“Fifteen was the bottom line,” Shogren said flatly.
“I don’t know,” Brower said. “Maybe we should—”
“Maybe you should shut your damn yap!” Shogren said. “We agreed I’d make the deal, right? So let me make it.”
“You might want to reconsider, before you wind up with a mutiny on your hands,” Belyakov said.
Good advice, Callen thought. Listen to him. The longer it dragged on, the more he worried that it might fall apart.
Shogren planted himself in the chair again. “Twelve,” he said. “Not a dime less. That’s the final offer.”
“Twelve,” Belyakov repeated.
“Three for each of us,” Shogren said. He can do math, Callen thought. Wonders never cease.
“Sounds good to me,” Brower said.
“Me, too,” Wehling added.
“Denis?” Shogren asked.
The big man shrugged. Callen couldn’t see his shoulders, but the chair moved when he did it.
“Twelve,” Shogren said. “Cash, right now. Count it out.”
“I’m delighted that we could do business,” Belyakov said. “Vadim, count out twelve million for our friends.”
Vadim took one of the bags from beside the billionaire’s chair and unzipped it. The money inside, banded hundreds, could hardly be contained; it threatened to spill out on the floor. He crouched beside it and started stacking bundles on the table.
“You got your prize, boss,” Yegor said, in English. “I didn’t think the spy would let it happen.”
“Spy?” Shogren echoed.
Callen’s blood froze. Yegor could only be talking about him. He didn’t move a muscle, but he was already gauging possibilities in his head. How fast they were, how accurate with those guns.
How pissed.
For a second he thought Yegor would laugh it off. How could he know? He was probably joking.
Then he gestured toward Callen, standing at the doorway. “That one,” he said. “He just came last night. Got something on the boss.”
“It’s a setup!” Shogren shouted. He yanked a Glock from the holster on his hip.
Then the room erupted in chaos.
* * *
The driveway was flanked by thick growth, almost jungle-like. Sam, Kensi, and Deeks had taken up positions among the plants, from which they could watch the drive and emerge at just the right time to surprise the contractors as they drove out, flush with cash. But when they heard gunfire from inside, their plans changed. “Callen!” Kensi called.
“Go!” Sam cried.
Charging toward a firefight without knowing who was shooting at whom was never a good idea, Kensi knew. Hell, it wasn’t even a good idea when you knew full well. When bullets were flying, keeping out of the way was the wisest course of action.
Nobody had ever called Kensi Blye dumb—not more than once, anyway—but her reaction was ingrained. Callen was inside, where the guns were going off. Callen was OSP. Callen was family.
As she rounded the bend in the driveway, she could see muzzle flashes briefly illuminating the windows. One window was already shattered. Nearing the front door, the acrid tang of gun smoke bit at her nostrils.
Sam reached the door first, she and Deeks right behind.
“We don’t know what we’re walking into,” Sam reminded them.
“Doesn’t matter,” Deeks said. “Callen’s in there.”
Kensi wanted to kiss him. He and Callen weren’t the best of friends. But when the chips were down, each knew he could count on the other to have his back. Callen had punched Deeks in the jaw the night before, kicked him in the knee hard enough to raise a knot, but Deeks hadn’t hesitated for a second when it seemed that Callen was in danger.
That was the man she loved. Even if it was hard to say out loud, sometimes.
“We’ll announce ourselves,” she said. “Maybe the presence of federal agents will—no, never mind. Nobody in there would think twice about killing federal agents.”
“Probably right,” Sam said. “But we’ve got to get inside, and we’ve got to stop the shooting.”
Deeks held up his HK416. “That’s what these bad boys are for, right?”
Sam nodded. “Let’s go.”
34
When Yegor outed Callen and Shogren pulled his weapon, Callen didn’t wait around to see who he intended to use it on.
There were too many guns in that room, and the emotions were running too high. Callen ducked behind the wall, then tore up the winding stairs, three at a time. He stopped when he was high enough to have plenty of staircase between him and the doorway, then waited with his borrowed Kalashnikov ready.
Brower was the first one through the door. He held a Glock nine-mil like Shogren’s, and when he saw Callen on the steps, he raised it to fire. Callen shot first, a quick burst that dropped Brower like a hot rock.
Then he heard gunfire from inside the room, and someone cried out in pain. They were shooting each other now, and he couldn’t tell who was being hit. A moment later, Evgeni dashed out, shooting behind him as he ran past the staircase, toward the kitchen and the series of rooms beyond that.
Callen heard the crashing of window glass. Shot out, or had someone jumped through to escape? He couldn’t say. He was blind here. He was protected, but for how long? This house had more than one staircase, after all. What good would this vantage point be if someone came at him from above?
