Deception Game (21 page)

‘If you are here to abduct me, you won’t get out of Tripoli alive,’ he warned, keeping his voice calm and controlled. Showing fear would only empower the man. ‘We have troops everywhere. You should leave now while you still can, my friend.’

‘Shut the fuck up,’ Drake said, keeping him covered while Mason moved forward and yanked his hands behind his back, securing them with a pair of cable ties.

With Sowan restrained, Drake gestured to his two comrades who had made entry with him. ‘Secure the upper level. I’ve got this one.’

Straight away they were moving to ascend the stairs, weapons out and ready.

It was at this moment that Sowan, having calculated his captor’s intentions, as well as how far they were prepared to go to achieve them, made a split-second decision and acted upon it.

‘Laila! Run!’ he shouted in Arabic at the top of his voice.

He wasn’t able to shout any further warnings, as the butt of a pistol slammed into his temple like a hammer. Stars exploded across his eyes as the force of the impact knocked him sideways, and he collapsed in a heap with his blood staining the pristine tiled floor.

Nonetheless, the damage had been done.

In the bedroom upstairs, Laila Sowan awoke with a start, her mind roused from sleep to immediate, painful alertness at the sudden cry of her husband’s voice. She didn’t know what danger had befallen him, but at that moment it didn’t matter. There was only one reason he would have commanded her to run – an intruder was in the house.

That being the case, there was only one course of action. They had rehearsed for this terrible possibility many times at his urging, despite her misplaced belief that it could never happen. They had practised it until she was quite certain she could have performed the steps in her sleep.

She was moving almost without thinking, throwing the covers aside and leaping from the bed even as the sound of booted feet echoed up the stairs. The room was in near-total darkness, but that didn’t matter. She knew where she was going.

Heart pounding with the sudden, frantic surge of adrenaline that was more powerful than any drug, she tore across the room to the simple closet door opposite.

But this was no simple closet. Beyond the flimsy wooden door lay a room perhaps eight feet square, its interior starkly utilitarian compared to the tasteful comfort of the rest of their home. Its walls were uncompromising whitewashed concrete reinforced with steel, the immensely strong structure designed to protect the occupant from any intruder.

It had always seemed so unnecessary to her – a panic room in a house that was already well protected. It was the sort of pointless frivolity that American celebrities might indulge in; another means of bolstering their already inflated egos by pretending people were so obsessed with them that they might actually try to break into their homes. But Tarek had insisted on it for reasons that had nothing whatsoever to do with vanity. Only now did she understand why.

They were almost upon her. She could hear them sprinting down the corridor towards the bedroom, shouting to each other as they sought their target, their flashlight beams bouncing crazily across the walls and floor.

Rushing into the foreboding-looking room, she turned and reached out for the emergency-close button to seal the reinforced steel door.

At the same moment, Mason and McKnight charged into the bedroom, flashlights and weapons sweeping left and right. It was McKnight who spotted the blur of movement out of the corner of her eye, saw a woman in a nightdress disappear into a smaller room off to their left. A room whose lights blinked on when she reached out and stabbed a button against the wall.

It took only a heartbeat to realize what was happening; a heartbeat during which the panic room’s reinforced steel door began to roll shut, propelled forward by powerful electric motors that wouldn’t stop until it was sealed and locked.

If she was allowed to seal herself away in there, there would be no way to get her out. Even worse, she could conceivably call for help, since the room was almost certainly fitted with some kind of communications gear.

Reacting on instinct, McKnight braced her foot against a wooden chair set in front of the small dressing table she was standing beside, and kicked it towards the doorway with all the strength she could summon. Her aim was good, her timing near flawless. The chair slid across the polished wood floor and caught in the gap between door and frame. There was a crunch as wood splintered and gave way, and the door’s relentless momentum faltered. It shuddered forward another couple of inches, breaking apart the chair’s frame, its powerful motors whining as they tried to force their way through the obstruction.

