by Brad Thor
It was a black art, the taking of life, and one that Luke Ralston was all too well versed in.
Dropping the knife, he picked up the intruder’s suppressed Walther P99 and did a press check. Satisfied that a round was chambered and the weapon was hot, he turned the volume down on the radio, tucked it into his back pocket, and went off in search of Salomon.
The problem, though, was twofold. Were there any more intruders in the house and where should he begin looking for Salomon? He decided to start with the producer’s office.
To get there, he had to pass through the entry hall with its wide double staircase. There was nothing for cover and Ralston used the darkness and shadows as best he could. The living room, with its floor-to-ceiling glass windows and ambient moonlight spilling from outside, was even worse, but he made it through both without incident.
The entrance to Larry Salomon’s office was down a short hall just past the living room. The hairs on the back of Ralston’s neck were standing on end before he even got to the door.
With the weapon up and at the ready, he button-hooked into the room and tried to take it all in.
Everything was different. The office looked as if it had been turned into some sort of war room. Whiteboards and bulletin boards were leaning against the walls and a large, rolling chalkboard was off to one side. Salomon’s imposing glass-and-steel desk now sat cheek-by-jowl with two additional, smaller desks, which were topped with high-end Apple computer systems and what Ralston recognized as editing equipment. There were stacks of cardboard filing boxes filled with reams and reams of papers and documents.
There were more pillars of books, some stacked three feet high and surrounded by yellow Post-it notes on a pair of matching drafting tables. And then there was another body.
The man appeared to be in his midforties, doughy, with salt-and-pepper hair and a matching beard. He wore jeans, loafers, and an Oxford cloth shirt. He had been shot in the back of the head execution-style. Ralston rolled him over to see who he was. As with the body in the kitchen, he didn’t recognize the man.
Exiting the office, he went down the hall to the back stairs. If Salomon had retained any of the emergency response advice he had dispensed to him dozens of times, perhaps he would have headed straight upstairs. If so, maybe it had bought him some time, especially if he’d heard the shots and had been able to figure out what was going on.
Reaching the top of the stairs, Ralston crouched down and stole a quick peek around the doorframe. The hallway was empty.
Stepping into the hall, he moved as quickly as he could toward Salomon’s bedroom. He stopped only for open doors, and even then, it was for just long enough to make sure there were no threats on the other side.
He was fifteen feet away from the master bedroom, when a figure stepped into the hall and fired.
The bullet came so close to the side of Ralston’s head that it actually set his right ear ringing. On instinct, having fired hundreds of thousands of rounds during his Spec Ops career, he depressed the trigger of his own weapon twice in quick succession and dropped the shooter onto the carpeted floor of the hallway.
Ralston advanced on the man and kicked the suppressed pistol away before checking to see if he was still alive. One round had entered just below his nose; the other had entered through his throat. He was big and dressed in a cheap suit just like his partner downstairs. The back of his head was flat as well. What the hell was going on? Who were these people? Why were there Russians in the house?
Ralston’s questions were interrupted by the sound of a sharp crack from inside Salomon’s bedroom. It wasn’t the crack of a pistol. It was the crack of molding as drywall was being ripped away.
It told him two things. Salomon was still alive, but he had only seconds left to live.
CHAPTER 6
Larry Salomon had expected that a savvy intruder would probably cut his telephone hard line. That was why he always kept a charged cell phone in his panic room. A fixed external antenna had been installed to guarantee reception, but suddenly it wasn’t working either. He was panicked. No matter how many times he dialed 911, he couldn’t get through.
He’d been around enough weapons, even if only on movie sets where blanks were being fired, to know what real gunshots sounded like. Suppressed gunshots, contrary to what many people thought, were still audible. There was no such thing as completely silenced gunfire.
Having changed out of his evening attire, Salomon had been on his way out of his bedroom and back downstairs for one final drink, when he’d heard the first shot. He’d stood paralyzed, wondering what he’d actually heard. Then the second shot came. That’s when he knew.
He had turned and fled back to the master bedroom. He didn’t dare waste even a fraction of a second looking over his shoulder to see if he was being followed. He didn’t need to. His animal instinct for survival told him that he most definitely had someone pursuing him. He also knew that the two gunshots meant his houseguests were dead.
Charging into his walk-in closet cum panic room, he slammed the heavy metal door shut, threw the bolts home, and hit the panic button for the alarm system. He expected the high-pitched piercing shriek of the alarm to kick in instantly. It didn’t, and his fear mounted.
On a small monitor mounted inside the closet, he watched via the hidden bedroom camera as a large man with a gun rushed into the room just behind him. He pressed the panic button again and when the alarm failed to engage, he attempted to call the police, only to discover that neither his landline nor his cell phone were working.
He then watched as the intruder attempted to kick in the closet door. Again and again he kicked, but the steel-reinforced door held. Finally, the man turned and walked out of view. Had he given up?
Salomon’s question was answered when the man passed back under the camera a moment later with a fireplace tool and disappeared from view once again.
