Seven down, five to go.
But where were the rest? And where was the Raven?
So far Marcus had seen no sign of Oleg. He hoped several agents had rushed him down to the panic room. That’s what Oleg had told him his detail was supposed to do, but what if they instead tried to rush him out of the house and into one of the bulletproof SUVs? Could Jenny take them out in time without hitting Oleg?
Slowly, methodically, he worked his way back to the archway between the piano room and the dining room, sweeping his weapon from one side to the other. His ears were still ringing from the explosion and the gunfire, making it all but impossible to hear his enemies moving across broken glass and splintered furniture, though they almost certainly were at the same disadvantage.
The smell of fear in the room was rapidly overtaking the stench of the smoke from the flash bomb. Then Marcus saw two shadows moving in the distance. That’s when the counteroffensive began.
Gunfire erupted from his right, from the backyard through the bay windows. Marcus instantly hit the deck but saw a grenade rolling past him. He scrambled to his feet and dove headfirst into the kitchen just before the grenade exploded, destroying everything in its blast radius. Marcus slid along the hardwood floor, winding up behind the kitchen island as more gunfire erupted all around him.
He raised the VSS rifle over his head and sprayed the room, hoping at least to buy himself a few seconds to reorient and retake the initiative. If he stayed where he was, he knew he was in very real danger of getting caught in a pincer movement. He had to make a break for it. Pulling the pin on a grenade of his own, he threw it the full length of the house. He heard it hit the far wall and roll into the vestibule, then heard men yelling furiously in Russian. The moment the grenade detonated, he sprinted forward. He didn’t think he’d taken out anyone new. He just hoped he’d cleared himself a path.
Marcus didn’t know the floor plan as well as Oleg’s men, but he knew it well enough to navigate through the carnage to his target: the stairs leading to the basement. He tossed his last grenade down the stairs, then pivoted back and sprayed the vestibule with a full magazine. He bounded down the stairs, reloading as he moved, and came around the corner, gun blazing.
The explosion had bought him just the time and distraction he needed. Through the night vision goggles, he spotted an agent about ten yards to his right, standing guard in front of the panic room. The rounds hit their mark. But Marcus resisted the temptation to race to the end of the hallway, punch in the code, and see if his man was inside. Instead, he turned left, ducked inside the darkened billiard room, and made sure no one was in there. He waited.
It didn’t take long. No more than ten seconds later, another grenade came down the stairs. The explosion shook the house yet again. Then came two sets of footsteps. The Russians were moving fast and no doubt worried that members of this attacking force, whoever they were, knew where their principal was and were heading there to abduct him.
Marcus considered popping out and shooting them both from behind. That would make ten. But something held him back.
For a few seconds it was silent.
Then Marcus heard the distinctive sound of pins being pulled on not one but four more grenades. Two went rolling down the hall away from his location, toward the other wing of the mansion. Two came his way. Before he could hit the deck, the successive explosions sent him hurtling through the air past the pool table and crashing against the wall on the far side.
The air grew thick with clouds of smoke and the fine dust of crushed Sheetrock. The floor was littered with shards of lumber, twisted metal, mangled light fixtures, and shattered glass. The ceiling had become a mess of scorched beams, melted HVAC ducts, and dangling wires.
Marcus had no idea where his rifle had fallen. It was somewhere in all this debris. He’d dropped it the moment he went airborne, but he couldn’t search for it yet. Nor could he check to see if anything on him was broken or bleeding. He didn’t have the luxury. He knew for certain these guys were coming for him. He’d be coming for them if the situation were reversed. If he made a sound, he would give away his position and make himself a target. But just because he was a sitting duck didn’t mean he couldn’t defend himself. Slowly he reached with his right hand for his pistol, drew it from its holster, raised it, and aimed it at what had been a door and was now a gaping hole in the wall. His ears were ringing even worse now. There was no way he was going to be able to hear someone coming around the corner. At least with his night-vision goggles he’d be able to see them coming before they saw him.
Then the goggles shorted out.
With his left hand he pulled them off and set them aside. As his eyes readjusted to the darkness, his mind tried to comprehend the new reality that he was no longer the hunter but the hunted.
He flexed his fingers. They were working. He wriggled his toes. They, too, were working. He turned his head from side to side, still never taking his eyes off the hole in the wall. His neck was in immense pain, but at least he hadn’t broken it. As quietly as possible, he bent his right knee. He tried to bend his left knee, but a jolt of searing pain shot up his spinal cord. He pulled off a glove and dabbed the knee with his left hand. It was bleeding. No matter. He had to get up. He had to make sure his back was not broken. He had to get moving.
Four of the Russian bodyguards were still alive. Surely one of them had called for backup by now. Where would the reinforcements be coming from? How long would it take them to get there? How many would there be? He had no answers. But if he wanted to live—if he was going to complete this mission and get Oleg and his files out of here—he had to get on his feet.
