***
Greg Marshall yawned and rubbed his eyes. A few more minutes and his eight-hour shift monitoring the compound’s remote sensor network would come to an end. He’d eat a massive breakfast and crash out for several hours upstairs, until his natural biorhythms forced him out of bed. He closed his eyes and imagined the grease-laden farmer’s breakfast waiting for him in the sunroom. Security work at the compound might be tedious, but the food was plentiful and he had plenty of time between shifts to work it off. He could imagine worse work within the agency.
When he opened his eyes, he immediately saw that one of the eastern-based sensor arrays had detected movement. Damn it. Now his watch turnover would be delayed by at least fifteen minutes while a team was dispatched to investigate what would undoubtedly turn out to be another bear. The system could eliminate most non-human signatures based on speed, size and thermal characteristics, but it had a hard time differentiating between a young black bear and a human being. The system would track the bear accurately while it ambled along on all fours, but suddenly flash an alert when it rose up on its hind legs to pick berries. Now his breakfast would have to wait. He pulled his chair up to the desk and started the checklist.
The fifty-inch LED screen mounted at eye level in front of his desk displayed a digital map of the area surrounding the compound. Two sectors showed movement, which was a little unusual. He moved his hand to the red phone at the edge of the workstation and considered ringing Sheffield. Not yet. Sheffield hated when they rang him without gathering any information. He dragged the cursor over to the closest red sector and double-clicked, activating the two screens flanking the center monitor.
The top screen displayed multiple camera feeds from the sector, which he could change from traditional full color day view to thermal imaging. The bottom screen presented information from the motion sensors, pressure plates and thermal scanners in numeric and map form. The sector boundary map on this screen indicated that the signals were rapidly approaching the fence line. Multiple signals. The data flowing next to the map told him which cameras to search for a view of the targets, presenting hyperlinks that would change the view on the top screen to reflect what he had selected. He clicked on of the links and momentarily froze in his chair. What the fuck? Two heavily armed men sprinted toward the only section of fence exposed directly to the security complex beside the front gate. He didn’t bother to check the second sector before charging the entire eastern fence line and picking up the red phone.
***
The former Russian GRU Spetsnaz soldier raced toward the ten-foot-high section of chain-link fence directly ahead of him and threw himself to the ground several feet in front of it. He quickly extended the bipod attached to his RPK-74S Light Machine Gun and pressed the weapon firmly into the ground. Through the 3.4X ACOG sight attached to the RPK’s top rail, he sighted in on the front door of the gray two-story house and disengaged the weapon’s safety.
His partner had already stopped several meters back, having found a thick tree stump to support his .50 caliber sniper rifle. They would both start engaging targets as soon as it became apparent that the alarm had been sounded. The RPK would be used against security personnel, while the .50 caliber sniper rifle would initially target the building’s communications array. Based on the second team’s progress, they would breach the fence and provide close-up support as requested.
Nearly on cue with his arrival, three men spilled out of the front door onto the gravel driveway. One of the men peeled left and crouched against the front bumper of a black SUV, aiming an assault rifle in his general direction, while the other two took off in the opposite direction. He fired a sustained burst through the fence at the man next to the truck, kicking up gravel around the truck and connecting with the SUV’s metal frame. The man flailed backward, obviously hit by at least one of the rounds, so he shifted his aim to the two men fleeing toward an outcropping of dark ledge near the house.
A massive detonation sounded in the distance on his right, rippling the fence as his next burst of bullets caught the first man and sent him tumbling to the ground in a tangle of collapsed limbs. His partner stopped and crouched low to return fire, but was struck in the head by a well-aimed, short burst from the machine gun.
The RPK’s longer and heavier barrel, designed to allow accurate, sustained automatic fire in an infantry support role, combined extremely well with the combat telescopic sight to yield an effective sharpshooting weapon. He reacquired the front door of the house and demonstrated the light machine gun’s true purpose on this mission, pulling the trigger and cycling through the remaining seventy seven rounds of 5.45mm in long sweeping bursts that raked the front of the house from top to bottom, splintering the cedar siding and shattering all of the windows.
