Morris glanced at the Mercedes positioned about thirty yards to her right. She’d camouflaged it with branches and foliage. Now she worried the rains and wind might wash away enough of it to make the SUV visible if Kraskin’s security detail did a thorough search of the woods. She felt in the darkness for her pistol and clicked off the safety. She took a long look to her right and to her left, then behind her. She didn’t want anyone to catch her off guard. Satisfied she had the woods to herself—at least for the moment—she fought to slow and steady her breathing. She’d done two tours in Iraq with Army intelligence. She’d helped hunt down dozens of high-value targets before being recruited by the Agency and sent to language school to add Russian to her Arabic and Farsi. She’d done all sorts of crazy things for her government. But she’d never lain on her stomach in a Russian forest in the freezing rain, aiming a loaded weapon at a team of highly trained Russian FSB officers and Spetsnaz commandos.
She was seriously doubting herself for ever letting Marcus Ryker design this plan and run this operation. She didn’t care if he was the only link to the Raven. He wasn’t the CIA’s top dog in Russia. He wasn’t responsible for managing more than 120 officers and some three dozen Russian agents they’d recruited throughout the military, Duma, and executive branch. Yet somehow she’d let him dictate exactly what was going to happen and how. She hadn’t even put up a fight. He spoke with a humility and yet an air of authority unlike any other civilian she’d come across. And given the amount of time they’d had, his plan was probably the best anyone could come up with. But it was risky. It was bad enough when they had to contend with four bodyguards, but twelve?
If this went badly, it was going to go very badly.
Marcus heard the vehicles pull up out front.
He turned his night vision goggles back on and glanced out the small attic window. He could see two large bodyguards emerging from the lead SUV. They were dressed in suits and raincoats and held submachine guns at the ready. One moved cautiously through the darkness around to the backyard; the other moved toward the front door. The rest of the detail remained dry and warm in their SUVs, which now turned around and parked facing the main gate and the road beyond it.
They had made their first mistake, Marcus realized. With a dozen men on the team, at least eight of them should have jumped out to set up a secure perimeter and thoroughly search the house—regardless of the weather—leaving behind only the two drivers keeping their engines running and two body men staying close to their principal, Oleg Stefanovich Kraskin.
“Keyhole to Razor,” Jenny Morris whispered in his headset.
“What?” Marcus asked, annoyed by the sudden break of radio silence.
“Did you reset the alarm system? Over.”
“Affirmative. Hold your position and wait for my command.”
In theory, they were in an ideal tactical position. Morris had suggested that they could cut down the Russian security force with breathtaking speed, assuming that Marcus wasn’t found by the lone agent sweeping the house. Once the “all clear” signal was radioed back to the head of the detail, the agents would prepare to whisk Oleg inside. As soon as the doors of both SUVs opened and all the agents—aside from the drivers—began to exit, it would be like shooting fish in a barrel. Marcus had the high ground from a fixed yet hidden position. He could open fire and likely take out four or five of the Russians before they even realized where the rounds were coming from. Simultaneously, he could give the order to Morris to begin firing from the woods at the agents emerging from the other side of the vehicles. If she was as proficient a marksman as she claimed, she could likely take out all or most of the Russians on her side in a matter of seconds.
But the windows of both SUVs were tinted. That meant neither Marcus nor Jenny knew which vehicle their subject was in. And they couldn’t afford the possibility of Oleg being hit in the cross fire. It wasn’t just the thumb drive Marcus needed. He needed Oleg alive to execute the next phase of the plan.
Don’t die, and don’t get arrested.
His mother’s words rang in his ears as Marcus heard the front door open. He heard someone enter the code to disarm the security system. It seemed to take forever, but eventually he heard someone coming up the stairs from the first floor to the second. This was it. There was no turning back now.
He gripped the Russian-made pistol as he listened to doors opening and closing. Marcus could visualize every step the agent was taking. He’d cleared homes like this a thousand times and every time had forced himself to resist the temptation to believe everything was fine and the location was safe.
