“One down,” she said as two others started firing at the turret tracking them. The man by the gazebo went for the house and tripped the weapon Smith dreaded above all the others. A flounder rocketed out of a skeet launcher and caught him in the side of the face hard enough to knock him to the ground.

“Are there any more underground traps that we could funnel them toward?” Randi asked.

“No. Just the paintball guns, some flash grenades, and stink bombs. Oh, and a couple of pressure washers that I haven’t really been able to get the targeting working on. It’s a fluid dynamics issue. The force of the water is kind of unpredictable in the way it—”

“So you’re telling us that in about thirty seconds, these guys are going to realize none of this crap can hurt them and come right for the front door,” Smith said. “You’ve still got the Mace that shoots out there, though, right?”

Zellerbach shook his head miserably. “I got sued over it and one of the provisions of the settlement was that I had to disable it. Stupid Girl Scouts…”

“What about other weapons? Do you have any in the house?” Randi said, pulling out her Beretta. That and her ever-present blade were all they had. Once again, Smith had left the house unarmed.

“No.”

“What about the back way out,” Smith said. “Is that still there?”

Zellerbach seemed to be having trouble concentrating. He had an uncanny ability to apply laser-like focus to one thing at a time, but was easily overwhelmed. “Yes.”

On screen, one of the men took fire and went down on the same slippery sheet of plastic that Smith had.

“Then get us the hell out of here, Marty.”

Zellerbach grabbed something that looked like a television remote and they followed him into the bathroom, where he punched a sequence of commands into the device. A moment later, the bathtub started to rise and a trapdoor beneath slid open. Randi dropped into the crawl space first, followed by Zellerbach and then Smith. The hatch closed above them and emergency lights came on as they moved into an abandoned sewer pipe. It ran a few hundred meters before dead-ending into a ladder leading to another trapdoor.

They climbed quietly, exiting into the pitch-dark interior of a similar bungalow that Zellerbach owned on the next street. The lights snapped on and Smith was about to tell Zellerbach to shut them off again when he realized that his old friend wasn’t responsible.

James Whitfield moved away from the switch holding a Colt in his right hand. A quick glance behind confirmed that Randi was similarly covered by two men with assault rifles.

“I’ve underestimated you in the past,” Whitfield said. “But I think you’ll find that I learn from my mistakes.”