“Gun towers?” Cash said.
Glen nodded, head cocked. “Yeah?”
“Were they, I dunno… manned when you snuck in here?”
Glen’s slow, evil smile spread from ear to ear. “No—no they were not. Hey, did you find a remote in anybody’s pocket? Like maybe a garage door remote?”
Cash frowned and pulled a fob from his back pocket, where he’d put it next to the knife Glen had given him. “What do you think—”
“Oh, come on. What could it possibly be for?”
Cash looked at the little white object with the big red button. Exactly like a garage door opener. “Doctor Evil’s ocean wall of death?” he hazarded.
Glen looked back at the guys they’d subdued. “I saw two more boats in the cove where they hauled you out. Wanna hear my plan?”
But Cash didn’t need to hear it, because great minds really did think alike.
Such Great Heights
THIS was dumb. This was so dumb. How much dumber could this be?
Yeah, it was the dumbest idea in the history of dumb ideas, but that didn’t mean Glen wasn’t climbing an empty gun tower while Cash got into position below him.
What in the furry hell was a gun tower even doing here? There were no fences and no barbed wire and apparently not enough mercs to man the damned thing, but here it stood, a monument to stupid egotism like the rest of the island.
Glen got to the platform at the top and took a look around. Okay, so there was a pissing can—nice to know—and a little shelf full of hand-sanitizer, lotion, tissues, and water bottles.
And porn. Big old-fashioned glossy magazines of bouncy breasts. Apparently whoever was here at night had caught on a long time ago that there was really not much to do here.
He approached the gun carefully, activating the electronic sights and moving the thing around on its swivel to get an idea of what its range was. Curious, he looked toward the peninsula, which was a faded gray line on the horizon, and gasped.
Several savaged sea lions lay rotting on the shore, and Glen swallowed angrily. Dammit—boredom and weak minds and plain old meanness could make people do such monstrous things.
Grimly, he hoped he’d broken the nose of every guy on the floor of the wine cellar and left them all with concussions as well. Spencer’s idea of assassination looked better and better; he couldn’t even pretend it didn’t.
He stood for a moment there in the sun, taking a deep breath and wondering if he was up for this next part. From his utility belt, the sat phone gave a squawk, and he hit the button.
“The fuck you doing up there?” Spencer hissed.
“Giving you some cover,” Glen said.
“You can’t shoot the bad guys!” And Glen was relieved to hear that Spencer actually sounded horrified. The bigger portion of his amorality was a front, and that was good to know.
“I’m going to be a distraction,” Glen said. “And so’s Cash. ’Cause they’re getting curious. In fact….”
Yup. First goon was sticking his nose out the front door of the mansion, looking curiously for the acolytes. From his position, Glen could see most of them clearly. Spencer was leading a portion of them toward their camo netting, and the rest were seated, lotus position, faces toward the sun.
Well, that was a whole host of people he couldn’t hit, but the most important one was waving to him from the west side of the house. Glen gave a grim nod and waved back.
“You got everyone who’s coming with you?” he asked into the phone.
“Yeah. Other dumbshits think this thing is for real.”
“Good—they can free the mercenary fuckheads from the wine cellar in about an hour. Get your kids up the mountain. Cash and I have a distraction planned. Hang on to your shorts!” A set of noise-canceling headphones sat on the porn shelf, and Glen picked them up, used a tissue to wipe them off, and put them on. Then he looked down the gunsight to a spot beyond the tip of the cove’s crescent—on the side Spencer wasn’t leading a dozen freed prisoners toward—and let out a spatter of fire that would be banging around his brain for a good long time, headphones or no.
That was Cash’s signal. He went running toward the beach and the first boat, his limbs obviously functioning better than they had been when Glen had freed him. He dragged what looked to be the fastest boat into the water, hopped in, and started the motor with the key left in the ignition.
They’d assumed the key would be there because who was going to steal boats from a private island with gun towers and a James Bond wall?
Cash Harper, that was who. Cash Harper who had been bloodied and bruised but not beaten when Glen arrived. Hearing him bait John Barron—and play for time—while he waited for rescue was one of those things Glen would never forget. Cash had been expecting Glen—hadn’t doubted he’d show up for a moment. Glen’s stomach clenched with the worry that he could someday let that kind of faith down. But God, he’d die trying to serve it, wouldn’t he?
Cash started to maneuver toward the opening of the cove, looking behind him to see if the bad guys were going to catch up.
Well, yes and no. They were torn between running across the sand and staring fearfully up at Glen, and Cash was all but taunting them to follow him.
Well, shit. With more care than he could have imagined possible, Glen aimed the gun at a strip of land between the house and the beach, glad that Spencer’s billy goat and any other stray farm animals seemed to be on the other side of the house at this time of day. He fired off a couple of shots, his shoulder aching as he mastered the damned gun, and watched with some satisfaction as the group of goons got a move on again and headed for the other boat to chase after Cash. Cash stepped on the accelerator, enough to get a lead but not enough to lose them entirely, and sped over the wall. He maintained that distance—too far to be a good target, too close to give up on—while Glen continued to spatter the sand with fire to keep the bad guys from thinking about coming to shore.
Still, they weren’t going that fast as they approached the Dr. Evil Wall of Doom, and just when Glen thought, Cash, now, it did its thing.
Popped out of the water about twenty feet ahead of the speedboat trying to catch Cash Harper.
They turned hard—hard enough for their momentum to keep carrying them sideways right into the wall, and Glen heard the damned boat scrape and crackle as its hull caved in.
All the bad guys bailed, guns sinking to the bottom of the cove, and floundered, shouting, next to that damned silly wall.
Glen checked beyond the wall, seeing Cash circling around toward the other side of the island, where he’d have to look very carefully for a hidden cove, and he had strict instructions to stay away from the fucking snake.
Glen’s job was to follow Spence overland and meet in the cove, but he had some shit to do first.
Using his knife and a few quick blows from his pistol butt he managed to disable the turret gun, and fifteen minutes later he was on his way across the yard to the second tower, cursing the grandiosity of power-mad con men.
He was halfway up when the first shot pinged past his hip. He looked down in surprise to see John Barron, barefoot and bloody, trying to climb the tower and wield a small pistol at the same time.
Glen gave him a look—the sort of look you could only give a man who was too stupid to kill you when he had the upper hand—and said, “You could wait until I get to the top, or I can shoot you now—what’s it going to be?”