He shook his head. “I never saw a woman do that before.”
“Then you haven’t been paying attention,” she said in a whisper.
“We do it all the time.” Then, a second later: “Besides, there’s too much testosterone flowing around here. I was kind of feeling left out.”
Another twenty minutes passed. A little snow started to fall, and although it was freezing cold and windy as hell, Naomi couldn’t help but start to drift off a little. It was 5:05 in the morning when Maginnes furrowed his brow and cupped his ear.
“Roger that, Alpha One. Standby, over.” He reached over to shake her, and she started, then looked up. “We’re ready to go.”
She was still shaking off the sleep. “Umm . . . okay. How? I mean, how are they going in?”
“If he’s in there, I can’t give him time to barricade himself,” he said in a low murmur. “We’re gonna go with Primacord on the door frame.”
She said, unnecessarily, “They need to be careful.”
“They will be.” Maginnes had the individual teams call in, then got back on with Larsen. “Okay, Chris. Let’s go.”
“Roger that, Mags. Breachers are moving in, out.”
Several minutes passed. Naomi couldn’t see anything other than their own quiet breath condensing in the frigid air, and she said so.
The commander handed her the night vision goggles. “Try these.
Don’t watch the door when they shoot the charge.”
Pulling on the goggles, she immediately saw dark figures advancing through the light snow. One stayed back with his weapon up, facing the front of the house, as the other moved up and started priming the door.
“Where are they?”
“Already at the door,” she said.
Maginnes murmured into his mike. “Sierra One, what do you got?
Over.”
“No movement in the windows.”
“Sierra Three, Magpie. Anything?”
“Negative. I’m drawing a blank, over.”
Then, a moment later: “This is Alpha One. Door is primed.”
“Take those off, Kharmai.” When the goggles were up on her forehead, he cupped his hand and said, “Blow it.”
There was a brief flash of light through the snow, followed immediately by a sharp crack. After a few tension-filled seconds, Larsen came on and said, “No secondary explosions, Magpie. Clear to advance, over.”
“Head on in, Chris. Take it slow.”
“Roger that.”
Maginnes waited as long as he could bear it, then reached over to pull the goggles off her head. “Ouch.”
He saw that he had caught a few strands of her hair. “Sorry.” When he focused on the house, he didn’t catch any movement in the windows.
Naomi was getting impatient. “What do you see?”
He shook his head in frustration. “Nothing.”
Chris Larsen was the third man in the house after Canfield and Hudson. He was immediately followed by a team of five assaulters, who quickly followed his hand signals and moved to their predetermined positions.
“Magpie, Alpha One. Moving to secure ground floor, over.”
“Roger, Alpha One.” Larsen watched as his men cleared the first two rooms to the right, then followed them silently into the living room. The kitchen was past the open space, and he moved forward smoothly with the Heckler and Koch MP5 up tight against his shoulder, his eyes scouring the walls at knee- and ankle level, searching for anything that might indicate a trip wire. Then he was moving slowly against the textured wallpaper, taking a deep breath before poking his gun and his head around the corner . . . nothing.
He lowered the weapon and turned to see one of his men standing in front of a closed door. Larsen was the only one to spot the towel stuffed underneath. The operator said, “I think we got something here . . .”
Larsen had just enough time to say, “No—” before the door dis-integrated. Kevin Hudson, who had been the one to pull it open, was thrown back and up by the blast. He passed through 8 inches of drywall before his head collided with the ceiling, snapping it forward and breaking his neck instantly.
Larsen turned to run, but then found, to his astonishment, that his feet were not touching the ground, and actually seemed to be going in opposite directions, as were the rest of his appendages . . .
Naomi saw a blinding flash, then heard a muffled wumph as the house was ripped apart. Maginnes was on top of her in an instant, shielding her body as fragments of brick, wood, and glass rained down around them.
Then there was silence and his crushing weight on her back.
Nothing else, until he rolled off and she saw that there was part of a leg sitting two feet in front of her face.
That was when she began to scream.
Chapter 33
TYSON’S CORNER • HANOVER COUNTY • WASHINGTON, D.C.
Back at the TTIC, Ryan had finally stopped trying to fight the fa-tigue and decided to get some rest while he could. He tried to crash out in a secretary’s office, but sleep didn’t come. His mind was too occupied by everything that was going on, but most of all, it was Katie who held his thoughts.
Ryan recognized that he was largely responsible for their current situation, but he couldn’t help but feel let down by the fact that she had just run out on him without even trying to talk about it first. He was thinking about this, and getting angrier, when he realized that he had done exactly the same thing to her when Harper first asked him to come to Washington.
He was not pleased by this recollection. It would have been a whole lot easier to blame the whole situation on her, but at the same time, he wanted nothing more than to see her again. If being the first to apologize made that a possibility, then it was a sacrifice he was more than willing to make.
And all it would take was a phone call. In the dim light of the office, Ryan looked up at the clock on the walclass="underline" 5:23 AM. He knew she wouldn’t be awake, and Katie wasn’t a morning person in any case.
She would be much easier to apologize to in a couple of hours.
He shut his eyes and tried to let the exhaustion overtake him. He was curled up uncomfortably on the cot, thinking about how he would explain everything to her when the door swung open, the lights came on, and he heard a distant voice calling his name.
Suddenly, it didn’t seem so distant. When he opened his eyes and saw the expression on the deputy director’s face, he was instantly wide awake. “What? What is it?”
Harper’s voice was strangled. “Vanderveen just got seven guys from HRT in Hanover.”
Ryan was standing now, looking around for his shoes. “How? Was he there?”
“No, he rigged something up in the basement. They’re still trying to figure it out.”
Ryan stopped what he was doing and suddenly felt cold. He didn’t want to ask it, but knew he had to. “Naomi?”
He breathed out a long sigh of relief when Harper shook his head.
“She was 300 meters away when it blew. She’s pretty shook up, though.”
“Oh, fuck,” Ryan said. He rubbed the stubble on his cheeks with open palms. “Oh, fuck.”
The area around the house was swarming with police cars and ambulances by 6:45, their flashing lights less pronounced now that the sun was occasionally peeking through the heavy clouds. The fire-fighters had pretty much finished their work, slightly aided by the damp snow that was still drifting down over the wreckage and surrounding fields.
The barn, for the most part, was still intact. Naomi was sitting with her back against the timbers, wearing a thick blanket around her shoulders and staring at what was left of the house.
Looking around, she saw a group of Bureau investigators trying to determine the outer boundaries of their search area. Maginnes was aimlessly wandering around the charred remains with a strange mixture of pain and confusion on his face. He had lost Larsen, Canfield, and Hudson, as well as four other members of his unit. One assaulter had been blown back through the front door, and had managed to escape with second degree burns, a broken leg, and a concussion.