by Barry Eisler
Minutes seemed to go by, but Livia knew it was less than that. Her heart was hammering now. The waiting, the anticipation, was always the worst part. Made even harder now because when to go in wasn’t up to her. She wasn’t even waiting for a signal as such. Their signal would be a sudden boom.
They waited. She could see past Carl and everything was quiet. She was glad he had her back the same way. Now it was just a question of—
BOOM!
Without a second’s hesitation, Carl smashed the glass with the pry bar, pulled the pin from the flashbang, and tossed it in. Another boom! came from the room within, along with a gigantic flash of light. Carl drew the Wilson, swept back the curtain, and aimed inside, left, center, right. He raked the remaining glass out of the frame with the pry bar and shouted, “Clear!” Livia put her free hand on the bottom pane and vaulted in, landing in a crouch and sweeping the room with the muzzle of the Glock. There was smoke from the flashbang but nothing else—just a couch and chairs and a flat-panel monitor. She yelled, “Clear!” and dashed ahead to the side of the room’s open door.
Carl hit the floor behind her and raced to the other side of the door. She heard loud shots from the second floor—BAM! BAM!—and then a quieter answering volley. But there was no time to worry about Larison. They had the entire first floor still ahead of them—
Another BAM!, from the other side of the door, louder than a pistol shot. Carl staggered. She looked and saw a huge hole in the wall. Someone had shot through the other side—from the sound and the size of the hole, a shotgun. She felt a surge of fear and rage. She calculated the angle by instinct, aimed at the wall, and fired eight times in a wide pattern. There was a cry from the other side. She bolted through the door into a kitchen. There, to the right, a man with a pistol-grip shotgun. His shoulder was bloody—she must have hit him there—and his right arm was dangling. He grimaced and tried to bring up the muzzle one-handed. Livia put three rounds in his chest. He dropped the shotgun and fell backward into the dining room.
She spun. To her left were two closed doors that she knew from the Airbnb site went to a rec room and to the garage. Straight ahead were the stairs to the second floor. To her right, the dining room—
She didn’t even hear it. It was more a feeling, or an instinct. She spun. She saw a man flash-check past the doorjamb. She fired three rounds through the wall and dove behind a counter. The wood looked cheap and she doubted it would provide much cover, especially against another shotgun. She pressed against the wall, dropped the magazine, and slapped in a spare. Had she hit him? She wasn’t sure. And the angles here were bad. If she popped up, he’d know her position after she dropped back down. If she scuttled left, it would make for an awkward shot.
She heard three more pistol shots from upstairs. Then a much louder one—BAM!—from the other side of the room. In the same instant, a giant hole appeared in the cabinet next to her. Wood and porcelain shards sprayed past her.
Fuck, shotgun—
She popped up before he could rack the slide, a distant part of her mind praying it was pump-action, not semiauto—
She put the sights on center mass and pressed the trigger. She hit him. Fire erupted from the shotgun muzzle, and the cabinet to her left exploded.
Fuck, semiauto—
She kept firing, putting three more rounds into him. He got off two more shots, but he was firing wildly now, his body jerking and flinching from being hit. Her last shot caught him in the neck. A geyser of blood erupted. He tripped over the body in the dining room and went down.
She wanted to go to Carl, but she had to use whatever surprise and confusion they had left. These guys were better armed than they were. She couldn’t risk getting pinned down again—her best hope was speed and mobility.
She heard more shots from upstairs. Either Larison was having a protracted gunfight with a single shooter, or Kanezaki’s estimate of three men was badly off.
Come on, Livia, move—
She raced out into the hallway. Clear. No one on the stairs.
Where the fuck is Schrader?
The garage or the rec room. Had to be one or the other.
She turned and saw the garage door open a crack. A face peeked through it. She fired twice. The rounds hit the door and it slammed closed. She stepped offline, but before she could get off another round, a fusillade of fire erupted through the door. Rounds punched through the air to her left and slammed into the wall behind her. Shards of the garage door flew through the air. What was left looked like shredded paper.
