City of Endless Night (Pendergast #17)(25)

He could hear the panting of the dog as the group approached the hedge, and the irritable murmuring of the two men. Special forces soldiers were normally trained not to talk and to use hand signals only. Not only that, he could smell cigarette smoke.

These men had become soft.

“I hope Scout gets the critter this time,” one of the men said.

“Yeah, fucking squirrel probably.”

The dog suddenly whined. It had scented him.

One of them spoke to the dog. “Scout, go get it. Go get it, boy.”

They released the dog and it shot through a gap in the hedge—coming straight at him, no barking, no warning: a dog trained to kill. He braced himself and met the dog straight on as it leapt at him, delivering a single swipe with his SOG knife to the animal’s throat, severing its windpipe. With a gurgling cough the animal struck him a glancing blow as it fell, tumbling to rest at his feet.

“Hey—did you hear that?” one of the men asked, his voice low. “Scout? Scout? Return, Scout. Return.”

Silence.

“What the fuck?”

“Scout, return.” A little louder now.

“Should we call for backup?”

“Not yet, for chrissakes. He’s probably off chasing the squirrel. Let me go in and see.”

He heard the first man noisily pushing his way into the hedge. This, he began to think, was proving too damn easy. But it would get harder; he was confident of that.

He set himself into a crouching position, ready to spring, still cloaked in darkness. As the blundering noise grew close, he sprang up and drove the SOG into the man’s throat, jerking it sideways, again cutting the windpipe before his victim could make a sound. Even as the man fell facedown the intruder shouldered him aside and rushed forward, driving through the hedge like a linebacker, bursting out and leaping straight at the second man, standing in the open about ten feet away, still smoking a cigarette. With a shout, the man reached for his sidearm and managed to get it partway out of its holster before the intruder, airborne, slashed him through the neck with the SOG. The guard fell backward and the man landed on top of him, taking a faceful of arterial blood. The firearm bounced away on the lawn, unfired.

The man lay on the body as it jerked about for a few seconds before going still. He waited, unmoving, listening. The action had taken place about three hundred yards from the house, and they were far enough away to be obscured by darkness. He doubted the man’s aborted shout had reached the ears of anyone else. There were klieg lights that would go on in a general alarm or intruder emergency, but nothing happened.

When the intruder was assured that the alarm had not been raised, he rose up from the dead guard. Kneeling, he searched the body, removing a radio, two magnetic key cards, a flashlight, and the man’s hat. He turned on the radio and saw it was set to broadcast at channel 15 in the VHF range. He left it on in reception mode and tucked it in his belt, left the gun where it was, put the hat on his head, and tucked the magnetic key cards into his shirt pocket.

He grabbed the feet of the body and dragged it back into the hedge, hiding it near where the man’s partner lay. Then he proceeded westward, walking in the gap between the hedge and the wall. When he came to the property corner, he turned and walked north, a distance—according to his GPS—of five hundred yards. He was now on the opposite side of the house and had only to cross a 150-yard expanse of lawn.

There he waited for the faint vibration of his cell phone’s timer to signal the next phase.

When it came, he snugged the dead guard’s hat tighter onto his head and proceeded across the grass, walking purposefully, flashlight on, moving it back and forth. While the hat wouldn’t fool anyone close up, he would look all right from a distance.

The intruder was almost completely soaked in blood, and he knew if the other dogs scented him, they would freak out. But that would not happen unless the wind, which was coming from the east, shifted: and it would not shift in the weather pattern at this time of night.

He made it across the space unseen, and merged into the bushes along the side of the house just as a man on patrol with a dog came around from the front, walking along the grass. The movement of air was still in his favor. He waited in the dark until they had passed around the corner, and then he moved between bushes and house to the beginning of the flagstone patio, which surrounded the pool. A long pergola ran alongside the patio, and he used that as cover to reach a small cabana containing the pool pump and filters. The door was locked, but it was standard hardware that came with the shed and therefore rudimentary. He jimmied it and stepped into the cramped, darkened space, closing the door only partway.

Again he waited for the vibration.

He now raised the radio and held it to his lips, while taking out a small magnet. He depressed the BROADCAST button while holding the magnet near the mike.

“I’m at the pool,” he whispered. “Got a big snake here, need backup.” His voice, muffled in static thanks to the magnet, was almost unintelligible.

“What’s that about a snake?” came the reply. “Didn’t copy, repeat.”

He repeated the message, easing up slightly on the magnet to reduce the static.

“Copy, who’s this?” came the reply.

Now he broadcast just static.

“All right, I’m on my way over.”

He knew it would be the closest responder: the man with the dog who had recently passed him. As expected, the man came around the corner again with the dog on a leash, and he paused, sweeping his light this way and that. “Hey, where are you? Is that Pretorious?”