Marcus knew exactly what this agent was thinking. Oleg had announced the decision to come to his parents’ home less than an hour before. He’d made the decision in the middle of the night. The agent would certainly have been told that the Kraskins had left the country earlier in the evening and would not be home. They had no servants or staff, no pets, nobody house-sitting, only a housekeeping crew that came on Monday mornings. Thus the agent believed no one could possibly have known that Oleg was going to be there that night. This—more than the rotten weather, which after all was a staple of a Russian bodyguard’s existence—was the single most important reason the entire detail wasn’t on highest alert. They simply could not foresee a realistic, immediate threat. Still, Marcus knew the agent was a professional. He would at least be looking for hidden weapons, explosives, listening devices, surveillance cameras, or anything that seemed odd or out of place.
The door handle to the attic rattled. The agent was checking to make sure it was locked. But rather than move on, as Marcus had fully hoped and expected he would, the agent slipped a key into the lock. Marcus froze as he heard the door open. He instinctively held his breath as a beam from the agent’s flashlight shone up the stairs and swept from side to side, stopping finally on the small window. Marcus, hidden in a crawl space around the corner from the stairwell, was not immediately visible. But he was now grateful he hadn’t removed any of the glass panes. That would have been a dead giveaway.
Marcus silently prayed the agent would be satisfied with a quick glance up the stairs and go on to finish his check of the rest of the house. But suddenly he heard the steps creaking. This guy was doing his job. He was doing it more thoroughly than Marcus had anticipated, and this radically changed the calculus.
Marcus quietly turned off his night vision goggles. He steadied the pistol in one hand. In his other he held the remote switch to the explosive charge in the basement. But he couldn’t take out the power now. It would destroy his most important advantage: the element of surprise.
Marcus watched as the man’s shadow came up the stairs, cast by the light from the second-floor hallway. He was moving slowly, too slowly, as if he suspected something. But how could he? Marcus had been careful to leave no trace of his presence. His backpack was at his feet, deep inside the crawl space. The sniper rifle was at his side. He hadn’t left a flashlight or anything else on the stairs or at the base of the window. What was wrong? Why was the man moving so slowly?
Now why had he stopped?
Then Marcus saw what the agent saw. On the wall below the small window were smudges of dust. Marcus realized he must have made them when he was trying to maneuver in the cramped quarters. The man’s flashlight was fixated on them. Surely he was evaluating whether they were fresh or had been left there by the owners or a workman or even Oleg in the past. Again he began making his way up the stairs. Time seemed to stand still. Marcus knew he couldn’t shoot the man. To do so could blow his cover. Oleg was not yet out of the vehicle and in the house. If Marcus fired at this man and his whisper mic was on, he could alert a dozen Russian agents who could storm the house or speed off with Oleg and the computer files.
But if the agent found Marcus, he would likely shoot first and ask questions later. Either way the plan was blown.
Marcus had to make a decision. So he pulled the trigger four times in less than a second, firing blind through the crawl space wa
ll. All four bullets pierced the drywall. Three hit their mark. The Russian collapsed and slid down the stairs.
Marcus bolted from the crawl space. He pivoted around the corner and saw the agent sprawled on the floor. It was possible he was already dead, but there was no margin for error. He fired two more shots, one into the man’s heart, the other into his head. He knew he wasn’t wrong about all the consequences that could unfold from his decision to take this guy out, but in the end the calculation had come down to one decision: kill or be killed.
Marcus immediately discharged the partially empty magazine from his pistol.
He pulled another mag from his belt and locked it in place. Given the Russian weapon’s built-in silencer, no one outside the house could possibly have heard the shots. A quick peek out the window showed no movement, suggesting no one had heard the body fall down the stairs or heard the man’s submachine gun drop to the floor.
“Razor to Keyhole, target down,” he said. “Stand by to engage. Over.”
