Ready? He signaled, glancing at the former KGB officer. A nod.
Time to roll the dice. Harry pulled a flashbang from the front of his assault vest, pulling the pin and softly tossing the cylinder out onto the plush carpet of the hallway.
One. Two…
The blinding light of the stun grenade reflected off the study’s windows, an ear-shattering wave of sound rolling through the house. There were few things on earth so disorienting, if you weren’t prepared for it.
Now! Harry sprang to his feet, the UMP-45 coming up to his shoulder as he entered the hallway, Vasiliev at his right hand. Four men in tactical gear, dazed and disoriented. Blinded by the blast.
The fifth had remained back near the staircase, keeping watch.
No hesitation, no time for mercy. The submachine gun spat fire, the suppressed reports sounding like hammer blows in the narrow confines of the hall, along with the louder crack of Vasiliev’s Grach. The young man by the staircase was the first to die, his weapon clattering to the wood as he crashed through the bannister, falling to the marble floor below.
Three of the assaulters went down, the fourth ran for the stairs as the H&K’s magazine emptied, returning fire as he went.
Firing wildly.
Bullets tore into the wood paneling around Harry’s head as he ejected the empty magazine and replaced it mere seconds later, pulling the charging handle to chamber a round.
A crystal chandelier over Vasiliev’s head shattered in a shower of glass, bringing a curse from the Russian as he ducked for cover. Too late. A wild bullet caught him in the left arm, staining his sleeve crimson.
Calm. Focus. Harry raised his weapon, the red dot of a laser beam appearing on the man’s forehead. Squeeze.
His head snapped back as if he had been struck with a mallet, his nerveless body crumpling to the carpet.
Dead silence.
“You okay, Alexei?” Harry demanded, shooting a glance across the hallway at his partner.
The Russian grunted, pushing himself to his feet. “Of course, tovarisch. But the idiot ruined my best shirt.”
Harry couldn’t help but chuckle. The response was so typically Alexei. His eyes scanned the carnage of the hallway, his heart still racing with the adrenaline of combat. They had been lucky. Very lucky.
And then a woman screamed…
Something was going wrong. Very wrong. He could feel it, an old operational instinct. Korsakov looked down at his phone, verifying the number once again before pressing SEND. He and Andropov had been communicating through a series of “burner” phones, rotating every twenty-four hours.
It was the right number.
Korsakov looked up as his driver accelerated into the passing lane, narrowly inserting the SUV into a hole in the traffic. It wasn’t just that Andropov wasn’t answering — the call wasn’t even connecting.
“I’m not getting through to Valentin. Give me the contact number for Maxim.”
He could see the boy tense, his eyes visible in the luminescent glow of the laptop. Fear flickering in their depths. “I don’t want to see them again.”
“You won’t have to,” the assassin promised, his mind racing. “Just give me the number.”
He listened, punching in the ten-digit number as Viktor read it off. Send. It didn’t even ring, just a persistent beep informing him that the call could not be completed. Exactly as it had with Andropov.
Korsakov closed the phone, staring out the SUV’s tinted windows at the passing traffic — the lights of San Francisco. He could still see the destroyed vacuum laying there in the safehouse. All of it misdirection…
He had a choice to make. Fight or flight, neither of them good options. Every ounce of his common sense screamed warning, but walking away wasn’t as easy as it might have sounded.
Giving up the contract…if there had been a mistake, he would have to face the wrath of Andropov. Face the havoc that such an enemy could wreak among his business in Eastern Europe. Perhaps Yuri had been right, but there was no time for such recriminations. Not in the face of such danger.
He looked in his mirror, eyes meeting with Viktor’s. “Get Andropov’s pilot on the phone. Tell him nothing, give him no warning, but divert him to meet up with Yuri at the Commodore Heliport.”
The boy looked confused. “That’s a private-access helipad. Permission is required before landing.”
“Then get permission.”
She was barely out of her teens, Harry realized, gazing down from the broken bannister. Blonde, impossibly tanned.
Her nightgown matched the pool of blood at her bare feet — blood still trickling from the broken body of the dying bodyguard.
Too young to be involved in all of this.
He felt movement beside his head, looked up to see Vasiliev’s hand outstretched, his finger tightening around the Grach’s trigger.
Let him do it, a voice urged, a dark whisper curling around Harry’s thoughts. No witnesses. It made sense.
It was just one more life. The face of Andropov’s security chief flashed before his eyes, the look of disbelief changing to horror.
Who will know of your lofty principles when you’re dead?
Harry thrust his left hand upward, striking Vasiliev’s arm just as he pulled the trigger. The bullet buried itself in the wall across the massive foyer. The girl looked up into their eyes, mouth opening as if she would scream, but no sound came out.
For a moment they stood there, a frozen tableau. The living among the dead.
Panic. Tears flowing down her face, she turned to run, bare feet against the tile. “Fool!”
He had been, Harry thought — throwing his H&K aside as he charged down the staircase. If she got away…everything they had done was for nothing, everything they had sacrificed so much to gain.
Ahead of him, a fleeing shape through the darkness of the kitchen. A flash of red lace in the glow of a lamp.
He could hear the girl’s sobbing as she fumbled with the patio door, fear slowing her actions even as he closed.
The door opened and she slipped out into the night just as he grabbed her wrist, fingers closing in an iron grip.
She screamed something incoherent, her voice ringing out through the clear, cool air. If someone was passing by on the street…
Her hand came back as if she intended to hit him, and then her eyes settled on the Colt in his hand, the mouth of the long, black suppressor only inches away from her chest.
“Settle down and stay quiet,” he stated, his eyes flashing a warning from behind the mask. “No one else needs to die.”
“You live proud in your cities, boastful and entrenched in your selfishness.” Jamal glanced furtively down at the sheet of notepaper in his hand, then back up at the steady red light of the camera. “You deny to others the gifts of Allah’s spacious earth and think it as nothing. I came to this country three years ago, a student, never dreaming that I would have this opportunity to strike a blow for my faith, that I would be chosen to die a shahid alongside my brothers.”
He caught the approving eye of the shaikh and continued, steadying his voice. “Listen to my words, America, and tremble, for surely you must be extinguished, as was the fate of the Ad and the Thamud, the apostates of Arabia in the days of the Prophet, peace be upon him. How swiftly were they wiped out! As if they had never been?”
Jamal’s voice began to swell with excitement as he remembered the words of the sura. It seemed impossible that only a few short days had passed since he had left behind his classes at the University of Michigan. “But wrong can never stand! Allahu akbar!”