by John Ling
Kendra shook her head ever so slightly.
She felt a growing sense of unease.
Skirting around deckchairs, she advanced up a marbled pathway, glided past trimmed hedges and flowerbeds in full bloom, and she flattened herself against the glasshouse.
She spotted another camera.
She double-tapped it.
Circling around, Kendra reached the gazebo at the far end of the garden. She crouched and took cover behind one of its arched columns. She flicked her gaze over the windows of the mansion itself.
She had already examined them earlier, but that was done at a distance.
Now that she was closer, she needed to be doubly sure.
So Kendra holstered her pistol on her vest, got out the monocular and performed another security audit.
She took her time. She was searching for windows where a section of the glass had been cut and removed. Because that’s what a shooter lying in wait would do. He would keep himself way back from the window, only using the hole in the glass to fire through once he had acquired a target.
So Kendra checked, checked and rechecked.
Just like before, all the windows looked intact. There was no tampering, and more importantly, all the blinds and drapes behind them were drawn tight. There were no convenient gaps that would allow a shooter to discharge his weapon.
Good.
Still, Kendra wasn’t ready to move.
She continued scanning. She inspected the rooftop, the surrounding foliage, every possible nook and cranny. And – damn – she felt her optimism sinking.
Kendra couldn’t deny the obvious – to get to the mansion itself, she’d have to cross over fifty metres of open lawn, and there were multiple positions where a concealed shooter could still take a crack at her if she left the safety of the gazebo.
Cover would be minimal, and the fact that it was broad daylight didn’t help.
Lowering the monocular, Kendra brushed sweat away from her forehead.
And even if I do make it that far, what would be the best point of entry? I’m going to need one that won’t leave me exposed while I make the breach. A tough one.
And that’s when Jim Braddock’s gravelly voice echoed in her thoughts, prodding, admonishing.
Little girl, no line of approach is ever a hundred percent. Best you can do is avoid engaging in kinetic action until you have carried out a thorough security audit. And even then, all you’ll get is eighty percent. Or sixty. Or forty. So take your pick. They don’t call it the fog of war for nothing.
Refocusing the monocular, Kendra began searching for a solution, something to offset the risks, and with renewed zeal, she found it.
The garage at the side of the mansion was sandwiched between the main building and the compound wall. It offered decent cover, and for lack of a better option, it would serve as the best point of entry.
The only problem was she still had to cut across the open lawn to reach the garage, and in doing so, she could very well blunder into a shooter’s field of fire.
Tricky. Awfully tricky.
But Kendra had a strategy in mind.
Based on experience, she knew that a moving target was harder to hit than a stationary one, and even harder still was a moving target that happened to be zigzagging in a haphazard way.
So Kendra figured that’s what she had to do. Go in hard and fast and keep her line of approach erratic and unpredictable. And hopefully – hopefully – that would tip the odds in her favour.
Putting the monocular away, Kendra took slow breaths.
She tightened her stomach, feeling the liquid warmth of adrenaline.
Do it. Just do it.
With a sharp exhale, she launched herself out from behind the gazebo, and with her shoes squeaking on the grass, her vest rustling, she darted at random.
Left, right.
Right, left.
Panting, heart racing, she half-expected to hear the snap of a gunshot, the chomp of a bullet. But – man, oh man – she kept her eyes fixed on her goal.
She gritted her teeth. She felt the tendons in her neck straining. And – oh yeah – she cleared the lawn and whipped around the side of the garage, skidding to a crouch.
Another camera loomed.
Palms damp, she quick-drew her pistol and shattered it with a double-tap.
17
Kendra took a moment to calm her frayed nerves.
She allowed her breaths to level out.
I’m either real lucky or real paranoid.
She didn’t know which was which.
Duck-walking, she peered around the corner ahead. She scanned the long oval driveway, the baroque fountain, the front gates at the far end.
Everything was quiet.
Still.
Too fucking still.
Kendra backtracked, wiping sweat from her chin.
At this point, she would have expected her intrusion into the compound to provoke more of a response, especially after she had taken out multiple cameras. But, so far, there were no boots on the ground. No potshots. Zero pushback.
Maybe nobody’s watching. Or... maybe nobody’s around.
Kendra groaned and shook her head.
She didn’t want to settle on unfounded assumptions.
Holstering her pistol, she reached into a vest pocket. She got out the infiltration kit and unpacked it.
She extended a scanner wand and ran it along the periphery of the garage’s side door, and it vibrated when she reached the top right-hand corner, its LED light flashing green.
That meant that the door was fitted with an alarm, but it wasn’t active.
Kendra hesitated.
She felt that familiar dash of unease.
Why would the security system be disabled?
Chewing the inside of her cheek, Kendra got out the fibrescope. She snaked the lens under the door and peered through the eyepiece.
The interior of the garage was cloaked in semi-darkness, like a cave.
