Page 80 of Holmes, Margaret and Poe

“North Carolina,” I said. “Dead.”

His eyebrows lifted. “Dead? I hope it was a difficult death.”

Sampson said, “Someone blew his head off with a shotgun and tried to make it look like a suicide.”

He considered that. “Well, of course there would be violence involved. It traveled with Parks. Trouble. Violence. But I have not seen him in years. He’s involved in the plane coming down?”

Mahoney said, “Supplied the machine gun.”

Abdallah paused, then said, “Any more loose ends I can help with?”

“Did you know someone named Ibrahim when you worked with Parks?”

Something flickered in his eyes before he said, “Not that I remember. That it?”

“Just one more thing. The information that travels over an Orion encrypted phone is fully secure, but did you know that when you or someone else in your house uses an Orion, it attracts attention from people like us?”

We all watched him. He was cool, I’ll give him that.

“I have no idea what this Orion thing is,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “But maybe my roommates do. Should I get them?”

“Please,” Mahoney said.

Abdallah pivoted, opened the front door, and called, “Racif, Badawi, the FBI, they want to talk to you.”

Someone grumbled inside just as one of the FBI agents in the cornfield barked through our earpieces, “Armed subject! AR rifle, body armor, exiting rear of east-side barn, aggressive posture, heading your way.”

All three of us dropped into crouches, drew our guns, and moved to cover just as someone inside Abdallah’s house opened fire with an automatic weapon, blowing out the window glass.

CHAPTER 71

I LUNGED HARD BEHINDone of the oaks, heard slugs slamming into the tree. Sampson and Mahoney got behind the other tree, John high and looking to his right, Ned low and looking left.

The moment the shooting stopped, we all leaned out and fired multiple shots toward the window. Sami Abdallah was crawling off the deck, trying to get out of the line of fire.

In our earpieces, the drone pilot said, “You’ve got two more armed men, automatic weapons, leaving the mobile home.”

“All agents engage,” Mahoney said. “Repeat, all agents engage.”

I caught movement in the growing shadows to my right and saw the guy who’d left the barn, complete with body armor and a light machine gun, running my way, his weapon at port arms. I twisted toward him and slid down the tree until I was almost lying on the ground.

Two automatic rifles started shooting at us from inside themanufactured house, short, disciplined bursts. I ignored them and the woman screaming behind me, focusing on the guy running my way. The second he was inside forty yards, I opened fire, double-tapping him to his left leg and groin. He screamed and went down, dropping his rifle.

One of the automatic weapons in the house stopped. The other sprayed my position wildly, which caused the woman to scream even more.

Before I could turn to see what was happening with her, there was a barrage of shots toward the manufactured home, then reports of two bad guys down, one by the cornfield and another at the rear of the property.

That left four by my count. We could hear shouting from inside the house, and I heard the clanking sound of men trying to seat new clips in their weapons and not doing it well.

Sampson heard it too, charged around the oak toward the deck, and fired through the blown-out window. Mahoney was behind him, shooting at another window.

I heard a man shout in agony and then the woman was screaming again, this time calling for help in English. I spun around and saw Mrs. Shariff on her knees next to two of her daughters, both of whom were lying on the ground.

They’re hit!

More shots went off behind me, all from Sampson and Mahoney; all of them, it turned out, connected with the throats and foreheads of the two gunmen trying to reload unfamiliar weapons under pressure.

There’s still two of them left,I thought, running toward the mother and her two wounded children, expecting her husband to come out the front door at any moment, blazing at me and possibly hitting his wife and daughters.

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