At least some of the paratroopers had made it to the roof, Abrams thought. He hurried back into the hallway, going directly to Katherine at the cellar stairs. The door was ajar and he swung it fully open with the barrel of his rifle.
Katherine suppressed a gasp. The stairs and landing were littered with men, women, and children, sprawled over one another. Some of the men held pistols in their hands. Abrams said, “That’s the bomb shelter down there.”
Katherine nodded.
Abrams looked for the little girl with the doll but didn’t see her. He pulled Katherine away from the door and closed it. “Still some gas. . . .”
She nodded again and realized she was dizzy. “Let’s get moving.”
They approached the glass-paneled doors that led to the music room and Abrams peered through the curtains. The room was dark except for the glow of the Russian television set. The screen showed a fuzzy picture of a newscaster. Abrams opened the door slowly and they entered. Abrams walked across the frayed rug and Katherine raised her rifle.
The oak flooring creaked. A head appeared over the back of the couch. A female voice said in Russian, “Who is there?”
Abrams replied in Russian, “Me.” He leaned over the couch and leveled his rifle. It was, as he suspected, the woman who had done the security check. She stared at him in the glow of the video tube. She seemed, he thought, neither surprised nor frightened. She said, “What do you want?”
“You watch too much television.”
She smiled. “That’s my job tonight. To watch the news. Your Russian is bad.”
“You’re drunk. What’s your name?”
“Lara.” She looked at his camouflage gear and focused on his rifle, then said in perfect English, “Are you going to kill me?”
Abrams replied in English, “Quite possibly. That’s my job tonight.”
She shrugged and reached for her drink on the end table. “We’re all going to die anyway. Those asses are starting a nuclear war.” She took a long drink and added, “Everyone is in the bomb shelter.”
Abrams remembered the sad expression on her face when he had seen her in this room earlier. He saw the same expression now. He said, “Get up.”
She stood up unsteadily.
Katherine approached and Abrams said, “This is Lara. She’s a recent defector.”
The woman looked at Katherine without curiosity and shrugged again.
Abrams led the two women out into the hallway where the metal detector stood. Across the hall were two impressive oak doors: one led to the security office; the other was the door to Androv’s office. Abrams whispered to Lara, “Is anyone in those rooms?”
She nodded toward the security office. “At least two men at all times.” She looked at the other door. “That’s Androv’s office. He was in a few minutes ago. He has a prisoner. An American paratrooper.”
Abrams looked at the Russian woman. “Knock on the door.”
Lara hesitated, then walked to Androv’s door and knocked. There was no response. She knocked again. “Viktor, may I have a word with you?”
Abrams motioned with the muzzle of his rifle and Lara opened the door. She screamed.
Abrams and Katherine rushed in. The office was empty, but a cigarette still burned in the ashtray. On the floor was Claudia Lepescu. Abrams closed the door. They stared at the body a moment, but no one spoke.
Abrams looked around the office. So, he thought, this is the inner sanctum of the chief KGB resident in New York, the second highest-ranking KGB man in America. A former chapel in the former home of one of America’s leading families. A preview of things to come, perhaps.
Katherine was kneeling beside Claudia’s body. She saw the pistol still clutched in her hand. “Look.”
Abrams knelt beside her and said, “Russian make . . .” He saw where she had been shot—twice in the side—and his gaze went to the wingback chair in the corner.
Katherine stood and moved to the chair. She picked up the ashtray on the end table. “American cigarettes. Camels.” She saw a bottle of Scotch beside a glass. “Dewar’s.”
Abrams said, “By the looks of it, this American paratrooper was not a prisoner but a confederate.”
A loud alarm bell suddenly began ringing somewhere in the house. Katherine, Abrams, and Lara rushed into the hall. Alarm bells were ringing everywhere now and the house was filled with the staccato noise.
The security office door burst open and a uniformed officer holding a pistol came through. Abrams’ M-16 blazed and the man was thrown back into the office.