She panned left and right, up and down. She saw nothing more threatening than a Porsche and a Ferrari, parked side by side. But her angle was limited. She couldn’t see beyond those two vehicles.
There was a chance that a shooter could be lying in wait for her.
It was unlikely, but she couldn’t rule it out.
Kendra put away the fibrescope and got out the Peterson universal key. She slid it into the keyhole, and with a bump and a jiggle, she got the door unlocked.
Kendra reassembled the infiltration kit and pocketed it. She got out the night-vision goggles, mounted its harness over her head and tightened it. Then, drawing her pistol, she snapped on a laser-aiming module.
It felt strange to be doing this right in the middle of the day, but if all the windows in the mansion were shuttered, then she had to assume that visibility would be patchy. In that case, equipping herself with the goggles would be a win-win.
It would automatically adjust for differentials in light levels, amplifying the contrast when it was gloomy, dimming it when the environment was brighter.
This would allow her to maintain consistent and uninterrupted vision.
Better to be paranoid than sorry.
Kendra positioned herself beside the door and flipped the goggles down over her eyes. She knew she had to be decisive with making the breach because the doorway was a fatal funnel. This was where a shooter could take a crack at her while she was silhouetted against the daylight.
Kendra rolled and stretched her neck.
She swallowed.
And... here we go.
She pushed the door open and slipped through in a button-hook manoeuvre.
She was quick and fluid, and once she was inside, she shut the door behind her, maximising the darkness, maximising her advantage.
Sidestepping, she activated the infrared laser on her gun, visible only to her night-vision, and she performed a slow orbit of the garage.
Her senses were alive, and she picked up on the smallest of details. The fain
t scent of exhaust and motor oil. The motes of dust shimmering in the air. The slow, careful padding of her footsteps.
Kendra skirted around the Porsche and the Ferrari. She moved past two more vehicles – a Lamborghini and a Mercedes SUV.
And that’s when she saw something else in the corner.
A motorcycle.
18
Kendra blinked hard as she approached the motorcycle and touched its engine.
Still warm.
Her breaths grew hitched.
Her chest felt tight.
She couldn’t believe it. She didn’t want to believe it. So she craned her neck and checked the registration plate. And – hell – it matched. This was the exact same motorcycle that Ryan had used to make his getaway.
Nostrils flaring, Kendra took a step back, raking her fingers through her hair. She struggled to process this new revelation.
He’s here.
Kendra turned and eyed the door ahead. It led out of the garage, into the house itself. And she just stood there, swaying, agonising.
He blows up a department store and neutralises a team of operators. Then he comes back here to his parents’ home. But that doesn’t make sense. He should be doing something smart, like skipping town, gaining distance.
Kendra thought back to the GPS navigation unit that she had found in the operators’ car. About how it connected to all of this. And... she drew a blank.
The only obvious fact was that Ryan was mixed up in something bad, something god-awful, and Kendra wondered what confronting him would mean.
Can I pull the trigger? Can I afford not to?
Her hand flexed around her gun, and Kendra shook her head, her face pulled tight. She knew that dwelling on the anguish wouldn’t help. It would only colour her judgement and give her the jitters. And now, more than ever, she needed to be calm, precise, rational.
So she got her breathing under control.
She reined in her emotions and straightened.
Focus on what’s in front of you. Just on what’s in front of you. Locate, isolate and contain Ryan. Then maybe, just maybe, you’ll get some answers.
Hardening her jaw, Kendra crept to the door.
She didn’t like the situation, but at least she had one perk. If Ryan was here, it meant that all the motion detectors in the house were disabled, and she didn’t have to worry about tripping any alarms.
Taking bitter comfort in that, Kendra opened the door and stepped through.
19
Kendra found herself at the bottom of a stairwell, and the first thing she noticed was the dip in temperature. The air had become cooler, drier.
It took her a moment, but then she realised why – the air conditioning was purring from the ventilation ducts above, which meant that it was circulating throughout the house.
It was obviously a sign that she wasn’t alone.
Kendra mounted the staircase, gun raised, and as she climbed, she kept herself to the side, away from the handrail, shoulder brushing against the wall.
She knew that she was vulnerable to attack from above, so she acquired the widest possible angle, keeping her pace slow and deliberate.
When she reached the landing at the top, she rounded the corner and continued up the next flight of steps. She emerged into a foyer. The smell of perfumed incense filled her nostrils. It was a mixture of rose and apple.
Kendra paused.
A Persian rug lay spread out before her, and oil paintings lined the walls, lush and intricate Iranian landscapes that stood out even under her green-hued vision.
Kendra recognised two of the paintings, but the rest were new. The collection had obviously been updated since the last time she was here.
Kendra felt the stirrings of the past.
The last time I was here, things didn’t end up so well.
With her cheeks twitching, she moved on.
She continued down a hallway. She remembered the layout well enough. The music room was on the left. The library was on the right.
