Four of the Russian bodyguards were still alive. Surely one of them had called for backup by now. Where would the reinforcements be coming from? How long would it take them to get there? How many would there be? He had no answers. But if he wanted to live—if he was going to complete this mission and get Oleg and his files out of here—he had to get on his feet.
His hearing was slowly coming back. Both eardrums might prove permanently damaged. Only time would tell. But at least he could hear something, and just then he heard the crunch of glass and wood in the hallway. Someone was coming. Without the night-vision equipment, the basement was pitch-black. He’d expected his eyes to adjust after a few moments, but there was nothing to adjust to. So Marcus actually closed his eyes and listened.
There were two of them, moving cautiously, surely as blind and maybe as deaf as he was. Marcus could see the men in his mind’s eye, standing in the hallway now directly in front of him. He pulled the trigger.
Six shots in two seconds.
Left to right.
He heard both men collapse to the floor.
His eyes still closed, Marcus ejected the spent magazine and popped in a full one. Then, slowly, painfully, he forced himself to his feet.
Jenny Morris was covered in a blanket of snow, and it was coming down harder.
She was less worried about getting frostbite and losing a digit or two than losing her ability to react quickly when the moment arose. Her eyelashes were nearly frozen. Her fingers weren’t numb but they were heading in that direction. She had no idea what was going on inside the house. Only the repeated bursts of gunfire and occasional explosions and flashes of orange light gave evidence that the fight was still on. That was a good sign—if someone was still shooting, hopefully Marcus was still alive.
Another fear haunted her, however. She hadn’t seen the agent in the back of the house in a while. What if he had been alerted by his colleagues to a sniper in the woods? Could he have been ordered to outflank her and take her out from behind? She forced herself to resist the temptation to keep checking behind her. Marcus had left her with one simple order before going into the house: no one could get back to the SUVs alive.
She’d already fired at the tires of the SUV in the rear and flattened them all. Since then, she’d maintained her focus on the four-yard gap between the front door of the Kraskin home and the closed doors of the SUVs. The moment the front door opened, she’d have only a split second to open fire. She didn’t necessarily need to hit or kill anyone. She did have to keep them from successfully getting into the vehicles and leaving the premises. Morris was determined to do her job, no matter how cold she was, regardless of how long she had to wait.
Her second radio crackled to life. Not the one that connected her to Marcus but her link to the Global Operations Center in Langley. They wanted an update. She had little to tell them. No, she had not heard from Razor. No, she could not confirm the Raven was alive. No, the package was not yet in their possession. No, she was not aware that the agents on-site had called for backup.
This last fact was a very serious development. Langley informed her that three choppers were spooling up on helipads behind Lubyanka. Heavily armed commandos were loading in. They would be airborne in less than two minutes and would arrive at her location in no more than fifteen.
“Copy that,” she replied.
Before she decided whether to relay that critical last piece to Marcus, the front door burst open. She fired. No one came out the door. But now she had exposed her position. A sniper began firing back from, of all places, the little window in the attic.
Frozen stiff yet coursing with adrenaline, Morris rolled right, down a slight embankment, taking herself out of the shooter’s direct line of sight. She doubted the guy had night-vision goggles. None of the others did. He was just firing at her muzzle flash. She continued rolling right until she could again see the window, the gun barrel poking through, and a shadow behind it. With her left hand she pulled the keys to the Mercedes from her pocket—it was still about twenty yards farther to her right—and clicked the lights on.
The instant the sniper saw the lights, he began firing in that direction. Morris cut the lights again, looked through the reticle of her scope, took a deep breath, and pulled the trigger twice. She saw the man’s head jerk back violently and then disappear from view.
In those brief seconds, however, someone had gotten to the lead SUV. The engine roared to life. The headlights burst on. Jenny Morris opened fire with everything she had, but the vehicle took off into the night and she had no idea who was inside.
85
Marcus heard the words but couldn’t believe them.
He’d given Morris one job, and she’d blown it. Not only had she allowed one of the SUVs to escape, she wasn’t even sure who had driven it—an agent or Oleg. If it was an agent, that was bad enough. But if they’d lost Oleg and the files, then the situation was catastrophic, for reasons only Marcus could fully understand.
The possibility that there was still an ex-Spetsnaz soldier on the loose in this house seriously slowed Marcus’s approach to the panic room. Worse, Morris had radioed him that helicopters filled with more men were heading their way.
Marcus pulled out his phone and turned on the flashlight app. He searched the floor of the billiard room for his rifle, and when he found it, he looked at his knee and saw blood dripping. He grimaced but put the injury out of his mind and turned his attention to the hallway. He’d heard no sounds, no movement whatsoever on the bottom level since he’d taken out the last guy. If someone was waiting in the shadows to pop him, so be it, he thought. He knew where he was going when he drew his last breath on this planet.
Moving as quickly as he could with a limp and in wicked pain, Marcus climbed over debris and the dead and finally made it to the panic room. He shone the flashlight up one hallway and down another but saw no one and heard nothing. So he entered the code into the touch pad. Nothing happened at first. Then the panic room’s independent power source kicked in and the massive steel door slid open.
Oleg Kraskin sat on a wooden stool, looking fairly calm given the circumstances. Marcus lowered his weapon and pulled off his balaclava.
“Took you long enough,” Oleg said.
“Sorry—hit some traffic,” Marcus replied. “You okay?”
“I’ll live, a little while longer, anyway,” the Russian deadpanned.
Marcus took the gallows humor as a good sign. “Got something for me?” Marcus asked.
“Absolutely,” Oleg said, producing the thumb drive. “And you?”
“Absolutely,” Marcus said, reloading the pistol and handing it over.
He showed the Russian exactly how the silencing mechanism worked, where the safety was, and how close he would need to be to Luganov to maintain accuracy.
“Anything under five feet, you should be good. The closer the better, especially if you’re behind him and he’s not looking. But if you’re facing him, then don’t get too close or he could bat it away before you pull the trigger.”
“Got it,” Oleg said. “Is the plane ready?”
“It will be by the time you get there.”
“And my ride—is it on the way?”
“Just lifted off from Lubyanka—ETA twelve minutes.”