Keith and Billy made their way through the pine forest and came to a stop at the edge of the clearing toward the back of the house.
Keith braced the butt of the crossbow against his chest and pulled on the sixty-pound bowstring until it hooked into the trigger release catch. He fitted one of the short arrows into the groove and knelt beside a pine tree, using the trunk to steady his aim. He looked through the crossbow's telescopic sight.
About sixty yards away, walking in the moonlight of the clearing, was a big German shepherd. The dog was not on a wire run, Keith noticed, but was tethered to a pole with a long leash.
Keith waited, hoping the dog would come closer, or at least stop in place for a few seconds, but the shepherd continued to pace randomly. Keith waited and watched.
Billy focused the binoculars on the house and whispered, "Okay here."
Finally, the shepherd stopped pacing at about forty yards' distance and raised its head, as though listening for something. It was a profile shot, and Keith aimed at the dog's forward flank, hoping to hit his heart or lungs. He pulled the trigger, and the arrow shot out of the crossbow.
He couldn't see where it went, but it didn't hit the dog. The dog, however, heard the vanes as they hummed past and let out a short, confused bark, then began running around.
Keith recocked the bowstring and fitted another arrow.
Billy whispered, "Still okay here."
Keith stood and fired purposely short, and the arrow sliced into the ground about twenty yards away. The shepherd heard it and streaked directly toward the arrow as Keith recocked, fitted another arrow, and aimed through the sight. The dog stopped short and snapped at the feathered vanes. Keith pulled the trigger.
He could actually see the arrow pass through the German shepherd's head, and he was sure the dog was dead before it hit the ground.
Keith tapped Billy on the shoulder. "One down. Let's move."
Keith reslung his M-16 rifle and carried the crossbow at his side. Billy slung his M-14 and carried the shotgun. Together, they began moving again through the pine forest, toward the other two dogs.
It took them over twenty minutes to navigate through the dark woods around the perimeter of the clearing. They crossed the open dirt road in a quick rush, and continued on in a semicircle through the pines and toward the lake.
They stopped at a point where they could see the lake ahead. The moon was almost behind the pines now, and the lake looked much darker. Keith figured they had only a few more minutes of good moonlight left.
There were some felled pines in the area, cut down, it appeared, to expand the clearing. Keith used the sawed base of a tree trunk to steady the stock of the crossbow. He scanned through the bow sight and saw the Labrador retriever on its wire run, sitting about twenty yards away on its haunches, looking out at the lake.
Billy was watching the house through the telescopic sight of his rifle. He had an oblique view of the sliding glass doors on the front deck and whispered, "House okay." He shifted his aim and found the golden retriever. "Third dog sleeping."
Keith lined up the bow sight's crosshairs over the Labrador's left flank. The dog raised its head and yawned. Keith pulled the trigger. Except for the twang of the bowstring, there was no sound as the arrow flew off. A second later, the dog jerked, let out a short, surprised sound halfway through its yawn, and rolled over. It whimpered softly for a few seconds, then became quiet.
Keith rolled over, too, on his back, and with the butt against his chest, recocked the bowstring as Billy handed him another arrow from the quiver. Keith fitted the arrow, then jumped to his feet. With two dogs gone, absolute silence was not as important as speed. He noted on his watch that it was one twenty-eight A.M.
Keith left the cover of the pine trees and made directly for the golden retriever, who was curled up on the ground about fifty yards away, apparently sleeping. Keith got within twenty yards before the dog awoke and jumped to its feet. Keith fired, and before he even saw if the arrow would hit or not, he dropped the crossbow and sprinted toward the dog, drawing his knife as he ran.
The retriever yelped and tried to run at Keith, but the arrow had pierced his rear haunch, and he stumbled. As the dog looked back over his shoulder to see what was wrong, Keith landed on him with both knees, breaking his backbone, and at the same time grabbing its muzzle and holding it closed while he slit the dog's throat.
Keith felt the dog go into spasms, its blood pouring from its slashed throat. In a few seconds, the dog lay limp.
Keith glanced up at the house a hundred yards away. There was nothing between him and the house now — no dogs to warn Baxter, but also no cover or concealment for him. Just three hundred feet of open space. The clearing was dark, but not as dark as it would be in a few minutes when the moon dropped behind the pine trees, and he knew he should wait, as per plan. But he was psyched now, the adrenaline was pumping, he'd drawn blood, and he was as ready as he'd ever be.
