Support and Defend (32 page)

A
S
D
OM MOVED LOW
and fast across the property, the barking of the dogs on the far side of the house seemed to grow louder, even though there was no way they could see him in their kennels. Two men standing the veranda ringing the second floor shined flashlights all around the lawn facing the inlet and the dock, but Dom moved laterally to avoid them, and he ran on to the side of the house near the driveway. More men shined their lights at the back of the property; Dom could see the beams raking across the pool area and the vehicles, and as he ran he wondered if the Russian paramilitaries hiding somewhere back there might find themselves spotlighted and shoot the guards on the veranda before attacking the building.

Dom made it to the side of the big colonial house, he pressed his body flush with the cool wall, and then began moving along the wall through thick, flowering hedges. He came to a darkened window, chanced a look inside, and saw nothing but black on his first glance.

He stood to the side of the window, waited a moment, then looked again.

It took a few seconds for his eyes to pick up any features inside, but soon he realized the room was some sort of a storage area. Banquet tables were stacked high against the far wall, sporting equipment, small soccer goals, a croquet set, and several balls in net bags hung from hooks on the wall.

The door to the room was closed. He tried the window but found it securely locked. He thought about breaking one of the panes near the lock, but just as he prepared to use the butt of the Beretta to do this, he stopped, took his flashlight and flicked it quickly on the little room, his eyes locked on the ceiling near the window.

Yep, as he expected, a glass-break sensor jutted an inch from the ceiling. If he smashed the windowpane, sirens would blare all over the property.

As he turned away to look for another point of entry, a sudden crackle of gunfire echoed off the trees of the rainforest and all over the lawn. It had come from the rear of the property, near the pool, and Dom knew this meant the Venezuelans and the Russians were engaged in a firefight.

Alarms started blaring throughout the house. Dom took advantage of this by turning back to the windowpane and smashing it with the grip of his pistol. In seconds he had the lock open and the window lifted high enough for him to enter.

E
THAN
R
OSS WOKE
from an alcohol-aided sleep and leapt to his feet with the loud crackling sounds. He thought it might have been gunfire, but he’d never been around actual shooting, and he’d expected it to sound like it did on television. He stuck his head out the door of his bedroom, on guard but more curious than afraid, but almost instantly he panicked when the sirens began blaring. A guard stood close to his door, but the man had turned away to look over the mezzanine down at the main room of the mansion.

“What’s going on?” Ethan shouted, but the man did not respond. He knew just enough Spanish to ask,
“Qué pasa?”

“No sé,”
the man shouted back. He had his big black gun against his shoulder and he waved it around at the first floor below.

Just then Mohammed came running around the corner in his stocking feet. He made a beeline straight to Ross, passing Gianna Bertoli with utter indifference as she came out of her room with a robe held around her shoulders.

Ethan noticed Mohammed had a mobile phone in one hand and his computer in the other. He’d left his shoes, but he hadn’t left his computer or his phone.

Mohammed shouted, “The Americans are here! We have to leave!”

Ethan turned and ran back into his room. He tried to shut the door, but Mohammed was right on his heels and followed him in. “Get the drive! Do you have the drive?”

Ethan looked toward his laptop, and Mohammed caught the look. “It’s on the computer?”

Ethan didn’t answer. The drive was still attached with moleskin to his hip, but he snatched the laptop off the table, threw it into his backpack, and slung it over his back.

When they raced back out onto the mezzanine, Ethan saw the Venezuelan intelligence chief Leo had arrived with two more of his men, making a total of four armed Venezuelans. Leo wore a sweatshirt and cotton pants, but he carried a machine pistol in one hand and a walkie-talkie in the other. “Quickly, come with me! I have a man in a truck waiting for us by the kennels. The Americans will expect us to try for the Expeditions on the other side of the house. We must hurry.”

Mohammed asked, “How many attackers?”

“I don’t know!” shouted Leo, but he led the way with his weapon out in front of him.

The procession moved down the rear stairwell, and then out into a long gallery that ran the length of the back of the house. Leo turned to the left and the others began following, but as they passed an archway that led to the large main room of the home, automatic gunfire erupted from the dark. One of the Venezuelan guards spun dead to the wooden gallery floor, and Leo and the other three fired back into the room as they ran past the archway and out of the line of fire.

Mohammed and Gianna were ahead of Ethan, so they made it across the kill zone, but Ethan had hesitated, and now he found himself alone between the stairs and the archway, afraid to move forward and join the others. As Mohammed shouted at him, urging him to catch up, Ethan instead turned away and began running in the opposite direction down the gallery, past the stairs and toward the kitchen.

