They all stood. Suddenly there was a sound on the stairs and Pembroke turned. A shot rang out and Pembroke staggered back and fell.
Llewelyn turned in time to see the head and shoulders of a uniformed Russian coming up the stairs, rifle raised. Llewelyn fired a short burst, sending the man reeling back down the stairs. He ripped a fragmentation grenade from his belt, pulled the pin, and lobbed it into the stairwell, then hit the floor.
There was a deafening explosion, followed by the sound of the old staircase collapsing.
Llewelyn slid across the floor and peered over the edge of the open stairwell. A cloud of smoke and dust filled the dark space and he could see small fires crackling below. He thought, That protects our rear. That also cuts off our line of withdrawal. He pivoted on the floor and crawled back to Pembroke, who was sitting up in the alcove, Sutter and Ann beside him.
Pembroke ran his hand under his bulletproof vest. “Cracked a rib.”
“Don’t move.” Llewelyn stared at him and saw a trickle of blood running from the corner of his pale mouth. “The lung is punctured, you know.”
“Yes, it’s my lung and my rib, so I knew it immediately. Get moving.”
“Yes. See you later.” Ann and Sutter followed Llewelyn cautiously toward the partition that separated the wings. Ann noticed several canvas bags and wooden crates marked in English and French DIPLOMATIC — RUSSIAN MISSION TO THE UNITED NATIONS — NOT SUBJECT TO U.S. CUSTOMS INSPECTION.
Sutter had taken the lead, and he approached the brick wall that rose through the floorboards and ended at the sloping ceiling. A brick chimney formed part of the wall, and a sliding steel door lay to the left of the chimney.
Sutter said softly, “This is more than we expected.”
Llewelyn nodded. “Nice old house. Built them like fortresses, they did. Russkies added the steel door, I should think. Well, we’ve a bit of plastic left.”
Sutter looked at the door. The rollers were on the far side and it was probably barred with steel. “Possibly there’s more door than plastic.”
Ann stepped forward and the two men watched wide-eyed as she banged the butt of her rifle against the steel door. She shouted in Russian, “Androv! I want to speak to Androv.”
Sutter and Llewelyn said nothing.
Ann banged again. After a full minute, a voice called back through the door in English. “Who are you?”
She replied, “I am Ann Kimberly, daughter of Henry Kimberly. Are you Androv?”
“Yes.”
“Listen carefully. I know my father’s in here somewhere. I know about Molniya and so does my government. They are prepared to launch a nuclear strike against your country. Van Dorn has mortars aimed at you. Do you understand?”
Androv replied, “What do you want?”
“I want you to call it off.” She looked at her watch. “You have eighteen minutes before Molniya explodes. I want you to open this door and let me broadcast a message over your radio.”
Androv replied, “I’ll call Moscow. I’ll be back to you in a few minutes.”
Ann screamed, “You’re lying! You’re not allowed to mention this over the air. Don’t bullshit me! Open this door. Now!”
Androv did not reply.
Ann shouted, “Your situation is hopeless, you fool!”
There was no reply.
Sutter said, “You can’t reason with them, miss. They’ve gotten used to getting their own way.”
Llewelyn had wedged the last of the plastic explosive in the corner where the brick wall met the chimney. He said to Sutter, “The wall is stress-bearing.” He nodded up at the rafters. “If we rock it a bit, it might collapse from the weight of the roof.” He looked at Ann. “But it’s your show now.”
Ann looked again at her watch, then said, “May as well. There’s nothing left to lose.”
Abrams, Katherine, and Cameron reached the top of the tightly winding staircase and stopped in a small windowless interior room about the size of a large closet. A sloping ladder with steps led to a hatch in the ceiling.
Cameron turned his attention to the overhead hatch. “Stand back.” He had unslung a small cardboard tube from his back, about the size of a roll of wrapping paper. He extended the periscoping tube, which held a sixty-millimeter rocket, and placed it on his shoulder in a firing position. Cameron knelt, “Hold your ears and open your month.” He squeezed the electric detonating button and a flame roared out of the rear of the tube, charring the floor as the rocket streaked up to the ceiling. The rocket hit the wooden hatch but didn’t detonate against the thin wood, passing through it and streaking up to the slate-covered roof boards. The rocket exploded inside the attic, sending shrapnel spreading out across a bursting radius of fifty feet.
Abrams was already on the ladder. He pushed up on the hinged hatch, lobbed a concussion grenade through the aperture, then dropped the hatch as the grenade detonated. Sheets of plaster fell from the ceiling above them, covering them with white powder. Abrams sprang upward and knocked open the hatch, scrambling up to the attic floor and rolling away. Cameron and Katherine followed. They all lay motionless on the floor, weapons pointed outward to form a small defensive perimeter.
The pressure of the concussion grenade had blown out every light, and Abrams could see a small piece of the night sky through the hole in the roof. The floorboards were covered with hot shrapnel from the rocket. As the ringing of the explosion faded from his ears, Abrams heard the sound of dull moaning.
Cameron rose to one knee, turned on his flashlight, and rolled it across the floor. It didn’t draw fire and they all stood.
They searched the large attic room and found three men and two women, all in shock from the concussion grenade and suffering from shrapnel wounds.
Cameron shot each one with his silenced pistol, not asking Abrams or Katherine to give him a hand, or commenting on the business in any way.
Katherine called out quietly, “Look at this.”
Abrams and Cameron came up beside her.
She said, “It’s a television studio.”
Abrams stepped onto the raised set and shone his light over the desk, the fireplace, the American flag. Katherine stooped down and picked up some papers that had been blown around the set, and read the typed script. She looked at Abrams. “This is my father’s speech to the American people… He was to be the next President.”
Abrams glanced at one of the sheets. “I didn’t even know he was running.”
Cameron directed his beam across the room and played it over a brick wall, chimney, and steel door. “If Pembroke is on the other side,” he said, “then we’ve taken both arms of the T. The main stem is still in their hands, but Stewart ought to be on the flat roof above it. We’ve got them boxed in.”
Katherine replied, “But we are boxed out.” She looked at her watch. “We’ve got about sixteen minutes until the EMP detonation and less time than that before George’s mortar rounds begin crashing through this roof. We’ve got to get in there and take control of the radios.”
Cameron nodded toward the steel door. “We can blow that door.”
Abrams heard sounds below. “They’re coming up the stairs.” He took the last hand grenade from Cameron, went to the hatch door, opened it, and threw the grenade down, then moved back. The fragmented grenade exploded, throwing the hatch door into the air and ripping apart the ladder below. Cameron pressed a kilo of the claylike plastic around the doorframe, embedded the detonators, and ran the detonation fuse fifty feet back from the door.
Cameron looked at his watch. “Damned little time left.” He looked at Katherine and Abrams. “Well, let’s assume everyone is in place.”
Abrams replied, “If they’re not, they’re dead.”