***
Karl Berg’s hand froze when he heard the first muffled staccato burst of gunfire. His first thought was that Sheffield had picked a really shitty time to conduct target practice for his security team. He dismissed that thought when the house shook violently, followed immediately by the thunderclap of a nearby explosion. He put it all together before the next burst of gunfire tore through the compound. Reznikov had somehow led the Russian mafiya to Mountain Glen.
He fumbled with the Velcro flap in his briefcase, almost missing Reznikov’s sudden attack. The thick bottle of vodka he’d given the scientist appeared overhead, plunging toward his head. Berg abandoned the effort to draw his pistol and raised the briefcase upward to deflect the heavy glass bludgeon. With most of his hand-to-hand combat training years behind him, the CIA officer’s instinctual response was far from graceful.
The bottle crashed into his forearm with a sickening thump, driving his arm down below his head. Reznikov raised the bottle to strike him in the head, but Berg kicked him in the sternum, disrupting the attack. The Russian stumbled backward, dropping the bottle onto the hardwood floor, where it shattered. Berg considered trying to retrieve the pistol from the briefcase at his feet, but Reznikov charged the door, and he had no intention of losing the Russian that easily.
The Russian grabbed the doorknob with both hands, unable to defend himself from Berg’s front kick, which was aimed at his hands. Berg’s sturdy hiking boots crushed Reznikov’s fingers against the brass knob, causing the Russian to recoil from the front door, howling in agony. Less than a second later, a klaxon sounded in the house, and Reznikov threw himself at the door, screaming. Now Berg understood why he had been so focused on the door. The house could be put into lockdown mode from the security station, which would complicate whatever plan the lunatic had conjured.
Reznikov yanked at the door to no avail and quickly scrambled left to one of the picture windows. Berg glanced at the window to his immediate right and saw metal shutters descending outside of the windowpanes. He heard glass shatter and turned his attention back to Reznikov. The crazed scientist had cracked the other window with the base of a table lamp. Judging from the shutters’ rate of descent, Berg wasn’t worried about Reznikov escaping through the window. The security shutters next to him had already blocked most of the light from the outside. In a fit of rage, the Russian repeatedly struck the window frame in an ineffectual display of fury, yelling orders to his hidden rescuers.
Berg decided that this would be a good time to grab his pistol. Trying to ignore the excruciating pain in his left arm, he opened the flap and withdrew the pistol, just as a fusillade of bullets tore through the door and the drywall next to him. The CIA officer dropped flat against the floor and fired three hastily aimed shots through the cloud of obliterated drywall dust at Reznikov’s silhouette. Another long burst of gunfire penetrated the front of the house, ripping through the furniture and collapsing the closest end table.
He hadn’t fully processed Reznikov’s verbal tirade, which had obviously directed indiscriminate automatic weapons fire into the left side of the house. He needed to get clear of the free-fire zone before Reznikov directed the next barrage right onto him. Searching for a target with
his pistol, Berg scrambled forward, quickly reaching the archway to find the library room empty. He heard a chair scrape across the kitchen tile and turned his attention to the doorway leading out of the library and deeper into the house.
Before he could process the thought any further, he heard two separate Russian voices outside of the house yell, “Clear!” Berg’s options at this point were extremely limited, but one of them wasn’t standing in the library, exposed to the front door. He passed through the doorway less than a millisecond before a small explosion shook the house. The explosion cleared his mind and engaged some of the mind processes buried under years of bureaucratic deskwork at Langley. He hoped this temporary reboot would be enough to keep him alive.
He’d been one of the CIA’s premier case officers in Europe during the Cold War’s final decade, sidelining as a “black ops” field supervisor long before retired Special Forces operators filled those roles. He knew what would come through that door, and that his chances of walking out of here alive were poor, but Berg was a survivor, and he still had plenty of fight left in him. He immediately started forming a strategy.