“What target?” came the stunned reply devoid of all radio protocol. “What are you talking about? You shot someone already?”
“Wait one,” Marcus replied as he shoved the pistol into his holster, grabbed the VSS rifle, and flicked a switch changing it from single-shot sniper mode to full-on automatic.
He inched halfway down the stairs, listening intently for any sounds of movement below. Hearing none, he double-checked the man’s pulse and confirmed what he already knew, then scooped up the man’s machine gun and stripped him of the rest of his weapons and ammo. There was blood all over the hallway carpet, but Marcus wasn’t worried about that. One way or another, this would be over before any of the Russians made it to the second floor.
Marcus removed the man’s whisper mic, earpiece, and battery-powered wireless radio and put them on himself. Now he had two—one connected to Morris and this one connected to the entire Russian detail. This would have been ideal if he spoke Russian, but he did not. Jenny did, and he briefly considered ways of patching her into the Russian feed. For the moment, however, it did not matter. Only one thing did.
“Razor to Keyhole—how do you say ‘all clear’ in Russian? Over.”
“What in the world?” Morris shot back, a disturbing mix of confusion and fear in her voice, a mix that did not exactly bolster Marcus’s confidence in her partnership at that moment.
“You heard me—‘all clear’—now. Over.”
“Vsay yasno, over,” she replied.
“Vsay yasno? Confirm. Over.”
“Correct. Why?”
Marcus wasn’t happy. He wasn’t conducting a Socratic dialogue. He was in the middle of leading an operation with by far the biggest stakes of their careers. Morris should know better than to question him or engage in any extraneous conversation. There was no way he was going to walk her through what he was doing. He’d be happy to explain all in their after-action report, if they got that far, but certainly not now.
“Stand by” was all he said in response.
Marcus turned off the light in the second-floor hallway. He powered his night vision goggles back up and moved to a bedroom with windows overlooking the front yard. Seeing no movement in the vehicles, he pressed the button to the Russian radio system and gave the all clear signal exactly as Jenny had said it and prayed it did the job. Then he waited.
Would they buy it or bolt?
A minute passed, then two, though it seemed like an hour. Finally he heard the radio crackle to life. The head of the detail, presumably, was giving the order. It was in Russian, but its meaning was plain enough. Doors began to open. The Russians began to exit their vehicles. They’d bought it. The mission was still on.
Marcus pinned himself against a wall on the second floor, next to the stairs but out of position for anyone to see him if they glanced upward. He was amazed at how calm he felt. His breathing was steady. His pulse was barely above normal. The initial rush of adrenaline he’d felt minutes before had drained out of his system. His equilibrium had settled. He was back in control. The odds of complete success were long, to be sure. But at this point he gambled that even if he died in a firefight inside the house, Morris could eliminate everyone outside and pick off the rest as they tried to rush Oleg back to one of the SUVs. Whether she’d live long enough to talk to him, much less grab the thumb drive and get it uploaded to Langley, he had no idea. But he now put the odds at fifty-fifty, and given the scenario, that really wasn’t so bad.
He asked his partner for a head count.
“Seven bogeys out of their vehicles, heading for the front door,” she said.
These, plus the agent he’d killed and the one in the backyard, made nine. But that was odd. That left only the drivers, both of whom were certain to stay in their vehicles, keeping them running and ready for a quick escape if necessary. Was only one agent going to walk Oleg inside? Sloppy, Marcus thought.
Morris radioed again. “Keyhole to Razor—the headlights of both trucks just went dark. Both drivers are getting out, along with what looks like the head of the detail. They’re putting a tight cordon around the subject and moving him toward the front door.”
Marcus was surprised and went to the window to make sure Jenny was right. Sure enough, she was. If the drivers were shutting down their vehicles and getting out, it must mean the detail saw no immediate threat inside or outside the house. That was good news. It meant he and Jenny still retained the advantage. Still, there were now ten highly trained Russian bodyguards in the house, and Marcus was going to have to take them on by himself.
