That had been one of the rules in SOG. A man went down behind the lines, you risked almost everything to extract him.

…16… 15…

He heard Kenny punch through, and then he was through with his second opening. He stood on tiptoe and peered into the hole. He needed more light.

“Kenny, get that lamp over here.”

“Sam…”

Damn, his nephew was practically whining.

I know how you feel kid, but you gotta hang in here with me. Don’t let me down.

“Do it!”

…12… 11…

Kenny picked up the lamp and held it high with shaky hands.

Now Baker could see, and he spotted the powerful spring that had powered the spike into Briggs’s arm.

“There’s the sucker,” he said.

…08… 07…

He reached in and inserted the point of his blade under the bottom of the spring. His own hand was beginning to shake, and the point slipped off the spring.

“Come on! Come on!”

He positioned the point again, then grunted as he threw all his strength into levering that spike out of the safe. It moved, and he heard air hiss through Briggs’s teeth as the spike slowly withdrew from his flesh.

… 04… 03…

With a piercing cry, Briggs yanked his bloody arm from the safe and began a headlong dash toward the front door.

Kenny was right behind him. Baker brought up the rear, leaping off the front steps and pushing Kenny to the ground.

“Hit the deck!” he shouted.

17.

17.

“Where are we?” Alicia said as Jack helped her up the ladder from the tunnel. “Take a look.” Alicia turned in a slow circle to get her bearings. They’d emerged in the center of a clump of bushes bordering a potato field. Fifty feet to her right, she saw the white rented car, parked where they had left it. Beyond the car lay Jack’s ranch house, with every window lit.

“We’re across the street,” she said.

“Right.”

“Are we going to—?”

Alicia jumped as a booming retort echoed from the house, followed by a burst of machine-gun fire.

“My God, what happened?”

“Somebody just became cannon fodder, I imagine,” Jack said.

“You mean dead?”

He nodded. “Most likely. I told you, it’s my decoy place. Booby-trapped to within an inch of its life.”

She looked at Jack. She’d grown to like him, even trust him during the short time she’d known him—unusual for her, because her list of trusted people was a short one—but there was so much she didn’t know about him. And here was something she hadn’t realized—maybe she’d guessed it, but hadn’t wanted to confront it: beneath that unprepossessing, low-key, regular-guy surface was someone willing and able to kill when necessary.

And he was standing only a foot away. Her mouth went dry. She took a step back.

“You… killed one of them?” She tried to make out his expression in the dark.