Cameron added, “Communication, command, and control are a bit dicey without wireless, but Ivan has got some damned good monitoring equipment and we don’t want to get his guard up.”
Abrams nodded, and thought, If you think we’ve got a communications problem, wait until all the radios in North America go out.
Abrams looked at Cameron and Davis in the dying glow of the flares. When he’d met them in the locker room in Van Dorn’s basement, he’d recognized them from the encounter in the cemetery. He’d been told by Pembroke that they were both former Royal Commandos, both veterans of the Falklands war, recruited by Pembroke when their enlistments ran out. Cameron was a Scotsman, Davis an Englishman. Pembroke, according to Van Dorn, hired only former British soldiers: English, Scottish, Irish, and Welshmen.
Abrams looked up at the sky. The wind was blowing steadier now; a front was passing through. The gray wispy clouds scudded at high speed across the sky, moving north to south. The air was cooling and had the smell of rain. Toward the far northeast, across the Long Island Sound, toward Connecticut, the thunder rolled, and the lightning flashed at widely spaced intervals. He remembered what Van Dorn said at the final pep talk: “If the entire sky lights up in the West, you’ll know it’s happened. Your mission will no longer be a preventive strike but an avenging strike. Press on. Take as many with you as you can. There’s no longer any reason to come home.”
It was difficult for Abrams to reconcile the genteel public image of O’Brien, Van Dorn, and their friends with their propensity to engage in political murder and commando raids.
Katherine broke into his thoughts. “Tony, look.”
Abrams followed her gaze upward. A huge rocket rose slowly into the air, its fiery plume oscillating as the wind caught it. Suddenly the entire rocket erupted into a huge fireball, unlike any display rocket Abrams had ever seen. The night air was shattered with the explosion, and Abrams even felt the shock waves and saw the trees shake. Seconds later, smaller rockets began bursting with loud reverberating explosions. Van Dorn’s pole-mounted loudspeakers, about two hundred yards back, crackled, then Abrams heard the opening notes of “My Country ’tis of Thee,” or, as his companions would call it, “God Save the Queen.” Abrams thought, Nice touch, George.
Cameron and Davis stood, followed by Abrams and Katherine. Cameron spoke above the noise. “Single file. Ten-foot intervals. Look sharp, now. We’re crossing over.”
Abrams had never heard anyone actually say that except in British war movies. He glanced at Katherine. She winked and gave him a thumbs-up, then pulled her hood over her face.
The file moved out. Objective: the communications room in the attic of the Russian mansion. The distance was about half a mile, but Abrams thought the last few yards or so up the attic stairs — if they got that far — would be, as Cameron would say, a bit dicey.
He wondered if he’d meet Androv again. He wouldn’t mind meeting Alexei Kalin. Or Peter Thorpe, for that matter. He wondered how Katherine felt about the possibility of coming face-to-face with her father.
The Fates and Furies are loose tonight, he thought, borne along on the winds of the gathering storm. And all the currents of time and history are converging on that hilltop house beyond the next tree line.
As for himself, he remembered that the Fates led the willing and dragged the unwilling.
57
Karl Roth drove southbound on Dosoris Lane for a quarter of a mile, then signaled to pull into the driveway of the Russian estate.
The traffic patrolman recognized Roth and his catering van and waved him in. Roth turned right and bumped across the sidewalk between rows of police barriers toward the guardhouse, which was about thirty feet up the drive. He approached the small lighted house, bringing the van to a halt abreast of the front door. His hands and legs were shaking badly.
Two Russian guards, wearing sidearms, appeared farther up the drive and stood in a blocking position. Roth shut off his headlights and rolled down his window. From the guardhouse door emerged a man in civilian clothes. The man stood on the stoop a few feet from the van. Roth cleared his throat and greeted the man in English. “How are you, Bunin?”
Bunin replied, also in English, “What are you doing here, Roth? They said later.”
Roth stuck his head out the window. “I had to come now.”
Bunin leaned forward and rested his hands on the window frame. He peered into the cab. “Where is your wife? They said she would be with you.”
“She’s still at Van Dorn’s.”
The Russian stared at Roth. “You stink of whisky, and you look terrible.”
Roth didn’t reply.
Bunin said in a whisper, “They have us on full alert. Do you know anything?”
Roth shrugged. “You think they tell me anything, Bunin?”
Bunin made a contemptuous sound, then said, “What do you have for us?”
Roth licked his lips and looked toward the guardhouse. Through the window was a young man in uniform sitting at the desk, writing. The two guards on the drive were a few feet from the van. He glanced in his sideview mirror and noticed that the gates and road weren’t visible from this angle in the drive.
“Roth!”
Karl Roth flinched. “Yes… yes, I have blinis, caviar, and sour cream. The rear doors.”
Bunin signaled the two guards and they moved quickly to the rear of the van.
Marc Pembroke crouched to the side of the left-hand door, which was locked. He held a pistol pointed at the back of Roth’s head. A canvas tarp in the center of the floor covered a stack of boxes, and between the boxes lay two of Pembroke’s men, Sutter and Llewelyn. In a large built-in side chest lay Ann Kimberly.
The unlocked right-hand door opened, and the two guards seized the thermal containers of food.
Pembroke glanced quickly to his right. One man’s arm was less than three feet from his foot. Pembroke looked at Roth and saw he was observing the Russian guards and Pembroke through his rearview mirror. If Roth was going to betray them, it would be now. But Roth seemed paralyzed with terror.
The rear door slammed shut, and Pembroke heard the guards’ footsteps retreating toward the guardhouse.
Bunin said to Roth, “Wait here. I must call the house and see if they want you so early.”
Roth didn’t reply.
Pembroke whispered, “Now.”
Llewelyn and Sutter threw the tarp off as Ann Kimberly emerged from the chest. Pembroke threw open both rear doors and the four black-clad people jumped to the drive, tore around the side of the van, and burst into the small front room of the guardhouse.
The two Russian guards still carrying the thermal containers glanced back over their shoulders, their mouths and eyes wide open. The young uniformed man behind the desk stood and stared. Bunin, his left hand on the wall telephone, stood beside the desk. Ann shouted in Russian, “Don’t move!”
Bunin’s right hand shot inside his jacket.
Pembroke fired a short burst from his silenced M-16. The bullets slammed into Bunin, throwing him back against the wall. He stood for a split second, took a step forward and toppled, falling against the legs of the young man who had his hands in the air. The two guards had dropped the thermal containers and they’d burst open, scattering blinis, sour cream, and caviar over the wooden planking. Bunin seemed to be staring at the mess, watching the crimson tide of his blood creeping toward the food.
Ann gave a series of sharp orders. Within minutes the three surviving Russians were lying in a rear room, bound and gagged. Sutter stood beside the van and kept an eye on Roth and the driveway. Llewelyn checked Bunin’s pulse, found there was none, and sat Bunin up behind the desk so that any official car driving by would see someone in the window.