“Eyes on? Over,” he whispered, making sure his math was correct.
“Eyes on one—repeat, eyes on one—the one they left to guard the front door,” Morris replied.
Marcus didn’t like the fact that they had no eyes on the agent stationed out back. But it couldn’t be helped now. He listened for the last group of agents to enter the house with Oleg. He could soon hear Oleg talking in Russian, and though he couldn’t understand a word the man was saying, it was obvious what the Raven was doing—he was putting the men at ease. They were laughing now. He could hear someone opening the refrigerator, kitchen cabinets opening and closing. A microwave started running. A moment later, he heard some glasses clinking and the unmistakable sound of a wine cork popping. It seemed highly unlikely that the men assigned to Oleg’s protection were going to start drinking. Luganov would have their heads. But Marcus wouldn’t be surprised at all if Oleg started drinking. He was nervous. He would want to take the edge off.
Marcus hoped Oleg wouldn’t drink too heavily. He would need his wits about him tonight. That was for certain.
The thunder had died off.
The lightning had stopped. A quick glance out the window proved the storm was not subsiding, but with the temperatures dropping, the rain had turned to a mixture of sleet and snow, and it was falling hard.
Marcus felt bad for his compadre. Jenny had been out in the elements for nearly two hours, and she had to be freezing. He liked this woman—professionally, anyway. He didn’t really know her, of course. They hadn’t trained together. He hadn’t observed her in action. He had no idea what she was capable of or what her breaking point was. But he liked her moxie, if not her ability to maintain proper radio protocol.
“On my mark,” he whispered. “Now.”
Morris flexed her frozen fingers one last time and took a deep breath.
Then she fired twice in rapid succession.
The agent standing post on the front steps dropped to the walkway. She fired two more times just to make sure. She watched him closely, looking for any signs of life, either of his chest moving or the fog of the man’s breath condensing in the frigid cold.
Nothing.
And the silencer had worked. She hadn’t compromised her position at all.
“Target down,” she said. “I repeat, target down. Over.”
Marcus almost smiled under his balaclava. Two down, ten to go.
He double-clicked his r
adio to signal he’d received her message. No longer could he risk speaking, even in a whisper.
It was his turn now. He pushed the remote in his left hand. All the lights went out simultaneously as the power in the house went down. Marcus clicked on his night vision goggles and moved sure and fast.
He spotted one agent standing post inside the front door and fired a quick burst with the Vintorez, then realized to his horror he hadn’t remembered to attach the silencer Jenny had given him. It was the first time he’d actually fired the Russian-built VSS, and it was far louder than he’d expected. The house erupted with confused men shouting at each other in the dark. They were not prepared with night vision equipment. This gave Marcus another advantage. Turning right, he saw an agent standing just inside the vestibule and fired again, dropping him to the marble floor. Dashing down the stairs and pivoting around the corner, he tossed a stun grenade into the living room and shut his eyes.
The explosion was deafening. The momentary burst of intense white light did its job, activating all the photoreceptors in his enemies’ eyes and causing temporary disorientation and loss of hearing and balance. Marcus knew these men would recover quickly, given their training, so he had to make the most of what little time the M84 had bought him.
First he unleashed a burst of fire at an agent stationed by the door to the garage, taking him out immediately. Next he spun around and cut down another one by the back door. Running to the kitchen, Marcus expected to find at least one agent and Oleg but was caught off guard to find neither. He moved left, into the dining room, and saw an agent running right toward the piano room. The man opened fire—a scoot and shoot. Marcus dove for the floor, and fired the rest of his magazine at the man, clipping him with his last round and sending him sprawling across the Persian rug. Marcus quickly ejected the spent mag and replaced it with a full one, then spotted the man crawling across the floor, leaving a trail of blood in his wake. Marcus pulled the trigger, unleashing another short burst into the man until he stopped moving.