The stack leader felt the pressure wave of the igniting gasoline before he smelled it. The room went up in an instant, flames spreading across the floors and walls in every direction. He saw lines of flame travel out of the room into the kitchen, the hallway, the library, faster than he could move.
A large glass jar, sealed with a lid and filled with a colored gelatin, sat in the middle of the room, the flames not quite touching it.
“Fall back!” he ordered. “All teams! Evacuate the building now!”
His stack turned and filed out as fast as they could move. The team leader still on the porch jumped the railing and ran with them across the lawn toward Sokolov’s position.
Inside the front room, the glass jar heated enough to ignite the napalm inside. The makeshift bomb exploded, glass and burning jellied gasoline spreading out to fill the room in a fraction of a second. Identical explosives went off in the kitchen and by the rear and side doors.
The gas trails Kyra had laid down led the open flames to every other room in the house, where the napalm she’d spread across the walls and floors lit off, each starting a small inferno. On the second floor, the gas fumes that had collected since her departure ignited, sending a mild fireball through the upper floor, igniting the napalm puddles and everything else flammable they touched.
With less than a minute, the funeral pyre for Moscow Station was burning against the dusk, smoke rising high enough to be seen from the Kremlin.
A mile away, Kyra lay prone in a copse on a small knoll, looking at the abandoned estate through her own field glasses. The building was nothing more than a house-shaped flame with men in tactical gear standing at a safe distance, helpless to do anything but watch the immolation.
One man was dressed in civilian clothes, a business suit and overcoat, no hat, and speaking into a phone. She could not make out his features from this distance, but his profile was different enough that she could tell that it wasn’t Lavrov. She’d hoped he would be here to see the safe house burn in person, but she was sure that he’d get the message all the same.
She pushed herself up to standing and walked back to the Tiguan. She tossed the field glasses inside, crawled in, started the engine, and drove across the green field between her and the road, not caring if the soldiers in the distance could hear the engine.
The exact moment of the excited phone call had been a surprise, but the call itself was not. Barron entered the bullpen, his eyes immediately drawn to the array of monitors that covered the front wall. At the moment, they were mated together to display a single image, in this case a live video feed from an orbiting satellite controlled by the National Reconnaissance Office.
Barron stopped and smiled when he saw the image. Everyone in the room stared at the head of the Directorate of Operations, unable to fathom why anyone should be happy to watch an Agency facility burn so early in the morning.
The senior duty officer sidled over to his superior. “You seem very chipper for a man who’s watching a very expensive safe house go up in flames.”
“Better torched than in the hands of the GRU,” he said.
Sokolov stepped inside the charred remains of the safe house. Spetsnaz officers in tactical vests and balaclavas were still sweeping the gutted structure, Bison SMG carbines and Makarov pistols raised to eye level. They would be thorough, but Sokolov had no doubt that there was nothing to find. There had been no cars in the garage, no lights, no signs of life, but Lavrov’s information had again proven correct. This had been a CIA safe house. The incendiary traps had erased any doubts he’d had about that.
The sweep took less than ten minutes to complete. “Nothing to recover?” Sokolov asked.
“Nyet” was the answer. The Spetsnaz team leader pulled his black hood back over his head and away from his face. “Any specialized equipment or papers have been destroyed. We found the remains of an industrial shredder on the second level and its wastebin in the cellar next to a furnace. There was one computer in the same area with the shredder, but its hard drive is missing, probably fed into the shredder. Any papers were probably shredded and burned before the house went up. We will recover nothing.”
“They knew we were coming.”
The Spetsnaz leader looked around, thought, and nodded. “They used gasoline as an accelerant, possibly other chemicals as well,” he said. “Our own breaching charges ignited the fires.”
“They tried to kill our teams,” Sokolov noted.
“I don’t think so,” the soldier replied. “The napalm jars were left in plain view where the teams would see them immediately. Whoever arranged this could have set up a very efficient ignition system, but just left them sitting in the middle of the room for the heat to ignite. They were not even covered in accelerant, if our men’s observations are accurate. I think that our arsonist wanted to give our men a chance to get out.” He scanned the ruins. “I have never heard of the CIA rigging a house to burn this way, but I suppose they might have done so in desperation. The general gave them little time to leave the country. They may have hoped to return one day, but left the incendiaries in case that proved impossible.”
Sokolov nodded. “I suspect that you are right. Still, it would be a callous thing. Had we not come, some civilian would have in time and might been killed, delayed napalm bombs notwithstanding.” But if they knew we were coming? That we would be the ones to encounter those homemade explosives? It would not be callous then, would it? He looked around at the remains of the living room, what had been a vaulted ceiling, plush carpet, and leather couches. “It surely was a lovely home. The Americans do like their comforts, do they not?”
“They do, I think,” the soldier agreed.
“Indeed,” Sokolov replied. “Sweep the rubble again. Look for any secret compartments. Tear out any floorboards you find intact. I doubt very much that you will find anything, but we must be thorough. Report to me by nineteen hundred hours tonight. General Lavrov will be expecting an update.” Sokolov frowned, then sighed. “And I must disappoint him.” The soldier nodded, saluted his commanding officer, then moved off to organize the sifting of the ash and char.
He pulled out his own encrypted smartphone and dialed a stored number. “General Lavrov, this is Colonel Sokolov.”
“Your report, Colonel?” Lavrov demanded.
“My teams have all reported in. We have taken control of all of the sites on the list you provided, but found them all abandoned. All but one had sensitive equipment either removed or rendered unusable. There is evidence enough to confirm that they likely were CIA safe houses, but there will be little of use to be recovered from any of them.”
“All but one?”
“The last one. The doors were all reinforced with strong metal and we were forced to breach the doors with explosive charges. There were incendiary traps set at the entrances, which our charges ignited. The house burned.”
“That is where she was hiding,” Lavrov noted.
“Almost certainly,” Sokolov agreed. “But she was not here when we arrived and she has no safe haven now, if your source’s list is complete.”
“I do not think that worries her,” Lavrov replied. “She did not have to burn the house, but chose to do so. That was a message and a dramatic one. She is confident that she can escape our country. Your team’s surveillance of the Western embassies has suffered no lapses?”
“None, General. She has not been observed entering or exiting the U.S. Embassy or that of any close American ally,” Sokolov confirmed. “It is always possible that she could have entered hidden in some vehicle, as we cannot search those. But we have kept a very tight watch on all pedestrians entering on foot.”