She passed through a door, climbed a half flight of stairs, and entered the main wing of the house. Claudia believed in preternatural evil and she possessed the superstitious tendencies of her people. She could sense Androv’s evil close by and walked toward it.
Abrams, Katherine, Davis, and Cameron pulled their long black bayonets from their scabbards and snapped them onto the lugs below the silencer and flash suppressors. Abrams thought they were quite lethal-looking. He had never personally participated in a bayonet charge, but what had seemed unthinkable not so long ago seemed perfectly reasonable tonight.
Katherine looked at her watch. “What’s taking them so long—”
Suddenly all the floodlights and spotlights on the north end of the house went from glaring white to dying red, then black, leaving a swatch of darkness lying over the north lawn.
Cameron stood and said simply, “Charge!”
The four people burst out of the tree line and began tearing across the hundred yards of lawn. They were all good runners and the distance closed fast. Abrams didn’t think Cameron had finished his “Our Father” before they found themselves on the tiled steps leading up to the terrace.
Abrams was vaguely aware of passing over the swastika in the center of the terrace as the gray stone wall of the house loomed up, punctuated by the windows and French doors that glowed weakly from some distant interior house light. Abrams spotted a guard in the corner, silhouetted against a large window where the two wings came together. He turned and charged.
The guard heard the running footsteps and squinted into the darkness, then raised his rifle tentatively. In a split second Abrams knew he wouldn’t reach him with the bayonet. Abrams fired a single shot and the man doubled over and crumpled to the terrace.
Cameron charged into two Russians who were standing together and talking excitedly. They turned toward Cameron at the last moment and Cameron buried his long bayonet into the groin of the closest one, then cut upward and opened the man’s abdomen up to his breastbone. Cameron raised his leg and pushed the skewered man off his bayonet.
Simultaneously, Davis plunged his bayonet in an overhand harpooning motion through the heart of the second Russian. They both wiped their blades on their victims’ uniforms.
Katherine had stopped on the steps as instructed and was scanning the windows and glass doors, rifle raised to fire, but no one seemed alerted by the sounds.
The three men quickly joined her. She said, “Let’s get off this terrace before the lights come on.”
They ran along the terrace, heading west to the rear of the house, and came upon a huge screened porch attached to the back of the house. Davis crashed through the screen door, followed by Cameron, Katherine, and Abrams.
They pivoted to the left and Davis ran up to a single door and pushed it open. They rushed through the doorway, into the living room, and spread out behind pieces of massive furniture.
Abrams half expected to see Henry Kimberly sitting in the chair beside the green-shaded lamp where he had last left him, but the chair was empty. The lamp was still lit, casting a small circle of light around the chair in the otherwise darkened room. Abrams noticed there were still cigarette stubs in the ashtray.
Cameron rose and looked around. He whispered, “Clear. Let’s go.”
They made their way across the wide room, rifles at their hips.
Cameron and Davis went to the left toward the door that led to the gallery. Abrams and Katherine went to the door from which Abrams had spoken to Henry Kimberly. They were to make a sweep of the ground floor, from the west end of the house to the east, room by room: a search-and-destroy operation.
They were searching, Abrams thought, for Viktor Androv and his KGB pals, for Peter Thorpe, and for Henry Kimberly. They were searching in a physical way, as well as in a metaphysical sense, for the switch that would shut down the ticking clock.
Tom Grenville looked straight down. Van Dorn’s house was directly below, framed nicely between his feet. He wondered how he’d gotten from there to here and if he’d ever get back there again.
He looked around and saw that the rest of his team were grouping in close around him. They had chosen the roof of the Russian mansion as their landing site, depending, as Van Dorn had said, on what was known in the military as the “pathfinder team.” The pathfinder team’s job was to light or mark difficult zones, and although the roof of the house covered nearly half an acre, Van Dorn had pointed out in the aerial photographs that most of the dark roof was pitched and covered with slippery slate, and where it was flat it was bristling with antennas, a satellite dish, and a microwave dish. Van Dorn had likened these to the wartime anti-parachutist protuberances that were meant to kill and maim. Grenville felt his stomach go sour again.
But the landing was possible, if the pathfinder team could get the work lights on the roof turned on. However, the pathfinder team, as Grenville knew, consisted of Joan and an acne-faced adolescent. Grenville didn’t hold out much hope for those lights going on, and this brought him some modicum of comfort.
They were sailing right at the house now, the descent slow from the updrafts, but the forward movement fast because of the tail wind. Grenville knew that within the next few seconds, Stewart would have to decide if they were to land.
He looked to his left at Stewart, who was about to flash a light signaclass="underline" a blinking light meant the roof, a steady light meant glide over the house and make for a clearing in the woods. As Grenville watched, Stewart’s light went on, then began to blink. Grenville stared at it in amazement, then looked below.
The lights on the north lawn had gone black and the rooftop work lights glowed white. “Oh, shit. Joan… what are you doing to me?” But inexplicably a sense of pride swelled within Grenville, and he was relieved to discover that she was, at least at that moment, still alive.
The brightly lit roof was about two hundred feet ahead and a hundred feet below, and their angle of glide might or might not intercept it. Grenville glanced quickly back at the mysterious sixth man, who was now guiding his chute toward the illuminated forecourt that covered nearly an acre of flat grass and gravel.
Collins also watched the sixth man float farther away. Collins didn’t know who the man was, only that he didn’t belong there. Collins raised his rifle, put it on full automatic, and fired across the fifty yards that separated them.
The distance to the target was not far, but the relative positions of the moving chutists made it difficult to establish a point of reference.
The sixth man saw the muzzle flash and fired back. The man had the advantage of red tracer rounds, and he was able to adjust the fiery red streaks until he found his target.
Collins lurched in his harness, then dropped his rifle and hung motionless. His unguided chute floated southward with the wind toward the distant tree line.
Tom Grenville watched the exchange with a sense of incredulity. This silent death above the earth could not be happening. He caught a glimpse of the sixth chutist as he disappeared below the higher roofline to the left and dropped toward the forecourt. Grenville could see Russian guards converging toward the man.
Grenville looked down and saw the flat gray roof less than thirty feet below. He snapped out of his shock and gave a final tug on his risers to try to slow the chute from its southward drift. Stewart, Johnson, and Hallis were so close their chutes were touching his, all four of them now trying to pick out a patch of clear space amid the antennas, dishes, and guy wires below.