'Hell,' he rambled on, 'I saw the damn thing in his suit when we were climbing onto the helicopter.'. 'Sir. It's supposed to be classified.'
'I know that. I know exactly what it is too. The P54. Manufactured by Armstrong in Philadelphia. First workable handgun made entirely of composite material. Half the weight of a service-issue unit. Built-in silencer. Massive firepower at close quarters. A piece of shit if you want to hit anyone more than thirty yards away too. That's what I hear.'
'Okay,' Green said, a nervous edge to his voice. 'You know what you know. That fair enough? One more minute and I think we should be going.'
'That's not comradely,' Wolfit grunted.
'Enough!' She could hear how shrill she sounded. The desert scared her. The job scared her. Wolfit was starting to scare her too. She didn't need someone out of control right then.
'No,' he said, voice rising. 'It's not enough. All these damn secrets. All these damn people think they know everything there is to know. And the truth is they know nothing. Nothing. You going to show me that thing?'
'Can't do that, sir. Can't-'
And almost choked as Wolfit was on him, a single sharp punch in the stomach taking out his breath, hands running all over his night suit.
'Larry,' she yelled, walking over to the fight. 'What the hell are you doing? I am reporting this, you believe it. Even if the kid's too scared to.'
'Yeah?' She couldn't see his face properly in the darkness. He was hidden in the shadow of the ridge. 'Well, you go ahead and report me. Who gives a shit?'
Larry Wolfit felt the P54 in his hand and wished he weren't sweating so much. It was light, so light he could hardly believe it. A little big for most ordinary duties. And long too. The integral silencer seemed responsible for that. He lifted it up and down with his right hand a few times.
'This the kind of thing you like, Green? The kind of thing you approve of? Guess there's a little work to do on the size, but they'll get there. Thank you.' He turned the weapon around, held it by the long barrel, held the handgrip outward.
'I just wanted to look,' he said apologetically. 'Sitting around on the edge of things like this just makes me uneasy.'
'Sure thing,' Green mumbled. 'I think we should be going now.' Then he reached out for the gun. Larry Wolfit flipped it over in his hand, slipped his finger into the trigger guard, pointed it at the sky.
'Trick or treat?' he said. 'You should never fall for that one. Don't they teach you that in the Bureau?'
'Yeah,' Green said. 'But not with fellow agents.'
'Pity,' Wolfit grunted, and fired a single round. It made a noise like a balloon exploding underneath a pillow. Jeff Green was lifted off his feet, flew backward noiselessly, fell to the ground in a silent heap.
Then Larry Wolfit turned round to face Helen. He was out of the shadow now and he looked half-crazy. The dark shape of the gun was in his hand. 'Wasn't meant to be like this,' he said. 'Wasn't meant to be like this at all.'
CHAPTER 53
Entry
There were only a couple of lights on inside the farmhouse, and they threw little illumination onto the scene. 'Millfield?' John Collins said quietly into his voice mike, half-listening for the distant circling of the surveillance helicopter overhead. When they were in place, Collins could floodlight the scene. But they were late. An entry in half-darkness seemed inevitable. 'You read anything?'
'Negative,' the far-off voice squawked into his single earpiece. 'We got no sound, no heat indications since we started this thing, John. Either these people are gone, sleeping, or just plain dead.'
'Yeah,' he said. His team was stationed to the left of the front door, just out of range of the obvious infrared security trigger that had been fastened, like an amateur-hour burglar alarm, to the nearest stanchion in the frame. The farmhouse was wood, with a big open veranda, and stood in a flat patch of rocky ground. Behind it were a couple of agricultural buildings, a horse ring, and a yard with three or four cars in it.
What looked like a newly made path led off to the adjoining ridge. Somewhere on the top, no more than four hundred yards away, he guessed, was the dome. He could just make out the dark shapes of his men working their way into position. It had all been so easy, and that made him feel uncomfortable. Some snags were inevitable. It was best to get them out of the way as soon as you could.
'Initial plan,' Collins said. 'Flash goggles on. Team One goes in first, the rest of you in order. Keep your heads in there; I'd like to come out of this with no casualties on either side. And good luck, folks.'
Then he pushed the goggles back down onto his cheeks and nodded to the team. One of them walked up to the small downstairs window, sidestepping the infrared beam, and threw a flash grenade through the pane. There was a low tinkling of broken glass. Collins looked away at the ground, waiting for the first flash. It came like a brief bolt of lightning, with a soft puff of air behind it, and he led the team in a steady, fixed walk to the door. Then five more (counting, he kept counting, and listening for the yells, the screaming, but none came), and he was nodding at them, watching the one with the sledgehammer pull it back and start to thunder away at the big wooden slab. It fell in two, and they were through, screaming like crazy, hearing the sound of explosions and crashing glass from elsewhere in the building.
'Team One entered, contact not established,' Collins said, and paused while one of the flash grenades let off a late rogue blast that painted the entire room a harsh, stony white, drew everything out like some kind of bas relief that wasn't quite real, more a piece of strange modern art than a picture of something physical around them.
'Team Two entered, no contact,' said a voice in his ear.
'Team Three entered, no contact.'
'Team Four entered. Ditto.'
The last commander paused. 'What the hell is going on here, John?'
'Maintain vigilance.' Collins watched the room come back into normal focus. It was full of cheap desks, cheap furniture, a whole line of PCs still glinting and alive, the twirling picture of some screensavers rolling around their monitors. Somewhere in the corner one of the team was throwing up, a repetitive, physical noise that sounded as if it might never end. Fear made its presence known in the oddest of ways.
'Keep those goggles on, man,' Collins barked. 'And don't think this is over. Millfield? Have you seen anyone leave this building since we entered?'
'Negative, John. You guys went in, no one went out.'
'Right.' Collins walked through into the hall, met two of the other teams wandering in to meet each other.
'This place is empty, John,' someone said, invisible behind the flash goggles. 'Hell, it smells empty.'
'Yeah,' he said. 'I know.'
'There's food in the kitchen, dirty plates,' the Team Three commander said. 'But no clothes, no suitcases. They made it out of here.'
'Still rooms to go,' the Team Two man said. 'We'll take upstairs, constant vigilance, usual drill. Use the flash grenades. Don't take anything for granted.'
The four men in black ascended the narrow wooden staircase, machine pistols in their hands, and Collins could hear the popping of grenades up there, see the bright phosphorescent light chasing down the plain white corridors of the farmhouse. You didn't prosper in this business on your instincts, but just then John Collins knew his were right: There was nothing to be found upstairs.
'Fred,' Collins said to the Team Four commander. 'Get your guys seeing if there's any subterranean rooms in this place. A cellar or something.'
'But John, it's built on solid rock. What'd they use? Mining equipment or something?'
'Just do it, will you?' Collins snapped, and wished there weren't so much crankiness in his voice. 'And while you're at it, bring in some of the explosives guys. I want this place cleaned internally. Make sure we don't have any surprises waiting for us. We got a little extra time to spare. No reason why we shouldn't use it to make sure everything's safe here before going up that hill to the dome.'