by Craig Smith
Handing Malloy his armor and one of the AKS-74s, Kate said to him, 'I'm Girl, he's Boy, you're Man. No names, no faces showing, no prints and hopefully no blood. It's okay to leave weapons and clips behind. Everything's been reported stolen. 'What about yours?'
'Clean,' Malloy answered, wiping his guns for prints as he spoke.
'Your job will be to secure the helicopter, preferably with the pilot still alive. After you do that, hold your position. Use your MAC-10 if you need a burst. Otherwise set the Kalashnikov on single shot and keep our retreat clear. If we don't fly out, we don't get out.' Malloy examined his weapon, but he was comfortable with it. Unlike the American M-16, the Kalashnikov's first selector was full auto, the second single shot. The weapons were otherwise relatively comparable, with the Russian model being somewhat lighter and less inclined to jam but more difficult to handle in a prone position because of the length of the clip.
'Corbeau keeps the helicopter pad at the centre of his backyard. His pilot always flies in from the lakeside and faces the house. You'll come in behind his position a few seconds before us. It will still be dark, but the security lights ought to be on for the helicopter, meaning we don't trip the alarm when we drop in. The last fifty feet or so all three of us will be visible, assuming anyone is looking up, but there's supposed to be a light fog this morning, so we might catch a break. If our timing is right Dr North should be somewhere between the house and the helicopter when we drop. Ethan and you can take out the escorts - headshots if possible. If anyone is wearing armor it will be the people going with the hostage.
'You make sure North gets to the helicopter. If she has trouble walking, you might have to help her. Ethan can provide some cover for you if you need it, but you're going to have to assume at least some of the fire is going to be coming from a position only you can respond to. Once she is inside the helicopter, the light armor should keep her safe from small arms fire. We figure three, maybe four minutes inside the house. It's going to feel like ten, so get down close to the ground and get comfortable. We have one chance at this guy. If we lose him today, he'll hunt us down, and he won't ever stop.'
Inside the tiny Cessna Malloy met the pilot, an amateur flier from Bern and a good friend of Ethan's.
He was preternaturally cheerful considering the hour.
They were in the air less than a minute later, sweeping up alongside the dark shadow that was Mount Pilatus and then circling back under the peak of Stanserhorn. As the plane pushed for altitude, everyone grew quiet. At eleven thousand feet the pilot turned toward Rigi and called out to Kate. Kate took a moment to get oriented with the lake and then checked with Malloy and Ethan. Everyone was ready to jump.
'Make the call,' she said. 'Tell him to meet you at Lake Pilatus on Mount Pilatus. You'll have a bonfire burning, so he can find you.' As Malloy hit the speed dial, Kate signaled to the pilot to turn the engine off. They were floating in the darkness, earth and sky indistinguishable.
Corbeau answered his phone at once. 'Yes?' he said, speaking English.
'I'll meet you at Lake Pilatus on Mount Pilatus. I've got a bonfire started so you can find me. If I don't see your helicopter by . . . six-twenty, don't bother coming.'
'We need to talk, Mr Malloy,' Corbeau answered.
'No we don't.' Malloy disconnected and shut the phone off. Then he looked at his new partners. 'We're on the clock, people.'
Corbeau finished his call and looked at Bremmer, who shook his head. 'He wasn't on long enough, but they got the number and they're tracking it. They should have a location in a few minutes.'
Corbeau nodded and let his gaze sweep across his library bookshelves. He was seated at his desk. Xeno, Jeffrey Bremmer, and Helena Chernoff stood directly before him. Two uniformed guards stood at attention across the room.
'Something is wrong,' Corbeau announced quietly. His manner was thoughtful, as if still putting together his impressions. 'Malloy's voice was not quite right.'
'He's nervous,' Xeno answered. Xeno was leading the team taking North on the helicopter and was already wearing armor.
Corbeau shook his head. 'That wasn't it. It was more like ... a man who is bluffing. I don't think he has the painting.' Having said this, Corbeau looked at Chernoff for confirmation.
