Chapter Twenty-Seven
MAYBE IT WAS nothing, but Walker had learned long ago that primal instincts should not be ignored, especially those of a multipurpose canine.
He stepped off the path and into the garden shadows between the detached garage and the main house, drawing his Glock.
“Stil,” he whispered, ordering Paladin to stay silent.
Maybe it’s nothing.
The side entrance led into a room just off the kitchen, warm yellow light emanated through sheer curtains.
He watched for shadows, listened for footsteps, voices.
Nothing but jazz.
Paladin stood rigid beside him, silent but alert. The dog’s body language was unmistakable—something was wrong.
Walker leaned in and murmured, “Volg.” Heel.
He kept to the garden, pushing to the back of the house to get a good angle on the kitchen through a window that allowed someone at the sink to look out over the flowers.
Oversized Edison lights hung above the island, where he noticed an open bottle of wine and an empty platter. The swinging door that separated the kitchen from the dining room was closed, unlike on his first visit.
He turned back to the street, which was now partially obscured by a southern magnolia.
Had there been any suspicious vehicles parked on the street?
Had he not been so consumed with thoughts of Belle, John, and the CIA, he might have noticed.
Or maybe not. Parking on the street was common in this neighborhood.
His van was probably the most suspicious vehicle out there.
Damn it! Get your head in the game.
He thought he heard a male voice inside the home, but when he stopped to listen, all he caught was jazz over the chirping of crickets and the long rattle of cicadas.
A thousand thoughts swarmed in his head, but an overriding one was that of Leigh Ann’s meeting with Irene Isaacson.
Still might be nothing.
Then what of the male voice? Leigh Ann hadn’t said anything about having another guest.
Maybe it was the TV.
You could just knock on the door.
You could call the police.
Leigh Ann reached out to you for a reason, and it wasn’t so you could call the police.
She was afraid of the police. She was convinced they had killed her son.
Staying low, Paladin at his side, he wound his way along a garden path and covered the rear corner to the home in a few seconds, maneuvering through the landscaping lights over a small patch of grass and around fluted canna lily buds, angular bird-of-paradise flowers standing five feet high, and the leafy hostas and ferns hanging over fine-grain cedar bark.
He paused near the side of the house, next to a shovel, bucket, rake, and pruning shears.
Paladin wasn’t interested in the plants. His snout pointed like a spear at the rear porch, utterly silent, a predator on the hunt.
Stop. Look. Listen. Smell.
Walker heard a door swing open and saw a shadow fall across the back porch.
The shadow took the shape of a man with a slung weapon. A guard? Lookout? Just like Afghanistan and Iraq. Why was his weapon slung?
The man walked across the veranda, briefly illuminated in the light. He was mid-twenties, maybe thirty, Hispanic, shaved head, neck and face covered in tattoos. He walked to the far edge of the porch, unzipped his fly, and began to relieve himself.
There is not going to be a better time. He’s at his most vulnerable.
What if this is a mistake?
It’s no mistake.
Kill him? Question him to get intel and find out how many more are inside?
Take him with the Glock?
That warns anyone else on-site and gives up the element of surprise.
If there were more, Walker needed to stack the odds in his favor.
Send Paladin forward?
Too noisy.
Blade?
Maybe there was a better way.
Walker holstered his Glock and grabbed the shovel.
“Blijf,” he whispered. Stay.
Kill or capture?
Leigh Ann made the decision for him as her voice, twisted into an unmistakable scream, echoed from the recesses of the home.
Execute!
The man must have thought Walker’s footsteps came from a comrade because he finished shaking the last of his urine into the bushes before turning with a look of annoyance that altered to disbelief as the full force of Walker’s baseball swing with the shovel connected with his face.
His neck snapped back, his brain reverberating against his skull.
If Walker had any thoughts about keeping him alive, those thoughts faded when he heard Leigh Ann’s next scream.
As the man collapsed to the deck, Walker smashed the shovel into his head once again.
He then placed the flat cutting edge of the tool against his unconscious opponent’s neck, and as if he was about to start digging into hard dirt, he slammed his boot down onto the footstep.
He adjusted the shovel’s angle and brought his heel down twice more in quick succession, almost severing his enemy’s head from the body.
“Heir,” Walker said.
Paladin vaulted onto the porch and crossed the deck to his master, sniffing the body at his feet.
The dead man’s weapon was slung over his shoulder, so Walker set the shovel aside and worked the sling down his arm, prying his left hand from the lower wood handguard, noting the man’s fingernails were stubby and embedded with dirt.
What the fuck is this?
It looked like an AK-type weapon but with a short barrel and without a stock.
It had the standard banana-shaped magazine and felt heavy, which meant it was probably loaded with thirty rounds.
He pulled the charging handle back slightly to confirm there was a round in the chamber, then ensured the selector lever was in the top position.
I’ll be more accurate with my Glock.
Handguns were often referred to as defensive weapons, but as an instructor at the Farm had told him, it was all about how you used it. Walker was going on the offensive.
As he slung the AK-style pistol, he became aware of a peculiar, almost sweet odor with a tinge of sickness coming from the dead man. Cologne? Aftershave?
“Zoek,” Walker said, pronouncing it zook. It was a command for Paladin to search based on the smell.
Speed. Surprise. Violence of action.
If we still have surprise.
At least you have speed and violence of action.
