"Not worth it. Figure they'll soften us up from a distance, then send the sec men in under cover of the grens. Our best chance is to hit them, mebbe once, when they're inside. Bottom of the stairs. Fire the place, like Jak said."
Krysty brushed dust from her hair. "That door to the gateway is real well hidden, lover. How about we try and chill some of the first wave in? Then fire the stairs and pull back into the attic. Close the door."
"They'll move fucking slow thinking bullet from anywhere." Jak grinned hugely at the prospect of more of a firefight.
"Could work," the Armorer mused.
"Not sure about burning the stairs. Better leave them a way up and then chill the shit out of them when they try to use it," Ryan suggested.
"More grens," Jak warned.
"By the hammer and the anvil!"
Gregori Zimyanin had lived long enough under the Russia ruled by the Party to be aware that not everything worked properly. But one and a half hits out of six grens was devastatingly poor, even by those low standards.
He grabbed again for the talkie at his side and pressed the button to transmit his orders to the rest of the command.
"Gren launchers! Three more rounds each. Repeat! Three more rounds each."
"What target, Comrade Major-Commissar? Repeat. What?.."
Zimyanin interrupted the speaker, jabbing his finger angrily on the button. "Just attempt to hit the rad-rotted house!"
The second volley was marginally more successful than the first.
Only two grenades either failed to detonate or misfired. Three struck the front of the mansion, exploding with a dull rumble, while the fourth soared skyward in a sweeping rainbow trajectory and landed just behind the dacha.
"They going to wait out there and bring the walls down around our ears?" J.B. asked. "From the noise, they're firing low-ex at us. Take them all morning to shake somewhere as solid as this."
"Still take us all out with a fluke shot," Ryan reminded him.
"Could circle and hit 'em behind," suggested Jak, still eager for action.
"No. Triple-no! Best we got's here. Let them come at us. We'll move out to the back room. Should be safest there."
Ryan led the way, making sure that they could still keep an eye on the stairs. The main door was closed and the hall was in darkness. Anyone who came in that way would let in a flood of sunlight. They all crouched and waited.
Moving with extreme caution, aware of the range of the long guns the Americans had, Zimyanin eased himself around the side of the wag. He surveyed the front of the dacha with the glasses, raking the magnifying lenses from left to right.
He nodded to himself. "The structural alterations are virtually completed," he said, smiling in a self-congratulatory way at his memory for the English phrases. The far left of the building was devastated, with the corner of the roof tilting drunkenly over the tumbled wreckage.
"No more grens," he ordered into the talkie. "But stay ready in case I need backup. All armawags engage low gear. Prepare to move."
His throat was so filled with excitement that he could scarcely breathe. It had been days, and then hours. Now it could only be minutes.
"Coming," Krysty announced.
Moments later they all heard the distant rumble of the wags' engines throbbing into life, coming closer through the bright morning.
Ryan shook his head. "This could be hard. They got enough numbers they can rush the stairs. We get caught in a tight place, we'll never all make it up into the attic and through that door."
The woman smiled. "You want to play hero again, don't you, lover?"
He laid his hand gently on her shoulder, smiling into her eyes. "Talk about this later. For now, I'll stay near the stairs. Everyone else down into the basement. Check Rick's ready for... for whatever it is he's going to do. And get the mat-trans on standby. When I come down, there won't be a whole lot of time left. Go to it."
Krysty kissed him lightly on the cheek then led the others across the hallway toward the attic. Ryan checked that his blaster was on semiautomatic and hunkered down to wait for the Russians.
The exhausts jetted great clouds of choking blue-gray smoke into the sunlight, which drifted across the windshield of Zimyanin's vehicle. He eased a few yards to his left, trying to keep clear and find a position where he could see the house, now less than two hundred yards away from the lead vehicle.
He was touched with worry because there had been no further attempt at defensive firing from the dacha. Suppose they'd escaped, or been killed by one of the grens? The place was ringed tighter than a goose's ass and the grens had all been low-ex. No, they were in there. Waiting.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
"Now I lay me down to sleep and pray the Lord my soul to keep. And if... if I die before I wake... I pray... pray..." Rick shook his head in desperation. "Can't recall what... Yes. Pray the Lord my soul to take. That's it. It's done."
Apart from Ryan Cawdor, watching the top of the stairs in the main part of the dacha, everyone else was down in the gateway control room, circling Rick Ginsberg. The freezie lay on his back, furs across his legs, body wrapped in the poor remains of the Stars and Stripes. The pyrotab rested between his trembling hands, and the two large cans of gasoline were at his side.
Doc Tanner had gone straight to the lock to check that the handle worked. He pumped it up and down, doing everything but close the door to the actual chamber, which would trigger the whole device, assuming it still did function.
"You have done well, Richard," he praised in his deep, sonorous voice. "Exceedingly well, if I may make so bold."
"Thanks, Doc. Just don't test it too hard. If it works the once, that's all it..." A coughing fit prevented him from finishing the sentence.
Zorro kept close to the heels of Doc's worn and cracked knee boots, his belly flat to the floor, head low as though it knew that things were tough and getting tougher.
Ryan Cawdor and his H&K G-12 assault rifle, with its fifty-round mag of special 4.7 mm bullets, waited together for the final assault of the Russian sec men.
It was still cold inside the big house, despite the hard spring sun outside. Ryan sat on the landing, ready to bolt for the steps to the attic. He waited and listened, trying to detect the change in the noise of the engines that would indicate the vehicles were about to stop. Then there would be the clatter of opening doors, the thud of boots on the veranda and the splintering of wood as the door was smashed in.
If Ryan fired the blaster on full-automatic the mag would last about one and a half seconds. Great for wiping out a room packed with enemies. Not so great for trying to deter a mass of men charging a staircase. Triple-burst would do that job more effectively.
The engines slowed and the wag doors banged open. Ryan put his finger on the trigger and took several deep, slow breaths, hoping that Gregori Zimyanin would be the first Russian to appear in the center of his sights.
Zimyanin was out the door of the autowag and flat against the front wall of the dacha ahead of any of the slower, clumsier sec men. He beckoned them urgently to attack the main entrance and smash it in.
As they poured through the door, Zimyanin was at their heels, bunking at the sudden darkness. But there was enough illumination coming through shattered windows and skewed shutters for him to immediately see the room at the rear of the building, with its jumble of wrecked corpses.
It took a handful of seconds to establish that the first floor had been abandoned by the Americans.
"Up the stairs!" Zimyanin roared, unaware that his lips had peeled back off his teeth in a hideous grin of blood rage.
Ryan had positioned himself with great care, so that he was in almost total darkness, within two short paces of the steps to the ruined floor above. He had a perfect eye-line down the wide corridor to the top of the staircase.