His hearing was slowly coming back. Both eardrums might prove permanently damaged. Only time would tell. But at least he could hear something, and just then he heard the crunch of glass and wood in the hallway. Someone was coming. Without the night-vision equipment, the basement was pitch-black. He’d expected his eyes to adjust after a few moments, but there was nothing to adjust to. So Marcus actually closed his eyes and listened.
There were two of them, moving cautiously, surely as blind and maybe as deaf as he was. Marcus could see the men in his mind’s eye, standing in the hallway now directly in front of him. He pulled the trigger.
Six shots in two seconds.
Left to right.
He heard both men collapse to the floor.
His eyes still closed, Marcus ejected the spent magazine and popped in a full one. Then, slowly, painfully, he forced himself to his feet.
Jenny Morris was covered in a blanket of snow, and it was coming down harder.
She was less worried about getting frostbite and losing a digit or two than losing her ability to react quickly when the moment arose. Her eyelashes were nearly frozen. Her fingers weren’t numb but they were heading in that direction. She had no idea what was going on inside the house. Only the repeated bursts of gunfire and occasional explosions and flashes of orange light gave evidence that the fight was still on. That was a good sign—if someone was still shooting, hopefully Marcus was still alive.
Another fear haunted her, however. She hadn’t seen the agent in the back of the house in a while. What if he had been alerted by his colleagues to a sniper in the woods? Could he have been ordered to outflank her and take her out from behind? She forced herself to resist the temptation to keep checking behind her. Marcus had left her with one simple order before going into the house: no one could get back to the SUVs alive.
She’d already fired at the tires of the SUV in the rear and flattened them all. Since then, she’d maintained her focus on the four-yard gap between the front door of the Kraskin home and the closed doors of the SUVs. The moment the front door opened, she’d have only a split second to open fire. She didn’t necessarily need to hit or kill anyone. She did have to keep them from successfully getting into the vehicles and leaving the premises. Morris was determined to do her job, no matter how cold she was, regardless of how long she had to wait.
Her second radio crackled to life. Not the one that connected her to Marcus but her link to the Global Operations Center in Langley. They wanted an update. She had little to tell them. No, she had not heard from Razor. No, she could not confirm the Raven was alive. No, the package was not yet in their possession. No, she was not aware that the agents on-site had called for backup.
This last fact was a very serious development. Langley informed her that three choppers were spooling up on helipads behind Lubyanka. Heavily armed commandos were loading in. They would be airborne in less than two minutes and would arrive at her location in no more than fifteen.
“Copy that,” she replied.
Before she decided whether to relay that critical last piece to Marcus, the front door burst open. She fired. No one came out the door. But now she had exposed her position. A sniper began firing back from, of all places, the little window in the attic.
Frozen stiff yet coursing with adrenaline, Morris rolled right, down a slight embankment, taking herself out of the shooter’s direct line of sight. She doubted the guy had night-vision goggles. None of the others did. He was just firing at her muzzle flash. She continued rolling right until she could again see the window, the gun barrel poking through, and a shadow behind it. With her left hand she pulled the keys to the Mercedes from her pocket—it was still about twenty yards farther to her right—and clicked the lights on.
The instant the sniper saw the lights, he began firing in that direction. Morris cut the lights again, looked through the reticle of her scope, took a deep breath, and pulled the trigger twice. She saw the man’s head jerk back violently and then disappear from view.
In those brief seconds, however, someone had gotten to the lead SUV. The engine roared to life. The headlights burst on. Jenny Morris opened fire with everything she had, but the vehicle took off into the night and she had no idea who was inside.
Marcus heard the words but couldn’t believe them.
He’d given Morris one job, and she’d blown it. Not only had she allowed one of the SUVs to escape, she wasn’t even sure who had driven it—an agent or Oleg. If it was an agent, that was bad enough. But if they’d lost Oleg and the files, then the situation was catastrophic, for reasons only Marcus could fully understand.
The possibility that there was still an ex-Spetsnaz soldier on the loose in this house seriously slowed Marcus’s approach to the panic room. Worse, Morris had radioed him that helicopters filled with more men were heading their way.
Marcus pulled out his phone and turned on the flashlight app. He searched the floor of the billiard room for his rifle, and when he found it, he looked at his knee and saw blood dripping. He grimaced but put the injury out of his mind and turned his attention to the hallway. He’d heard no sounds, no movement whatsoever on the bottom level since he’d taken out the last guy. If someone was waiting in the shadows to pop him, so be it, he thought. He knew where he was going when he drew his last breath on this planet.
Moving as quickly as he could with a limp and in wicked pain, Marcus climbed over debris and the dead and finally made it to the panic room. He shone the flashlight up one hallway and down another but saw no one and heard nothing. So he entered the code into the touch pad. Nothing happened at first. Then the panic room’s independent power source kicked in and the massive steel door slid open.
Oleg Kraskin sat on a wooden stool, looking fairly calm given the circumstances. Marcus lowered his weapon and pulled off his balaclava.
“Took you long enough,” Oleg said.
“Sorry—hit some traffic,” Marcus replied. “You okay?”
“I’ll live, a little while longer, anyway,” the Russian deadpanned.
