He bolted around the building, across ten feet of open ground, and dashed under a London planetree at the rear of the property. The other men followed, one by one, in a line. When they had assembled under cover, one of the team opened a hole, which had been cut earlier that morning, in the black chain-link fence. Moments later, they were inside.
The garden was only around thirty feet long, bordered by another chain-link fence on one side and a small stand of evergreen shrubs on the other. There was a wooden shed at the rear of the property. They hovered behind it. Beyond the gray-shingled roof of the shed, Decker could see the house where the suspects were hiding.
“Team two is in place,” someone said. A second team had made its way along the rooftops of the townhouses on Seventy-second Street. If they were in place, it meant they were only a few yards from the target. Decker took a peek around the shed but the men on the roof were invisible.
A dog started to bark in the garden next door, on the other side of the evergreens. A pit bull. It barked and it barked.
“Someone shut that dog up. What’s it doing?” the voice said in his earpiece.
“It’s a guard dog. It’s guarding,” said Doherty. “We didn’t see it before. It must have been dozing.”
“Take it out. It’ll raise the alarm.”
“No, wait,” Decker said, cutting in. “Check the window.”
A figure appeared in the second story window at the rear of the house. A man. He had dark luminous eyes and a thin lupine face. There was no doubt about it.
El Aqrab!
Decker felt his fingers tense up on his gun. The man who had once tried to kill him and Emily, who had blown up his house, who had wrapped Becca up with magnesium ribbon and set fire to her.
El Aqrab stared out the window at the pit bull in the garden next door.
The dog was still barking. He was chained up to a stake in the ground, but he was yanking and pulling at it, trying to lunge at the men on the far side of the evergreen shrubs.
“When he leaves, take blue squad up the front staircase, as planned,” Decker said. “Red squad can remain in the kitchen. If we’re lucky, the dog’s barking will bring him right down to us.”
Doherty ran back to the rear of the line. He pulled Decker aside. “I let you come along because you said you’d take orders,” he spat. He brought his face close to Decker’s. “I’m not changing the plan, is that clear? Two teams. Blue up the front and red up the rear. As I briefed you and everyone else. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” said Decker. Although the captain’s eyes were barely visible in the slits of his face stocking, Decker could see that Doherty was furious. The dog kept on barking.
“As soon as the suspect’s out of sight, shut that dog up,” said Doherty to another man.
The dog windmilled about on his chain. He barked and he barked, then he stepped into the shadows. A moment later, he was still.
The man put his .22 back in his holster. With the suppressor, the shot had been virtually soundless. Decker hadn’t even seen the agent take aim. There was a hole in the pit-bull’s left eye.
Sometimes the absence of sound rings the loudest, thought Decker. It was something his old sensei, Master Yamaguchi, had taught him. They should have let the pit bull keep barking. Decker looked up at the house but the man in the window was gone.
“Go, go,” Doherty said, and they tore through the garden, past the table and clothesline, past the lawn chairs and garden gnomes to the rear of the house. The door was unlocked. Everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief.
Doherty opened the door very slowly, trying to keep the old hinges from squeaking. The five-man blue team entered the kitchen. They filed past the fridge and the counter, down the hall toward the parlor, moving quickly and quietly, swinging their weapons as they canvassed each room, every corner. Once they reached the front door, they paused at the foot of the stairs. In the meantime, the three-man red team, including Decker, slipped off toward the stairwell at the rear of the house.
“They’re moving,” said the voice in his ear. “Suspect two toward the garden. Suspects three and four toward the street.”
“Someone’s lifting the roof cover,” another voice said. One of the men from Team B.
“Suspect one heading toward the rear of the house.”
But the two men before him had already entered the stairwell. Decker watched as they climbed up the steps, clutching their weapons, swaying from side to side in their body armor.
Gunfire crackled somewhere else in the house.
“Team blue taking fire,” said Doherty. He had reached the third floor.
And then gunfire exploded in the stairwell around him. Decker could see the first of his squad take a hit in the neck, just below the edge of his helmet.
Blood spurted in a great arc as he collapsed against the agent behind him. His MP5 chattered. Bullets ripped up the wall. There was another shot and the second man threw his arms in the air. Decker barely had time to get out of the way, back into the kitchen, as the agent somersaulted to the foot of the stairs.
“Suspect two on the roof. Take him out, Bill. Take him out!” someone shouted. Decker could hear shots going off intermittently.
“Suspects three and four down. Clear.”
“Clear,” someone else said, but it wasn’t. At least, not in the stairwell.
Decker looked at the agent at the foot of the stairs. He was shaking and writhing in pain. Without warning, another bullet slammed into his mouth, blowing off a piece of his jawbone and cheek. Decker backed away from the doorframe instinctively.
Someone started walking downstairs. Decker could hear him, despite the stutter of gunfire in the distance. The man wasn’t running. He was taking his sweet fucking time. One step, then another, as he slipped past the corpse at the top of the stairs.
Decker could hear his own muffled breathing as he sucked air through his face stocking. He leveled his assault rifle, moved back a few feet.
There was no cover in the kitchen but he ducked behind the stove nonetheless. He took aim at the door. Now, the MP5 felt like a toy in his hands.
“Clear,” someone else said. “Clear.”
Decker waited in the glare of the harsh kitchen light. He could hear every movement around him, as if each sound had been magnified: the drip of the faucet in the sink; the squeak of each step in the stairwell as the stranger approached. Even the gunfire seemed to have stopped.
A shadow, then a figure appeared in the doorway. The man took a step forward, stepping over the corpse at his feet.
Decker couldn’t see his whole face but he knew who it was. El Aqrab. He could tell by the way that he moved. There was a gun in his hand.
“Drop it,” said Decker. It took every ounce of strength at the heart of his being not to squeeze off a round, not to stand back and watch as the back of the terrorist’s head burst apart like a melon.
The man froze. He slowly opened his fingers and the gun fell to the floor.
“Turn around.”
The man started to pivot, to turn and his face finally swam into view.
He looks just like El Aqrab, Decker thought. Just like him. Except that he’s not.
The man smiled and Decker was certain.
There was a sound, or the absence of it, as if the air were being sucked from the room. Sometimes the absence of sound…
Like the cabin of a plane decompressing.
The lights grew unnaturally bright for a moment, for an instant. There was a brilliant white flash. Then the house came apart in his face.
CHAPTER 12