Riptide

wanted
    the senator dead was his son-in-law. Irving--that's the guy's
    name--had sent him threats, all the usual anonymous bullshit. The
    senator called me. It turned out that Irving had become a heroin
    addict, didn't have any more money, and wanted the senator's inheritance.
    The senator managed to keep it from the media, to protect
    his daughter, and so we got the guy into a sanatorium, where
    he belonged, where he's still at. I guess there are only a few insiders
    who know anything at all about it."
    "You run some sort of a bodyguard business?" Becca said,
    frowning at Adam over a spoonful of baked beans. "I thought you
    did security consulting."
    "I like to keep my hand in on a lot of different things," Adam
    said.
    "What I'd like to know," Sherlock said, handing Rollo another
    hot dog with lots of down-home yellow mustard slathered on it, "is
    why you didn't find out who it was right away. The guy was an addict?
    That kind of thing isn't easy to hide."
    Adam actually flushed. He played with his fork, didn't meet her
    eyes. He cleared his throat. "Well, the thing is that the son-in-law
    wasn't around for those three days I was checking things out. His wife

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was protecting him, said he had the flu, that he was really contagious,
    et cetera. She swore to me and to her father that Irving wouldn't even
    consider doing something like that, no, it had to be a crazy, or a left-wing
    conspiracy. She was so--well--damned believable."
    "Good thing you were there to deflect the guy's knife," Rollo
    said.
    "That's the truth," Adam said.
    Rollo sat down at the kitchen table, squeezing in between
    Savich and Becca. Adam said on a deep sigh, "I just heard that the
    wife is trying to get the husband out of there. It could start all over
    again."
    "Well, shit," Rollo said. "Not much justice around, is there?"
    Then Chuck came in and Rollo, still half a hog dog left, saluted
    and went back outside.
    "It won't be long now," Savich said. "I feel it. Things will happen."
    He took a last bite of a tofu hot dog, sighed with pleasure, and
    hugged his wife.

    Things didn't happen until later.
    They were all in the living room drinking coffee, planning, arguing,
    brainstorming. There was no activity outside. Everything
    was buttoned down tight, until at exactly ten o'clock a bullet shattered
    one of the front windows, glass exploded inward, carrying
    shreds of curtain with it.
    "Down!" Savich yelled.
    But it wasn't a simple bullet that came through the window to
    strike the floor molding on the far side of the living room, it was a
    tear gas bullet. Thick gray smoke gushed out even before it struck
    the molding.
    "Oh, damn," Adam said. "Back into the kitchen. Now!"

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Another tear gas bullet exploded through the window. They
    were coughing, covering their faces, running toward the back of
    the house.
    They heard men's shouts, sporadic gunfire, sharp and loud in the
    night. The front door burst open and Tommy the Pipe ran in, his
    face covered with his jacket. "Out, guys, quick. Through the front
    door, the back's not covered well enough."
    "He shot tear gas bullets," Adam said between choking coughs.
    "He's probably using a CAR-15, behind our perimeter. Come
    on out."
    They coughed their heads off, tears streaming down their faces.
    Savich found himself with Becca's nose pressed into his armpit.
    "We've got to get him," Adam shouted, coughing, choking, his
    eyes streaming tears. "Just another minute to get over this and we'll
    start scouring."
    It took another seven minutes before they headed out in the
    general direction of where the tear gas bullets must have been shot
    toward the front windows.
    They found tire tracks, nothing else, until Adam called out,
    "Look here."
    Everyone gathered around Adam, who was on his haunches. He
    held up a shell casing that was four inches long and about an inch
    and a half in diameter. "Tommy the Pipe was right. He used a
    CAR-15--that's a compact M16," he added to Becca, "stands for
    carbine automatic rifle."
    Savich found the other shell casing and was tossing it back and
    forth.
    "But how can tear gas come from a gun?" Becca said. "I thought
    they were canisters or something like that. That's what I've always
    seen in movies and on TV."
    "That's real old-hat now," Adam said. "This smaller Ml6 is real

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portable, you could carry it under your trench coat. It's got this
    telescoping collapsible barrel. The SEALs use this stuff. What you
    do is simply mount an under-barrel tubular