The Curse of Medusa

“Can it, Mikey,” Devlin said, his voice suddenly all business. “She’ll open it when she’s ready. In the meantime, now we’ve found the fucking thing maybe you and Lurch over there could go outside and keep an eye out. It’s not like we had an easy time getting here. Whoever tried to take us out back in Dublin might not give up as easily as you two jokers.”

Mikey took the hint and he and Kyle picked up the shotguns and went outside the cottage where they stood either side of the door.

Devlin put a hand on her shoulder. “In your own time, Lea. They can wait. We can all wait.”

“I hope that’s a fatherly hand, Danny, and nothing else.”

He smiled, and removed the hand. “It’s a reassuring hand, Lea. That’s all.”

Lea managed an insincere smile and opened the box-file.

Then she gasped so loudly she almost made Kyle Byrne jump out of his skin.

Mikey looked at Kyle and suppressed a chuckle. He leaned his head into the kitchen and lowered his voice. “What the hell is it, woman?”

Lea was silent for a few moments. When she spoke, her voice was trembling.

“It’s worse than I could have imagined.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Vincent Reno watched with admiration as Kim Taylor fought her way closer to the luxury pool house. It was a hard slog through half a dozen men paid handsomely by Kiefel to defend the drone.

In response, the French mercenary fired a non-stop barrage of rounds into the defensive positions held by Kiefel’s men and kept them pinned down, but he was also being kept busy by Angelika Schwartz and her impressive determination to blow his head off.

Vincent saw a chance to hit the drone and he started to fire. Pauling saw what was happening and ran for cover, leaving the canister behind. A second later Vincent hit the drone and it exploded all over the rear yard, sending a fireball into the night sky.

Then, using the cover of a row of California palms, he sprinted in the shadows until he was across the south lawn and finally joined Kim at the pool house. It didn’t take too long for a very dangerous and angry Angelika Schwartz to snatch the canister and join Pauling. A second later she had picked off another two of Kim’s men with startling ease and accuracy before ordering Pauling in broken English to retreat to the back room of the pool house.

She shoved the Australian through the door and walked backwards, firing lethal shots as she went, pausing only to tear some cloth off her shirt and stuff it into Pauling’s vodka bottle. She lit the end of the cloth with the burning cigarette in her mouth and tossed the bottle at the entrance of the pool house. It struck the arched doorway and smashed, spreading vodka all over the walls and pool chairs. Instantly the burning cloth ignited the spirit and moments later the front of the pool house was ablaze.

“Move forward!” Kim shouted, unperturbed by the flames. “They’re on the back foot.”

Vincent was the first inside, covering his face from the heat of the fire with the back of his arm. He moved forward, gun raised while Kim and her remaining men were just a pace behind. Somewhere in here, he thought, Klaus Kiefel’s West Coast operation was about to come to an abrupt end.

They reached the changing room — a large, expansive affair of polished teak floorboards and fluffy white towels hanging over the backs of wooden pool chairs. Vincent caught a fast movement in the corner of his eye and turned his head to see Angelika blasting the lock out of an external door at the rear of the pool house. She fired two or three shots at them blindly before the two of them exited the pool house and slammed the door.

Then they heard another isolated shot.

Vincent and Kim were there a second later, and while the Frenchman tried to open the door, the American agent used her palm mic to order more of her men to the rear of the building to cut them off.

“Is anyone reading this?”

“What’s the problem?” Vincent asked.

“No response. I think all my men are down. What’s the problem with you?”

“Damned door is stuck,” the Frenchman said. He tried to shoulder it open but it didn’t move an inch.

“They must have pushed something up against it,” Kim said.

Vincent frowned. “Step aside.”

When Kim was safely out of the way the former Foreign Legion man fired a long burst of bullets into the top panel of the door until it was reduced to matchwood. He then smashed out what was left with the butt of the gun and peered through the hole to see the problem.

Alan Pauling was dead and wedged up against the door.

“She must have shot him and used him as a kind of door wedge,” Kim said.

Vincent nodded his head thoughtfully. “Why can’t I find a woman like that?”

* * *

In the tense silence of the Oval Office, President Kimble waited anxiously for the telephone to ring. He was almost totally sure that Kiefel would call off the murder of Grant if it meant saving his own life.

Almost.