No shots. As I huddled behind the SUV and listened to the fire in the house snap, crackle, and pop, the thought occurred to me that one of those dudes might have stayed behind just for the fun of icing me point-blank as I went up the porch stairs.
If so, he was behind the door.
I emptied the magazine into the door, put in a fresh magazine, then put a burst into each window.
Feeling a tad bit better, I ran up the stairs and into the house, ready to shoot the first thing that moved.
They had used thermal grenades. The heat and smoke were intense. Yet the fire looked worse than it was. Crouching, I could see that the main room was covered with paper, heaping piles of it. And three bodies.
Two more bodies in the kitchen.
The back door was standing open.
I threw caution to the winds and hurried through the building, looking for anyone still alive. And sorta hoping I’d meet a bad guy, so I could have the fun of shooting him with the MP-5.
I did find someone, hiding in an upstairs closet.
She screamed as I jerked her out of there, screamed and went for my eyes with her fingernails.
I pushed her roughly, and she fell to the floor. “Goddamn, lady, get a grip. I’m one of the good guys.” I must have shouted it, because I was pretty pumped.
She stared at the submachine gun with eyes as big as saucers as the smoke roiled through the room. Her eyes rose to my face. I must have looked like something from the Black Lagoon standing there with that weapon in my hand, soaked to the skin, and covered with dirt and leaves.
“Who are you?” she whispered, staring at the weapon, her eyes wide.
“Let’s get the hell outta here, lady, and do the introductions some other time.” I jerked her off the floor and pushed her toward the door.
“The suitcase,” she shrieked, pointing back toward the closet.
“We ain’t got time for your fuckin’ clothes. The goddamn house is burning—”
“That’s what they came for! That’s what they wanted!”
I jerked the suitcase from the closet — it must have weighed fifty pounds — and pushed it at her.
“Get down the stairs and out of the house, right now, while I check to see if anyone else is alive up here.”
She disappeared into the smoke dragging the suitcase — it was just a bit too heavy to carry.
I ran from room to room, looking in closets and under beds, coughing and shouting. I didn’t find anyone; not that I searched everywhere, but I just ran out of time. The smoke was bad and getting worse. I could feel the heat in the floor and walls. I charged for the stairs hoping that I hadn’t waited too long. The staircase was like a chimney, funneling smoke and heat to the second and third floors. I held my breath and went down blind.
At the bottom of the stairs I tripped on something and went sprawling. She had collapsed coming down the stairs and lay in a heap beside the suitcase.
The fire was raging by then and the heat was unbelievable, but there was a little clear area near the floor, maybe two feet high. I crawled over to her, grabbed her by the arm, and began pulling. I couldn’t manage both girl and gun, so I abandoned the weapon.
When we reached the porch I half carried, half dragged her down the steps into the yard.
Then I lost my footing and dropped her. I went to my knees, gagging and retching and trying desperately to get some air. I stayed down until my head cleared somewhat. She was breathing shallowly. I put her on the grass, turned her over on her chest, and began pushing and pulling on her arms. After about thirty seconds of that she gagged, then gasped, “The suitcase! For Christ’s sake, get the suitcase!”
Okay, she was going to make it.
Figuring she knew more than I did, I went spider-walking back into the house for the damned suitcase and the MP-5. I wanted the gun more than the suitcase. The guys who iced these people and set the house afire might come back; if they did, I wanted that shooter. In our uncertain age, you must do unto others before they do it unto you.
Going back into that burning building was one of the dumber things I have done since I got out of diapers and stopped eating mud. The heat and smoke were damn near intolerable.
Miracle of miracles, I found the gun and suitcase and reversed course for the door. Got lost and started getting dizzy again from the smoke, then found the door just in time. I tossed the case into the yard and fell beside it on the grass.
While I gagged and coughed, she loaded the suitcase into the SUV.
Finally I got my breathing under control. I struggled to my feet and almost fell on my face. After thirty more seconds of hands on knees, I stood. She was bent over the dead man in the ghillie suit. She had pulled off his headpiece and had it in her hand.
“You know him?” I managed.
“No,” she said, and tossed his head rag on the ground. She turned back toward me.
“Name’s Carmellini, lady. Who the hell are you?”
“Kelly.” She said her last name, but I didn’t catch it. She was about medium height, had short dark hair and large brown eyes, and was in her late twenties, maybe a few years older. She might even have been pretty; it was hard to tell. Her face and clothes were covered with soot and grime. Behind us the fire was roaring. The heat was getting worse, and I found myself moving away from it. She did, too. Although she glanced at the fire from time to time, most of the time she kept her eyes on me.
“Well, Kel, this is how it is. Those assholes shot everyone they could find and set the goddamn house on fire. The worst of it is that they may come back. I suggest that we borrow this fine vehicle and get the hell outta here.”
I managed to stagger over to the SUV and look in. The key was still in the ignition. I picked up the MP-5 and put it in the rear seat, then got behind the wheel. Kelly got into the passenger seat.
We were sitting ducks if the killers elected to stay around to ambush us, but I was praying they hadn’t. Still, Fred’s pistol felt good in my lap. As the wipers smeared the water on the windshield, I got the SUV going and turned it around.
The guy in the ghillie suit looked like a small brush pile in the lawn.
I put the transmission in park, leaped out, and ran over to him. I turned his head and took a good look. Nope. Never saw him before. And he had an MP-5 lying beside him. I had forgotten about it. Hell, I could have left the other one in the house and just taken his.
His weapon sported a double banana clip in it that might come in handy later, so I jerked it out. I left the weapon.
“Where did you get your submachine gun?” she asked, her eyes on my face.
“The guy carrying it left it to me in his will.”
She glanced back at the house, then at the suitcase on the rear seat.
As we were going down the drive, I asked Kelly, “What happened back there?”
“They came this morning. I was upstairs, heard the shooting, went to the top of the stairs. There’s a place where you can look over the balcony into the main room downstairs, and I saw they had shot Mikhail. That’s when I grabbed the suitcase in his room and hid.”
“Who is Mikhail? What’s in the suitcase?”
She took a deep breath before she answered. “Mikhail Goncharov was the chief archivist for SVR, the successor to the KGB. He was like… their librarian, in charge of the central records depository. He defected last week. We had just started to debrief him. He spent the last twenty years making notes from the case files of the Soviet foreign intelligence service, and then Russia’s after the breakup. He had seven suitcases full of notes that he brought with him when we extracted him.”
She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “That’s the last one.”
With the house on fire, the man hiding in the washing machine in the basement decided he could wait no longer. He could smell the smoke, hear the roar of the fire, and knew if he waited much longer, he would never get out of the building.