“Hold on” his walkie-talkie squawked. “We’ll be there in a minute”
Nemchin suddenly felt’a presence above him, and he turned. Baranov had come back to the head of the stairs. in the very dim light Nemchin thought that the man’s face looked like a death’s head.
“Comrade ” he started to say when Baranov raised his pistol and fired one shot, a sudden starburst exploding inside of his head.
“Believe in me” Baranov whispered, but Nemchin was dead.
McGarvey heard the gunshot and he hugged the ground, thinking for just a moment that he’d been spotted and they were shooting at him.
But when a second shot didn’t come, he rose up and peered into the darkness. At first there was nothing to be seen except the back and east side of the house, the driveway to the highway, and the path down to the lake. Something terrible had happened in the house. All he could think of was that Lorraine was down there with Baranov. He jumped up and raced the last few yards to the back corner of the big house, where he flattened himself against the rough brick wall. He switched his pistol’s safety to the off position, cocked the hammer, dropped down below the level of the stone balcony, and started in a dead run toward the front of the house. Someone was coming up from the lake. He heard them at the same moment he came out around the balcony. There were two of them.
McGarvey raised his pistol and fired three shots in rapid succession, getting the impression he had hit at least one of them. Then he ducked back behind the stonework just as someone opened fire with an AK74 on full automatic, chips of stone and mortar dust flying everywhere. As soon as the firing stopped, McGarvey extended his gun arm around the corner and fired three more shots. A man cried out on the path across the driveway, and then the night fell silent again. leaning against the wall, McGarvey quickly ejected the nearly spent clip of ammunition from his pistol and rammed the new one home. Counting to three, he leapt out away from the balcony, swinging his gun left to right as he dodged and zigzagged his way across the driveway. Both of them were dead. He could see their bodies from where he had reached the protection of the edge of the woods. Both of them were dressed in dark clothing, and both had been armed with assault rifles One of them, his face a mass of blood, lay on his back at the end of the path. The other one had taken at least two hits in his chest, and he too lay on his back, tangled in the low underbrush. There would be others. These two had come up from the lake, where they had been waiting for him to come across. There would be someone coming up from the driveway at any moment. And at least Baranov was in the house. But what was the first shot? He couldn’t understand.
The driveway remained empty. McGarvey crouched in the darkness watching so intently for someone to come up from the highway that he nearly missed the third Russian coming from the lake. He heard a slight noise behind him and to his left, as if someone had stepped on a twig and then stopped in their tracks.
It saved his life. He looked over his shoulder, spotted the dull ruby glint of a night-spotting scope illuminating him, and rolled left, dropping to the ground. The Russian opened fire with his assault rifle, the rounds slamming into the tree just inches behind McGarvey, and kicking up the dirt as he rolled over and over again. He looked up at the last possible second as the Russian raced across the path swinging the rifle up again into firing position, and he snapped off two shots, the first going wide, the second catching the man in the chest just below his sternum, driving him backward, the weapon clattering to the ground. Where were the others? McGarvey remained for just an instant where he lay on the ground, listening for the sound of others coming.
But once again the night had fallen silent. He was in an exposed position here, not only from someone in the house, but from anyone coming up the driveway. He leapt to his feet and raced back across the clearing to the front of the house, where he held up at the foot of the four steps which rose to the front veranda. Why wasn’t someone else coming? Why hadn’t Baranov or his people opened fire from the house?
What was the sonofabitch waiting for? McGarvey scrambled up the steps where he flattened himself against the wall beside the open door.
Inside, the stairhall was in darkness, but he had enough of his night vision to see the figure of a man lying at the foot of the stairs, a walkie-talkie lying beside his body. The man was dead. It was obvious from the angle at which his head was bent, and the way his left leg had folded up beneath him.
He had been killed by the single shot McGarvey had heard. Who the hell was he, and who had shot him? This was making no Sense.
Girding himself, McGarvey rolled through the doorway, feinted left, and then raced directly across the hall to the side of the staircase. Still nothing moved. Still there were no sounds. Still no one opened fire.
Perhaps, he thought, Baranov had already gone. Perhaps these were only the staff.
He looked up the stairs, trying to penetrate the deeper darkness in the corridor above. Baranov was here. McGarvey could feel his presence in the house, like some dark, forbidding, evil spirit. He was here all right, waiting. Moving soundlessly on the balls of his feet, McGarvey started up the stairs, taking them one at a time, testing each step before he put his full weight on it, his every sense searching out ahead of him for the presence of the man. At the top he stopped again. A door was open at the end of the corridor. But except for the rectangle of dim light filtering out he could see nothing. He held his breath to listen.
There was no sound … But then he heard a single pistol shot somewhere outside in the distance. He half turned; a fusillade of gunfire came from a long way off, perhaps down the driveway somewhere. Someone else was coming here. Suddenly there was no time” Baranov” he shouted, rushing down the corridor toward the open door. “You sonofabitch! He pulled up short just at the doorway and laid his head back against the wall. The firing outside had stopped. The silence was ominous.
“Baranov” he shouted again, and he rolled left through the doorway, nearly firing on instinct alone at the man standing across the large room. “Hello, Kirk” Baranov said gently. He was aiming his pistol at Lorraine. McGarvey took it all in within a split second: the gun in Baranov’s meaty paw, the cords binding Lorraine’s wrists and ankles, the C4 taped to her thighs. She was blinking her eyes but she wasn’t moving.
“I wanted the time to talk to you” Baranov said. “But it’s no longer possible” There was something wrong with him, in the way he held himself, in the almost furtive look in his eyes.
“You heard the gunfire. Someone else is coming for you” McGarvey said, finally finding his voice. Just another halfounce of pressure on the trigger of his pistol and the man would be dead, “So it would seem. And now the advantage is once again yours. I’ll trade you Doctor Abbott’s life for mine”
“No” McGarvey said. Now that he had come to this point his rage was gone, leaving in its stead a deep aching weariness. He looked into Lorraine’s eyes. He had tried to warn her. God, why wouldn’t they listen? “You won’t throw her life away merely to kill me. We will meet on another day”
“We’ll just wait here for a little while”
“For those others to come”
Baranov asked, nodding toward the door. “Do you know that they are policemen here to arrest me”
“Good”
“I won’t allow that to happen, McGarvey. Not now. Not yet”
“You don’t have any choice”
“I’ll shoot her”