The four men watched the agent exit to the front.
“Interesting,” Coventry said as he turned. He saw Jones staring at Art. “What?”
“Jefferson?”
Art didn’t hear the director’s one-word inquiry. His mind was racing through the possibilities that this new piece of a very interesting puzzle might present. Blame the monkeys… Have to get them to do it for you… But why the call? A setup? “A setup.”
“A setup what?” Bud asked.
Art looked left toward the rear of the house, then to the windows on his right. Whiteness swept across the curtains covering them. Headlights. Then a brighter flash, and a sound familiar from so long ago. Familiar and frightful. “GET DOWN!”
The front door blew in just as Art’s warning was heeded.
THIRTY ONE
Strike
The side door of the minivan was already fully open when Darian slowed the vehicle a hundred feet shy of 695 Hillsborough. Mustafa took aim through the opening with the M79 as he did, drawing a bead on the front door of the secretary’s house. He breathed, noted one target already near the door, another coming out through it, and squeezed the trigger. The six-ounce 40mm grenade leapt from the fat barrel with a metallic pop and arced gently toward its aim point, impacting low on the small stone porch a hair more than a half-second after firing.
Hundreds of shrapnel fragments flew outward from the explosion, a good deal of it tearing into the two Secret Service agents standing just feet from the point of impact. Both were killed instantly, and the remaining blast and fragmentation did the rest of its significant damage on the wooden front door of the secretary’s house. The seven-foot-high slab of oak was split in the middle and pushed into the foyer by the force of the blast.
Darian accelerated to the house and stopped in front. He hopped out, weapon in hand, Moises joining him in a race to the smoking door. Mustafa had already reloaded the M79 and stayed with the car. He caught sight of a form coming up the driveway of the house and fired straight at it. It disappeared in a flash and a scream.
Jesus! Art lifted his head in time to hear a second explosion and immediately drew his weapon. He was on his knees and looking at the shattered front door as shadows fell across the opening.
“Get them back!” Art yelled to Jones, who also had his weapon out.
The director pulled the secretary up and toward the kitchen. Bud followed, looking back at Jefferson just as he began to fire toward the front door.
“SHIT!” Darian yelled, two shots hitting the doorjamb to his right. He stuck the Ingram through the opening and sprayed fire to the left. Moises saw movement toward the rear of the interior and fired half a magazine that way.
Art saw the stubby weapon just before it fired. He rolled left and retreated in the same direction as the others had. He found them in the kitchen, the director covering the arched opening to the foyer.
“Everyone all right?” Art asked.
“Yeah,” Jones reported. “They’ve got firepower.”
“Where are the Secret Service guys?” Coventry asked. There was no response. He knew what that meant.
Art lifted his head a bit and looked over the island to the far side of the kitchen. There was a door, shades on it drawn. The two Service agents guarding the rear were supposed to be out there, but Art hadn’t heard any fire from them. Had the second explosion taken them out? He then looked behind, checking the abandoned study. Empty. And… His eyes saw the steps rising from an alcove off the kitchen. “Does that go upstairs?”
Coventry nodded.
Darian and Moises stepped back from the front door together. The NALF leader had communicated his wish to Mustafa with a clear hand signal. As they hunched behind large cement planters to either side of the porch a third grenade was fired. It penetrated to the rear of the house before exploding.
The NALF entry team went in behind it.
The detonation of the small but powerful fragmentation grenade threw all four men in the kitchen to the floor. Despite the protection of the counter, shrapnel ripped through the room. One shard of metal tore a gouge across Bud DiContino’s forehead.
“Damn!”
Coventry pulled the NSA farther back in the kitchen, finding more shelter back behind the island and nearer the sink.
“This is not good,” Art said to the director.
“We need cavalry.”
As Jones said that the kitchen was peppered by automatic fire from two weapons.
Darian reloaded, as did Moises, and advanced along the left wall of the foyer. He stopped, went to his tiptoes, and fell back to his young comrade.
“Back there,” Darian whispered, pointing toward the kitchen. Moises peeked around him briefly. “I’ll move there, you cover my rear. That room back there. That’s where the shots came from.”
“Got it.” Moises backed up, taking a position at the base of the stairs, his eyes sweeping left and right as his leader inched deeper into the house.
Jones held up two fingers in a V. Two guns.
Art nodded, looking behind once again. In the study he saw a shadow fall from the foyer. He looked back to the director and mouthed behind us.
It was obvious they had to do something. They were outgunned — at least two automatics and someone lobbing grenades at them — and outmaneuvered. Art looked to the small staircase again. Or were they?
You cover here, Art mouthed to the director. He pointed up, then down, then to the front of the house. Jones nodded and slid a bit to the left. When he looked behind Art was already heading fast up the stairs.
Mustafa glanced at his watch. A minute and a half already. It seemed more like an hour. He had already discarded the M79 in favor of his Ingram, suppressor off like the others, and was hunched down between a government sedan at curbside and their minivan. Windows all along the street had lit up, and he was beginning to hear sirens in the distance. Things were going to have to happen fast, or else it would get—
Movement to the right!
He rose up, looking over the roof of the car, catching only a glimpse of a shadow, but that was enough. The Ingram bucked as he aimed and tapped the trigger. Sparks flashed off the sidewalk as wild rounds hit the cement. Auto glass shattered. Metal was punched. Orange flashes…
The lone surviving Secret Service agent fired from over the rear deck of one of the Crown Victorias, taking one of the attackers by surprise. Six rounds from his Sig Sauer pistol found their mark, felling Mustafa Ali. He fell into the open side of the minivan, then to the ground. The agent, sporting some nasty but superficial shrapnel wounds to his head and shoulders, backed away to the other Service Ford and got immediately on the radio. He passed out after putting out an “agent needs help” call.
Art was up the stairs to the second floor and moving down the hallway he hoped led to the main staircase as fire from outside made him pause. When it died he continued, stopping as the upstairs landing opened before him. He peered carefully down, trying to keep his cover, and saw Moises Griggs standing at the bottom of the staircase.
Dear God, don’t make me have to kill him.
Director Jones held the Smith & Wesson 1076 two-handed, wondering if the lessons he’d learned so long before as a Bureau street agent would help keep the bureaucrat he’d become alive. One thing was certain: his ears were still good. They were easily picking up a clearly identifiable sound: shoes on broken glass. And it was getting closer. Much closer. Just on the other side of the counter.