The chair had been reduced to a crushed, broken mass of wood by the door’s relentless pressure, but even this great power couldn’t obliterate it entirely. A gap almost a foot wide prevented it from locking in place.

Realizing what was going on, Laila kicked desperately at the obstruction, trying to force it clear. Her bare feet lacked both the strength and the support for such a task, and she let out a cry as splintered wood sank into her flesh.

‘Panic room!’ McKnight cried in warning. ‘Get her before we lose her!’

Mason needed no prompting. Already he was moving forward with his weapon up and levelled at the woman’s head.

‘Open the door!’ he yelled. ‘Open it now or I’ll fire!’

He had a shot. He could take it, put her down for good and eliminate the chance that she might warn others. But doing so would mean killing an unarmed woman.

The answer came all too quickly. Ducking aside behind the door, Laila desperately grabbed for the weapon that was kept on a shelf running along one wall. It was a Smith & Wesson revolver, its six chambers loaded with armour-piercing rounds. Tarek had once explained to her that weapons which used magazines couldn’t be left loaded for long because the constant tension would weaken the magazine springs, causing them to misfire. Revolvers, on the other hand, could be kept almost indefinitely, ready to be used at any time.

Hefting the weapon in a clumsy grip, she aimed it towards the gap in the door just as she saw a figure appear, and squeezed off a round.

Quick reactions and his assailant’s poor aim were about the only things that saved Mason from taking a round full in the chest. Twisting aside just as the woman opened fire, he was in time to see the round bury itself in the wall beside him.

The echoing crack of the shot reverberated around the room, loud as thunder, followed immediately by a second.

Downstairs, Drake winced at the distinctive sound of gunfire, torn between concern for the safety of his two operatives and the horrible, sickening realization that their cover had just been blown. Every house in the neighbourhood would have heard that shot. People would be pulling themselves out of bed, startled and befuddled by the noise. Some might dismiss it, or be too slow-witted and indecisive to react in time, but others would be trained and prepared for such things. Even now, men would be shouting orders into phones and radios, vectoring in police and security units.

Their time here was rapidly running out.

Reaching up, he pressed his radio transmitter. ‘Envoy, Cameo, report now.’

Keira Frost was sweating and out of breath by the time she reached the compound, having run several hundred yards through backstreets and alleyways to get here from the construction site. Her balaclava clung uncomfortably to her face, the coarse fabric irritating her skin, though she resisted the urge to peel it off as she approached Sowan’s residence.

The compound was surrounded by a nine-foot-high perimeter wall made of solid brick. There was only one way in or out: a wrought-iron gate secured with an electronic combination lock.

Normally such a security measure would have presented a formidable obstacle, but fortunately Frost had already trawled the building’s security system and discovered the pass code for the gate.

Pausing only a moment by the gate, she punched the code into the little numeric keypad mounted on a steel plinth that was obviously designed to be used by drivers pulling up to the main entrance. A light on the keypad blinked green, there was a click as the lock disengaged, and with a smooth hum the gates swung open.

She was just crossing the threshold when she heard the distinctive crackle of gunfire from within the building. It was somewhat muted by the villa’s structure, suggesting the shots had been fired from deep inside, but the noise was unmistakable. And since her companions were armed with silenced weapons, it could only mean one thing.

She was moving right away, darting across the open courtyard to the villa’s main entrance. Her pack weighed heavily on her back, the straps biting into her shoulders, but she couldn’t care less. Her teammates could be in trouble; getting to them was all that mattered.

With her weapon drawn, she pushed through the front door, emerging into a wide, plush entrance hall that reminded her more of a hotel lobby than a private residence. If this was how Libyan intelligence operatives lived, she couldn’t help thinking she was working for the wrong agency.

As she’d hoped, Drake was there, standing guard over an unconscious figure lying curled on the floor. Spotting someone making entrance, Drake raised his weapon and trained it on her instinctively, but relaxed a little when he recognized his teammate.

‘You trying to get yourself shot?’ he growled. ‘Announce it when you’re coming in.’