Reznikov’s Solntsevskaya benefactors would have used highly trained professionals for this job, most likely former Russian army Spetsnaz, which didn’t bode well. Spetsnaz operators were notoriously savage and barely restrained by rules of engagement within the Russian military. As hired guns for the Russian mafiya, there would be no limit to their brutality. The only factor working in his favor at this point was an intimate familiarity with Special Operations tactics.
Special Forces teams worldwide could attribute their incredible success rate to training. Repetitive training. Especially in close-quarters combat. There was little variation in training and tactics, which is why he wasn’t the least bit surprised to hear metal objects hit the hardwood floor somewhere in the front of the house. Flashbangs. He glanced toward the staircase off the kitchen and made a quick calculation. He had at this point all but forgotten about Reznikov, who was nowhere in sight.
***
A long burst of distant gunfire preceded the multiple flashbang detonations inside the house, reminding Yergei that the compound’s security team was still in play. He didn’t need to cue the two men that flanked the door. They had practiced this drill hundreds of times together as a Russian Spetsnaz direct-action team and several dozen more times as private contractors. The only real difference between the two was that he routinely got paid more for one of these privately funded operations than he made in an entire year as a Russian army sergeant.
The four-man team assembled on Reznikov’s doorstep had worked exclusively together throughout the world for the past three years, making money hand over fist doing business with some of the nastiest people alive. Assassination, kidnapping, extortion, blackmail…all for sale to the highest bidder, and the Solntsevskaya Bratva was by far their best customer.
When the flashbangs exploded, the assault team’s point man peeled away from his position next to the smoldering doorway and slid into the house. The operative on the other side of the door started to follow, when two gunshots knocked the point man’s lifeless body back onto the granite porch in a cascade of brains and blood. The second man fired a burst from his shortened AK-74 into the house, which instigated mayhem. Yergei heard screaming, followed by several rapidly spaced pistol shots, all of which competed with the sound of crashing furniture.
“He’s upstairs, you fucking idiots. He shot me in the face!” yelled a Russian voice from inside.
“Watch your fire!” he yelled to the team.
His instructions had been clear. If he didn’t recover the scientist alive, they had no reason to return to Russia. They would be out of business, simple as that, targets of the next team standing in line to take their place…and there were many. Their bratva contact had made this painfully clear, which underscored the importance of the mission and better explained the exorbitant fee they had been able to negotiate. Reznikov was critically important to the Solntsevskaya Bratva.
“Hit the upstairs,” he said, pointing at the cottage’s shuttered dormer windows.
The two remaining operatives sprinted several meters back from the house and turned, each firing an entire magazine at the second floor. Yergei charged through the door during the mayhem and headed right, hearing the snap of a bullet pass inches from his head. The pistol’s report was lost in the hammering of automatic weapon’s fire from just outside the house, but he had caught a glimpse of the shooter on the staircase.
He spotted Reznikov sitting against a floor-to-ceiling bookcase, precariously close to a splintered doorframe he presumed to be fully exposed to the shooter who had just fired on him as he entered the house. Reznikov muttered to himself, holding a blood-covered hand to his face while repeatedly hitting the bookshelf with the back of his head. Scarlet fluid oozed through his fingers and dripped into a widening stain on his right thigh.
Yergei aimed his rifle high along the room’s interior wall, pointing in the presumed direction of the staircase off the kitchen. He fired several controlled bursts through the thin drywall while advancing toward the scientist. He arrived at the splintered doorframe next to Reznikov with enough ammunition in the rifle’s thirty-round magazine for a short, well-aimed burst at the staircase. As he fired the rifle, two more bullets snapped past, missing his head by inches and striking the wall behind him. He yanked his head back, satisfied that he had done enough damage to the shooter to escape safely with Reznikov. A sizable bloodstain had appeared on the wall at the top of the stairs.
“We’re getting you out of here,” Yergei said, reloading his weapon.
“Team. Inside left! Watch the stairway!” he said.