Eyebrows furrowed, Kendra chose the music room and button-hooked into it. She swivelled her head from side to side to compensate for the tunnel vision that her goggles gave her.
A grand piano stood at the centre of the room. The walls were adorned with tapestries. The heavy drapes at the windows were pulled shut.
All clear.
Kendra backtracked and slipped into the library.
A computer workstation sat in the corner. Shelves filled with books reached to the ceiling. The blinds at the windows were shuttered.
All clear.
Kendra moved through the study and accessed the door at the far end. It opened out into another hallway.
As she stepped through, that’s when she caught the scent of something sharply metallic. It was enough to make her flinch, her mouth puckering up. It was the stench of blood. She’d recognise it anywhere.
With her heart throbbing in her ears, Kendra cleared the hallway and button-hooked into the living room.
The sickly sweet smell got stronger.
She dodged a sprawling sofa set and moved past the supersized television, past a table covered with Persian pottery.
And that’s when she saw the bodies.
20
Six bodies.
They were lying face down on the floor, hands bound behind them with flexicuffs, each executed with a single gunshot to the back of the head.
From the way they were positioned, it looked like they’d been forced to kneel before the inevitable slaughter.
God Almighty.
Kendra shifted their heads to check on their faces, and their necks moved easily. Minimal rigor mortis, which meant they had been dead for only a few hours.
She studied the entry wounds. They were small in diameter, and there were no exit wounds. That indicated a .22 calibre. An assassin’s weapon.
She scanned the carpet. She looked for spent casings, but she found none. That meant the killer had cleaned up after himself.
God Almighty.
This felt like a bad dream.
The worst possible dream.
Kendra had spent years on the global circuit. Finding, fixing and finishing threats in souks and madrasas and back alleys. Spilling blood in every jihadi stronghold from Baghdad to Kabul to Islamabad.
But nothing – absolutely nothing – had prepared her for how she felt right here, right now, because she knew these people.
The driver.
The cook.
The gardener.
The butler.
The maids.
They had served the Hosseini family for years.
Kendra fidgeted. She felt bile clawing at the back of her throat, sticky and hot.
Did Ryan do this?
She stared hard at the bodies, and that’s when something else occurred to her. The air conditioning had been switched on specifically to slow the rate of decomposition. And blocking out all the sunlight? It amounted to the same thing.
He wanted to preserve his handiwork. Preserve the scene of the crime.
Kendra knew that there were two kinds of killers.
The first was the psychopath – the one who killed his victims because he thought they deserved it. And the other was the sociopath – the one who killed his victims because he just didn’t care.
The way the household staff had been executed was ruthless, expedient, completely devoid of any kind of passion. And that pointed more to a sociopath, not a psychopath.
No, Ryan wouldn’t just snuff out the people he grew up with. Not without displaying emotion. It doesn’t make any sense.
Yet Kendra found a contradiction with that line of reasoning. The aftermath of the killing indicated some kind of perverse emotion at work; some kind of intimacy.
Why is he trying to preserve the bodies? Is this his way of showing affection? Does it even count as affection?
Kendra hated to admit it, but her knowledge of behavioural profiling was rudimentary at best, and despite her best efforts, s
he was grasping at straws here.
All she knew was that she had to find Ryan.
She had to lock him down before anyone else got hurt.
21
Kendra swept the rest of the ground floor, corner by corner, room by room.
The cold and the dark and the silence conspired to make her burden worse. Her mouth was dry, her muscles were tight, and her nerves were frayed. But she couldn’t afford to seek relief by flicking on a light switch or peeling back a curtain.
All she could do was push forward, probe the shadows, brave her doubts.
Once Kendra was sure that the ground floor was clear, she returned to the middle of the house. She approached the grand central staircase. It was broad and majestic, with handrails made out of carved wood and glossy ivory.
Kendra mounted it backwards, taking each step slowly, carefully.
Above her, the second floor was rimmed by a long balustrade balcony which looked down on the entire staircase, which made it the perfect strike point for an ambush.
Don’t rush. Take your time. Do it right.
Kendra aimed her gun this way and that way, her laser puncturing the gloom. She listened to the gentle creak of the steps below her; the steady tick-tock of a grandfather clock close by; the constant purr of the air conditioning.
Head swivelling, Kendra logged in the angles, the lines of sight, the lines of fire. She measured them, ready to react at the slightest flicker of movement, at the smallest sound that didn’t belong.
The seconds stretched.
The short hairs on the back of her neck prickled.
Kendra reached the landing that divided the staircase.
Rounding the banister, she took the next flight of steps by climbing forward. But she remained cautious until she crested the top of the staircase itself. And slowly, very slowly, she swept the balcony, employing a technique known as slicing the pie, acquiring the widest possible angle.
All clear.
Kendra paused only to suck in a breath and exhale, then she carried on with her search, corridor by corridor, room by room.