Billy had moved up into a concealed position among the trees behind Keith, at a slight angle from the sliding glass doors, so he could cover Keith without Keith being directly in the line of fire. Billy whispered loudly, "Keith — get back here or get moving. You can't stay there."
Keith turned to Billy and gave him a thumbs-up.
Billy said, "Okay, I got you covered. Good luck."
Keith turned back toward the house and with no hesitation began the hundred-yard sprint across the open field.
He didn't want to be slowed down, and he didn't need his rifle for this, so he carried only the police revolver and the hunting knife.
Eighty yards. Ten more seconds, and he'd be on the steps to the porch. He focused on the dark sliding glass doors.
Sixty yards. He felt very exposed, very naked, charging across the open field, and he knew that if Baxter came through that door right now with the rifle and infrared scope, Baxter wouldn't even have to rush his shot and could even take the time to smile and say something nasty. Keith hoped that Billy Marlon was a good shot.
Cliff Baxter, responding to the alarm clock, had risen from bed and, still in his underwear, came into the living room and turned on the table lamp. He had his gun belt and holster draped over his shoulder and was wearing his bulletproof vest, but didn't have his AK-47 or shotgun with him.
Annie was kneeling on the floor in front of the rocking chair, her manacled ankles behind her. The poker was squeezed tight between her thighs, the end protruding between her feet and under the rocker, not visible to Baxter.
He asked, "Why you kneeling there in the dark?"
"I couldn't sleep in the rocking chair. I'm going to lie on the floor."
"Yeah?" He walked toward the sliding glass door. "I'm gonna wake the dogs."
He drew his pistol, unlocked the sliding glass door, and opened it just enough to point the pistol in the air and fire a shot. He began to close the door but froze and listened. The dogs weren't barking.
Billy Marlon, sighting through the telescopic sight of his M-14 rifle, covered Keith's run across the open clearing, the scope's crosshairs lined up on the glass door.
Suddenly, a light went on in the house, and a few seconds later he saw a backlighted figure at the door, but he couldn't be sure it was Baxter. The door seemed to move, and Billy heard a shot, then before he could squeeze off a round, the figure was gone. "Damn!" He saw Keith come into the view of his scope, still running. "Okay. Okay." Then a few yards from the base of the stairs, Keith veered off and disappeared from the scope. "What the hell?"
Billy Marlon stood there a second, confused, angry with himself, and feeling that he'd somehow let Keith down. There was nothing in the world more frustrating than a shot not taken, a target not engaged. He lowered the rifle, and without much thought, he began charging across the open field toward the house.
Thirty yards. Four or five more seconds. Keith looked up and saw a light come on inside the house. He didn't slow up or break stride, but kept going.
Twenty yards. A backlighted figure was suddenly at the glass door, and Keith thought he saw the door sliding open. Keith made a snap decision and veered off, running under the cantilevered deck and bringing himself to a short stop against one of the concrete-block columns that held up the house. A shot rang out. Keith put his back to the column and aimed his revolver straight up. The light from the house cast a faint illumination through the spaced deck boards. He kept the revolver pointed up, waiting for a shadow or movement on the deck above him, but he saw and heard nothing. A second later, he heard the door slide shut with a thud.
Keith was fairly certain that it was Baxter at the door and that Baxter hadn't seen or heard him approaching the house, or he wouldn't have turned on the light. Baxter had just picked that bad moment to rouse his dogs with a gunshot, and the dogs hadn't responded. Nor would they ever respond. Cliff Baxter knew he had company.
Cliff Baxter locked the glass door and took a long step away, his back to his gun rack. He stood absolutely still with Keith's Glock 9mm automatic pointing at the door. He glanced back at the table lamp about twenty feet away. He wanted to turn it off but didn't want to move. He listened.
He kept telling himself that no one could have gotten all three dogs, that they weren't dead, that the pistol shot just hadn't woken them. But that was not possible. Damn it.
He looked at his wife kneeling across the room, and their eyes met.
Annie maintained eye contact with him, and she recognized that look she had seen on his face when she'd pointed the shotgun at him. She wanted to smile, to smirk, to say something, but she sensed that death was near, and she didn't know whose.
