Slowly, Garin moved closer to the cabin but still well within the tree line of the surrounding forest. He expected there would be guards stationed outside, and Bor was likely to have positioned portable motion detectors and pressure plates around the cabin as well.
When he came within seventy feet of the cabin, Garin was able to discern two figures standing at opposite ends of the structure. Two more were likely stationed on the other side, but Garin couldn’t see them. He needed to take out all of them to ensure getting into the cabin undetected. But to get to anyone on the other side, he first had to leave the cover of the tree line.
Before taking care of the outside guards, Garin had to find out where Olivia and Day were in relation to their captors on the inside. While scanning the windows he continued to move closer to the edge of the tree line, approximately forty feet from the cabin.
There he detected movement in one of the upstairs windows and paused. Taras Bor. The Russian’s head was cast downward and he appeared to be speaking to someone seated to the right. An Iranian was barely visible to his left.
This complicated matters significantly, rendering a bad situation worse. Garin had expended thousands of rounds in innumerable kill-house exercises, as well as in actual hostage scenarios in both Iraq and Somalia. None had presented the challenges he was facing tonight. It would be difficult enough for one man to take out Bor and the Iranians were they all grouped together in a small area. Taking out the downstairs contingent without alerting those upstairs, and without increasing the already high probability of collateral damage, would be nearly impossible. He had no flash bangs, no backup, and poor intel on the bad guys’ positions. He needed support—lots of it—and he needed it now. Otherwise, this exercise would be futile, suicidal.
He hit the redial on his cell again to no avail. Seconds later, more movement caught his eye, this time in the living room window below. He looked down at the ground-floor window and his chest seized with astonishment. Seated on a couch was his sister, Katy. Although he couldn’t see them, he knew Joe and the kids must be nearby.
The noise outside the bunker. In the chaos of the last few days Garin had neglected to check on Joe and Katy. The seemingly omniscient Bor, however, had not. Clearly, to have located the bunker meant the Russian had extraordinary resources here in the United States. But that wasn’t an issue to be addressed now. Right now, all that mattered was that Bor had located Garin’s loved ones and was using them as an insurance policy. Just in case Garin showed up. Freeze him in place. The Russian assassin had covered all the angles. Once again, he remained one step ahead.
Garin felt a rush of adrenaline fueled by a combination of fear and fury. A jumble of childhood memories and emotion swirled in his brain, stoking his rage and causing the muscles in his neck and jaw to tense. The monsters in the cabin were holding the person who knew him best, loved him most. Maybe the only person who loved him. And they had Olivia, too. She’d taken a chance, risked her career, to help him.
So for their crimes they would suffer. Especially Bor. Garin would rip out his intestines and ram them so far down his throat they’d end up where they’d started. He was going to die slowly, in unbearable agony.
And then Garin’s training—the cold, steel discipline of Omega’s team leader—began to kick in. His training told him that any move he made now, compromised by emotion, would end in disaster. He needed to think, be rational.
His training, however, was at war with his instincts. Long ago, Laws had warned him there would be one or two extraordinary situations in his career in which that would happen. No amount of training, no amount of experience, would help. And on these occasions he would be alone, the correctness of his choice validated only by its outcome.
He sensed he was left, quite simply, with no choice but to act. If he didn’t, Katy and her family would be dead.
—
Katy’s eyes reflected seething hatred toward her captors. The animals had thrown her family, bound and gagged, into the rear of a filthy Econoline van and had driven from Ohio to . . . wherever they were. Joe, bleeding from his scalp from repeated blows to the head, had been unconscious for most of the trip. They had stopped only once, Katy presumed for gas. The family was kept locked in the van, and the kids, denied the use of a restroom, had soiled themselves. No food, no water. Nine hours of driving sprawled on the bare metal floor of the van.