Within seconds, the two operatives appeared inside the house, fanning to the left and occupying the corners of the room. He pointed at the ceiling above them and gave the hand signal to open fire. The men crouched and aimed at the ceiling, firing wild bursts of automatic fire into the drywall above. Yergei joined them, sending most of the steel-jacketed rounds from his fresh magazine into the remaining ceiling areas that didn’t show significant damage. He always retained a few rounds just in case.
“We’re done here!” he said to his men, walking back to Reznikov.
They didn’t have any more time to play around with the mystery shooter. They had less than five minutes to secure a landing zone behind the security building, which still presented a considerable obstacle to their success. The constant sound of small arms fire, intertwined with the deep boom of a .50 caliber sniper rifle, reminded him of why they had been paid so much for this job. Nobody said it would be easy.
“You have to make sure he is dead!” Reznikov said.
“We don’t have time for that! My job is to get you out of here alive! So stand up and move out! I don’t see anything wrong with your legs,” Yergei said.
“You could at least be polite about it,” Reznikov protested.
“I don’t get paid for that, so don’t push your luck. Get on your fucking feet and move!” he said, spurring Reznikov into action.
He pushed the scientist through the front door and activated his shoulder microphone.
“Support team. Move up on the house. We’re on our way.”
***
Berg pressed his hands against his ears, wincing from the pain that radiated through his left arm. The flashbangs detonated moments later, whitewashing the kitchen in a six-million-Candela flash, but essentially causing no distress to his eyesight. Similarly, the one-hundred-and-seventy-decibel subsonic deflagration emitted by the grenade was reduced to a tolerable level by his hands. The suppressed gunshots fired from his pistol moments earlier had produced significantly more discomfort. He sprang into action and crossed the kitchen, torn by his decision to seek safety instead of hunting down Reznikov. He was in pure survival mode at this point, with little on his mind beyond getting upstairs, where he might be able to put up a better defense.
Reaching the center hallway, he didn’t
hesitate to lean out and search for targets. His experience told him that the men entering the house would rush through the “fatal funnel,” or front doorway in this case, and immediately clear the front corners of the house. Their attention would not be focused forward directly upon entry. A heavily armed operative suddenly appeared in his sights, oblivious to his concealed presence dead ahead. Berg fired two 9mm hollow point rounds at his head, stopping the Russian cold. Based on the crimson explosion behind the man’s head, Berg had no doubt that he had scored a lethal hit. Unwilling to press his luck, he sprinted toward the stairs, barely avoiding a burst of rifle fire centered on the hallway.
Before he reached the stairs, Reznikov burst out of the walk-in pantry to his right, holding a kitchen stool and shrieking like a madman. He sprinted past Berg, swinging the stool at his head, but missing by inches. The CIA officer extended his right hand and fired repeatedly at the fleeing scientist. At least one of the rounds connected, knocking Reznikov against the far wall, but before he could line up a kill shot, Reznikov spilled through the doorway leading to the library.
He had missed his last chance to kill Reznikov, a fact he knew would condemn thousands, if not millions of lives in the near future. The thought of this epic failure kept him from fleeing up the stairs, which probably saved his life. The upstairs landing disappeared in a storm of drywall and splintering wood, as the sound of automatic fire echoed throughout the house. Movement near the front door attracted his attention, and he brought his pistol to bear on a single intruder. He managed to squeeze off one shot, missing by inches, before the commando vanished into the library.
Bursts of automatic fire punctured the wall on the other side of the hallway and chased him upstairs. He reached the top of the stairs and turned, noting a discernible pattern on the downstairs wall. Each burst had shifted left across the wall, indicating that the gunman was moving toward the back of the house. Berg crouched low and steadied his hand against the stairway corner, aiming at the kitchen doorway as bullets continued to pour through the wall. Through the smoke and drywall dust, a head appeared, and he fired twice, never seeing if his rounds connected. He was struck in the upper left shoulder and spun into the bathroom behind him. He landed on his hands and knees, physically stunned and unable to breathe…but fully aware that he was a dead man if he didn’t move.
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