Private Wars (20 page)

When he was perhaps twenty-five feet away, the walker faltered, almost skidding to a stop, and Chace knew he had seen something, perhaps her silhouette, perhaps the body of the last driver. He started to bring his pistol up, but she had been ready, and beat him on the index, firing twice, then twice more. In the distance and the darkness, she couldn’t see her hits, but she saw the results, and the man twisted on his feet, a top in its final stages, then toppled.

Chace took a moment to catch her breath.

Then she turned back to her Volga, climbed once more behind the wheel, and drove up to the front of the house, parking at an angle, half on the driveway, half off. The lights on the ground floor were burning, but the lights above were all out. A single fixture burned above the door.

She left the engine running and walked up the path, setting the slide lock on the hush puppy as she made her way to the door. This time, silence would be more important than volume. The light dug at her eyes, killing off the last vestiges of her night vision. There was no peephole on the door, which was a marginal surprise, and no cameras posted above or around, which was not. Chace tried not to think about the men with the room-brooms on watch inside.

She knocked firmly, twice.

She raised the hush puppy in both hands, and waited.

Just need to use the toilet,
she thought, and then found herself fighting a giggle, because, in fact, she was sure she did.

The door rattled, parted, and she saw a slice of a man’s face. She fired, stepping forward and shoving the door, and managed to catch him before he hit the floor. It struck her that he looked awfully young, and for a moment she was afraid she’d made a mistake and had the terrifying but fleeting fear that she’d done all this work only to enter the wrong house. But as she laid the body down on the carpet, beside the rows of shoes left by their owners, she saw the MP-5K resting on the sideboard.

Chace shut the door quietly, working the slide on the hush puppy and removing the empty casing, tucking it into her pants. She’d dumped the spent shells from the garage at the cemetery, so they wouldn’t collide and ring in her pocket. Then she slipped the hush puppy back into her jacket and brought out the knife at her back.

She listened, and for several seconds didn’t hear anything.

Then she heard distant waves rolling onto a shore.

She followed the sound, taking each step as its own movement, keeping her progress deliberate. A stairway ran to the second floor, carpeted, but she ignored it for the moment, pressing forward. The sound of waves disappeared, replaced by a man’s voice, speaking Russian, and she could make out enough to know she was hearing commentary to a football match. A second voice joined the first, and then both laughed.

She came off the hallway, through an open archway, into a kitchen, the sound of the television growing gently louder. She passed the light switch as she entered, and threw it, turning the room dark. A dining room opened up in front of her with a view of the backyard, a semidarkened hallway to her left. She took the hallway, still moving slowly, still hearing the television, now finally able to discern its light at the end of the corridor, beyond a half-opened door. Along the left-hand side were two doors, closed; on the right, one, partially ajar, and she could make out bathroom fixtures within.

Halfway down the hall, she heard movement from the room with the television, the creak of furniture springs losing their tension. She retreated as quickly as she could to the kitchen, then turned and put her back to the wall on the opposite side of the opening to the hall as the light switch. She spun the blade in her hand into a stabbing grip, trying to keep her breathing steady, steeling herself.

It was called wet work for a reason.

A man stepped through the archway. She saw him in profile as he squinted in the darkness, then muttered a curse. He half pivoted away from her, the MP-5K on a strap over his shoulder, reaching to turn on the light with his right hand. She saw he was perhaps an inch or two shorter than her, broad-shouldered, and bald.

Chace stepped behind him, bringing the knife up in her right hand, reaching around with her left to cup his chin, pulling it toward her. She stabbed horizontally into his neck, jabbing once, twice, and again and again and again in rapid succession, and blood sprayed out of the man, hot on her hand and face. She stabbed into his neck a sixth time, but he was deadweight on her now, and she had to kneel to avoid dropping him completely. A ragged breath broke through his perforated skin.

That was the last sound he made.

Chace got back to her feet, saw that the knife in her hand was jumping slightly, a tuning fork catching some stray vibration, and that her hands were trembling. She cleaned the blade on the back of the man’s shirt, then stepped over him and back into the hallway, dimly aware that her front, even down to her trousers, was stained and slick with blood.