The animals had taken Joe somewhere else in the cabin. She hadn’t seen him since their arrival, and she suspected the worst after Joe had punched one of the men as they were herding their captives into the cabin. Two of them leapt upon Joe, beating him as the others kept their weapons trained on him. Katy held no illusion that the beatings had discontinued. The kids were sitting together at her feet on the floor, frightened but quiet.
Seated on the couch to Katy’s immediate right was a young woman who had arrived at the cabin along with a frail, distraught-looking man a few hours after the Burns family. She had tried to speak to Katy but was slapped by one of the guards for the effort. The leader of the group seemed to take particular interest in the woman, who apparently possessed information valuable to the animals. One disapproving glance from him had caused the guard to retreat submissively.
A total of six guards, each with some sort of submachine gun, formed a semicircle in front of the couch. The one named Atosh sat in front of her in a chair. Two stood to his right in front of the living room window. Three stood to Atosh’s left. Katy let them know she was unimpressed.
“Six men with guns to cover two women and three children,” Katy hissed in contempt. “Pathetic. You’re not men. You’re not even cowards. You’re beneath cowards. My husband—”
“Will be dead soon,” Atosh said dismissively, cutting her off.
“My husband will kill you,” Katy continued. “He will—”
“Silence,” Atosh commanded. “Your husband, like all Americans, is weak. He is all but dead.” Katy heard the soft sniffles of Kimmy and Alex. But Katrina Garin Burns didn’t heed the Iranian.
“My brother will find you,” Katy continued in a poorly controlled rage. “Every single one of you. You’ve bought yourselves a nightmare. Worse. You don’t know it yet, but you’re already dead. There’s nothing you can do to change that. Nothing you can do to save yourselves. Because you can’t stop him. Can’t beat him. No one can.” A pause. “But you can still save your families. Let my children go. That’s your only chance. Otherwise, every member of your families will be dead.” Katy looked at each guard in turn. “Every. Single. One.”
A sneer crossed Atosh’s face. The impertinence of the American female. She had been a constant irritant throughout the trip from Ohio. No matter, the impertinence would soon be purged from her, along with her life. “You foolish—” He stopped in midsentence, distracted by the chirping of the outdoor motion detectors. And the sound of someone singing.
—
Garin, vastly outnumbered, decided to hide in plain sight. Unable to see all the perimeter guards, he determined that the risk of being detected before he was able to get into the house was too high. So Garin decided to take the risk of detection out of the equation. He’d simply make his presence known to everyone in the cabin. Garin quietly retreated from the tree line back into the woods. When he’d gone far enough, he began humming loudly and walked to the cabin again, making no attempt to conceal the noise of twigs and branches snapping underfoot.
Just before he broke the tree line, Garin began singing boisterously, feigning inebriation.
Well, I stand right up to a mountain . . .
The guards peered into the dark, standing tensely, with their hands near the pistols on their hips. A third guard quickly appeared from the front of the cabin to check on what was happening.
And I chop it down with the edge of my hand . . .
Garin walked unsteadily toward the cabin, carrying the six-pack in his left hand and the f
ishing rod camouflaging the SIG in his right. His head down, he appeared lost in song, but through veiled eyes he was assessing the guards, gauging the angles.
As Garin drew closer he saw that one of the guards wore a head mike, his hand pressing against the earbud so he could hear over the noise. Someone from inside must have been inquiring what the commotion was all about.
The guard responded in Farsi to the inquiry coming over his mike. “No, Atosh, no. There is no problem. Everything is under control.” A pause, then: “A drunken American. Yes. We will send him on his way.”
Garin continued to approach, affecting an oblivious, careless manner. His eyes scanned from side to side. No other guards outside. He looked up as if noticing the guards in the dark for the first time and staggered to a halt, the picture of confusion.
“What . . . Wait, isn’t this the Prince George’s cabin?”
“Sir, you are lost,” said one of the guards without a trace of accent. “This is not the Prince George’s. You must move along if you wish to locate your cabin.”
