Chapter 49 - The Bungalow Perimeter
The rain was coming down in sheets now, turning the red Georgia clay along the gravel drive into thick, sucking mud.
I cut through the overgrown blackberry brambles behind the scrap iron yard, using the darkness and the roar of the downpour to mask my approach. My seventy-one-year-old knees burned with a dull, throbbing fire, but the adrenaline surging through my veins turned the ache into nothing more than white noise.
Through the rain-streaked darkness, the warm yellow light from Clara’s kitchen window glowed like a beacon.
Two shadows were crouched near the low porch, dressed in rain gear, one carrying a suppressed submachine gun, the other holding a heavy-duty hydraulic pry bar. They were preparing to breach the back door.
Inside, I could see Clara’s silhouette. She was sitting at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee, her laptop open, working late on the accounting ledgers for the shop—completely unaware that two professional killers were less than ten feet from her living room.
*Not my daughter. Not tonight.*
I stopped behind the massive carcass of a 1952 Caterpillar D8 bulldozer sitting rusted on the property line. The heavy diesel machine had been dead for twenty years, but its four-inch steel tow cable still hung looped around the drawbar, attached to a heavy timber grapple.
I didn't use the shotgun. Gunfire would draw the remaining two shooters from the front gate before I could secure Clara.
I grabbed the heavy iron grapple, swung it once in a wide, silent circle, and launched it through the low canopy of the cedar tree directly above the porch.
*Crash!*
A massive, waterlogged cedar branch snapped under the weight, plunging downward with a thunderous roar of splintering wood and cascading rainwater.
The two men scrambled backward, cursing as tons of wet foliage crushed the porch awning. The man with the pry bar was knocked flat onto the muddy lawn, trapped beneath the heavy limbs.
The second shooter rolled to his feet, bringing his submachine gun up to scan the darkness.
"Over here, son," I called out from the shadow of the bulldozer.
He turned toward my voice, his weapon firing a three-round suppressed burst that stitched the rusted iron blade of the Cat with sparks.
Before he could correct his aim, I lunged from behind the tracks, swinging a twenty-four-inch forged steel pipe wrench with every ounce of leverage seventy years of manual labor had given my shoulders.
The heavy tool struck his wrist, shattering the forearm bones and sending the submachine gun flying into the mud. Before he could scream, my left hand—hard as seasoned hickory—clamped over his mouth, and I drove him backward into the muck, planting my knee firmly onto his chest.
"Move, and I snap your collarbone," I whispered into his ear.
The kitchen door flew open. Clara stood on the threshold, a heavy cast-iron skillet raised in both hands, her eyes wide with terror and fire.
"Dad?!" she cried out.
May you like
"Get back inside, Clara," I said, breathing hard through my teeth as I zip-tied the operative's wrists with industrial electrical ties from my belt. "Pack the ledger, grab the hard drives from the safe, and get your coat. We're going hunting."
***