Baxter lifted the key chain from around his neck and unlocked his gun rack. He took down the Sako rifle, turned on the electronic infrared scope, and flipped the safety switch to the fire position.
Keith stayed frozen against the concrete column, the revolver still pointing upward at the deck. Behind him was the open garage space where the Bronco was parked, and above the garage was the house. He listened for footsteps from the house but heard nothing.
He glanced out to where he'd left Billy Marlon near the edge of the clearing where the dead retriever lay. The moon had slipped behind the pines now, leaving the clearing in almost total darkness.
Keith wondered why Billy hadn't gotten a shot off but was glad he hadn't. Probably it had all happened too fast for him to react, or he thought Keith was going to open fire and charge up the stairs in Billy's line of fire. In any case, Baxter was on full alert, Billy was a hundred yards away across the clearing, and Keith was under Baxter's feet, probably not ten feet from him. He would rather have been and should have been on the deck, but Keith was reasonably certain Baxter didn't know he was there. All Keith had to do now was wait until Baxter decided he had to come out with his infrared scope and deal with the problem.
Keith heard a sound and turned toward the dark clearing. It took him a few seconds to realize there was movement out there, then he saw Billy Marlon running toward the house at a high speed.
Damn him. Keith was furious at Billy for not following orders, but Keith never thought Billy Marlon would.
He watched Billy covering the open space very quickly, his rifle at his hip, ready to fire, like an infantryman assaulting an enemy position.
Keith wasn't in a position to cover Marlon, but he tried to motion him to veer off and come under the house. But Billy was intent on his charge to the deck stairs. Billy Marlon wanted Cliff Baxter, and that's all that was on his mind at this moment.
Cliff Baxter quickly took stock of the situation. He had no way of knowing when the dogs had been silenced, and no way of knowing who'd done it, but he had a real good suspect in mind. Without the dogs, he had no early warning and had no idea where Keith Landry was at that moment. He felt a line of sweat form on his forehead and run down his face. Goddamnit.
He was about to cross the room and turn the lamp off when he thought he heard something outside — the sound of someone running, getting closer.
Billy Marlon was less than ten feet from the bottom of the staircase and showed no inclination to veer off and join Keith under the deck. Keith had no choice now but to break cover and follow Billy Marlon up the staircase, though what they were going to do up there he didn't know, but he figured Billy would smash the glass door with his rifle butt, and they'd wing it from there.
Keith began moving out from under the deck as Marlon took a long stride four or five feet from the first wooden step. Keith saw too late the four wooden pegs driven into the ground at the base of the staircase. Billy's foot came down on what looked like solid ground, but was a sheet of canvas or plastic, secured at the corners by the pegs and covered with a thin layer of earth.
Keith watched and saw it all as if in slow motion: Billy's surprised look as the ground beneath him gave way and Billy dropping through the earth. Keith expected him to keep falling, like the men did in Vietnam who dropped into a deep punji pit and became impaled on sharpened bamboo shafts. But Marlon stopped at knee height, his feet funneled into the narrow base of the conical hole. Keith heard a sharp metallic snap, followed by the sickening sound of something crunching, followed by Billy's shrill, piercing scream. Keith froze where he was beneath the edge of the deck, a few feet from Billy. The glass door above him slid open.
Baxter heard the bear trap snap shut, followed by the scream, and he slid the door open, letting the screams into the living room. He yelled, "Gotcha! Gotcha!"
The figure at the base of the stairs was thrashing in pain, screaming, but still holding tight to the rifle.
In an instant, Baxter recognized that it wasn't Landry, and he shouted, "Who the hell — Marlon! You little shit!" Baxter, still standing inside the doorway, aimed his rifle down at Marlon.
Billy Marlon, still holding his rifle with one hand and writhing in agony, managed to get off a single shot from the hip, as Baxter fired simultaneously. Billy's shot went high and tore into the wood siding above Baxter's head. Baxter's bullet went where it was aimed, through Billy Marlon's heart.
Almost simultaneously, Keith fired three quick shots up and through the wooden planks toward where he guessed Baxter was standing in the doorway.
One shot shattered the glass door, one grazed Baxter's forearm, and the third hit him in the chest, knocking the wind out of him and throwing him back through the open door where he sprawled on the floor.
Annie screamed.
Baxter struggled to his feet, still holding his rifle.