Behind him at the archway the gunfire increased.

He rounded the corner into the kitchen now. A row of dim lights ran under the shelves over the counter, giving the room a dim glow, and with this light Ethan could see a figure standing in the middle of the room, not twenty feet in front of him. He was a white man in wet brown clothing and a scruffy beard. His sleeves were rolled up and his forearms were covered in mud. He held a black pistol in his hand, and he pointed it straight at Ethan.

Ethan stopped. Raised his hands quickly.

“You got it with you?” The man spoke English.

Ethan was too terrified to answer. Behind him, on the far side of the gallery, multiple automatic weapons barked back and forth at one another.

“You got the scrape?”

“I . . . I . . .”

The man pulled the hammer back on his pistol. “I’m not asking again!”

“I’ve got it!”

“You’re coming with me.”

“Who . . . who are . . . no!”

The man with the gun raised the weapon suddenly and fired. Ethan screamed, dropped to the ground, his hands still above his head. Behind him, a GIO officer had run into the room with a G3 rifle shouldered, but the American in the brown shirt shot him dead as he entered.

A second Venezuelan entered the kitchen, his rifle firing as he came through the door. Ethan rolled onto his side in the fetal position, screaming at the top of his lungs, but he kept his eyes open and he saw the American in the brown shirt run to his left, chased across the kitchen by flashing sparks and bullet holes that tore into the stove and refrigerator and tiled backsplash over the oven. The American dove through the air, his pistol still in his hand, and he executed a complete forward roll on the floor to get through the doorway to the dining room.

“Ethan!” The scream came from behind, and Ross looked back to see Mohammed crouched low in the doorway next to the Venezuelan with the rifle. Mohammed’s hand was out, beckoning Ethan to crawl out of the kitchen. “Come on!”

The American in the brown shirt ducked his head back around from the dining room. The Venezuelan shot at him, but the American returned fire with the pistol, firing several rounds, then he retreated again around the corner.

Ethan looked at the Venezuelan. He’d been shot in the left shin, just below the knee, and now he lay on the ground, grabbing at his leg, with the rifle on the floor next to him.

Mohammed dove on the rifle, lifted it up toward the dining room entrance, and fired several rounds. Even with all the chaos, Ethan was surprised the small Lebanese computer geek knew how to shoot a gun.

Mohammed shouted, “Ethan! Come!”

Ethan climbed to his hands and knees and crawled out of the dim kitchen. He found his feet and started running through the main room of the house, but Mohammed caught up with him from behind. “No! Not that way. You are going toward the other Americans.”

On cue, more gunfire snapped at the front of the house. Glass shattered, and men shouted.

“Run!” Mohammed commanded, and Ethan found himself following the Lebanese man’s instructions. Together they ran through the main room of the house, which had been the center of the battle just a minute earlier. Now, however, much of gunfire seemed to be upstairs. As Ethan ran he tripped over the body of a dead man, fell to the floor, and lay there exhausted and terrorized.

“Get up!” Mohammed shouted, and he pulled Ethan to his feet, then pushed him forward.

They found a broken window in a library on the ground floor near the front of the house, and Mohammed used the barrel of the rifle to push out enough glass to climb through. Ethan followed, both men found themselves outside in a hedge near the pool that rimmed the building, and Mohammed scanned all around for any movement.

Just then Leo and Gianna rushed out the French doors that lead out into the pool area. Leo had been shot, blood ran from his shoulder down the length of his body, and even in the dim decorative lighting around the pool deck Ethan could see the man’s face had gone white.

He staggered past his guests, holding a walkie-talkie in his hands and calling out to members of his guard force.

No one was replying, but there was definitely still a firefight raging on the second floor.

Leo made it to the two Expeditions in the drive, then he spun around and lifted his small machine pistol high. He began scanning the second-floor veranda for threats while still calling on his walkie-talkie.

Gianna, Mohammed, and Ethan ran to him.

Ethan said, “The Expeditions! Do you have keys?”

“Get in the black one!”

In the dark they both looked back, but once Ethan got closer he realized one was dark green. He climbed into the backseat of the black Expedition, and Gianna moved in next to him. Mohammed took the front passenger seat, and Leo got behind the wheel and started the truck.

They lurched off down the muddy driveway, heading away from the inlet and into the trees.

“Where are we going?” Ethan asked, looking over his shoulder to make sure no one was following.