The producer strained to see what the man was up to, but the monitor provided only a very limited field of view. The security system, like the panic room, had come with the house and had been installed by the previous owner. Salomon had never really thought about it much. It was only now that he realized that a pan-and-tilt camera would have been infinitely more useful than a static, fixed lens.
It was at that moment that all the power went out. With the phone line cut and his cell phone signal having somehow been jammed, Salomon wasn’t surprised when the emergency generator failed to kick in. Whoever had cut the power knew what he was doing. He was now effectively blind.
He wasn’t, however, deaf, and his heart soon choked his throat when he figured out where the intruder was and what he was doing with the fireplace poker.
The first thud had been somewhat displaced, but Salomon locked on to the second swing of the poker like a sonar operator.
The sounds had come from the far end of the closet. On the other side was the master bath. Using the poker, the intruder was clawing his way through the drywall and into what really wasn’t a true panic room, but rather just a closet with a very heavy door.
It was a poorly thought out feature that provided a false sense of security and would only slow, but not stop, a determined attacker. It dawned on Salomon how much trouble he was in. He was trapped.
Though he couldn’t see the intruder, he could hear huge pieces of drywall being ripped away on the bathroom side of the wall. Any moment now, he feared, the attacker was going to burst through into the closet. Salomon had one ace up his sleeve and he reached for it.
The Mossberg tactical shotgun had been a gift. A friend, moving to New York City, had been afraid to take it with him for fear of running afoul of antigun laws. With its pistol grip, short barrel, and crenelated muzzlebrake Salomon could understand why. He’d kept the weapon around “just in case,” figuring if he ever got in trouble for owning it, he could let his lawyers straighten it out. They could simply claim that it had been taken from one of his film sets as a souvenir and that he had no idea it was actually real.
Of course he’d also have to claim that he didn’t know it was loaded, but a courtroom appearance was the furthest thing from his mind at this point. All he cared about was staying alive.
Racking the slide, he made ready.
As Ralston charged into the bedroom, he heard the blast of a shotgun, and his heart stopped.
Rushing to the door of the master bath, he saw blood and bits of flesh everywhere. Risking a closer look, he stepped into the bathroom and saw a body on the floor and the distinctive door-breacher muzzlebrake of Salomon’s shotgun protruding from the far wall. He leaped out of the bathroom just as the weapon erupted with another roar. Twelve-gauge shot shattered the marble tiles right where he had been standing.
“Damn it, Larry!” Ralston yelled. “Cease fire! It’s me! Luke!”
His ears were ringing even harder now, and he wondered if his hearing would ever fully return. “I need to get into the bathroom and see if he’s dead. Don’t you fucking shoot me,” he ordered. “Okay?”
There was a muffled assent from Salomon. Whether it was muffled because his hearing was shot or because it was coming from behind a wall, Ralston couldn’t be sure. He peeked back into the bathroom and watched as the shotgun was retracted through the blown-out drywall.
Ralston grabbed two towels and threw them down so he didn’t have to walk across the bloody floor in his stocking feet.
The intruder must have been very close when the shotgun went off, as it had blown a huge hole in his chest. Ralston looked for any weapon he might have been carrying and saw another silenced pistol sitting on the edge of the vanity near where the man had been tearing through the wall to get at Salomon.
A good portion of the man’s suit coat and the shirt beneath were shredded. Once Ralston had ascertained that he had no pulse, he began peeling the strips of cloth away around his right armpit. He heard the closet door unlock, and seconds later Salomon was behind him.
“Who the hell are they?” he asked.
“Spetsnaz,” replied Ralston. “Russian Special Forces, I think.”
“How can you tell?”
Ralston lifted the dead man’s arm and pointed to the blue-black Cyrillic tattoo. “That’s how they mark their blood type.”
“What the hell are they doing here? Why would Russian Special Forces soldiers want to kill me?”
“You’re not the only one they came for.”
“Oh, my God,” said Salomon. “Chip and Jeremy. They were downstairs. I heard two shots.” His voice trailed off.
“They’re both dead. What were they doing here? And what the hell happened to your office?”
“We were working on a film; a documentary,” Salomon said, and then changed the subject. “We need to call the police.”
“No. We need to get someplace safe,” said Ralston. “We’ve got to think.”
“Think?” replied Salomon. “This guy killed Chip and Jeremy and was trying to make me the third. He could be some homicidal maniac, for all we know. We need to call the cops.”
Ralston stood up. “This is a professional wet work team. A Russian wet work team.”
“Team?”
“There was a driver outside and at least two others inside the house.”
Salomon was trying to piece it all together. “And you killed three of them?”
Ralston nodded.
“How did you know?”
“I saw tire tracks leading up the service road. I tried to call you, but I couldn’t get a signal.”
“My cell was down, too,” said Salomon.
“They must have some sort of jammer. Like I said, these guys were professional.” Ralston stepped off the towels and out of the bathroom. Reaching for the shotgun, he repeated, “There may be more of them. We need to get going.”
The producer shook his head. “I know how this plays out. If we don’t stay here and wait for the cops, we’ll look guilty.”