Keith heard Baxter fall on the floor, and Keith charged out from beneath the deck, grabbed the banister post, and swung around over the hole where Billy lay dead. With his pistol aimed at the door, he took the stairs in three strides, and, not seeing Baxter on the floor or anywhere in the dim light of the room, he bounded across the deck and dove through the open door, rolling to his right behind a long sofa, his pistol sweeping the room.
He lay there, looked and listened, but saw no one and heard nothing. The single lamp still shone weakly from somewhere at the far end of the room, casting dark shadows where he lay. The sofa blocked his view of the room toward the fireplace, but he could see the stone chimney rising to the high cathedral ceiling, and noticed the gray wolf head looking across the room from thirty feet away.
He lay on his back, motionless, the pistol still sweeping, controlling his breathing and trying to get a sense of the layout of the big room from what he could see. He was fairly certain he'd hit Baxter, but by the sound of Baxter's heavy crash to the floor, Keith reasoned that Baxter was wearing his body armor and that the round had simply knocked him off his feet, and he'd scrambled away from the door. Baxter might be hurt, Keith thought, but a.38-caliber pistol round that had gone through a plank and hit body armor would not hurt him too badly.
Keith couldn't see much beyond the sofa and the other furniture, so he slid a few feet away toward the wall. His head and eyes continuously swept the room, left to right, as his pistol swept right to left, trusting his peripheral vision and his hearing to cover what was momentarily not in his direct line of sight, and trusting his instinct to snap fire at anything that moved.
Keith didn't know who was going to make the first move, but he was fairly certain that there weren't many moves left on the board now.
Images of Billy Marlon flashed in front of him — Billy at the bar in John's Place, Billy asking Keith if he could come along, Billy in the pickup truck on the way up here, Billy sitting with Keith in the dark woods... Billy writhing in agony in that hole. Billy dead.
Keith thought, too, of Annie. He knew she was here, not far away, and she knew he was here in this room.
Keith decided to make the first move, not based on rage or ego, but on the assumption that Baxter knew someone was in the room and that Baxter also knew approximately where that person was, while Keith didn't have a clue as to where Baxter was.
Keith began to rise to one knee, then heard a woman's voice from the direction of the fireplace say, "He's in the far right corner, crouched with a pistol."
Before she even finished, Keith sprang up on one knee, aimed over the back of the sofa, and fired two rounds at Baxter, who had taken cover behind a wooden chest in the corner. Keith fell back behind the sofa and rolled to the right, toward the wall, as two answering rounds ripped through the sofa.
Keith lay still behind an upholstered chair.
In the two seconds it had taken him to fire, he'd caught a glimpse of Annie to his left, kneeling on the floor near the fireplace, naked. He was sure she'd seen him.
Keith was certain that at least one of his rounds had hit Baxter, but again the body armor had saved him. Keith wasn't too happy with the six-shot Smith & Wesson Police Model 10 that Baxter's men used, especially not in this situation where, with one bullet left, he couldn't take a chance and open the cylinder, extract the used casings, and reload chamber by chamber.
He wondered if Baxter was using the Glock, which had a seventeen-round, quick reload magazine. It didn't matter anyway, because, as Keith suspected, now that Baxter knew for sure it was Landry, the round-counting game was about to be cut short.
As if Baxter had read Keith's mind, Baxter called out, "Don't shoot, Landry. I'm standing right behind her. I got a gun to her head. So you just stand up where I can see you, hands high."
Keith figured that was coming, because he knew Baxter. He noticed that Baxter's voice was steady, but not altogether calm, even though he had everything going for him.
"I want to see empty hands first."
Keith had only one option left, and Baxter had given it to him by firing. Keith played dead.
A few seconds went by, and Baxter called out, "Hey, asshole. You want her to die? Stand up like a man, or I blow her fucking head off. I kid you not."
Keith heard Annie's voice say, "Don't do it, Keith..." followed by a loud slap and a cry of pain.
Baxter yelled out again, "Hey, hero, you got five seconds, then she's dead. One!"
Keith didn't think Baxter was going to kill her, and there were a lot of reasons for that, not the least of which was that Baxter didn't want to lose his human shield.
"Two!"
Keith knew if he stood, he couldn't expect a quick death. He held the revolver close to his body to muffle the sound, opened the cylinder, and extracted the five spent casings.