'It's possible,' she answered. 'If he sent the painting to New York, he might still try to save North.'
Corbeau looked at Bremmer. 'What does a man do if he doesn't have the money to pay a ransom?'
Bremmer smiled. 'He fills a bag with paper and brings a gun to the exchange.'
'He's setting a trap for us.' Corbeau was suddenly sure of himself. 'He doesn't have the painting.' To Xeno he said, 'I want you to leave North here, and take Helena in her place. When you fly in, if Malloy is exposed, shoot him and get out of there. If he's concealed, wait on him, but don't set down. He'll have people with him, but they're not going to move against you until the hostage is safe. Work it right and you can be out of range before they understand what you've done.'
'What about the others?' Chernoff asked.
'I don't care about the others. I want Malloy.'
'And if he has the painting?' Xeno asked.
Corbeau shook his head. 'He doesn't.'
'Tell the pilot you're to go to Lake Pilatus,' Bremmer added. 'He'll know where it is.'
'Do you know the terrain?' Xeno asked.
'It's somewhere on Pilatus, so I expect—'
'It's on the north slope,' Corbeau said, 'and it's not really a lake. It's a marsh, reputed to be the last resting place of Pontius Pilate, thus the name. The place is isolated with lots of trees and rocks and steep hills surrounding an open meadow. That means Malloy is going to own the high ground if you set down, so make sure you don't.'
Bremmer looked at his watch. 'You have twelve minutes. Let's not keep the man waiting.'
Once Chernoff and Xeno had left, Bremmer asked, 'Do we need Dr North?'
'I suppose not.'
'I was promised an afternoon with her.'
'Take the whole day,' he said. 'As it turns out, she's of no value to us. But when you finish, leave the body where it can be found quickly. If nothing else those who claim the corpse will take us to Richland and Starr.'
Bremmer's cell phone rang. 'That will be the cell phone location,' he said as he reached for the phone. But then he stopped, his eyes locking on the mist just beyond the library windows, as if he could not believe his eyes.
'Oh, my God,' he whispered.
The cold rush of air against his face disoriented Malloy momentarily, but Kate's voice came over the headset. 'Just float and let us catch up with you.'
At the far end of the lake a few lights shining through the fog marked the city of Lucerne. To the east a pale light washed over the horizon. Otherwise the landscape was perfectly black - mountains, lake, and sky. Ethan came floating in beside Malloy, 'We're heading down there,' he said over the headset and pointed at a speck of light.
A freefall from ten thousand feet lasts a little over half-a-minute with normal speeds reaching one hundred twenty miles per hour. Despite the wild sensation that came with any jump, there was an odd feeling of being in control. To an extent that was true. It was possible to roll, perform somersaults, dive for speed, or slow down. All that really mattered was getting stabilized before deployment, and that was the only thing Malloy attempted to do from the moment he dropped out of the plane. When Kate slipped up on his right, her voice sounded in Malloy's headset, 'Deploy chutes on five, gentlemen.' Ethan and Kate arced away as she counted it out.
Instinctively Malloy reached for his ripcord and felt a moment of panic. No ripcord . . . and no reserve. Then he remembered and reached around and pulled the drogue chute out. The small pilot chute caught the air and began pulling the bridal out of the container. He heard his canopy unfurling and then felt the familiar impact of the material catching the air. He looked up, but could not see the slider descending down the ropes. Without the slider, the parachute would have deployed instantly,
decelerating his speed too quickly for the equipment to handle. With it the lines stayed untangled, and deceleration was more gradual. At full deployment Malloy took the toggles and tried to get a feel for his equipment. The wind whistled instead of screamed now, but beneath him the world seemed eerily quiet.
'You need to accelerate,' Kate said. 'Pull down on one of the toggles until you make a three-sixty. Not too tight! Nice and easy. That's it. Now just float and steer towards the light.'