“And if we do stay and wait for the cops, we’ll both be dead. I’m not going to let that happen. The Russians have infiltrated a lot of police departments across the country.”
“Are you serious?”
“Dead serious,” said Ralston. “We’re not trusting anyone else at this point. When these guys fail to report back in, whoever sent them might send more. They’re going to use every contact, every means they have at their disposal. We need to disappear.”
Salomon began to object, but Ralston was already making his way across the bedroom. “Are you comfortable using this?” Ralston asked as he handed his friend the suppressed pistol.
“I’d rather have the shotgun.”
Ralston nodded and handed it over. Raising the pistol, he prepared to enter the hallway and said, “Stay close. And if you see anything move at all, you pull that trigger. Got it? Don’t even worry about aiming.”
Salomon nodded and the pair slipped into the hallway and down the back stairs. They stopped at the dining room long enough for Ralston to grab his shoes. He thought about wiping his fingerprints off the handle of the knife that lay only feet away, but decided it wasn’t worth the time. They needed to get out of there as quickly as possible. His damaged Porsche was already going to tell the world that he had been there.
In the garage, Ralston grabbed a flashlight and walked over to the key box. He bypassed all of Salomon’s luxury automobiles and selected the keys for his vintage navy blue Wagoneer.
Disengaging the overhead opener, he rolled up the garage door and told Salomon to get in the truck. Hopping in beside him, he fired up the Wagoneer and pulled into the motor court.
The gates at the bottom of the drive were on a separate circuit from the house and opened as the Wagoneer rolled over the pressure plates. The marine layer had turned into a thick fog. That would work to their advantage and it helped Ralston decide in which direction to head.
“You’re bleeding,” said Salomon as they turned out onto the road.
Ralston touched the side of his head and looked at his fingers. The bullet that had whizzed by his ear had actually grazed him. “Don’t worry about it,” he said.
Salomon was worried about it, though. He was worried about all of it. He knew Ralston was right. More men would be coming after him. He had uncovered the truth, and the truth made him a liability.
CHAPTER 7
SWEDEN
Harvath had rented a farm on the outskirts of Uppsala for their safe house. It was far enough away from neighbors that they could interrogate their prisoner and come and go without attracting any attention.
In the city of Uppsala itself, he had rented an apartment where he had staged an assault team. Though they were outfitted with gear to look like members of the Swedish Security Service, the government of Sweden had no idea an American operation was taking place on their soil. They were purposely being kept in the dark for the time being. Somewhere in the intelligence community, there was a leak. Because of that leak, one of the highest-value terrorist targets the United States had ever bagged, Aazim Aleem, had been assassinated.
Sitting in the darkened room, Scot Harvath played the entire scene across the panorama of his mind’s eye for the millionth time. It was all there-all so vivid-the boom of the rocket-propelled grenade leaving its launcher; the whoosh as it blistered through the air en route to its target, and finally the deafening explosion as the RPG connected with the trunk and gas tank of his car and the vehicle went up in a billowing fireball.
In a blinding flash, his Yemen operation had gone from a resounding success to a spectacular failure. Aazim, who’d been in the trunk, would have purchased Harvath’s group some much-needed goodwill with the CIA, but it was too late for that now.
Staring out the window, he caught a glimpse of his reflection. Although he had crossed the threshold into his forties, he still looked as if he was in his early thirties. His sand-colored hair showed no traces of gray; his handsome, green-eyed face bore few if any lines, and his five-foot-ten body was in better physical shape than those of men half his age. To see
the toll the years had taken, one would have to look elsewhere.
By most measures, Harvath was a success. In the immortal words of Mark Twain, he had made his vocation his vacation. He was a man of particular talents who was deeply committed to his country. Those talents and that commitment had propelled him to the pinnacle of his career. The cost to his personal life was something he didn’t like to think about.
Nevertheless, ever since Yemen his relationships had been very much at the forefront of his mind. But it wasn’t romantic relationships that he had been thinking about. Someone had professionally betrayed him, someone with intimate knowledge of his organization, someone close.
It was precisely because of this apparent leak that Harvath had requested permission to run this assignment himself. Somewhere there was a leak, and until that leak was plugged, there was a very short list of people Harvath could trust.
At the top of that list was a thirty-year CIA veteran named Reed Carlton. Carlton had watched as bureaucracy and inertia devoured what had once been the best intelligence agency in the world. As management became more concerned with promotions and covering its tail, and as the Agency’s leadership atrophied, Carlton could see the writing on the wall. By the 1990s, when the CIA stopped conducting unilateral espionage operations altogether, he was disappointed, but not at all surprised.
While there were countless patriotic men and women still left at Langley, the institutionalized bureaucracy made it all but impossible for them to effectively do their jobs. The bureaucracy had become risk-averse. Even more troubling was the fact that the CIA now subcontracted its actual spy work to other countries’ intelligence services. They happily handed over huge sums of cash in the hopes that other countries would do the dangerous heavy lifting and would share whatever they developed.
It was the biggest open secret in the intelligence world and it was both humiliating and beneath America’s dignity.