"Three!"
Keith began quietly slipping rounds into the empty chambers.
"Four! I swear to God, Landry, you stand up, or she's dead."
Annie called out, "No! Don't..."
Another slap and another cry of pain, during which Keith snapped the cylinder quickly back into the frame.
"Five! Okay, she gets it."
Keith held his breath and steadied himself. He wanted to stand, to shout, to shoot, to let Baxter take him, to do anything in that split second except what he knew he had to do, which was nothing.
There was a long silence in the room, then Baxter said, "Hey! You dead, or playin' dead?"
Keith exhaled and smiled. Come here and find out.
"I can wait all fucking night, Landry."
Me, too. Keith waited. One thing he thought he could count on was Annie telling him if Baxter moved toward him. Baxter's hostage, his shield, was also Baxter's problem. But apparently Baxter had also figured that out, because the light suddenly went off, and the room was black.
It was so still in the big room that Keith could hear the mantel clock ticking from thirty feet away. Then he heard Baxter say to him, "One of us got an infrared scope, and one of us don't. Guess who can see in the dark."
He heard the floor squeak across the room, then heard it again, this time closer, then the squeaking stopped.
He pictured Baxter standing in about the middle of the room now, scanning along the floor, the walls, around the furniture with his night scope mounted on his rifle. The game was almost done, and Keith had only two moves left — stand and shoot into the dark, or play very dead.
He moved his right hand with the revolver under his buttocks as though he'd fallen dead on his forearm. With his left hand, he took his knife and sliced into his hairline, then smeared the blood over his face and left eye. He slid the knife into his pocket and kept both eyes open, staring dead at the unseen ceiling above him.
He heard Baxter move again, very close now, on the other side of the long sofa. Baxter said, "Well... so you ain't playin'."
Keith couldn't actually see him, but he felt his presence looming over him, and, by his voice, he knew that Baxter was about ten feet away and that, at this close distance, the infrared image would be too blurry to detect a sign of life. Nevertheless, Keith didn't draw a breath and kept his eyelids frozen and his eyeballs dead in their sockets. But he couldn't keep the sweat beads from forming on his upper lip. He had a sense, a feeling, of the infrared scope boring into his face, the muzzle of the rifle pointed at about his throat. Somewhere across the room, he heard Annie sobbing.
Baxter said, "Hey, Landry. You playin' possum on me?"
Keith knew he needed a head shot, but that wasn't possible in the dark. A hit in the body armor was the best he could hope for, and that would knock Baxter off his feet, then he'd use the knife.
"I hope to God you ain't dead, shithead. I want you to feel this."
Keith understood that the next thing to happen would be Baxter firing into his leg or his groin, and he knew he had to go for it now. He yanked his gun hand free and fired three times, up and to his right where he'd heard Baxter's voice, then rolled, fired three times again, then came to a stop tight against the wall near the shattered glass door. He stared into the dark and waited.
He never heard Baxter yell out in pain, never heard the rounds slap against the body armor, and never heard the sound of a man falling. He realized that Baxter must have moved or crouched low after he'd spoken and before Keith fired. Baxter had made a smart move. Keith had made a fatal move. He heard Baxter's voice, coming from a different place, saying, "So long, sucker..."
Instead of the explosion of Baxter's rifle firing into him, he heard a dull thud. He had no idea of what that was, but it meant he wasn't dead, and he jumped to his feet, lunging toward the sofa with his knife in his hand. He collided with the sofa and slashed out with his knife, then something hit his legs and fell to the floor, making another, softer thud.
There were no more sounds in the dark room, then he heard a groan, then a floor lamp came on beside the sofa.
It took him a second for his eyes to adjust to the light, and even then he wasn't completely processing what he saw.
Baxter was kneeling on the sofa in front of him, slumped over the back, his head and bare arms dangling toward Keith. Baxter was wearing a thick gray nylon vest, and Keith saw blood running from his left arm where Keith guessed one of his bullets had grazed him. Keith looked into Baxter's eyes, which were open and were focused on him.
Keith, the knife still in his hand, glanced down at his feet and saw the rifle with the night scope lying on the floor and realized that this is what had hit him in the legs. He knew he hadn't gotten Baxter with his knife, yet Baxter was bleeding now from the mouth.
