The Old Man(30)
Caldwell opened the bedroom door an eighth of an inch and looked out into the hallway and past it to the living room. The room was empty and the apartment’s front door was still closed. He opened Zoe’s door farther and the dogs slithered out ahead of him. He stayed low as he moved into the open.
He slipped into his bedroom and looked at the monitor of his security system. The screen was divided into quadrants, and when he scanned them, he was relieved at first. What the four cameras were seeing wasn’t a street full of Chicago police cars or a federal assault team suiting up in military gear. But he saw movement. It looked like the shape of a man coming toward the front of the house. He tucked in his shirt and put on the sport coat with the extra ammunition, because it was dark gray and would make him harder to see. He looked at the monitor more closely.
Three human figures were on the front steps, one of them kneeling by the door, and the other two standing behind him to shield him from the street. Caldwell watched the man manipulating something with both hands. The dogs lowered their heads. Their approach must have been what the dogs had heard earlier. Now it looked as though the man was moving a pick and tension wrench in the front door lock. The man put something in his pocket, fiddled with the doorknob, and then stood up.
Caldwell slipped out of his room and closed the dogs inside. He hurried to Zoe’s room and shook her awake.
“Zoe, there are men breaking into the building. They’ll be through the front door and coming up the stairs in a minute. Get dressed, lock yourself in the bathroom, and lie down in the tub. Go!” He snatched up the clothes she had left on the chaise, took her arm and pulled her to the bathroom, pushed them into her hands, and shut the door.
He stepped into the kitchen and turned on the water in the sink, then went down to the end of the hallway and lay on his belly, the pistol in his hand.
There was the clicking of metal on metal, this time at the door of the apartment, twenty-five feet from him, then the clack as the dead bolt retracted into the door. The door opened slowly and a pair of male shapes stood in the doorway, silhouetted in the dim light from a streetlamp shining through the first-floor windows. They each held something in one hand, and he knew the objects had to be guns, but they looked longer than pistols.
From behind Caldwell’s bedroom door the dogs began to bark and snarl, and both men turned toward the bedroom and braced themselves for an attack, their guns ready. The dogs scratched at the bedroom door, but couldn’t get out. The scratching told the two intruders that the dogs weren’t able to get at them, so they stepped deeper into the apartment.
Now the men heard the sound of running water coming from the kitchen, and it seemed to puzzle and distract them. They turned and stepped toward the kitchen, their weapons raised.
Caldwell picked that moment to emerge from the hallway and stop behind them. “Stand still and drop the guns.” He squatted and aimed at the man on the right.
The two turned in unison and fired, spraying sparks from the muzzles of their weapons. Both shots went high, and Caldwell squeezed his trigger. He had chosen the man on his right because he knew he could fire and move his aim to the left faster than to the right. The man went down, and before the man’s partner could lower his aim Caldwell fired at his chest.
The second man was hit, but he was still on his feet. Before he could slip into the kitchen for cover, Caldwell fired again and the man dropped.
Caldwell checked the two men and found neither had a pulse. He picked up their pistols and set them on the coffee table. The barrels were elongated by the addition of silencers, and it occurred to him that the only shots he had heard were his own. He frisked the bodies and found wallets and passports, but it was too dark to look at them, so he pocketed them and hurried to the bathroom door. “Zoe. It’s me, Peter. Come out.”
There was a click of the lock and Zoe peered out. “Are you okay? That sounded like gunfire.”
“That’s why I wanted you in the tub, where you wouldn’t get hit with a wild shot. Those two were the shooting team, but there will be other men outside. We’ve got to get out of here before they realize we’re alive.”
“Have you called the police? We can wait right here for them.”
“We can’t wait,” he said. “Please. Just do what I ask, without any questions. Our lives depend on it right now.”
“What should I do?”
“We’ve got no more than five minutes. Throw anything with your kids’ pictures or addresses into a bag. Don’t call anybody, or turn on any lights. If they see you, they’ll kill you.”
“Why would they kill me?”
“Because it’s their job. I’ve got to go out there for a minute, but I’ll be back for you. Don’t let the dogs out of the bedroom.” He held up the small Beretta he had fired. “The safety is off. If anybody but me comes in the door, aim and fire.” He set the gun on the bed and hurried out.
He stopped at the coffee table, picked up one of the pistols he’d taken from the two dead men, and hurried down the stairs to the ground floor landing. He had seen a third man on the security monitor, and knew there might be others. He went to the windows at the sides of the house. There was nobody visible out there. He picked a window, opened the sash slowly, then unlatched the screen, slipped out, and crouched beside the shrubs that grew there.
Caldwell remained motionless for a few seconds and then a few more as he stared into the night in one direction then another, waiting to identify the shape of a man or for a shadow to move. He made his way along the side of the house, crouched again, and looked around the corner. He could see a man in the shadows, leaning against the garage and facing the back stairway of the house. As Caldwell watched, the man took out his phone and checked its screen, apparently expecting a text message from the men inside. In the glow Caldwell could see the man’s face. He was the young man who had tried to rob him, James Harriman.