I, Michael Bennett (Michael Bennett 5)

Waiting for her, my eyes pinned on her hands, I saw black and shot just as she was bringing the machine pistol up. The triple burst of my M4 rifle was amplified by and reverberated violently off the pool-room tile. I hit her in the side of her neck, and her gun clattered onto the concrete deck. I watched her go stiff and fall straight back into the pool in a move we used to call the Nestea plunge when I was a kid. For a long dumbfounded second, I stared at the glow of the outside flames, their pink reflection on the tile, Marietta’s blood making a pink cloud in the water.

“Where’s Perrine

?” Ginther roared into his tactical microphone. “We heard ATVs going north. What the hell is going on? Tear this place apart!”

“We can’t, Cap. We’re done. The deck just caught,” came back one of his men. “You need to get the hell out of there. We need to exfil now. Everyone needs to head to the LZ behind the house.”

That’s what happened. We retraced our steps and went back outside. The heat was incredible; it felt like we were standing at the door of the world’s biggest convection oven.

The Black Hawk was filled by the time we got there, so we had to leave on one of the puny Little Birds, which reminded me of those toys you see at the mall. Ginther strapped me in and we lifted up. When we swung around the front of the house, I saw that it was completely engulfed. The living room curtains, the rugs, the furniture. Everything was burning.

The Devil’s Path, I thought, staring down as we sailed over the burning mountain through the smoke-dark sky.

CHAPTER 102

THE HRT RALLY point was the parking lot and field behind a rural post office in nearby Lexington, New York. When we landed between the tents, it was already chaos. About a hundred or so state troopers, local cops, and FBI agents were running around, coordinating a massive manhunt. I even spotted a few of the firemen we had borrowed the trucks from. It was going to be fun when we told them we left their new rigs behind in the inferno up on the mountain.

And this was the calm before the shitstorm, I thought as Ginther unclipped me from the chopper. We’d lit the world on fire to get Perrine, and it was looking like he’d still gotten away.

Ginther took me aside in one of the tents and handed me a baby wipe and a bottle of water. When I collapsed onto the bumper of their SWAT truck and wiped my face, it came back black. I poured the water over my head and watched it drip onto the beaten dirt between my boots.

I’d definitely had better days at the office. I was tired, filthy, and smelled like a smoked chicken. And I’d just killed a beautiful naked woman. A completely insane, homicidal maniac of a beautiful woman, but still. Actually, I didn’t feel bad about it, considering that the witch had killed my good pal Hughie. It was pretty much the highlight of the raid, since Perrine was still on the run.

“Mike, whatever happens, this was my plan,” Ginther said. “They want to transfer me to Alaska, I don’t give a shit. Because you were right about the night vision, about the weapons they had up there. We would have been sliced to ribbons if it wasn’t for you. We didn’t get this animal, but all my guys came back safe. That’s all I care about.”

“Thanks, brother,” I said, looking up. “But I have a funny feeling the blame-layers aren’t going to be satisfied with just one crucifixion. And screw the pencil pushers anyway, Kyle. They’re like eunuchs in a harem. They know how it’s done. They’ve seen it done every day, but for some reason, they just can’t do it themselves. We gave it our best shot, and we’re going home alive. Tomorrow’s another day.”

“For me, it’s looking like tomorrow’s going to be another day in the land of a thousand suns. We torched an entire mountain and got jack shit to show for it,” Ginther said. “I mean, I never even heard of that.”

I started laughing a little then. He was right. I’d been involved in disasters before, but this took the cake.

“But our heart was in the right place, Kyle,” I said. “Isn’t that what really counts?”

My phone started vibrating then. I had a funny feeling it was going to be doing quite a bit of that in the next few hours.

“Bennett,” I said.

There was a pause, then a strange voice.

“You killed her, Bennett, didn’t you? You killed Marietta.”

CHAPTER 103

I COULDN’T BELIEVE it. It was Perrine. I could tell by the stupid Pepé Le Pew accent. I jumped up and frantically waved at Ginther and pointed at my phone.

“Hey, buddy. You’re the one who left her there,” I said. “I would have said ‘high and dry,’ but you actually cut out and left her doing the backstroke in the pool.”

Ginther ran and grabbed an FBI phone tech, who whispered that she needed my cell number. I grabbed her offered pen and wrote it on the back of her hand.

“She was my wife. Did you know that, Bennett?” Perrine continued. “We were married right after my escape. My child was inside of her. You set that fire to smoke me out, didn’t you? You killed my pregnant wife.”

For a moment, I almost felt sorry for the drug-dealing, murdering son of a bitch. He sounded depressed. You could tell the pain in his voice was real. He sounded like he really did love that crazy chick.

“Pregnant? Didn’t show, Manuel. Do you always let your wife swim in the buff?”

The sound of pain and outrage that erupted from the phone a moment later was something I was unfamiliar with. There was something primal about it, something Jurassic. The cry of a pterodactyl caught in a lava flow.

“Oh, I see how this works,” I said, hearing Perrine’s cries turn into sobs. “You can kill anybody in your path and that’s fine and dandy. But someone close to you takes a bullet to the back of the head and all of a sudden it’s Greek tragedy time? How does it feel, you piece of garbage? Choke on it. Boo-hoo, you fucking crybaby.”