Leo’s voice was weak. “We can go to the docks on the east side, where we have boats. The Panamanian police boats will support us once on the water.” He coughed. “Please sit quietly.”

This sounded like as good a plan as any to Ethan, and he found himself astonished to have made it away from the Americans. His hands shook violently.

Gianna noticed this, she must have been going through her own panic at present, but she hugged him to comfort him nonetheless.

F
OUR NAVAL SPETSNAZ COMMANDOS
burst out the French doors to the pool area and ran to toward the remaining Ford Expedition in the driveway. They had been fighting the last of the resistance upstairs when one of their number saw the taillights of an SUV at the far edge of the lawn, racing into the jungle, and the lieutenant ordered the members of his team still in the fight to take off in pursuit.

Two Russians lay dead. One man had been killed on the back patio as he tried to pick a window lock for a stealthy entrance. A passing guard saw the movement and opened fire, and this caught the rest of the team still outside the house in the open. They’d fought their way inside, killed several Venezuelans in the process, but their attempts to take the American had been delayed and, at least temporarily, thwarted.

A second Russian commando was felled in the archway to the gallery. The Venezuelans had put up a surprising defense, and now, as the four men raced to the remaining vehicle parked in the driveway, the lieutenant feared this operation was falling apart around him.

He’d wanted helicopters for this job, he’d pressed for them right up until the minute he and his team climbed aboard the Cessna Caravan with their parachutes, but the FSB was running the op, and they demand Ross be taken to a yacht moored on the eastern edge of the island. Russian helos would be too overt, they had said, any pictures or sightings of the birds would prove they weren’t American, and the entire mission was to be constructed as a deniable operation. The lieutenant suggested using Nicaraguan helicopters, but the FSB had patiently explained this would do nothing to convince the world America had invaded Panama,
again
, this time to recover a loose-lipped employee. Then the FSB impatiently told the commando leader to stop worrying about their end of the mission and to start worrying about his own end of the mission.

The lieutenant dove into the front passenger seat of the Expedition, and one of his men opened the driver’s-side door and leapt behind the wheel. They had already hotwired the vehicle to use in their getaway, it was the lieutenant’s one piece of good fortune that Ross and his entourage had run off in the other Ford, leaving the one prepped by Spetsnaz behind. The Expedition kicked mud and rock and water into the air and shot down the drive in pursuit of the American and his confederates.

D
OMINIC
C
ARUSO RACED
around the front of the house onto the driveway, his pistol arcing left and right and up and down as he ran.

In the distance he saw a Ford Expedition moving into the trees, and he raised his weapon to fire at it, but from behind he heard a shout:
“Alto!” Stop!

Dom froze, raised his hands, and dropped the pistol into the mud. Turning around slowly, he saw a Venezuelan guard with a G3 rifle on his shoulder walking across the patio near the pool, approaching rapidly. He shouted at Dom, no doubt they were commands of some sort, but Dom couldn’t understand. The man was alone, a little more amped up than Caruso would have liked, considering he had a finger pressed against the trigger of his rifle and the muzzle pointed directly at his target’s head.

The gun flicked to the left. Dom assumed that meant he was supposed to head back through the French doors. His kept his hands high, then turned to walk back to the house, complying with the gestures of the guard, if not his exact wishes.

The guard started following him, his rifle still pointed at Dom’s back.

Dom took a couple steps toward the house and then slowed suddenly but did not stop. He hoped the man would keep walking and actually touch him in the back with the rifle. He had no such luck, but the Venezuelan did say something, and Dom used the sound of the man’s voice to picture the location of both the man and his gun.

Dom spun, his right arm coming up, and he knocked the G3 sideways as a flash and the cacophonous report of a gunshot echoed across the lawn. He launched forward at the man, struck him in the chin, and the Venezuelan tumbled onto the driveway, rolling backward three hundred sixty degrees. Dom leapt for the rifle, but as he did he realized his opponent was lying directly on top of the Beretta pistol in the mud.

Dom lifted the G3 as quickly as possible and pointed it at the Venezuelan, who had just climbed to his knees and wrapped his hands around the Beretta. Dom aimed at the kneeling man’s chest and pulled the trigger.

The G3 went “click” in Dom’s hand.

The Venezuelan’s eyes widened and he quickly lifted the pistol to aim at the American’s face. At a distance of less than fifteen feet, he couldn’t miss.

Dom shut his eyes as the boom of a gunshot echoed off the colonial mansion behind him.