Katherine threw a concussion grenade into the office and pulled the door closed to maximize the shock waves. The grenade blew and the door fell off its hinges, followed by a billow of plaster dust.
Cameron and Davis came quickly down the hallway. They ran into the security office and began spraying the room with automatic fire. All the lights were blown out, but the windows were clear of glass and the lights from the forecourt revealed two dead men, one at the switchboard and one behind a desk. A third man was stumbling toward a small door concealed in the oak paneling. He slipped through the door and it snapped shut.
Abrams, Katherine, and Lara came into the room. Abrams and Davis ran to the door and fired through it, then pulled the splintered oak panel open. Davis burst in and a shot rang out, sending him falling back into the office, a bullet hole in the center of his forehead. Abrams dropped into a crouch and fired into the darkness. He heard a man scream, then heard retreating footsteps.
Cameron joined him and they moved cautiously through the panel door into a small, windowless room lit by a wall sconce. To the immediate left was a narrow set of service stairs, and crawling up the stairs was a man in a suit. Blood trailed from his legs onto the wooden steps. Cameron bounded up the steps as the man turned. Cameron kicked the gun out of his hand and stared down at him. The man was bleeding from the mouth and nose, a result of the concussion grenade, and his features were twisted with pain, but Cameron recognized him. “Valentin Metkov, top pig in charge of murder. Who says there’s no justice in the world?”
Metkov stared at Cameron with clouded eyes. “Please . . . I can help you . . . please don’t—”
“Where’s Androv?”
Metkov blurted, “Upstairs. In the attic.”
Cameron fired a single shot and Metkov collapsed.
The alarm bells were sounding cautiously, and the house had come alive as though awakened from an unnatural sleep. Running footsteps could be heard overhead and throughout the surrounding rooms and hallways.
Abrams heard gunfire in the security office. He rushed to the concealed doorway. Katherine was firing at the open hallway door, backing toward him as bullets ripped through the paneled walls. Abrams fired at the open door. “Quickly! Run!”
Katherine made it into the small room while Abrams looked for Lara in the dark, dust-filled room. He saw her bullet-ridden body slumped near the door. He knelt down beside Davis and felt for a heartbeat, but there was none.
Cameron shouted, “Let’s go!”
Abrams took the hand grenade from Davis’ belt, pulled the pin, and flung it toward the hallway door. He dived back into the small, windowless room as the grenade exploded.
Cameron and Katherine were on the first landing of the narrow service stairs and Abrams scrambled up to join them. They continued quickly up the winding staircase toward the attic.
68
Marc Pembroke heard the shooting below. In the hallway outside the attic stairs foyer, alarm bells rang and people ran. He said, “The whole bloody house is up and about. Well, another explosion won’t make a difference.” He nodded to Sutter.
Sutter struck a match and touched it to six twisted strands of detonator cord running up the staircase. The cords flashed and the flame ran along the staircase, split into six directions, and blew the plastic charges on the steel door.
The house shook and plaster fell from the ceiling and walls of the stairwell. Pembroke charged up the narrow stairs and dov
e into the room, rolling across the floor, followed by Llewelyn, Ann, and Sutter. They all began firing automatic bursts into the dimly lit attic room. Pembroke yelled, “Hold fire!”
Sutter and Ann took cover behind a wall of metal file cabinets facing toward the south end of the attic; Pembroke and Llewelyn, in an alcove formed by a gable. Pembroke peered around the corner of the alcove. “Big room. Takes up half this wing. Empty. Brick partition at the end. The communications room will be on the other side of it.” He glanced back at Ann and Sutter. “Well, let’s push on.”
They all stood. Suddenly there was a sound on the stairs and Pembroke turned. A shot rang out and Pembroke staggered back and fell.
