Pete ran across the driveway through the open garage, threw the breaker to shut off power, then raced to the door, just past the Bronco. As the nine-bangers began going off inside, he slammed the hook of the thirty-inch prybar into the door. He ripped it free of the doorframe, using a foot to kick it open farther, then stood to the side just as a burst of gunfire came his way from inside the cabin.
He got the bear spray out just as the second distraction grenade began going off, and then he blasted the potent chemical into the building.
Zack was at the front door now, and it had been his worry that any enemy trying to escape would go through the garage and not towards him. He’d given Pete his Staccato pistol, but Pete wasn’t well trained, and he would have his hands full with the two large cans and the crowbar.
But the men had seen no alternative to this plan. Zack told Pete to just continue blasting the spray, sweeping it up and down and back and forth, and hopefully it would drive any enemy squirtersawayfrom the garage door and not towards it.
In the end, that part of the plan had worked.
One man came racing out the front door just seconds after Zack tossed the grenades. The two men were just six feet apart on the porch when Zack shot the man, but his momentum took him right into Zack. They slammed together; Zack took a blow to the face from the barrel of a shotgun, but then the enemy staggered off the side of the porch. The man tried to get his weapon up and pointed at Zack, but Zack was faster; he blasted the Scorpion a half dozen times, the enemy dropped his shotgun, and then the forward momentum of his stumble off the porch caused him to tumble farther out into the snow, and he slid down the hill into the trees, painting it red with blood as his lifeless body slowly descended.
—
On the second floor, Court looked out the window at the long drop to the uneven ground. He didn’t like it, but he could do it. His worry, however, was that Andie would balk and he’d have to waste precious time coaxing her.
He shouted into his mask, “We need to jump! It’s soft down there! You good?”
Without saying a word, she climbed past him on the windowsill, squatted, and pulled off the oxygen mask. Then she leapt out, away from the house, and disappeared in the darkness.
Court was pleasantly surprised, but he recovered quickly, held his breath, removed the tank and let it fall to the floor, then leapt out, keeping the subgun away from his body so it didn’t strike him when he impacted the ground.
It was fifteen feet down, but the angle and over a foot of snowfall blunted the impact. Court rose, found Andie brushing herself off, and he grabbed her and ran to the east, slipping quickly into thick pines.
No words were spoken for over a minute; the two of them just ran, coughing and hacking, wiping their eyes.
Andie Delaney in front, Court Gentry in back.
—
Thirty seconds after he opened the garage door, Pete Delaney exhausted the second can of bear spray. It had been his plan—a plan he did not communicate with the two CIA men—that he would then draw the pistol Hightower loaned him, brave the chemicals, and race in to try to help find his daughter.
But the bear spray was already wafting back into the garage, and he found it impossible to breathe.
Delaney drew the pistol, then began backing up, backing up more, then even more. Finally he was outside the garage, in the snow, exposed to the upper windows.
His eyes burned and tears rolled down his face.
Just then, the man Hightower just referred to as “his friend” broadcast over his AirPod.
“Got the kid! Dropped one enemy! He’s not Lancer.”
Delaney continued backing up; his eyes were watering even more heavily now, but he tried to keep them on the door.
Hightower broadcast, as well. “I smoked two enemy. Neither are Lancer.”
Fuck,Delaney thought. The guy behind all this was still in there, but his daughter, according to some stranger he just met, was safe.
He began to turn away from the door, but just then, he saw movement. It was difficult to discern through his burning eyes, but eventually he realized it was a man holding a towel to the lower portion of his face, with an AR-15 rifle in his right hand.
Pete aimed as best he could, fired, fired again, fired again.
The man in the garage next to the parked Wagoneer fired back, and then Pete just emptied most of the magazine of Zack’s gun into the area.
He saw Hightower running around from the front of the house. He waved Delaney off, telling him to stop shooting.
Hightower approached the side of the Wagoneer with his submachine gun at his shoulder, spun around the side, and found a man there on his knees, leaning against the wall of the garage, right next to the open fuse box door.
Hightower blasted the man with at least a dozen rounds.
