short bursts of suppressing fire

If a coordinated team of kidnappers had gotten inside Palazzo Rospo, however, there would be more than one gunman squeezing off [575] short bursts of suppressing fire. They would have chopped at Ethan with one, two, three fully automatic carbines. Uzis or worse. By now he would be down, dead, and dancing in paradise. When silence persisted after the third brief volley, he rose from cover and eased warily through the ferns, between the palms, to the edge of the pathway. In any jungle movie, stillness like this always signaled the wilderness-savvy characters that villainy in one form or another had stepped into the natural world, silencing cricket and crocodile alike. Green-juice smell of crushed vegetation rising from underfoot. Muffled voice of a heating-system fan purring in the walls. A gnat, a midge, hovering in the air before him, hovering. Taste of blood in his mouth, the discovery that he’d pinched tongue with teeth when he dropped to the ground, the throb just now arising in the bite. A flutter of foliage spun him around, and he brought the pistol toward the sound. Not foliage. Wings. Through the jungle, high above the pathway, flew a flock of brightly colored parrots, blue and red and yellow and the iridescent green of certain strange sunsets. No birds made their home in the conservatory. Neither a flock of parrots nor a single sparrow. Plummeting in front of Ethan but then swooping high again, the colorful birds passed without one screech or squawk, and became white doves on the rise. This was the phantom in the steam-clouded mirror. This was the impossible set of bells in his hand outside the flower shop. This was the heavy fragrance of Broadway roses in his study when no roses had been there, the precious voice of his lost wife speaking of ladybugs in the white room. This was the hand of some supernatural force held out to him and eager to lead. After spiraling high in a frenzied flapping, down again came the swarming doves, feathering the air, toward him, past him, with a [576] thrum that both exhilarated and frightened him, that plucked notes of wonder from his heart but also struck hard the jungle-drum terror of the primitive within. They flew. He ran. They led. He followed.