Assim rose, his legs trembling from the exertion. He’d sweated through his shirt. “Just have to connect the shock tube to the det cord.”

Sark elbowed his way through the cluster. “What will you use to initiate?”

A faint whirring sound carried across the rows of empty chairs and then a loud clank. The bidders turned as one.

Evan lowered his palm from the inside panel, the vault door clicking open. He jabbed the door out, knocking the guard onto his ass, then swung it back to use as a shield. He peered from the slender gap, the Kimber .45 pointed.

“I have a suggestion,” he said.

54. Bad Dogs

54

Bad Dogs

From there it went fast.

Evan put his first bullet through Assim’s shoulder, making the man tumble to the side and clearing the sight line to the initiation assembly.

The toppled guard unleashed the AK at Evan, but the swung-open slab of the door deflected his fire, the rounds whining off the angled Lexan.

René looked from Evan to Assim and back to Evan, his ruddy cheeks lighting with realization. Grabbing the Widow Lakshminarayanan’s sari, he flung her in front of the initiation assembly to block Evan’s angle.

Evan shot her through the back of the calf. She screeched and balled up as he’d hoped she would. The yellow shock tube and crimped blasting cap peeked into view above the crown of her head.

Evan fired and missed, the bullet blowing out one of the legs of the piano.

From the doorway Xalbador screamed orders at the remaining guards.

René backpedaled in the surging crowd, grabbing Sark’s jacket from behind and pivoting them both, putting the man’s girth between him and the explosives.

Evan fired at the assembly again, but the volley of bullets from the guard’s AK drove the Lexan door into his arm, his shot sailing wide. The guard’s flurry was punctuated with a click, the magazine finally run dry.

Over by the doorway, Xalbador picked up the slack, firing haphazardly. His rounds sprayed the Lexan wall, but Evan tuned him out.

He aimed the .45.

Two bullets left.

The bidders stampeded for the exits, bodies and kicked-over chairs flickering across his field of vision. The blasting cap strobed in and out of view.

Even in the mayhem, he found an inner calm. Inhale. Exhale. Wait for the space between heartbeats.

He let a final cool breath pass through his teeth.

With steady, even pressure, he pulled the trigger.

The bullet struck the cap at its union with the shock tube. The first explosion was instantaneous, the shock wave lifting Assim and the widow off the floor, their limbs spread, heads corkscrewing on broken necks.

Evan withdrew behind the door into the vault, rushing to swing the hefty door shut after him. He wasn’t worried about the initial explosion. He was worried about what was coming.