As they closed in, Malloy could actually see the cliff rising up over the lake, the helicopter, the high walls surrounding the estate, the villa and the tower - all shrouded in a light mist. They were still above the light, still invisible from the ground, but once they dropped into the light the euphoric silence of the world below would end with a clatter of automatic weapons.
Kate pulled hard on the left toggle. The effect was twofold. First, it sent her into a three hundred and sixty degree turn far tighter than the one Malloy had executed several thousand feet above. Second, as she straightened out of the hook turn, her momentum shot her forward at close to thirty miles an hour. Called a turf-surf among aficionados, the manoeuvre was usually performed a bit closer to the ground and allowed the parachutist to skim a couple of feet above the grass for about thirty metres or so. The risk of the move was unintended impact with the ground, but Kate's danger was different. She was headed right for the second-storey windows of Corbeau's library. A foot too high or low and she collided with a stone wall. On target, she broke glass.
The lights were on. Corbeau sat behind his desk. Bremmer stood in front of him. Two uniformed guards stood at attention by the door.
As she came toward the window, Kate lifted her legs at a ninety degree angle to her body.
The rotor blades on the Bell 407 were whirling as Malloy drifted in closer than he would have liked. The pilot was fiddling with his control panel, not thinking about his blind spot. In fact, he probably didn't have a fear in the world. Just after Malloy hit the ground, while the canopy still fluttered, he cut free and ran toward the pilot's door. He jerked a lean, athletic man about his own age from the cockpit, tossed him to the ground, handcuffed his wrists and tied his ankles.
Ethan came in toward the roof a bit higher than he intended. He pulled down hard on both toggles. This tightened the canopy and caused a sudden drop. He hit the slate roof with the force of a six-foot fall.
He stripped his parachute away and freed one of the AKS-74s. As Kate swept into Corbeau's library, Ethan walked calmly to the edge of the roof. At the sound of Kate's Steyrs he took out the two guards at the front gate and then turned to catch the first security guard exiting the guardhouse on the run. Ethan hit him with two taps. The next guard was at the door before he realized it was an ambush. Ethan's first shot struck his neck, the second his forehead. He tossed a grenade through the window of the guardhouse and then ran along the ridge of the roof toward the other end of the house. Directly above the basement entrance at the side of the house, Ethan saw two men below him. Another was already out in the open and struggling to get his Kalashnikov ready to fire. All three men wore armor, but North wasn't with them. Malloy took the lead man with a single shot to the head. Ethan dropped a grenade on the other two and then finished them with headshots.
He turned back and saw two men run out to the second storey terrace, spinning and firing on full auto at Ethan. Malloy took one. Ethan dropped the other.
At impact with the windows, Kate used a cross-handed draw to produce two Steyr tactical machine pistols. The two guards had their weapons raised when she took them with her left hand. Bremmer, who was stilling reaching for his sidearm, Kate took down with her right.
When she had emptied both weapons Kate dropped them and pulled a fresh Steyr from one of the holsters on her thigh. She finished the guards and Jeffrey Bremmer with kill shots as she walked toward Corbeau, who had risen from his seat but had made no attempt to reach for a weapon.
'On the floor!' Kate told him. When he hesitated, she pulled her Navy Colt with her left hand and fired once into his leg. Corbeau went down hard, screaming incoherently. Kate kicked him in the face, breaking his nose.
Tossing the Navy Colt aside, she forced Corbeau's hands behind his back and locked his wrist's together with cuffs. She set the Steyr on the floor next to him and then tied his feet with a length of rope. 'Your package is in the library, Boy,' she announced.
'Grounds are quiet, Girl,' Ethan answered.
'Man?' Kate asked.
'No sign of North,' Malloy answered.
'We'll find her.'
Taking up the Steyr, Kate walked toward the narrow hallway leading out of the library. 'I am clearing the second floor, gentlemen.'
Leading with a concussion grenade Kate walked toward the main hall, ready for resistance, but the hallway before the stairs was empty. Kate went room by room through the second storey, tapping closets, wardrobes, and doors with small bursts of gunfire before opening them.
