like a place where the bodyguards might hang out. More smoke was roiling down the stairway.
There were three small rooms and a bathroom off the open room, and Kurtz kicked all the doors open.
He found Rigby in the last room.
She was lying half-naked on a bloody mattress set on the concrete floor and she looked dead. Then he saw the crude IV-drip and wad of bandages on her left leg and he went to one knee next to her. She was unconscious and very pale, her skin felt cold and clammy, but when he put fingers to her throat, he could feel the faint pulse. They'd been trying to keep her alive until tomorrow when they could finish the job in Buffalo with Kurtz's gun. Rigby's eyes fluttered but did not open.
He unslung the litter from his back, unfolded it, and then wondered what the hell he was doing. He wasn't going to get anyone else down here to help him carry the stretcher.