She checked the television room first, and found no one there. Working back, she hit the rooms on the hall, opening each door with painful care, just enough to glimpse what was inside. Each room housed two more men, sleeping.

She let them sleep and headed upstairs.

Chace
found Stepan first, the toddler curled in a crib in a room with balloon wallpaper, his bottom thrust up into the air, as if he’d fallen asleep while preparing to somersault. She hesitated, then backed out, finally locating the master bedroom after two more doors.

Ruslan Mihailovich Malikov slept in a king-size bed, but only on one side, the one nearest the door. The light from the hallway bled into the room, and Chace recognized him from the photograph Riess had shown her on his digital camera. A positive identification. The way he slept surprised Chace for a second, because she’d expected him to take the opposite side, that it would have been his wife who had wanted to be nearest their son. But of course, that
was
the reason, wasn’t it?

Chace wondered if Ruslan had changed the sheets since Dina had been murdered.

She approached the bed carefully, not wanting to wake him until she could make certain he’d stay silent, mindful of the four guards and their four submachine guns sleeping below. Reaching his side, she crouched down on her haunches, then put her right hand over his mouth, sealing it with her palm, but keeping his nose free.

He came awake almost instantly, and as soon as Chace saw his eyes open, she put her mouth to his ear and began whispering, “Friend,” in Russian, over and over. Ruslan surged upward, eyes bulging, and Chace couldn’t blame him for that; if someone had woken her like this, clapping a gore-slicked hand over her mouth, she’d have tried to scream bloody murder. She shoved him back down, rising up to add her weight to the press, trying to keep him relatively immobile.

“Friend,” she kept repeating.

Ruslan’s arms came up, straining to break her grip, one going to her forearm, one reaching for her face. Then, abruptly, they dropped to his side, and she saw the confusion come into his eyes, stealing away the panic.

“Understand?” she asked, sticking with Russian.

Ruslan nodded.

“Ruslan Mihailovich Malikov?”

He nodded again.

“I’m here to take you and your son to London.”

There was the briefest pause, the confusion again awash in his eyes, before he nodded a third time.

“Quietly,” Chace whispered. “Four still asleep downstairs.” She removed her hand, stepping back from the bed, showing him her empty palms.

Ruslan Mihailovich Malikov sat up gasping for air, staring at her, half in horror, half in amazement. She couldn’t fault him the look; her clothes were covered with blood, much of it still wet, and she stank of gunpowder, sweat, and death. She resisted the urge to touch her hair, to try to brush it back into place, gave him another second to stare, then stepped closer.

“I have a car outside,” she said in Russian. “Dress quickly, we get your son, and we go.”

Without a word, Ruslan started moving, rising and heading to the dresser on the wall opposite the foot of the bed. He stripped, back to her, began pulling on clothes, and Chace watched him for a half second longer, then stepped lightly back, toward the door, to listen at the opening. There was no sound from downstairs, only the shift of cloth and movement as Ruslan continued to dress. Chace took the time to draw the hush puppy, then shrug out of the flak jacket. When she looked back to Ruslan, he was almost fully, if hastily, dressed in dark trousers and a long-sleeved shirt, now working on his shoes.

“It’s cold,” Chace whispered to him.

He nodded, finished with his last shoe, moved to the closet. From inside he pulled a thick overcoat.

“You have to keep your son quiet,” Chace told him. “Can you keep Stepan quiet?”

He was pulling on his overcoat, and surprised her by answering in English, his accent more Russian than Uzbek, but not so thick as to make him unintelligible. “Yes, he’ll stay quiet.”

Chace held out the flak jacket for him. “Wrap him in this,” she answered, now speaking English, too. “It’ll offer some protection.”

Ruslan balked for a second, looking at the blood-soaked garment, then nodded, taking it.

