He was dressed entirely in black; a hooded ski mask now covered all of his face except his mouth and eyes. He crept up fast and silently along the side of the road toward the gatehouse. Its bright security lights illuminated the immediate area.
It was almost too good to be true. The guard was standing outside the structure in the middle of the driveway, his back to the road, watching the fireworks. He was conversing with someone over a walkie-talkie, held in his left hand.
Hunter knew the security cameras would reveal his presence if anyone were monitoring them inside the house. He had to hope they were distracted. He vaulted the low brick wall to get inside the gates, then paused behind a tree next to the driveway, waiting for the next diverting burst of light from the area north of the house. As the flashing and echoing thunder cracked the air, he pounced across the pavement like a cat, covering the distance to the guard in under three seconds.
With his right hand he swung the blackjack hard against the guard’s skull. Simultaneously, he snared the guy’s walkie-talkie with his left, then wrapped that arm around the falling body. He dragged the stunned man back inside the gatehouse and dumped him on the floor, face down. Setting the walkie-talkie on the small counter, he grabbed plastic zip ties from his pocket and quickly bound his hands behind his back. There was a corded desk phone in there, too. He unplugged the modular ends of its handset cord and used it to tie the man’s feet together; then, using the wall cord, he hog-tied his feet up behind him to his bound hands, forcing his back to arch like a bow. The guard started to moan, so he yanked off the guy’s clip-on tie and jammed it into his mouth. He flipped him over onto his side, to take a little of the strain off his back and hands. Then he splashed his face with the contents of his water bottle.
“Slushai’ menye vnimatel’no!” Hunter spoke in Russian. “Listen to me! Nod if you hear and understand.”
The man whined behind the gag, but nodded. Tears of pain streamed from his eyes.
“I am going to do you the great favor of letting you live, my friend. You will be the only one who survives tonight. That’s because I want you to tell all your friends that this is what happens when you work for someone like Trammel, who tries to cheat the Solntsevskaya Bratva,” he growled, referring to the most powerful Russian crime syndicate. “Did you hear me? Did you understand what I said? Nod if you did.”
The helpless man nodded.
“You tell your friends. And you tell the American cops, too, they should stay away from the Bratva. Da?”
The guy nodded again.
Hunter left him like that. He shut off the interior light and floodlights around the booth, then took the walkie-talkie and slid the door shut.
He listened to the confused, anxious Russian chatter among the guards.
One down, five to go.
He trotted back to his van. From the back, he grabbed a coil of thin detonating cord and plastic igniter cord. He ran to the nearby utility company pole and wrapped the detonating cord around the electric feeder wire conduit attached to the pole. The conduit carried electricity underground, from the pole over to the house.
Thirty seconds later, there was a bright flash, and the electrical conduit had a sizable gap blown in its middle.
3
“But I have a backup generator!” Trammel shouted in the dark room. “Why is there no power?”
Lasher didn’t know, but he had a strong feeling Hunter had somehow knocked it offline.
They bent over the secretary’s desk, illuminated by the faint light from their cell phones, only to find it was a cordless phone system, knocked out of service along with the electric power.
“Any of you fellows have a flashlight I might borrow?” Hunter’s gruff baritone voice crackled over the walkie-talkie.
A series of flashes cut colored swatches across the walls and their faces, followed immediately by an explosive staccato that made Lasher flinch. Trammel’s eyes were barely visible in the faint light from his phone, and only because they were so wide with fear. But he could hear him breathing heavily.
So he’s gotten a walkie-talkie. Which probably means one of the men outside is down.
“What’s the matter, Lasher? Cat got your tongue? Or are you waiting for Trammel to tell you what to think?”
Don’t be baited.
“I’ve been looking forward to our meeting, Hunter. And thanks for the fireworks. I’m enjoying the show.”
“Savor it. It’ll be the last thing you enjoy.”
Suddenly Hunter launched into fluent Russian.
“What is he saying?” Trammel whispered.
“I don’t know,” he replied, puzzled. Then it dawned on him that whatever he was doing, it had to be spread confusion and demoralization among the Russian guards.
“Security team! Whatever he’s saying, don’t listen! He’s lying. Fall back from the grounds and get inside the house for close protection.”
“Give me that thing! I must talk to them!” Trammel demanded.
Seething, Lasher complied.
“Listen to me. This is Mr. Trammel. I shall give a one hundred thousand dollar bonus to the man who kills Dylan Hunter.”
“Just a goddamned minute!” Lasher exploded. “Hunter is mine. He was my assignment.”
“I accept offer, Mr. Trammel,” one of the guards said over the speaker.
“Me too.”
“Same here.”
“Mr. Trammel, sir, this is Yuri. That is good for me, too.”
Hunter laughed. “Finders, keepers. But remember—I warned you.”
“If you want your bonus, Mr. Lasher,” Trammel snarled, “then join them out there and earn it.”
“Don’t you see? That’s exactly what he wants! He wants us all outside, where he can pick us off. If you want close protection, the men should come in here.”
“I am not going to wait here while you argue with each other. I am going to protect myself.” He groped his way back into his darkened inner office.