She dove back into the kitchen, primally terrified. She heard another burst of fire. The guy must have decided it was safer to finish shredding the door instead of trying to open it.
How many rounds was that? Fifteen? More?
Must have been a magazine-fed automatic shotgun. She guessed an AA-12.
She got to her feet and dashed through the kitchen. She saw Carl coming in from the room they’d first entered.
“That’s an AA-12!” she shouted.
“I know! Go, go!”
She tore into the dining room, leaping over the two bodies. The shooter had probably already swapped magazines. These walls would be as much cover as paper.
She turned. Carl was behind her, wrestling the refrigerator away from the wall. He must have been supercharged with adrenaline because he got his arms around it, lifted—
The man with the shotgun raced to the edge of the kitchen. She saw the weapon—the AA-12—
—drum-fed, are you fucking kidding me?—
He raised it—
Carl spun and got the refrigerator facing the other way. A staccato series of shots rang out—BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAM!—and the refrigerator was jolted by repeated impacts. Carl dropped it. It landed with a thud and he dove to the side. Several slugs made it through, slamming into the wall behind them.
Livia gripped his shoulder and leaned close. “Distract him,” she whispered fiercely. Before he could respond, she raced out to the living room. She stopped at the edge of the hallway, her heart hammering.
Come on, come on . . .
She heard a series of pistol shots from the dining room. And an answering series of reverberating cannon shots from the AA-12. She stepped around the corner, saw him, put the sights on center mass—
He must have picked her up in his peripheral vision. He started to turn, the AA-12 spinning around—
She pressed the trigger, hitting him. He flinched and jerked. She kept shooting, walking the shots in, firing continuously, putting six rounds into his body and a final one in his head. He fell face-forward, hitting the carpet with a meaty thud, the shotgun landing next to him.
Carl ran up behind her, the Wilson at chin level. They backed up against each other so they had 360-degree coverage, Livia facing the kitchen, Carl facing the stairs.
“You okay?” Livia said.
“Yeah, took the round in the vest. But you might need to minister to my bruises later.”
“Schrader. He could be in the garage, but I’m guessing the rec room.”
“One thing at a time,” he said. Then he bellowed, “Larison! You still with us?”
Two shots rang out in response, followed by two louder ones in return.
“Damn it,” he said, “he must be pinned down.”
“Yeah, by another shotgun.”
“Sounds like it. Cover me. Always wanted to play with one of those drum-fed AA-12s. Saw the videos on YouTube.”
He went to the guy Livia had dropped, picked up the shotgun, checked the magazine, and ran to the bottom of the stairs. Livia went to the other side. She pointed the Glock at the top and nodded.
He took the stairs three at a time. Livia had been expecting him to move quietly, but apparently he was more interested in speed. She checked behind, then raced up after him. He reached the top and three shots rang out. Instantly he was proned out on the stairs. She crouched down alongside him, covering the top landing with the Glock. The walls were pockmarked with bullet holes.
<
br /> “Larison!” Carl bellowed. “We’re right here, with some heavy artillery we picked up. Can you fall back and get out of the way?”
“What the hell are you doing?” Livia whispered. They had the guy pinned down from both sides. Why tell him which side the attack was going to come from?
“Give me a three count,” Larison yelled back.
“One,” Carl yelled. “Two. Three!”
Three pistol shots rang out from ahead of them. Carl jumped up, shouldered the AA-12, and let loose a thunderclap of continuous fire. Livia ran past him to the edge of the landing and aimed the Glock, but it was too late—Larison was standing in the doorway at the end of the hall, and the shooter was on the ground, half in and half out of a doorway, his face and torso shredded, a shotgun lying next to him. Livia swept the muzzle of the Glock from side to side, searching for movement, but there was nothing, only gun smoke.
“Was that the only one?” Carl said.
“Just the one,” Larison said, his gun up, the muzzle tracking as he searched left and right.