Llewelyn turned in time to see the head and shoulders of a uniformed Russian coming up the stairs, rifle raised. Llewelyn fired a short burst, sending the man reeling back down the stairs. He ripped a fragmentation grenade from his belt, pulled the pin, and lobbed it into the stairwell, then hit the floor.
There was a deafening explosion, followed by the sound of the old staircase collapsing.
Llewelyn slid across the floor and peered over the edge of the open stairwell. A cloud of smoke and dust filled the dark space and he could see small fires crackling below. He thought, That protects our rear. That also cuts off our line of withdrawal. He pivoted on the floor and crawled back to Pembroke, who was sitting up in the alcove, Sutter and Ann beside him.
Pembroke ran his hand under his bulletproof vest. “Cracked a rib.”
“Don’t move.” Llewelyn stared at him and saw a trickle of blood running from the corner of his pale mouth. “The lung is punctured, you know.”
“Yes, it’s my lung and my rib, so I knew it immediately. Get moving.”
“Yes. See you later.” Ann and Sutter followed Llewelyn cautiously toward the partition that separated the wings. Ann noticed several canvas bags and wooden crates marked in English and French DIPLOMATIC—RUSSIAN MISSION TO THE UNITED NATIONS—NOT SUBJECT TO U.S. CUSTOMS INSPECTION.
Sutter had taken the lead, and he approached the brick wall that rose through the floorboards and ended at the sloping ceiling. A brick chimney formed part of the wall, and a sliding steel door lay to the left of the chimney.
Sutter said softly, “This is more than we expected.”
Llewelyn nodded. “Nice old house. Built them like fortresses, they did. Russkies added the steel door, I should think. Well, we’ve a bit of plastic left.”
Sutter looked at the door. The rollers were on the far side and it was probably barred with steel. “Possibly there’s more door than plastic.”
Ann stepped forward and the two men watched wide-eyed as she banged the butt of her rifle against the steel door. She shouted in Russian, “Androv! I want to speak to Androv.”
Sutter and Llewelyn said nothing.
Ann banged again. After a full minute, a voice called back through the door in English. “Who are you?”
She replied, “I am Ann Kimberly, daughter of Henry Kimberly. Are you Androv?”
“Yes.”
“Listen carefully. I know my father’s in here somewhere. I know about Molniya and so does my government. They are prepared to launch a nuclear strike against your country. Van Dorn has mortars aimed at you. Do you understand?”
Androv replied, “What do you want?”
“I want you to call it off.” She looked at her watch. “You have eighteen minutes before Molniya explodes. I want you to open this door and let me broadcast a message over your radio.”
Androv replied, “I’ll call Moscow. I’ll be back to you in a few minutes.”
Ann screamed, “You’re lying! You’re not allowed to mention this over the air. Don’t bullshit me! Open this door. Now!”
Androv did not reply.
Ann shouted, “Your situation is hopeless, you fool!”
There was no reply.
Sutter said, “You can’t reason with them, miss. They’ve gotten used to getting their own way.”
Llewelyn had wedged the last of the plastic explosive in the corner where the brick wall met the chimney. He said to Sutter, “The wall is stress-bearing.” He nodded up at the rafters. “If we rock it a bit, it might collapse from the weight of the roof.” He looked at Ann. “But it’s your show now.”
Ann looked again at her watch, then said, “May as well. There’s nothing left to lose.”
* * *
Abrams, Katherine, and Cameron reached the top of the tightly winding staircase and stopped in a small windowless interior room about the size of a large closet. A sloping ladder with steps led to a hatch in the ceiling.
Cameron turned his attention to the overhead hatch. “Stand back.” He had unslung a small cardboard tube from his back, about the size of a roll of wrapping paper. He extended the periscoping tube, which held a sixty-millimeter rocket, and placed it on his shoulder in a firing position. Cameron knelt, “Hold your ears and open your month.” He squeezed the electric detonating button and a flame roared out of the rear of the tube, charring the floor as the rocket streaked up to the ceiling. The rocket hit the wooden hatch but didn’t detonate against the thin wood, passing through it and streaking up to the slate-covered roof boards. The rocket exploded inside the attic, sending shrapnel spreading out across a bursting radius of fifty feet.
