“Now what?” said Elke.
Morgan rose to his feet and peered through a slit by the door. “I’d say, given how the bullets hit the frame, they were coming from the direction of the house.” There was another explosion and he ducked. A new hole appeared within inches of where his head had been.
“Do you think they know you’re the police?” said Elke.
“If they do, I’d say we’re just part of the clean-up on their way out the door,” said Miranda. “They’re closing down business.”
“And if they don’t?” asked Morgan.
“Well, same thing, I guess.”
“Either way,” said Morgan, “they’d rather we weren’t here.”
“I think they’d rather we were dead,” said Miranda.
“I don’t know,” said Morgan. “So far, they’re just shooting to announce their presence — and to test for return fire. I suppose if they did want to get rid of us, there’d be room to dump us in there with your —” He stopped. He was about to say glibly, “your friend.”
Miranda caught his eye. She smiled and threw him a mock kiss. “Okay,” she said. “How’re we going to deal with this situation? You’re the action figure role model, the testosterone kid. You lead us, Morgan. We’ll follow.”
“Where’s job parity when we need it?”
“You two aren’t taking this very seriously,” said Elke, sweeping her blond hair away from her face. “You may be used to being shot at, but I’m a civilian.”
“I’ve never been shot at before in my life,” said Morgan. “Not intentionally. And I’ve never shot anyone.”
“Great,” said the blond. “So am I in charge, then?”
“We’ll handle it,” said Miranda. “We’re just thinking how.”
Morgan peered out through the crack, scrunching his face against the wood to get the best view. “They’re coming, they definitely want us dead. Three of them. Two are carrying rifles. One’s a machine gun of some sort, the other’s an assault rifle.”
“Oh my God, my God,” said Elke.
“Praying, Morgan. Not swearing.” Miranda smiled. “You got any ideas?”
“They’re stopping at the car, opening the doors. They know it’s a cop car. They’re looking over here. One’s motioning to the others to circle around.”
“The back door, is there a back door?” said Miranda.
“Too late,” said Morgan.
“No,” she said. “Open it.” She reached over and took the blond woman by the arm. “Come on,” she ordered. “Up here.”
Morgan swung the back door ajar, then scrambled up the steel stairs after the two women. Miranda lifted open the hatch in the top of the tank.
“In you go,” she said to Elke.
“No.”
“You go, Miranda, I’ll lower you,” said Morgan. Miranda held out her arms to him and he dropped her slowly into the fetid gloom of the tank, letting her go when he could reach no farther. There was a splash and a single cough.
“Okay,” she said as she pushed away the dead man, who had been drawn close by her body’s displacement of the murky fluid.
Voices outside were closing in fast. Elke grasped Morgan’s arms and let herself be lowered until she dropped into the wine, totally immersed before surfacing beside Miranda. They were both sculling to stay afloat.
Morgan swung over the edge, and hanging from one hand he pulled the hatch cover down before letting himself drop beside them in the darkness.
He was just tall enough that his feet reached the bottom, and as they heard the shed door crash open he took one of the women in each arm and held them still with their heads just above the surface.
Suddenly a machine gun shattered the air. Crashing sounds, deafening. The firing was random, in anger. The men out there thought they had escaped through the back door. The machine gun rattled like chains in a bucket, and light holes appeared all around them. The body of the man with the gold ring thrashed about. They could hear wine gushing, splashing, more holes opening up beneath them in small disks of light.
They huddled with the corpse in the bottom of the tank as the wine level dropped to a brackish pool in the bottom, and then the splashing stopped. There was silence, then they could hear the roaring of an engine. A plane was landing or taking off.
Morgan whispered, “I think they’re gone. You two all right?”
There was no answer. He shook Miranda. She looked at him in the mottled light and smiled wanly.
“I think I’ve been hit.”
“No!”
“How’s Elke?”
The blond was staring at them in stunned disbelief. Then she whispered softly, “I didn’t know things like this happened.”
“They don’t,” said Miranda. “Not usually.”
Morgan checked her over in the stray shafts of light that seemed to be dancing in the fetid air, so that the stainless steel walls flashed eerily, like the inside of a furnace.
“Flesh wound,” he said, looking at the raw tear on her thigh. “You’re just grazed, you’ll be okay.”
“Oh, God,” she said. “What a pain. At least it’s antiseptic, you know, the wine …”
“I think we’re on fire,” said Elke.
Faint columns of smoke were wafting through the holes in the stainless steel.
“We’re on fire!” said Morgan. “They’ve set the shed on fire. Let’s go, let’s get out of here before we’re roasted alive.”
“Steamed,” said Miranda, correcting him. Inane quips. It was a way of dealing with the adrenalin rush.
“Yeah. Here, I’ll have to boost you up. No, your leg — Elke Sturmberg, you get to be hero.”
Miranda tried to help brace Morgan as the other woman shinnied up over his shoulders.
“I see England, I see France,” said Morgan.
“Morgan!” Miranda snapped. “This is serious.”
His head poked out away from Elke’s skirt.
“I am serious, damnit.” He shifted his attention to the woman on his shoulders. “Reach. It pushes up, no straight up. Give it a whack. Another.”
“I can’t reach, Morgan.”
“Hang on,” said Morgan. “Miranda, steady me.”
Smoke was streaming in through the holes, and rays of bright yellow light danced against the walls and over their saturated clothes and wine-drenched flesh.
Morgan leaned against Miranda and stepped up onto the corpse, which let out a grisly moan.
“I’ve got it,” Elke yelled as light flooded in from above. “Push!”
Morgan heaved and she swung up and in a flurry of legs clambered over the edge. Immediately she started coughing. She braced herself and draped her upper body down, reaching