Chapter 116 Section 19

Decker heard his pulse beat like a hammer behind his ear.He knelt down behind the bushes, carefully observing the surroundings for signs of other figures preparing to attack.Is there anyone else he hasn't seen?There must be someone on the road guarding the exit of the trail, but what about the house a quarter mile south of here?The Decker chaser must have seen it when the Decker-stalking Cherokee passed the house.Had some of Renata's gang gone back there, crossed the bridge there, and approached the cabin from that direction?Maybe that's how the dead man at Decker's feet got to this side of the clearing.

Wherever there is a possibility of error, it is certain that error will occur.The group must have had a plan before they approached the cabin.But how do they relate to each other and act in sync?Possibly a tiny walkie-talkie and an earbud receiver, but the gang wouldn't dare risk even a whisper.Decker checked the body's ears and jacket, confirming his suspicions. He couldn't find any tiny two-way radios. How else could they synchronize their actions?Decker traced down the corpse's left wrist and found a watch, but it was a watch without luminous hands that would not give away its location.There was no glass surface on the watch, just a metal cover, which Decker opened.The only way to tell the time in the dark is to take off your gloves and feel for the long minute hands, short hour hands, and the palpable numbers in the grooves on the edge of the dial.Decker was familiar with this kind of watch. He touched the minute hand that jumped forward, and soon knew that it was between 5 minutes and 1 o'clock.

Will the attack on the cabin start at 1?Decker didn't have much time to prepare.He put on his gloves, wiped his fingerprints off the watch, and scrambled back through the bushes, making as little noise as possible, to the dank shallow pit that reminded him more and more of a grave.There, he groped through the row of wires and settled on the two pairs on the far right.He separated each pair of wires, grasping two in his left hand and the other two in his right, ready to place one end of each pair on the positive battery and the other exposed end on the battery. to the negative pole. Sweat seeped from beneath the camouflage grease on his brow despite the low temperature of the night.He focused on the cabin, begrudgingly aware that the light in the window was impairing his night vision.He has been counting since he touched the watch on the wrist of the corpse, and he estimates that 4 minutes and 30 seconds have passed, and the attack on the cabin will start, as long as——

Decker miscalculated by 15 seconds.The windows shattered.The grenade exploded in the cabin with a blinding flash and a deafening roar.Dark figures with rifles crawled out from under the cover of bushes, and two broke in through the front door, and one broke in through the back door.The guy Decker killed was supposed to go through the back door with the latter guy, but the lone guy (probably Renata) was so focused on rushing in that he didn't seem to notice that his or her partner wasn't coming out help. From the pit, Decker saw the light of the cabin cast hurried figures on the curtains.Angry action.Shouting, cursing.The attackers found no one in the house and knew they had been duped and set up.They must have been eager to get out of the cabin before the trap closed.Another curse.The figure retreated frantically.Decker stared back and forth between the front and back doors of the cabin.Will they all come out of one door, or will they split into two as they went in?

It is divided into two ways.Decker saw a lanky figure rush out the back door and immediately pressed the wires to the battery's poles.Night turned into day.The ground beneath the figure trembled with a deafening explosion, kicking up dirt and buckshot and metal shards from the kettle.The man was thrown into the air.Immediately after, the two killers rushing out of the front door paused at the sound of the explosion.Decker then pressed another pair of wires to the battery's poles, causing an explosion more powerful than the first, tearing a crater in the ground with flames and killing the two screaming men. Tossed high, then down the steps, to Decker's car.The windows of the cabin were all shattered, and flames billowed on the outer walls.

The violent explosion caused Decker to squint his eyes.He dropped the wire and picked up the Winchester rifle.He pulled the lever as fast as he could and fired toward the back of the cabin, strafing where the tall, lanky figure had fallen.A shot from the shotgun told him unmistakably that Beth was shooting at the figure that had jumped into the clearing near her.Another shot.Another shot.If there were more assailants in that area, the sound of shotgun fire, not to mention the muzzle flash, would have given away Beth's location.Decker had told her to roll fifteen feet to the right with the two guns, where a hole had been dug and a box of ammunition laid out for her.She should quickly reload and fire again, continuing to change positions.

But Decker didn't have time to think about it; he had to trust that Beth was following the plan.For his part, after firing the seventh, final round in his Winchester rifle, he dropped the gun, pulled out Esperanza's 9mm Beretta, and walked through the bushes Cong, groping from the shadows as far as possible toward the place where the tall, lanky figure had fallen.As he got closer to the burning cabin, it became less and less possible to hide in the shadows.But the firelight helped, and it reflected a man on the ground.Decker fired, and the man twitched when the bullet hit the head. Decker heard Beth's shotgun go off again.He lunged forward, aimed down, and kicked the corpse over with his shoe.He didn't see the face he wished to see.The face under his feet was not that of a woman, not that of Renata, but that of one of her brothers. When McKittrick introduced Decker to Renata 15 months ago, Decker had spoken to her brother in that café in Rome.

Feeling exposed, Decker turned away hastily.He was eager to back away from the burning cabin, back into the dark bushes.But at the same time, he wanted to be with Beth and help her, to see if Renata was one of the two people she had shot (maybe killed).He was eager to know what had happened to Esperanza.Had Esperanza killed the guy who Decker figured was guarding the exit of the curb across the bridge?But Decker has to trust Esperanza to take care of herself, and Beth, as good as she is, may be panicking now. Although Decker's choice put him at great risk, he ran along the side of the burning cabin, intending to take cover in front of it and shoot at the two men who fell in the clearing near his car.Had they been alive, they would have concentrated their fire on the spot where Beth had shot.Decker could give them a surprise attack.

But a bullet whizzed past him and into the cabin, startling Decker.The bullet came from the woods on the left where he had been hiding.The man Decker killed must have had an accomplice who didn't move as fast as the other from the house to the south through the woods.Decker dropped to the ground and rolled toward a wide pine tree that provided cover.A bullet kicked up dust behind him, and the muzzle flash was to the left of the tree.Decker rolled to the right, around the tree trunk, and fired where he saw the muzzle flash.Then he fell to the right again and saw the flash again.He aimed at the flash, and before he could pull the trigger, he heard a scream.