Abrams was already on the ladder. He pushed up on the hinged hatch, lobbed a concussion grenade through the aperture, then dropped the hatch as the grenade detonated. Sheets of plaster fell from the ceiling above them, covering them with white powder. Abrams sprang upward and knocked open the hatch, scrambling up to the attic floor and rolling away. Cameron and Katherine followed. They all lay motionless on the floor, weapons pointed outward to form a small defensive perimeter.
The pressure of the concussion grenade had blown out every light, and Abrams could see a small piece of the night sky through the hole in the roof. The floorboards were covered with hot shrapnel from the rocket. As the ringing of the explosion faded from his ears, Abrams heard the sound of dull moaning.
Cameron rose to one knee, turned on his flashlight, and rolled it across the floor. It didn’t draw fire and they all stood.
They searched the large attic room and found three men and two women, all in shock from the concussion grenade and suffering from shrapnel wounds.
Cameron shot each one with his silenced pistol, not asking Abrams or Katherine to give him a hand, or commenting on the business in any way.
Katherine called out quietly, “Look at this.”
Abrams and Cameron came up beside her.
She said, “It’s a television studio.”
Abrams stepped onto the raised set and shone his light over the desk, the fireplace, the American flag. Katherine stooped down and picked up some papers that had been blown around the set, and read the typed script. She looked at Abrams. “This is my father’s speech to the American people. . . . He was to be the next President.”
Abrams glanced at one of the sheets. “I didn’t even know he was running.”
Cameron directed his beam across the room and played it over a brick wall, chimney, and steel door. “If Pembroke is on the other side,” he said, “then we’ve taken both arms of the T. The main stem is still in their hands, but Stewart ought to be on the flat roof above it. We’ve got them boxed in.”
Katherine replied, “But we are boxed out.” She looked at her watch. “We’ve got about sixteen minutes until the EMP detonation and less time than that before George’s mortar rounds begin crashing through this roof. We’ve got to get in there and take control of the radios.”
Cameron nodded toward the steel door. “We can blow that door.”
Abrams heard sounds below. “They’re coming up the stairs.” He took the last hand grenade from Cameron, went to the hatch door, opened it, and threw the grenade down, then moved back. The fragmented grenade exploded, throwing the hatch door into the air and ripping apart the ladder below. Cameron pressed a kilo of the claylike plastic around the doorframe,
embedded the detonators, and ran the detonation fuse fifty feet back from the door.
Cameron looked at his watch. “Damned little time left.” He looked at Katherine and Abrams. “Well, let’s assume everyone is in place.”
Abrams replied, “If they’re not, they’re dead.”
Katherine nodded agreement. “We can’t turn back. Go ahead and blow the door. We have people to see in there.”
Abrams struck a match.
69
George Van Dorn looked at the partly decoded telex message on his desk, then looked at the two men standing in the room, Colonel William Osterman and Wallis Baker. He said, “Someone must have hit the wrong code key. This is completely garbled.”
Baker replied, “I’ve sent a request for a repeat, but nothing’s come through yet.”
Van Dorn glanced at the mantel clock. Less than sixteen minutes remaining.
He suddenly grabbed the telephone and called the Pentagon, going through the identifying procedure, then he said, “Is Colonel Levin still on leave? I want to speak to him.”
The voice answered, “He’s still on leave, sir.”
“Why can’t I seem to be able to speak to anyone but you?”
“Because I’m the duty officer.”
“Put your sergeant on.”
“He’s not available.”
“Put anyone on. Anyone but you.”
There was a pause, then the voice said, “Is there a problem, sir?”
Yes, thought Van Dorn, there is a serious problem. A cold chill ran down his spine. He said, “You may be dead in the next few minutes.”