‘Sue me. What’s going on up there?’

He shook his head, having already decided what to do next. ‘Stay here, and don’t take your eyes off that fucker for a second.

Without waiting for a reply, he left her and sprinted up the stairs.

‘Shit! She’s armed. Go loud!’ Mason called out, realizing that stealth was no longer a factor in this equation. The priority was getting to the woman and neutralizing her as quickly as possible.

Reaching into his jacket, he produced a small cylindrical device, olive green in colour, with a simple pin-fuse at one end.

‘Flashbang!’ he shouted, yanking the pin and hurling the stun grenade in through the gap.

Within the room, Laila winced as waves of pain travelled up her arm. The kickback from the little weapon had been deceptively powerful – far more than she’d expected, and her shots had gone wide as a result. The report of the gunshot in such a confined space had been even worse, the deafening crackle leaving her ears ringing.

She almost didn’t notice the little green can that was thrown in through the gap, bouncing off the wall with a metallic clang before landing on the ground a few feet away. Even if she’d been trained to anticipate such a move, it was unlikely she would have had time to do anything about it.

She was just turning to glance at the unexpected object when suddenly there was a flash, a boom that wiped out whatever hearing remained to her, and her world was engulfed in pain and darkness.

Blinded and disoriented by the grenade’s concussive effects, she stumbled back against the wall, accidentally squeezing off another shot as her finger tightened involuntarily on the trigger before falling to her knees. Tears were streaming from her eyes, as if to clear the veil of iridescent light that had overwhelmed her pupils.

Outside, Mason wasted no time in taking advantage of his target’s vulnerability. She might be down for now, but the grenade’s effects wouldn’t last forever.

‘Tango down!’ he shouted, leaning in far enough to survey the room. He could see the downed target, but the gap in the door was too narrow for him to fit through. ‘Fuck, I can’t get in.’

‘Move, move!’ McKnight called out, practically shoving him aside as she attacked the gap. Smaller and lighter than her companion, she was their best chance of getting inside. It was unfortunate that Frost was too far away to assist them, since the diminutive specialist could almost certainly have slipped through the gap with ease.

Moving shoulder-first, McKnight forced herself in, stepping over the mangled remains of the chair that was the only thing stopping the door from crushing her to death. As if to emphasize that unpleasant prospect, she felt the debris give another fraction of an inch, the massive steel door straining against her with bone-breaking force.

‘Come on, goddamn it!’ she gasped, exerting all her strength. Door and frame pressed against her body, desperately trying to trap her in their deadly grip, but somehow the chair held them back, and with a sudden release of pressure, she fell through to the other side.

The woman was moaning and looking around, blinded and deafened by the grenade, but perhaps aware on some level that there was another person in the room with her. She started to raise the gun, but McKnight quickly yanked it from her grip before she could do any more damage.

Finding the automatic-door control mounted in the wall above, McKnight hit the release button. There was a single beep, and just like that the door retracted back into the frame, allowing Mason to finally make entry.

‘A fucking grenade?’ she hissed, furious with him. If people in the houses nearby hadn’t been sufficiently alerted by the gunshots, the detonation of a flashbang would certainly have finished the job.

Mason glared back at her. His face was obscured by the mask, but the anger in his eyes was plain to see. ‘You got a better idea?’

McKnight said nothing to this. Now wasn’t the time to be bickering.

‘Screw it. Help me get her up,’ she said instead, heaving the injured woman to her feet.

Carrying the stunned target between them, they dragged her through the bedroom and out into the corridor beyond. As they emerged, they promptly ran into Drake who was coming from the opposite direction.

‘You all right?’ he asked, his concern for their safety overriding any other considerations at that moment.

‘Hundred per cent,’ McKnight assured him.

‘What the fuck happened?’ he hissed, concern quickly giving way to anger now that he knew they were unharmed. ‘We’re compromised.’

‘The house has a panic room. She almost made it inside.’

‘Had to flash her,’ Mason added with an apologetic shrug.