When she had assured herself no one was at her back, she reloaded and headed for the stairway. 'Second floor is secure, gentlemen,' she whispered.
'I'm coming in,' Malloy announced.
'Hold your position!' Kate said.
'Position is secure.'
Chernoff and Xeno were at the bottom of the stairs when they heard the sound of automatic weapons in Corbeau's library. Xeno started back, but Chernoff took his arm. It was too late to help Corbeau, and they both knew it. They heard more shots, from the roof this time, and then the sound of a grenade exploding close to the guardhouse.
Three men came running toward the stairs, but Xeno stopped them. 'Wait for them here,' he said, signaling them to either side of the stairway.
He signaled Chernoff toward the back of the house. At the windows overlooking the backyard she saw the pilot in the grass. Next to him was a man wearing headgear and a hood. The helicopter was empty, the blades still twirling. She heard shots and another grenade exploding on the opposite side of the house. She crossed the main room heading to the front window. 'One in the back!' she called.
At the front of the house the gate was still closed, but both guards were down. 'Both guards down at the gate!'
Slipping out the side of the building not far from to the basement entrance, Chernoff found three more down. She looked up at the roof as she pressed close to the side of the house. One man holding the pilot. Two or three on the roof. Another pair on the second storey . . .
Against three times that number! It didn't make sense. There had to be a second wave coming through the tunnel from the lake or hitting the front gate - or both.
Which meant it was time to go.
She hit the wall on the run, snagging the tiles at the top and swinging one leg over. Pulling her Glock free, she studied the woods beneath her but saw nothing besides the predawn shadows and wisps of fog.
From Chernoff's position atop the wall she could see the helicopter and the pilot through the leaves but not the other man. Had he seen her? Was he coming?
She waited, watching the backyard with her gun ready. When he broke from behind the heavy cover of the tree branches close to the wall he was running toward the house. Chernoff fired three shots at the man, two in the chest for takedown and one in the head when he hit the ground. Then she took aim on the pilot and put one bullet in his skull. In case they were hoping to use him to fly out.
She heard a single gunshot fired from close to the front gate but couldn't see who had fired it. It didn't matter. She slipped both legs over the wall and dropped into the brush. Like Brand and Kenyon, Helena Chernoff headed in the direction of the lake.
'Man is down!' Ethan shouted. Even as he said it, a bullet hit him in the back. The impact sent him sliding headfirst toward the edge of the roof. His first coherent thought was that the slug had not penetrated his armor, but he was going to die from a headfirst plunge from the roof. He snagged his ice pick from his belt and swung its point through the slate. The immediate effect was to throw his body t
o one side. Getting both hands on the pick, Ethan's legs arced round and ended up hanging over the roof's guttering.
Pulling himself back and standing up again, Ethan saw his Kalashnikov had fallen into the shrubbery. He brought his second weapon off his chest, snapped the folding metallic butt into place, and climbed the steep grade back to the top. The man who had shot him was already through the front gate and starting toward the house. The rover. Ethan hit him once with a headshot and then strapped his weapon back to his chest.
Extending a length of his rope, he looped one end around the chimney and ran for the edge of the roof. At the end of his rope, his body swung back toward the house, and broke through the library window. He landed only a few feet from the devil himself.
Kate rolled a concussion grenade down the main stairwell, then pulled the second Steyr. Wielding both guns she was almost down the stairs without incident when two men slipped into position from different hallways - one in front of her, the other at her back. Seeing the muzzle flash of the Kalashnikov in front of her, Kate leaped over the bannister, emptying both weapons as she dropped. She hit one man hard but the second pulled back too quickly. Tossing the empty machine pistols aside as she rolled, she freed her Kalashnikov and came to sitting position with her back to the wall.
'I think I could use some help,' she whispered.
Kenyon's shots had pounded against Xeno's vest, forcing him back to cover. For a moment he waited, his chest heaving, his breath fast and shallow. He could hear Kenyon calling for help and signaled the man next to him that there was still someone on the second floor. 'Wait for him,' he whispered as he sent the man to the other hallway.