IT HAD TAKEN Yuri Deryugin a full fifteen minutes to make his way through the dark woods to the edge of the clearing. He had sent Lakomsky across the dirt road to approach the house from the east. Between them they would be able to cover the entire clearing and three sides of the large farmhouse.
Standing behind the bole of a large tree, the Russian raised his rifle, activated the infrared scope, and slowly scanned the clearing left to right. Images appeared pale gray and ghostly, but nobody could hide in the darkness.
A very bright light bloomed in his scope from the edge of the woods about fifty yards to Deryugin's left, momentarily overpowering his scope and blinding him. For a second or two he wasn't sure what he had seen. Gunfire, an explosion? But there had been no sound.
The light breeze was blowing in his face, and the images in his scope cleared about the same moment he smelled cigarette smoke. One of the FBI agents had actually lit a cigarette. In Deryugin's mind the action was extremely stupid, unprofessional. They were expecting trouble, and yet this man could not control his petty vice.
The agent's body was partially hidden behind brush and small trees, but Deryugin had a clear sight line on his head. At this distance he would have preferred a torso shot, and under normal conditions he would have moved in closer to get it. But there were others coming. He had heard the other agent tell Trotter so.
There was no time.
Deryugin settled the rifle's crosshairs on the FBI agent's ear, then raised his aim slightly to compensate for the effect the Kevlar silencer would have on the path of the bullet and squeezed off a shot, the noise audible perhaps for as far as twenty yards.
The agent disappeared, his body crashing into the brush. For just an instant Deryugin thought he might have missed, but there were no other sounds in the woods, and he knew that he had not. The agent was down and dead.
Again the Russian carefully scanned the clearing and the house, left to right. He caught a movement in the woods across the driveway, lost it, then picked it up again, a dark figure moving silently. It was Lakomsky getting into position.
From the helicopter they had spotted a man on the east side of the house. Lakomsky would be in position to see him at any moment now.
The walkie-talkie he had taken from Sills's body crackled into life. “Hank?”
Deryugin pulled it from his pocket and put it to his ear.
“Hank, for Christ's sake, was that you making all that goddamned noise over there?”
It would have to be the agent on the east side of the house. Apparently he had heard the body crashing into the brush, but had not heard the silenced shot.
“Tom, you copy?”
“What the hell is going on out there?” another voice radioed.
“Is that Bert?”
“Yeah, I'm in the front hallway. Now what the hell is going on out there?”
“I heard a noise in the woods, and now I can't raise Hank or ⦔ The agent's voice was abruptly cut off in mid-sentence by a distinctive short, sharp sound and the radio was silent.
Deryugin knew what he had heard. Lakomsky had shot him. The sound was that of a high-powered rifle bullet hitting a human skull.
“Mays, you were cut off,” the agent from inside the house answered.
Deryugin keyed the walkie-talkie. “Christ, I think Mays and Hank are both down. We've got troubles out here.”
“Who is this?”
“Tom,” Deryugin replied, muffling his voice a little.
“Goddamnit, Sills, where the hell are you?”
“I'm coming up the road from the truck. Should be to you in a couple of minutes, maybe less.”
“Are we under attack?”
“I think so ⦔ Deryugin radioed, cutting himself off before finishing the sentence. He dropped the walkie-talkie to the ground and raised his rifle, aiming at the front door of the farmhouse.
“Sills?” the agent in the house radioed urgently. “Sills, goddamnit.”
At this point, his first objective accomplished, Lakomsky would have moved farther south so that he could cover the rear exits from the house.
Sixty seconds. Deryugin was going to give the agent inside the house that long. No more.
Less than ten seconds later the front door of the house opened. The lights inside had been switched off; nevertheless Deryugin could see the figure of a man just inside.
He waited patiently.
The FBI agent came out of the house a moment later in a dead run, momentarily catching Deryugin off guard. But the Russian was a professional and extremely well trained.
He led the man off the porch, and twenty feet from the house, he squeezed off a shot, hitting the man high on his torso, literally lifting him off his feet.
Bert Langerford's M16 fired a quick burst as he went down, but he was dead before he hit the ground.
Deryugin lowered his rifle. Now there was only the woman and Trotter, left inside.
Moving fast, he stepped around from behind the tree and zigzagged across the clearing toward the house.
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Langerford was down and a dark-suited figure was racing across the clearing from the woods.
Trotter, standing a few feet inside the stairhall, led the man with his pistol and fired off three shots in rapid succession. The figure went down, rolled twice, and fired two shots, the bullets smacking into the wall behind Trotter.
A silenced rifle, Trotter had time to note, as he dove left. His heart was hammering in his chest. Somehow they had managed to take out all four agents. There was no telling how many of them were out there. But Sills had said he had called for reinforcements. If they could only hold out here for a little longer.
Lorraine Abbott was at the head of the stairs. Langerford had told her to hide herself somewhere upstairs, but she had turned back when she'd heard the M16 firing.
Deryugin fired a third shot, the bullet shattering a section of banister a few feet below where she stood.
“Get back,” Trotter shouted up at her.
He started for the stairs when the back door burst open, and Lakomsky's big frame suddenly filled the doorway. Trotter snapped off two shots, both of them hitting the Russian in the chest, driving him backward.