Marcus took the gallows humor as a good sign. “Got something for me?” Marcus asked.
“Absolutely,” Oleg said, producing the thumb drive. “And you?”
“Absolutely,” Marcus said, reloading the pistol and handing it over.
He showed the Russian exactly how the silencing mechanism worked, where the safety was, and how close he would need to be to Luganov to maintain accuracy.
“Anything under five feet, you should be good. The closer the better, especially if you’re behind him and he’s not looking. But if you’re facing him, then don’t get too close or he could bat it away before you pull the trigger.”
“Got it,” Oleg said. “Is the plane ready?”
“It will be by the time you get there.”
“And my ride—is it on the way?”
“Just lifted off from Lubyanka—ETA twelve minutes.”
Oleg smiled grimly as he pulled a package of cigarettes and a lighter from his jacket pocket. He lit one and took a long drag. He closed his eyes and seemed to savor the taste and the moment.
“Before we forget, I need the passwords to get into all your files,” Marcus said.
Oleg reopened his eyes. He reached into another pocket, retrieved a folded piece of paper, and handed it over. Marcus opened it and found it was a computer printout of at least twenty different passcodes. He took out his mobile phone, snapped several pictures of it, then borrowed Oleg’s lighter and set it aflame.
Suddenly Morris’s voice crackled over the radio.
“Keyhole to Razor—the choppers will be here in nine minutes. Over.”
“Roger that,” Marcus replied. “Get the car in position, and stand by.”
He turned back to Oleg. “Since we have a moment, can I ask you a question?”
“Of course,” Oleg said.
“You told me that Nimkov wants to proceed with the invasion but Petrovsky does not. Did I get that right?”
“You did.”
“So if you succeed tonight and the president is out of the picture, do the war plans go forward without the full and active support of the defense minister?”
“Probably not.”
“Are there others in the cabinet or in the war council pushing for war, others who really want to attack NATO?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Just your father-in-law?”
“And Nimkov.”
“Right,” Marcus said. “And if the president is gone and Nimkov is alone, could he persuade the others to proceed?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so—no.”
“What will Petrovsky do?”
Oleg considered that for a moment. “I think there’s a real possibility he will arrest Nimkov for treason. And call off the war.”
“Could he do that?”
“I believe so. The last public statement made by the president to Senator Dayton and the world was that he was going to pull all Russian forces back from the borders and deescalate the situation. Petrovsky could proceed on that basis while accusing Nimkov of trying to orchestrate a coup against Luganov. He could throw Nimkov in prison and announce that he was carrying out the express wishes of the late President Luganov. It just might work.”
It had better, Marcus thought.
Again, Morris radioed in. “Seven minutes.”
Marcus ignored her.
“So you remain convinced it all comes down to whether Luganov lives or dies?”
“Believe me, Mr. Ryker, I want there to be another way,” Oleg said. “But I can’t come up with one. Can you?”
“No, I can’t,” Marcus said. “And I’m sorry.”
“Then may I ask you a question?” Oleg said.
“Of course.”
“If you were in my place—if the situation were completely reversed—would you do it?”
Marcus paused. He hadn’t thought about it in those terms. “It doesn’t really matter what I’d do, Oleg,” he finally said. “It’s your life. Trust me, I won’t judge you for a moment if you choose not to do this. You can leave with us right now, and we’ll get you out of the country if you want. It’s your choice.”
Oleg looked thoughtful. “I keep thinking about what Solzhenitsyn wrote in The Gulag Archipelago. ‘In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that n
o sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.’ My father-in-law is attempting to perpetrate a terrible evil. I can’t just save myself. That’s the coward’s way out, and I’ve been a coward for too long. I want to do something significant, something important with my life. I wouldn’t have chosen this. I’d much rather have retired to the Riviera and tried my hand at writing a great Russian novel. But these are the cards I’ve been dealt. This is the hand I need to play.”
“And your wife and son?” Marcus asked, wondering why he’d never once brought them up. “Don’t you want to be with them?”
Oleg looked down at the smoldering cigarette in his hands. “Whom do you think I’m doing this for, Mr. Ryker? I may never see them again, but at least they won’t be vaporized in a millisecond of brilliant light.”
Again the radio crackled. The choppers would be there in less than four minutes. They were out of time.
“Go, go, go!” Marcus yelled as he bolted out of the house and into the Mercedes.
“Where’s Kraskin?” Morris asked, visibly stunned to see her partner alone.
“Never mind. Floor it, Jenny,” Marcus ordered.
The CIA’s top operative in Russia bristled, but with the choppers inbound she did as she was told.
Marcus reloaded his rifle and prayed for his crazy scheme to work as they blew through the front gates and tore down the slick back roads at dangerously high speeds.
It was still pitch-black. The clock on the dashboard said it was only 4:28. Few other cars were on the roads at such an hour, but the snow was coming down even harder now, and Morris had the windshield wipers on full blast. As blood continued oozing down his left leg, Marcus reached into the backseat, grabbed his backpack, and pulled out his first aid kit.