“Follow me,” Chace said, and slipped out the door, back into the hall. There was still nothing from below, no motion, no noise. She covered the distance to the child’s room, feeling Ruslan close behind her, then let him pass her when they entered. Ruslan moved to the crib, scooping up his son and whispering a flood of Uzbek as he did, cradling the little boy against his chest, wrapping the flak jacket around him. The boy barely stirred, and Chace wondered if Ruslan could keep him asleep until they were out of the house.

“Stay close,” Chace told him. “The car is out front. When we reach it, get in the back, then lie down on Stepan.”

“Yes,” Ruslan whispered.

Chace pivoted, moved back into the bright light of the upstairs hall, to the top of the landing. She stole a glance over the railing, down to the floor below, and saw no one but the body she’d left just inside the doorway. She motioned for Ruslan to follow, and he emerged from his son’s room. When the light hit Stepan, the boy squawked in soft protest, burying his face further against Ruslan’s chest, and Chace thought of Tamsin without wanting to or meaning to, then turned away, leading father and son down the stairs.

She checked the entry hall, looking back toward the darkened kitchen, then turned to the front door and edged it open, the hush puppy held in low-ready, with both hands. No one was outside, and the sound of the unattended Volga, its engine still wheezing, was the only thing she heard.

“Now,” Chace said, and she ran for the car, Ruslan with his son still in his arms close on her heels. She reached the car first, whipping her head around, checking the street in both directions even as she pulled open the rear door. The boy was crying now, startled and unnerved as Ruslan bundled him inside, and Chace heard his father’s voice, low and calm and constant, speaking in Uzbek. She slammed the door behind them, jumped into the driver’s seat, and accelerated out, wheeling the car around into a one-eighty. She floored it, the Volga reluctant at first, then finally catching speed.

From the backseat, she heard Stepan’s sobs turn to howls.

Chace
slid the Volga to a stop beside the Range Rover, jumped out, saying, “Wait here.”

“What—” Ruslan began, almost shouting over Stepan’s screams.

She ignored him, moving to the tailgate. Without the flak jacket, the cold was beginning to eat at her, finding the sweat and blood still wet on her skin and clothes. A wind was starting to rise, light, but enough to make her shiver.

Chace pulled the Starstreak from the Range Rover, switched on the power to the aiming unit and ignition, then hoisted it onto her shoulder, settling her right eye against the monocular. Sweat clung to her eyelashes, stinging her, and she blinked, trying to clear her eyes. A new anticipation swelled in her chest, a strange collusion of fear and excitement, almost arousing. She knew the Starstreak from reports, from technical papers and military analysis. She knew the Starstreak academically, what it could do, how it did it. But she’d never fired one herself, never seen the results in person. She lined up the aiming mark, exhaling slowly.

She depressed the firing stud, the small white button resting below her right thumb.

For a fraction of a second there was nothing, no response from the Starstreak, and her thoughts flashed on the possibility that the unit was dead, that the internal battery was incapable of engaging the first-stage motor and starting the launch sequence. Then, on her shoulder, she felt the tube rumble, the missile hissing, the sound of a kettle just before boil. Thrust drove the launcher hard into her shoulder, pressing her down, and she grit her teeth, fighting to keep the aiming mark steady on target. It all took an instant, and then, just as swiftly, the pressure was gone.

It all came back to her then, all of the clinical data, the briefings, the analysis. Starstreak, designed as a high-velocity extreme-short-range MANPAD, maximum distance five kilometers, minimum only three hundred meters. Composed of a two-stage rocket motor, capped with a three-dart kinetically driven payload guidance system. The electronic pulse delivered via the firing stud engages the first-stage motor, propelling the missile from its canister while canted nozzles on the side of the rocket force it to rotate, the rotation in turn causing its fins to deploy, providing stabilization in flight.

Missile clears launch tube, first-stage motor is jettisoned, second stage is engaged, providing full thrust, and accelerating the rocket to speeds in excess of Mach 4. Missile closes to target, the darts fire, each dart with its own high-density penetrating explosive payload, fuse, guidance system, and thermal battery. Dart separation from missile initiates the arming of each warhead, each dart guided independently via a double laser-beam riding system, controlled by the missile operator via the aiming unit.

That was the clinical, the academic, what she
knew
.