Deryugin fired a fourth shot from the front of the house. Ignoring it, Trotter took the stairs up two at a time. Lorraine had shrunk back against the corridor wall, her eyes wide with
fright. Grabbing her arm, he roughly hauled her the rest of the way down the hall to the attic door, which he yanked open. The narrow stairs led up into the darkness.
“They've come here to kill me, haven't they,” Lorraine whispered. She was very frightened.
“Yes, but I've managed to kill one of them, and I may have wounded the one out front.”
“There's probably more than two of them.”
“Possibly,” Trotter admitted. “But the FBI is sending someone else out here. They should be arriving very soon.”
“Can we hold out that long?”
“We're going to try, Doctor, believe me,” Trotter said. His weapon was a six-shot .38 caliber revolver. He'd already fired five times. “For now I want you to go up to the attic, find the darkest spot, and hide yourself. No noise, no sounds, nothing. And I don't want you coming out of there until you hear my voice or McGarvey's.”
“He's coming here?”
“I left the message for him. Now get up there. No noise.”
She looked at him for a long moment, then turned and headed up the stairs on the balls of her feet.
As soon as she had disappeared into the darkness, Trotter closed the door and headed back down the corridor to the stairs, stopping just at the end of the corridor.
Nothing moved below in the stairhall. The front door was still open.
Turning, he hurried silently back down the corridor and went into one of the front bedrooms, where he cautiously approached the window and, parting the curtain slightly, looked down into the clearing.
Langerford's body still lay in the gravel driveway, but the Russian was gone. Where was he, and how many others were out there?
There was no telling when Sills's reinforcements would show up, or if McGarvey had gotten his urgent message. Until then it would be up to him to hold out here. His first task would be to find more ammunition for his weapon, or take the rifle from the dead Russian in the back hall.
“Put your gun down, Mr. Trotter,” someone said from behind him.
Trotter stiffened and started to turn.
“I will kill you unless you do exactly as I say.”
Trotter weighed his chances, which at the moment were practically nil. The man behind him was almost certainly a Russian Department Viktor type. Highly trained, highly motivated.
“We don't do things like this on each other's territory,” he said.
“Your gun. Drop it.”
“If you know my name, then you know who and what I am. If you kill me, the political repercussions could even bring a man such as Baranov down.”
“I have no time to argue with you. Either drop your gun this instant or I will kill you.”
Trotter had absolutely no doubt the man meant what he was saying. Time, it was all he needed.
Slowly he bent over and laid the .38 on the floor, and straightening up he stepped away from it and turned around. The Russian was tall and very well built. His weapon was equipped with the latest night spotting scope, and silencer, which explained their effectiveness.
“Where is Dr. Abbott?”
“The FBI is sending reinforcements out here. They will be here momentarily.”
“Yes, I know this,” Deryugin replied calmly. “So you will either take me to Dr. Abbott or I will kill you and search the house myself.”
Trotter shook his head. “You will either kill me now or then, so it doesn't matter.”
“No. I don't mean to kill either of you. My orders were to come here, kidnap Dr. Abbott, and take her to Fredericksburg, where an airplane is waiting to take us to Mexico City. If you cooperate, I will bring you as well. You would be quite a prize in Moscow.”
Was the man telling the truth? Probably not, Trotter decided. An assassination was infinitely easier than kidnapping. There would be no need for them to take the latter risk.
Again it came down to a question of time.
“She's in the basement.”
Deryugin's eyes narrowed. “I think she is up here somewhere.”
“As soon as the shooting began, I sent her downstairs. I came up here to see what was happening outside. High ground.”
Deryugin was weighing the possibilities, Trotter could see it in the man's eyes.
“We will go to the basement. If you are lying I will kill you.”
Trotter nodded. “I think we've already established that.”
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They had followed Interstate 95 out of Washington, skirting Falmouth along the Rappahannock River which brought them in from the rear of the ninety-acre property on which the farmhouse was perched.
At first they nearly overflew the place. There were absolutely no lights showing from the house. They came around in a tight circle, and McGarvey finally spotted Trotter's car parked behind the FBI's blue van.
“There,” McGarvey shouted, leaning forward. “Set us down in the clearing at the front of the house.”
Kurshin nodded. “Yes, sir.”
McGarvey sat back and studied the pilot's neck and shoulders. The voice. There was something vaguely familiar about the man. He hadn't gotten a very good look at him because of the helmet he wore, and the rush they were in. But all the way down something kept nagging at the back of his mind.
“Kirk,” Potok suddenly shouted.
McGarvey turned to him. They were barely a hundred feet off the ground now. Potok was pointing down. There was a body lying about thirty feet from the front of the house, FBI stenciled in yellow letters on the back of his dark blue windbreaker.
“Get us down now,” McGarvey shouted. “And then call for backup.”
“Yes, sir,” Kurshin replied.
McGarvey pulled out his Walther, checked the action, and switched the safety off. The instant the helicopter's skids touched the gravel driveway, he popped the hatch and he and Potok scrambled out, separated and raced up toward the house.
Behind them the helicopter rose up a few feet and sideslipped
all the way across the clearing, where it set down just at the edge of the woods.
It was a good move, McGarvey thought, getting the machine out of the line of fire. But he didn't have time for that now.