“Oh man,” Garin moaned. “This is really messed up. I was just fishing . . . lost track of the time. As you can see I didn’t catch squat”—Garin held up the beer cans—“except this. And now here I am, lost in the dark.”
From the outlines of their torsos, Garin suspected the guards were wearing body armor. He would have to shoot each of them in the head. A neat trick in the dark, even at close range.
“Sir, you must move on,” the guard insisted politely. “This is a private rental.” The guard pointed to his left. “Perhaps your cabin is in that direction.”
Garin turned in the direction in which the guard pointed. “Where?”
The guard took his eye off Garin and turned in the direction in which he was pointing. “Over there.”
Garin seized the split second, dropped the beer and rod, and rapidly fired two suppressed rounds into the heads of each of the three guards, who collapsed onto the soft ground without a sound. Garin sprinted toward the cabin and moved to the front to confirm there were no remaining guards outside, hugging the exterior wall so he wouldn’t be seen from the windows.
As he moved along the right side of the cabin, he saw a light in a basement window. Staying to the side of the window, he bent down and glanced inside. Joe Burns, blood dripping from his head and face, was suspended by his hands from a wooden overhead beam in the basement laundry. Two Quds Force operatives, their backs to the window, were standing next to him. Even from behind, Garin immediately recognized the one holding a bent wire coat hanger in his hand as Mr. Obvious from the Diamondback. The other had what appeared to be a Mossberg 590A1 shotgun. From what Garin could see of Joe’s shredded, blood-soaked clothing, the Iranians had been beating Joe’s head, legs, and torso with the hanger.
Garin passed by the window and completed a circumnavigation of the cabin. No other guards were outside. He approached the rear door from the side and took a quick look in the door’s small window. Seeing no one, he carefully opened the door, stepped inside, and closed it. To his left, a flight of stairs ran up to the main and second floors. To his right was the door leading to the basement.
Garin opened the basement door slowly, praying that the hinges were well oiled. From the top of the stairs he could see the lower legs of the two Iranians and hear them talking in Farsi. Joe would be hanging a couple of feet to their left.
Taking a breath, Garin descended the stairs swiftly and silently. He reached the bottom just a few feet from the Iranians and began firing before they realized he was there, double tapping each. Both were dead before they hit the floor.
Garin stuck the SIG into the holster in his waistband, pulled out a SOG tactical knife from his left boot, and cut the ropes from Joe’s hands. Joe began to collapse but Garin steadied him with his free hand.
As Joe rubbed his arms, trying to get the feeling back in them, Garin ejected the half-spent magazine from his pistol and seated a fresh one. His next move would require him to engage at least six targets at once, and he wanted to reduce the need to change magazines in the middle of the fight. Garin looked over at Joe, who was doing his best to mask his pain.
“How bad is it?” Garin whispered.
“About as bad as it looks. They got my legs pretty good. I’m kinda wobbly. I didn’t tell them anything, though, Mike. Not that I had anything to say.”
“Can you handle one of those?” Garin asked, pointing to the Mossberg.
The sergeant major gave him a withering look.
“Katy and the kids are on the next floor. There are half a dozen of those bastards covering them. On the floor above that, there are at least three more. It’s not optimal, but I’ll need to use my pistol—I can’t use the shotgun and risk spraying Katy and the kids. Can you get up the flight of stairs?”
“I think so.”
“All right. Take a position on the landing inside the back door and smoke any bad guys that try to come your way.”
“Like hell. That’s not gonna happen. Those are my wife and kids up there in the living room. I’m coming with you.”
“Joe, listen. I need to move fast. Really fast. No margin for error. Even then . . . Look, I just can’t risk having you slow me down.”
Joe eyed Garin with an intensity he’d never before seen from his brother-in-law. “That’s my family up there,” Joe snarled. “You better not slow me down.”
