Now Gentry flew through the night above the southern wall of the compound, more or less on course, though he was coming in a little lower than he’d planned. He looked down at the property below and saw several outbuildings south of the main house, and near them two fire pits, around which several men sat, still awake at four A.M. Simple tents were erected here and there, and on the muddy drive and snow-covered lawn, snowmobiles sat parked haphazardly, some with their headlights on and illuminating the southern portion of the compound. Trucks were parked near a tin-roofed barn, and two men with flashlights walked between them.
And Court Gentry sailed above them all. He knew he was silent, and there was no way anyone below would see him without night vision optics and a reason to be looking up in the sky, but he could not help but wish he had a free hand with which to draw his pistol.
There were a lot of guys down there in the open air, which meant there would probably be even more guys inside the warm buildings.
But Court knew this going in. Gregor Sidorenko was no typical mobster. While he himself was urbane and mega rich, his personal security needs were handled by a rough crew of young Russian skinheads, all well armed, if not particularly well trained. Sid was their patron, and in return for his patronage they lived on and around his various properties, committed low-skill crime on his behalf, and kept gangsters and competing Bratvas off his territory.
Court’s intelligence reports suggested there would be more than forty goons on the property tonight, since most every Saturday they all came to the compound to drink and to party and to engage in their favorite pastime — bare-knuckled brawling, beating one another to a bloody pulp and then falling over piss-drunk.
Though Court would much rather pit himself against the normal guard force of twenty or so, he knew that many of those on the premises tonight would be shitfaced or passed out completely, and the large number of armed warm bodies would lead to a groupthink around the compound that no one in their right mind would come after Sid this evening.
As Court hung on, flying through the sky toward the roof, he allowed for the possibility that anyone who thought this might well be correct.
He was not in his right mind.
But now all his attention was focused on his immediate objective. The roof was steeply angled and just darker than the snow-covered forest beyond, and in the center of the mansion, a round clear dome bulged out like a blister. Court had seen the dome on overhead photos; it was an odd architectural feature for a forest dacha in Russia, even one as monstrous as this.
Court scanned the length of the roof as he neared, looking for stationary guards or lookouts positioned there, but he saw no one.
When he was less than fifty yards from contact, he realized he was veering to the left and dropping too low. He knew that by descending the ladder he would lower the center of gravity under the wings and cause the craft to lose altitude, and he’d allotted for this, but it seemed now he’d underestimated just how much effect hanging below the cockpit had on his flight path. As he watched the building rush up closer, he realized he now ran the risk of passing wide to the left, missing the roof altogether and tumbling to a landing on the lawn surrounded by drunk and armed goons or — and this could conceivably be worse — slamming into the flat wall of the mansion below the roof. If that happened, he knew the Russians would wake up in the morning to find a battered and frozen dead man on the ground next to the wall, surrounded by bloodred snow. He would be ID’d as Sid’s nemesis, the microlight would be discovered, and everyone would have a good laugh about the world’s greatest assassin dying while executing the world’s most asinine plan.
But Court wasn’t going to let that happen. He race-climbed the ladder, putting himself back in line with the lower portion of the ceramic-tiled roof. At the same time he pulled on the right toggle cord of the delta wing, wrenching the microlight back to the correct flight path.
He made it just in time. Eight feet from impact he let go of the ladder and made a controlled collision with the snow-covered ceramic tiles on the southwest corner of the building. He ran up the pitched roof several feet to slow himself, hands and feet scampering up to bleed off energy, and then he dropped down, his gloved hands and his soft padded kneepads absorbing most of the shock and the noise, and he found purchase with the rubber soles of his shoes.
The rope ladder dragged across the snow on the roof, but silently, sliding behind the empty microlight, which missed the apex of the building by no more than twenty feet. Court steadied himself as he looked up and saw the rear of the vehicle in his NOD’s as it disappeared over the dome, sailing on toward the dense forest on the other side of the compound’s northern wall.
The aircraft was lower than he’d envisioned, much lower. He could only hope now that it made it over the northern wall, and he hoped when it crashed there in the impenetrable forest it wouldn’t make too much noise.
Court turned back around to face the property, and he scanned the grounds four stories below with his NOD’s, seeing all the men on the ground either stationary or moving idly in the distance.
There were no shouts of alarm, no cracks of gunfire, and no movement that seemed out of place.
Court took off his backpack, unzipped an outer pocket, and removed a second, smaller, snaking fuse full of fireworks, also attached to a wireless igniter. This string was a battery of Yanisars, a dozen four-inch cardboard tubes filled with a lift charge of black powder under a paper shell filled with more powder designed to create a bright flash and a loud report. He took off the rubber band, uncoiled the strand, and threw it over the south side of the mansion. It fell the four stories, landing in the snow.
He re-donned his pack and moved up the roof, heading to an attic window jutting out of the ceramic tiles. He knelt down; there was no alarm system he could see. The lock was ancient and would be a cinch to defeat, had Gentry’s hands not been so damn cold.
But he shook his fingers to warm them and got the window open in under a minute, then slipped into the attic, shut the window behind him, and drew his suppressed Glock 19 pistol. He flipped up his wet NOD’s and actuated a red light under the barrel of his gun; with this he searched the expansive but cluttered space for motion detectors. Instead he saw rat droppings in the dusty corners of the room, and he knew the attic was accustomed to unwanted guests that would render motion detectors useless.
He kept his silenced Glock out in front of him as he made his way forward through the attic toward a door ahead.
He’d done it. Ingress to target complete. Court was in.
Lev and Yevgeny were cold, but not as cold as they would have been without all the vodka in their bloodstream. Tonight’s festivities were long over; most of the security forces in the compound were in tents or the dacha’s barracks, a long, coal-furnace-heated shack just north of the barn. Inside, two dozen skinheaded neo-Nazis slept, most of them facedown on bunks or on the floor with puke-stained olive drab winter gear, many with unattended cuts and bruises from the evening’s fights, and all of them passed out from the marathon session of drinking that had taken place for much of the past ten hours.
But Lev and Yevgeny were among the twelve men forced to work the night detail, and though they had consumed nearly as much vodka and beer as the rest of the toughs around the property, they still had a job to do. They were off on the second of three half-hour patrols of the forest tracks and dirt roads just north of the property.
Both men were armed with AK-47s, radios, and thermoses of vodka-laced tea. They shuffled through wet snow, their flashlights swinging low, not really looking for anything, just killing time until they could return to the north guard shack and warm themselves at the stove.