Page 105 of Near Miss

The lights off, Ed let himself out the back door and walked around the house, careful to avoid the crunch of feet on gravel. He stopped at the corner of the house, switched on his night sight, and swept the dock area. He found the two men still at the end, messing with ropes.

He hoped they were no better at shooting than with tying off dock lines. He took aim and waited for them to stand up. They finally secured the boat, then messed with their weapons.

“Light machine guns,” Ed muttered to himself. “They’re no better at being assassins than at boat handling.”

The two men started creeping down the dock toward the house. Ed stood one of them up with a round and fired a second for insurance. The other fell flat on the treads, but Ed could still find him with the night scope. He fired a single round into the top of the man’s head, and watched him lurch, then lie still.

He got out his cell phone and called Stone.

“You still alive?” Stone asked.

“Yeah, but nobody else is. You light the grill, and I’m coming in.”

“Consider it done. Like the song says, Knock three times.”

Chapter 53

Ed Rawls put on an apron and started grilling three three-inch porterhouse steaks, and the evening became convivial. Dino manned the bar.

In the middle of somebody’s long story, Carly raised a hand. Nobody paid attention to her.

“Hello?” she said plaintively. “Does anybody here smoke?”

Ed stopped talking and sniffed the air. “Everybody duck!” he yelled and led the way.

Glass began to break, and everybody ducked.

“There’s more of them out there,” Ed said. “My fault. I intended to leave everybody dead.”

“Uzis,” Dino said.

“Thank God for that,” Ed replied, his cheek pressed to the floor. “Nobody move a hair! Complete silence!”

Carly crept across the floor on her belly toward the rear door.

“Goddammit!” Ed whispered. “I told you to be still!”

“I’ll be still when there’s a rifle in my hands,” Carly whispered back and kept her course. She snagged a rifle and a magazine and rammed it home. “All set.”

There was a small sound from the front deck, and a row of Uzi holes appeared in the door. Carly put four rounds through that door, then there was the sound of a falling body. “One down,” she said. “Anybody joining me?”

“Hold it!” Ed said, then crawled to a front window and looked through a lower corner pane. “Carly, pass out weapons.”

“Pass ’em out yourself,” she replied. “I’m still working on your first order.”

Ed crawled over to the front door, cursing under his breath. He started throwing rifles around the room, followed by magazines.

“Front door,” Stone said, then put a burst in that direction.

“Two down,” Carly said.

“It’s four down, if you count the first two.”

There was a shout from the direction of the dock, and feet could be heard pounding it. A moment later an outboard motor revved, and its sound began to fade.

Ed stopped and listened. “Gone,” he said, finally.

“If you’re that sure,” Dino said, “stand up and look around.”

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