Chapter 23

It was three twenty-four A.M. when Catherine next opened her eyes. She was temporarily disoriented and it took a moment for her to figure out where she was, and why she was sleeping on her own couch. When she did, I heard her walkie talkie click twice, which caused her to leap up and run for her bedroom, to return with her sidearm drawn and ready for action.

She was talking a mile-a-minute to her team outside, and waved me over to stand with her in the little hallway, out of the direct line of sight from outside. It was a good idea, because the big window exploded inwards from a high powered rifle shot, and all sorts of things started to happen at the same time.

Catherine dived to the floor, dragging me with her, and waited for the air to clear from flying bullets, and broken glass. I was a little less patient, and worked my way into the rear bedroom, so I could cover our backside. It wasn't two minutes before I spotted a two man team moving towards the house.

Without knowing if they were ours, or theirs, I was hamstrung, but did have the advantage of cover, and darkness to protect me. When the lead man stated to put together an incendiary device, I knew they weren't friendly, and put two rounds into the one holding the tiny rocket. He screamed, fell backwards, and threw the device straight up, so that it came straight down and exploded on impact, killing both in a particularly gruesome way.

As I always say, if you make a habit of playing in the dirt, eventually you're going to get dirty.

The unexpected shots coming from the house, and the explosion caused Catherine's team to aggressively roll up the opposing force, a thing they did with deadly efficiency. Catherine finally made it back to the bedroom to check on me, and asked what happened. "See those two crispy critters over there – the ones with no faces? They decided to firebomb us, so I made them stop."

Catherine looked at me like she was seeing me for the first time. Her guys were checking out the dead and wounded, nothing else seemed to be happening, so Catherine dragged me out of the bedroom, into the kitchen saying that she needed to report in, and keep me from killing anyone else in the meantime.

"I didn't bring a firebomb to this shin-dig. I just dealt with those that did. You didn't want that low-life killing us and burning down your house, did you?" The logic was far too logical to dispute, so she concentrated on figuring out what to tell her boss.

Catherine's team assembled on the front lawn, and waited for instructions. The dead were left where they fell, and the wounded were cuffed, hands and feet. I could hear them cataloging the armament that the shooters had brought with them, and I heard the perimeter guys reporting on the transportation and supply vehicles they found.

Whoever put this together had access to lots of guns, men, and money, but even worse, they had access to secrets they shouldn't have been able to find out. We were sitting ducks and if I hadn't taken those two out in back, they could easily have killed us both and burned our bodies beyond recognition. Just thinking about it made me want to break out a can of Coke.

So I did.

Catherine watched me rummage through her fridge, take two cans of Coke and pick up a towel off the sideboard. She never said a word when I went out the front door and spoke to the agents there. When she heard the tortured screams, she said plenty, but it was all drowned out by the screaming.

Pretty soon two of the five discovered that they desperately did not want to find out what made their friends scream themselves unconscious, and told the nice agents everything they asked. By the time the relief and cleanup units arrived, the agents and Catherine had everything they needed to brief the Judge.

I noticed that none of Catherine's team wanted to make eye contact with me when we boarded a helicopter for a flight to the airport.

I couldn't imagine why...

"Kevin, where did you learn that thing with the Coke can?" Catherine waited until it was just the two of us in my jet. I had crawled into bed, and invited Catherine to join me for some much needed sleep. It was well after seven A.M. by the time we lifted off out of Asheville, and I was operating on fumes, and guts.

Typical of me, as soon as I was comfortable in bed, my mind refused to stop long enough to let my body rest. Catherine finally gave in to her exhaustion and crawled in beside me, taking my arm and dragging it around her shoulder, so I could hold her while she slept.

"I like to read, and read about it in a detective mystery a long time ago. When I tried it out on those guys, I never dreamed it would hurt so much that their screams and begging would frighten the others into talking. It worked really well, I think."

That was the best answer I could come up with quickly, and it served to explain away everything, leaving Catherine nowhere to poke and prod for more information. "First you shoot two guys about to blow us up, then you torture two more until they give up everything and everybody they know. I'd say it was far more than pretty good."

She was satisfied because she was happy with the outcome. It remained to be seen how they would explain their windfall of intel to their boss. Of course, the Judge loved raw intel and wouldn't care where it came from, as long as it panned out, but she might not know that first hand – yet.

Catherine slept then, and I succumbed to my own mind numbing exhaustion and slept without dreams until after we were on the ground in Page, Arizona.

I came awake with the feeling that something important had changed, and found that we had stopped flying and the jet was inside a hangar, somewhere. When I washed my face and hair, brushed my teeth and gargled, I went forward to see what there was to see and found Catherine entertaining the Judge.

"Hello, Sir," I said, respectfully.

"Welcome back from the dead, Kevin. It looks like you've had an interesting night. Catherine here tells me that you participated in the defense of her home last night. I should say that I'm not surprised. You attacked the man who shot the president with nothing but your bare hands, saved Carlisle Kirby's granddaughter by diving into a freezing lake, and then shoot two assassins, and help break the remaining ones using a trick that you read about in a children's adventure book.