Garin knew he was wasting precious seconds and that he wouldn’t win this argument. He conceded to himself that he needed help. Even with a second gun, the odds of pulling this off were not good.
“Okay, I’ll go up to the first floor and wait in the hallway leading to the living room.” Garin picked up the shotgun and handed it to Joe. “You continue up to the second floor. There’s a light on in the bedroom directly above the living room. There should be three bad guys standing in there, plus a skinny blondish guy who’s probably sitting in a chair or on the bed.”
“I saw them bring him in,” Joe said.
“It would be nice if he came out of this alive. Try to avoid hitting him if you can. But you’re not trained for this, so don’t be cute. When you’re ready, you go into that room blasting. Take out all the bad guys.”
“I’ve never been accused of being cute.”
“One of the guys in that bedroom is really bad. If you hesitate, even for a millisecond, you’re dead—we’re all dead. Got it?”
“We’re wasting time,” Joe replied impatiently.
“I’ll wait until you’ve made your move first. When you start firing that cannon, I’m counting on it to startle the enemy in the living room just long enough to give me an edge.”
Joe nodded. Garin proceeded quietly up the stairs to the landing at the back door. Someone was talking in the living room. Garin poked his head quickly into the darkened hallway. He could see the kids seated on the floor in front of the couch twenty feet away. An Iranian seated in a chair facing the couch blocked his view of someone Garin presumed was Katy.
Garin motioned for Joe to pass him and continue up the stairs to the second floor. As he passed, Joe patted Garin once on the shoulder.
Garin slid slowly down the hallway toward the living room, hugging the right wall, weapon extended at eye level. He could hear his sister cursing the Iranians. Balls. He stopped—remaining obscured by the shadows of the hallway, three feet from the entrance to the living room. If he stayed to the right side of the hallway when he moved forward, he’d have a clear shot at the three Iranians facing the window and the one sitting in a chair with his back to him. At the same time, the Iranians standing to the right, in front of the window, wouldn’t have a clear shot at him. He decided to start with the men on the left and then move to the other side of the hallway, engage the seated man, and finally the two in front of the window.
Garin inched forward. Alex’s eyes widened as he noticed Uncle Mike standing
with a pistol in the shadows of the hallway. Garin shook his head curtly and Alex obediently cast his eyes downward just as a series of deafening explosions sounded from the upstairs bedroom.
For Garin, the next five seconds unfolded in a slow, dreamlike sequence. He stepped forward and fired six rounds at the Quds Force operatives standing to the left. Each round found its target, sending the three Iranians tumbling backward and landing in a tangled sprawl on the floor.
Katy reflexively dove on top of the kids to shield them from errant bullets. Olivia dove next to her. Atosh, the seated Iranian, wasn’t able to turn more than halfway around before two shots from Garin’s weapon tore the top of his head off, blasting him from the chair and onto the floor next to Olivia.
Mental clock ticking, Garin stepped to the other side of the living room entrance and pivoted to his right to engage the two Iranians standing in front of the window. Before he could lock onto either target, he realized that the one closest to him had already raised his weapon and was about to fire, when the living room window exploded and the skulls of both Iranians burst simultaneously into a pink mist, sending their lifeless torsos crashing to the floor amid a cascade of shattered glass.
Sniper fire.
Garin rapidly checked the six corpses, ignoring the ringing in his ears and the cries of his niece and nephews. He took a brief glance at the women and kids to confirm that they were unharmed, then bolted up the stairs to the second floor, taking three steps at a time.
Reaching the landing, he jutted his head into the hallway and, seeing nothing, moved to the bedroom door, where Joe was standing, chest heaving, Mossberg held at his hip.
Joe turned urgently to Garin. “Katy and the kids?”
“Scared witless, but good as new.”
Garin peered into the bedroom to inspect the carnage. A kaleidoscope of blood was splattered across the walls behind two bodies lying on the floor. Neither body was Bor’s.
Target Omega Page 36