Lasher couldn’t believe this was happening. He followed. He saw Trammel’s silhouette behind his desk, and he heard the familiar sound of a round being racked into a handgun.
“Don’t tell me you are going out there,” he said.
“Of course not. I am heading to my safe room in the basement, while you people deal with him. Come and notify me when it is done.”
4
Trying to remain invisible, the security team prowled the yard taking cover behind trees, walls, and large decorative planters. From the way they signaled each other, he could tell they had night-vision goggles.
But he was doing the same thing—using the cover provided by the grounds. The difference was that he had the advantage of infrared thermal imaging goggles. Their heat signatures registered whenever the slightest part of them was exposed, and they even left heat prints on the ground where they had stood.
Hunter had given them a chance to flee. Over the walkie-talkie, in Russian, he spun them the same yarn about the Russian syndicate he’d given the guy in the gatehouse. However, the prospect of a big payday proved to be irresistible to them.
Now it would prove to be costly to them.
He was lying prone behind a flower bed not far from the greenhouse. Thirty yards ahead, he could make out the flickering heat signature of a figure hiding behind a tall shrub. The distance was a reasonable challenge, and the bush might deflect the round, but it was time to cut down the odds. He aimed carefully, a little high, watched his breathing, and squeezed off a round.
Then watched the flickering through the branches melt into a bright puddle on the ground.
Through the suppressor, the nine millimeter gunshot sounded not much louder than a set of car keys dropped onto a floor.
Two down.
Seeing no heat signatures nearby, he rolled away, rose into a crouching dash and stopped behind a human-sized garden statue. This position afforded a different vantage point—and another target. A covered gas grill sat on a patio area near the house. The bloc
ky shape provided good cover, except that someone’s feet were visible as bright blobs beneath the cover. He decided to circle behind the small greenhouse and approach through some trees, from the target’s side.
Again spotting no other bright glowing heat sources, he sprinted from the statue to the side of the greenhouse. No response. Good. He moved along the glass wall, to the rear corner. Paused. Poked his head around the back . . .
. . . and was confronted by a dazzling blob, right in front of him.
The guard fired—just as Hunter jerked his head back, dropped to one knee, then rolled onto his side. Continuing to fire, the guard came whipping around the corner, expecting to find Hunter standing there against the glass wall. But before the guy could react, Hunter fired four times into his face and upper body. The man crumpled to the ground right beside him, his left arm landing across Hunter’s legs.
Hunter had forgotten, nearly fatally, that glass usually blocks infrared images. The guy had probably seen him with night-vision goggles right through the windows, while to Hunter the guard was invisible.
Now it was three down, but his position was blown. Going forward behind glass walls was a non-starter. He’d have to retreat toward the rear of the yard.
He kicked away the shooter’s arm, rolled to his right and then to his feet. Within a few yards he heard gunshots and the whiz of bullets flying past. He veered to the left, then almost immediately back to the right, trying to keep an erratic, unpredictable course. He heard yelling behind him, the shooter summoning others, as he approached the pond. The shots seemed less accurate now—the combination of distance, his movement, and perhaps the shooter in motion, too, making a hit a matter of blind luck. He found himself nearing the willow tree where Trammel had fed his fish, so he zig-zagged again, then darted back toward the tree.
A final shot nearly clipped his shoe as he spun around the tree. Panting, he looked back and saw his pursuer running left, toward a tree of his own. Hunter crouched, braced himself against the tree, and trained the Sig’s sights at a spot two feet from that tree trunk, trying to time his shot for the guy’s arrival. He fired and the shooter ran right into the bullet, spinning and falling right past the tree trunk into a motionless heap.
Four down.
Instantly a chunk of the willow exploded above his head, followed by a much louder report.
Somebody had a rifle—and that changed everything.
5
Glock in hand, Lasher stumbled his way through the dark hallways to the sweeping staircase at the front of the house, then clung to the railing as he clambered down, trying hard not to miss a step. He made it to the bottom then turned and ran straight back through the foyer, then the corridor into the drawing room, then on into the solarium.
Silhouetted against the moonlit sky on the balcony outside the windows, a man stood with a rifle at his shoulder, firing repeatedly, methodically, out into the yard. Lasher stopped running and moved forward cautiously. To his left, fireworks lit the tall, curving windows like colored strobe lights, and the thunder of the blasts reverberated around the semicircular room. He moved to the French doors and, very quietly, out onto the balcony.
He saw that the man with the AK-47 was one of the pair he’d confronted when he first visited Trammel here—the dark-haired guy who had searched him.
“Vitaly, do you have him?”
Startled, the guy flicked a glance toward him, then turned back to his target, chuckling.
“Oh, I have him, all right. Behind that tree.” He fired again. There were colored decorative lights out there, around the circumference of the pond, and Lasher saw the shot chip splinters off the willow tree.
“Where are the others?”
Vitaly grimaced. “Bastard down there got them. When I go get AK from room, I come back and see Arkady go down, over there. Then I see others down. But he’s dead meat now. He can’t run from tree because I nail him.” He flicked another grin. “Looks like I get hundred thousand tonight—huh?”
“Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It’s an American expression—Boris.”
Lasher saw the scowl, and waited for Vitaly’s head to turn his way. He wanted to see him grinning as he did it.
He watched the Russian’s eyes widen with the alarm that was just about to turn into terror when he fired into his gut. Vitaly’s knees buckled, but he kept his feet and then screamed. He was swinging the AK around when Lasher shot him again, a little higher. The rifle muzzle sank in arms grown slack, and Vitaly’s mouth fell open and his head turned upward, toward the night sky.
Lasher stepped forward and shot him in his open mouth. He half-heard the AK clatter to the balcony as the fireworks boomed and flashed behind him and he fired again and again into the man’s falling body . . .
Hunter had squeezed himself in tightly behind the tree trunk. He couldn’t move. The grounds around the tree were wide open. He could try to dive into the pond, almost twenty feet away. But even if he made it, the guy would take him out the minute he came up for air. The shooter could just sit there with the rifle and wait him out. Meanwhile, his return fire with the pistol could never reach that balcony accurately. He’d merely empty his weapon, pointlessly.
He had gambled by not bringing his own rifle—and apparently lost.
Another shot chipped splinters and sawdust less than a foot away.
The thought flashed through his mind that he might never get either Lasher or Trammel . . . and then he thought of Annie and what he had told her about coming back . . . and then another shot rang out—but much softer . . . and then he heard a blood-curdling scream, and yet another shot . . . then another . . . another . . .
He dared a fast look around the tree—to see two men on the balcony, one shooting the other, who was tumbling backward, down the stairs, then falling off them and into the yard.
Somewhere, something automatic in him registered and said: Five down.
The man stood looking at the fallen body, then turned to him and called out.
“So now it’s just you and me, Hunter. Winner takes all.”
Then he laughed.
6
Trammel stumbled forward in the near-darkness, holding his .45 caliber Sig-Sauer. He called out for Julia, wondering why he had not seen her in hours, wondering if, hearing the frightening racket, she had hidden herself in her bedroom. He paused in the hallway going back to their bedrooms and yelled several times, but got no answer.
Well, it was too volatile and dangerous now to go searching for her in the dark. After all, she could be anywhere. The flashing of the fireworks helped a little as he felt his way down the staircase. Then, to reach the basement, he had to grope his way down the Stygian blackness of the interior stairwell, next to the useless elevator.
Opening the door there, he was surprised to see a square of light ahead in the darkness. Then he realized what it was—and also realized that the clever girl had beaten him here. He hurried across the floor toward that square, a bright beacon promising safety in the madness. They would wait it out together in here, then forever leave behind the hell-hole that was the United States of America.
He reached the three-foot-square window and looked inside. There she was, slumped in one of the chairs, head down, looking lost.
He tried the door. Locked, of course. He moved back to the window.
“Julia!” he shouted.
Her head snapped up. But her wide-eyed expression was one of fear.
“Julia, dear! Let me in. Quickly. Nothing to fear—I am alone.”
But she just stared at him, looking as if her breathing had quickened. Then she gave her head a slight shake and rose to her feet. She narrowed her eyes and raised her chin, as if gathering herself for something.
“No!” she shouted, suddenly looking defiant.
He stood there, unable to believe it.
“What . . . what are you saying? Let me in!”
She took a step fo
rward, her eyes glittering, her head slowly shaking back and forth.
“No, I will not!”
For several seconds he could not speak. Then, bewildered, he asked:
“But why?”
She took two more steps, right up to the glass. Their faces were only a foot apart.
“Because you are a fraud—Avis Tremills!”
It was as if he had been smashed by a fist. He actually wobbled and recoiled a step back, staring at her, unable to believe it.
“You are a total fraud. You lied to me for twenty years. You lied to everyone. Your entire life is one goddamned lie. You have betrayed me. You have betrayed friends. You have betrayed your country—the country that gave you everything. And I know it all. I know everything about you. I know about your communist parents. I know about your secret life as a spy for Russia. I know about Emmalee Conn, and that she was sleeping with you, and I also know what you did to her. You are a fraud, Avery—and a traitor, and goddamn you, a murderer!”
This could not be happening.
“How . . .” he gasped, realizing it was the wrong word.
“How? That day when you ran out of the apartment. Remember? You accidentally left your study door open. I knew for a long time you were hiding something, and I knew you were having an affair. So I went in to see if I could learn the truth. And I did. Did I ever! A truth about my own husband, worse than anything I could have imagined.”
“No,” he said hopelessly. “You have gotten it all wrong! Julia, we must talk about this. We—”
“There is no ‘we’ and nothing to talk about. Tonight, Avery, you face reality. Tonight it all comes crashing down on you. Tonight you begin to pay for all the evil you have done. And the worst thing about you is that you did it all of it in the name of your mother and father!”
“Shut up!” he shouted, banging his fist on the glass.
“Can’t face it, can you? The fact is, your traitor parents turned you into a twisted mess.”
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