“Then it’s zero,” Carl said, “’cause this one is dead.”
Livia realized she hadn’t been giving them credit for knowing each other’s moves. Carl hadn’t been telling Larison to move. He’d been drawing the shooter’s attention, giving Larison a chance to get the drop on him.
They went down the stairs, Livia in the lead, Larison behind her, Carl bringing up the rear with the AA-12. Livia didn’t know whether there were any others, and her instinct was to slow things down. Speed and surprise had gotten them this far. Care and control were how they would see it through.
They checked the garage first. There were two cars, and it took them a minute to make sure the interiors were empty and the area was clear. Carl put his hand on one hood, then the other.
“This one’s warm,” he said. “Got here not long ago. Maybe to pass off Schrader, or to change shifts, or whatever. Probably why Tom’s intel about their numbers was off.”
They moved back through the house, fanning out near the door to the rec room. “Give me that shotgun,” Larison whispered to Carl. “And go back out. When you hear shooting, put another flashbang through the window.”
Carl nodded. He handed the AA-12 to Larison and went out. Larison holstered his Glock. He looked at Livia and smiled. “We having fun yet?”
She didn’t see the humor. She was too aware of why they were there, and what was at stake. “It’ll be fun when we have Schrader,” she said.
“Then let’s get him. You ready?”
She nodded. He backed up, aimed the AA-12 at the doorknob at a sharp angle, and—
BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAM! Shards of wood flew through the air. Silence, then—
A giant BOOM! from inside. The flashbang.
Larison kicked open the door and pointed the shotgun. Livia dashed up alongside him, aiming the Glock—
The room was filled with smoke, but she saw him immediately. In the corner. Schrader. For a second, she thought he had two heads. Because behind him, pressing his cheek to one side of Schrader’s face and the muzzle of a pistol to the other, was another man. They were both blinking and coughing.
“I’ll kill him!” the man shouted. “I’ll fucking kill him!”
Carl ripped the curtains away and took aim. Larison sighted down the shotgun.
“Wait!” Livia yelled. “Wait!” From where he was standing outside the window, Carl couldn’t have had more than an inch of the guy’s face. And the shotgun wasn’t a precision weapon.
“Back up!” the man shouted. “Back the fuck up or I swear to God I’ll blow him away!”
“Just let him go!” Livia shouted, pointing the Glock. She was ninety percent sure of the shot. But ninety percent wasn’t good enough. “Can you hear me? Let him go and you can walk out of here.”
The man blinked furiously, fighting the blinding effects of the flashbang. “No way!” he screamed. “All of you, back up or he’s dead!”
“Listen to me!” Livia said. “You shoot him and you’re dead a second after. But we don’t know who you are. And we don’t care. We’re here for Schrader. Walk away and we never saw you. That simple. Just walk away.”
The man didn’t answer. He was panting, his eyes darting from her to Larison to Carl and back. He wanted to believe. She could feel it. She prayed Carl and Larison would for once keep their mouths shut.
“We’re going to lower our guns,” she said, glancing at Larison. His eyes bulged, but she glared at him, then looked back to the guy behind Schrader. After a second, Larison lowered the muzzle of his Glock a little. She did the same.
“Lower your gun!” she shouted to Carl. “He can go. If he’s smart.”
Carl lowered the Wilson.
“Leave,” she said to the man. “Right now. This is your chance.”
He looked at her, panting, then at Larison. He eased the muzzle of his gun away from Schrader’s face, relaxed his grip, started to move to the side—
Livia stepped offline, brought up the Glock, and put two rounds in his face. His head snapped back and he went down.
“Oh, my God!” Schrader screamed. Larison stepped in and kicked him field-goal style in the balls. The scream was instantly cut off and Schrader doubled over.
Larison looked at Livia and smiled. “You’re good. For a second there, you had me convinced, too.”
Carl rushed in. He and Larison grabbed Schrader by the arms and half dragged, half carried him out the back, Livia covering them from the rear.