The man had left the door open when he exited to take a piss. His friends would be expecting him back. They would get Walker instead.
The hunter-killer part of his soul was firmly in the driver’s seat. The philosopher was relegated to the passenger side.
He entered the house pistol up and ready, searching for targets, sacrificing security for speed, Paladin slightly ahead of him off to his right side.
The screams sounded like they had come from upstairs.
He stepped into a hallway lined with the Tabriz carpets John had purchased at Pan Arabian Rugs in an alley in Kabul.
Walker heard footsteps upstairs. The screaming had stopped. Now there were voices, guttural, too muffled to make out what they were saying but it sounded like Spanish.
He turned a corner and looked up the stairs into the eyes of a soon-to-be dead man on the landing.
In the confines of the house, Walker’s gunshots sounded like cannons as he put four rounds into the chest of a man with a tattooed face, in jeans and a checked shirt, a man who didn’t even have time to raise the gigantic stainless Desert Eagle pistol in his right hand.
Surprise is gone. Push the speed. Lean into the violence.
Walker sprinted up the stairs, putting another round into the head of the man holding the Desert Eagle as he gained the top landing with Paladin off his right knee.
There were two options at the top of the staircase, but it was clear that the dead man had come from the left.
The sisal carpet Leigh Ann used as a runner over the dark mahogany was crooked. A blood streak ran down the ivory wall below the family photos.
A tattooed face emerged from the room at the end of the hallway.
Walker’s 9mm round caught him in the chin and sent him stumbling back into the room. The former SEAL followed him in, quickly scanning for additional threats and putting two more bullets into the man’s head.
The bedroom was spacious with a high ceiling rimmed with ornate crown molding.
A fan rotated above a king-sized bed. One of the French doors leading to a small balcony was open.
The drawers of both bedside tables had been pulled out and emptied onto the floor, as had the drawers from the dresser and armoire.
Leigh Ann sat slumped in a chair, tied, gagged, her blouse torn, hair tumbling around her face. Before Walker checked her pulse, he knew that she was dead. The claw hammer on the floor, covered with matted hair and blood, spoke to how she met her end.
The mother. The son. The father. All dead.
Walker took his fingers from the side of her neck and quickly cleared the attached bathroom and balcony. He heard tires squeal in the street and unsuccessfully tried to make out the type of vehicle that was so quickly departing.
Walker rushed back into the room, holstered his pistol, and reached for his blade to cut Leigh Ann from the chair.
It was Paladin who saved his life.
The Malinois leaped toward the bedroom door, attacking the arm holding the weapon, which in this case was another AK-variant pistol.
Paladin’s teeth tore into the forearm of the overmuscled man in the black T-shirt, who squeezed the trigger and sent a round into the floor while he continued toward Walker, a primal scream emanating from his tattooed lips.
The man towered over six feet tall and looked like he had ingested a steady diet of steroids, growth hormone, and testosterone since birth.
He dropped the AK, hurled Paladin into a wall, and pressed his forward charge at the SEAL.
Walker went for his pistol, but the large man barreled into him before his hand could index the grip. Walker heard glass break as they crashed through the pane on the French door that was still closed. He felt a shard slice through his skin as the big man took him to the ground.
Walker was pinned to the deck by his throat, the man’s massive left hand cutting off his air supply as his right rose up to strike.
With his pistol and the slung AK trapped beneath him, Walker went for the Regiment Blade at his appendix, drew it, and punched it into his attacker’s left pubic bone, slightly below the man’s left hip.
The banger howled in agony, his hands instinctively going to the source of the pain.
Walker attempted to call Paladin, but even with the pressure released from his windpipe his voice was temporarily stifled.
In this case he didn’t need to say a word.
The dog knew his job, and had a running start.
He hit their aggressor at full speed, attacking the bicep of his right arm, teeth crushing through skin, muscle, tendon, and into bone, a growl emanating from his throat, ancient in origin.
That was the opening Walker needed. He twisted the blade in the man’s pubic bone and used it as a lever as he trapped the giant’s left hand while also ensnaring the man’s left leg with his right. He then thrust his hips up and bridged to the right, taking the tattooed man with him.
With the man now on his back, Paladin clamped onto his chest, tearing through the meaty flesh before moving to the throat.
A dog biting and tearing near one’s neck triggers the most primal of fears, harkening back to the days when wolves hunted in packs, subduing and consuming their prey in a bid for survival.
The big man’s eyes were wide with fright, and a guttural howl escaped his lips as he thrashed, wanting nothing more than to be rid of the devil upon him.
Walker rolled away from his assailant to make sure he did not accidently cut his dog. He sheathed his blade, and brought his hand to his pistol as he stood, gasping for breath.
“Los,” he shouted, giving Paladin the command to release.
Immediately Paladin let go of the man’s bleeding neck and returned to his handler’s side.
The man struggled to his knees, bringing his hands to his larynx as blood poured from the wounds.
“Hijo de puta,” he sputtered.
Walker heard sirens in the distance.
“Speak English?” Walker asked between breaths as his eyes found the Trijicon HD night sights of his Glock 19. “Hablas Inglés?”
“Me cago en la puta madre que te parió,” the man spat back.
Walker glanced at the dead woman tied to a chair in the bedroom behind him and then back at the man on his knees.
“Guess not,” Walker said.
He shifted his focus to the bright orange glow of his tritium front sight, aligned it with the man’s head, and pressed the trigger.