Keith was aware of Annie standing to his left, and he looked at her. She was naked, standing very rigid, her eyes a million miles away, and her right hand still on the lamp switch. Then he noticed the poker in her left hand, hanging at her side. She wasn't looking at him, but was staring at the back of Cliff Baxter's head.
Baxter groaned, and his head lolled to the side, the blood still trickling from his mouth.
Keith looked back at Annie. He said nothing and made no move but kept looking at her until finally she turned toward him.
The sofa was between him and her, but he put out his arm, reaching past Baxter, and motioned for her to give him the poker. He noticed now that she had leg irons around her ankles. He made another motion for her to hand him the poker, but she shook her head.
Cliff Baxter groaned again, and Keith looked at him. Blood was running down the sides of his neck now, and Keith said to him, but for Annie's benefit, "You brought this on yourself. You know that."
Baxter raised his head, and, still conscious, looked at Keith and said, "Fuck you..." Then he tried to stand and turn around, his head and eyes moving around the room. "Annie, Annie, I..."
She swung the poker in a wide overhead arch and brought it down hard against the top of her husband's head, sending him sprawling back over the couch.
Keith could actually hear the skull crack and saw Baxter's eyes bulge out of his sockets and blood pour from his nose. Keith was not at all surprised by that second, fatal blow — he was certain she knew far better than anyone else what she was doing and why.
Annie dropped the poker to the floor and looked at Keith.
He said, "All right... it's all right..."He continued to speak softly to her as he moved around the sofa. She took a tentative step toward him, then a longer step, but the chain pulled taut and she stumbled. He caught her arms and moved her gently back into a chair, making her sit down. He took off his shirt, put it around her shoulders, and put his hand on her cheek. "It's okay."
Keith stepped away from her and picked up the poker. He took a long stride toward the sofa and brought the poker down with all his strength on the top of Baxter's already smashed skull. He noted, irrelevantly, that Baxter was in his underwear, that his skin was pale, and that his sphincter had let loose.
Keith threw the poker on the floor and turned to Annie. He said quietly, "I killed him."
She didn't reply.
He said again, "Annie, I killed him. He's dead. It's over."
She looked at Keith.
He knelt in front of her and took her hands, which were cold and clammy. He said, "It's okay now. You're going to be all right. We're going back to Spencerville now."
She nodded, and tears ran down her cheeks. She said, "Thank you."
This wasn't the time, Keith thought, to thank her for saving his life, because Keith wanted to establish a different set of events in her mind. He rubbed her hands and asked her, "Are you hurt?"
"No." She touched his face where the blood was still wet from the knife cut. "You're hurt."
"I'm fine." He saw a bruise on her face and bruises on her legs. Her eyes looked all right, though her skin was pale and cold. As he held her hands, he felt that her pulse was fast but regular. "You're okay. You're tough."
She ignored this and said to him, "He has the keys around his neck. I want these off." She jiggled the manacles around her ankles. "I want them off."
He smiled at her. "Okay."
He stood, went over to Baxter's body, and ripped the key chain off Baxter's bloody neck. He knelt in front of Annie again and, as he tried a few keys, he noticed the padlock hanging from the chain and the shackle running through the big eyebolt. He asked, "How did you manage that?"
"I unscrewed it with the poker."
He nodded. Keith unlocked the leg manacles and rubbed her ankles. "Okay?"
"Yes."
"Let's get you dressed and out of here."
She didn't seem to want to move, but then she looked at Cliff Baxter slumped dead over the back of the sofa and said, "Yes, I want to get out of here. Help me up."
He stood and helped her stand, turning her away from the dead body. He walked with his arm around her as she made her way toward the hallway, his shirt draped over her shoulders.
She stopped and moved away from him. "I can do this. Wait here. I'll be dressed in a few minutes."
"Okay."
She hesitated a moment, then looked at him and asked, "There was someone else outside, wasn't there?"
"Yes. Billy Marlon."
"Is he dead?"
"Yes."
"I'm sorry."
"Not your fault."
She looked at Cliff Baxter, then at Keith and said, "I killed him."
He didn't reply.
She put her hand on his face and looked into his eyes a long time, then said, "I knew you'd come."
"I told you I would."
"Well... I hope you think it was worth it."
He smiled at her and kissed her. "What are friends for?"