She heard sirens. But in seconds they were in the woods, and a minute later, the van. Carl and Larison threw Schrader in back and sat on him. Livia jumped in front.
“You got him?” Diaz said.
“Go,” Livia said, her heart pounding. “Drive normally. Head west. Yeah, we got him.”
She turned around and watched as Carl and Larison flex-tied Schrader’s wrists behind his back. She heard Diaz say, “Actual fact, girl: you are badass.”
Schrader was crying. He said, “I want to go home.”
“Don’t worry,” Livia said. “That’s the plan.”
chapter
fifty-seven
RISPEL
It was already ten in the morning on the East Coast, and still no word from the Seattle team. Of course, a benign explanation was possible, but Rispel knew something was wrong. Everything about the Schrader operation had been a clusterfuck, almost from go. Well, not everything. Getting Schrader released from jail had worked. Weirdly, it was the most audacious move of the entire game, and the only one that had gone smoothly.
She told her admin to hold her calls, then tried Sloat again. Then Tyson. No one answered. She tried them on their alternate burners. Nothing.
She checked the news feed on her desktop monitor. Nothing out of Seattle. But the Washington Post had a scoop: intelligence about the discovery of a Russian disinformation campaign, including deep-fake photos and videos of administration officials engaged in salacious acts. “This is the next step in the information wars,” an unnamed senior intelligence official was quoted as saying. “Russia’s ability to wage this kind of asymmetric, low-intensity warfare against the integrity of our government, our elections, and our way of life cannot go unanswered. America needs to develop a robust set of tools for a full suite of potential responses throughout the battlespace. Until that happens—until our adversaries pay a price for this kind of meddling—we’re going to see continued escalation of fake news from the Kremlin.”
Devereaux, she thought. Playing bullshit bingo with the press. Information wars, meddling, fake news, the Kremlin . . . It was actually an astute move, and she mentally kicked herself for having given him the idea. You could get the establishment media to print anything on background, and then quote it yourself later as proof of the need for whatever policy you were selling. In this case, Devereaux was indeed shaping the battlespace. Now if those videos were released, he’d be able to point to reports like the one he’d just dictated to his stenographer
at the Post as proof that the videos were nothing but fake news. Information wars, indeed.
She paused for a moment, thinking. Had Devereaux learned something about an imminent release of the videos? Why else would he be establishing this preemptive groundwork?
Or—had something been released already?
The more she thought about it, the more she suspected he’d been lying to her about the president being in the videos. Because what was he going to do, tell her the truth? Help me out here, Lisa. I fucked a bunch of teenaged girls at a drug-fueled orgy and now it’s all going to be released as a movie of the week. He would have been afraid she would want those videos for her own leverage. And rightly so.
But who was pressuring Devereaux? He had been vague about that when he first brought Rispel into this. Schrader himself? How could he have, from jail? Through his lawyer, maybe, but who would the woman contact? Well, given that the underlying problem was an out-of-control assistant US Attorney, it stood to reason that Schrader’s lawyer would have gone to the attorney general himself. But why would Hobbs have cared enough to bring in Devereaux, unless Hobbs was implicated in the videos, too?
It didn’t matter. Either way, she needed to secure the videos quickly. Every leaked report about Russian fake news would bleed off the eventual impact. Enough time, and Devereaux and Hobbs and anyone else who appeared in the videos might even be able to ride out a release. They’d cry “fake news” in unison and accuse anyone in the media who wanted to publish the material or even to ask questions about it of doing the Kremlin’s kompromat work. It wouldn’t be easy—the public, like the press, was far more interested in sex scandals than in routine corruption—but if Devereaux and the rest kept strict message discipline, eventually they’d exhaust the media, and it would move on to the next glittering object. In the end, it always did.
She went back to news from Seattle. And this time, there it was. Explosions and a shooting in a house on Lake Tapps. She felt a cold weight settle inside her chest.