His first instinct had been that he’d be the main target, since he was the one fingered as a spy. Now, though, the two teams seemed to be after each other, maybe fighting over possession of the money, or the tablet, or both. Or just because they had guns in their hands and targets in front of them.
He moved down the stairs, employing considerably more caution than he’d used on the way up. At the bottom, Brower lay there, blood bubbling up from his mouth. His eyes were open. He was alive, still twitching, but not for long. A pool of blood was spreading around him. His Glock was close to his hand. Callen reached down, snatched it up, and tucked it in his waistband at the small of his back.
Leaping past Brower’s dying form, he darted across the open space. On the far side of the door, he crouched and peeked around it.
Belyakov sat in his chair, arms splayed out to his sides. In the center of his forehead was a new hole, weeping blood. Cash was scattered all around him. The tablet still lay where Callen had last seen it, on the table.
Vadim was down, too, slumped against a wall, with a bloody streak painting an arrow from where he had been hit to where he’d landed.
The others were gone.
Callen tried to recall the layout of the house on that side. Another warren of rooms eventually led out to the pool. He thought there was another staircase over there, but he wasn’t positive—he’d never managed to get all the way to the end, in that direction. The window he’d heard being smashed was clear enough that someone could easily have gone out through it.
So he had no idea where any of the combatants were. On this floor, above him, outside the house… probably all of the above.
He hadn’t come here intending to kill anyone, although he had always known it was a possibility. Now, though, he had to assume that anybody he encountered was trying to kill him.
He heard voices outside, and whirled, finger on the trigger, just as the door banged open. “Federal agents!” sounded from multiple throats, and Callen froze his finger an instant before he squeezed it past the point of no return.
Sam, Kensi, and Deeks charged in, weapons at the ready, but they recognized him in time to hold their fire, too.
“Where is everybody?” Deeks asked.
“Got me,” Callen said. “They were here, then they weren’t.”
As if to make a liar out of him, a couple of gunshots sounded, followed by an automatic weapon’s burst. “That sounded like the pool area,” Callen said.
“Nice pool?” Deeks asked. “Heated? Not that you’d need it heated in this weather, but—”
“I never went in, Deeks,” Callen said. “Been a little busy.”
The gunfire from that direction continued. “Go check it out?” Sam said.
“There’s a dead guy,” Kensi said, eyeing Brower. She moved to the doorway and looked in. “There’s the tablet,” she pointed out. “And what looks like an awful lot of money.”
“And another dead guy,” Deeks said. “Strike that. Two dead guys.”
“Belyakov and Vadim,” Callen said. “And somewhere in the neighborhood of fifteen million dollars.”
“The tablet’s what we want, right?” Kensi asked.
“Part of what we want,” Deeks said. “We also want the guys who shot Tony junior.”
“Yeah,” Sam agreed. “The tablet’s key, but we also need those guys.”
“Guess we should find them, then,” Callen said. “Pool’s this way.”
More gunfire sounded as they made their way in that direction. The pool was walled in, and the racket bounced and echoed off the walls and tiles, so it was hard to gauge just how many were out there and where they were. Callen had been told that beyond the pool was a trail that wound through some lush landscaping to a private tennis court. Another wall hemmed in the overall property, but Callen was sure it wasn’t impossible to scale, so there was no guarantee that people hadn’t gone over it and left the property altogether.
He held up a fist to stop the group as they approached the door out to the pool. Sunlight glinted off the water and carved shards of light across the wall. A patch of blood beside the pool caught Callen’s eye, but he didn’t see anybody. He made a forward gesture, and led the team outside. They moved like the cohesive unit they were; as they stepped out, he scanned forward, Sam spun around to check the windows above, and Kensi and Deeks swung their gun barrels to the sides, covering them that way. The odor of chlorinated pool water mingled with the smell of gunfire and the sharp edge of blood.
He had to take a few more steps toward the pool before he saw Evgeni’s corpse floating facedown, tinting the water pink around him.
“One of ours or the Russians?” Deeks asked.
“None of them are exactly ‘ours,’” Callen said. “That’s Evgeni, the guy who took your stripper.”
“Didn’t recognize him from this angle,” Deeks said.
“Not gonna say he deserves it?” Sam asked. “Dude took your stripper.”
“I didn’t really want her anyway,” Deeks reminded them. “She was Kensi’s stripper.”
“That’s a pleasure I can live without,” Kensi said.
Callen was turning, ready to go back inside, when motion at the top of the pool wall caught his eye. “Down!” he shouted. At the same time, he dropped to the tiles, rolled once, and came up firing.
Wehling got off two shots before Callen’s rounds raked across his hand and scalp.
Everybody picked themselves up off the ground. “Gross,” Deeks said, tugging his shirt away from his body. “I hit the dirt in somebody’s blood.”
“Don’t touch it,” Kensi said. “You don’t know where it’s been.”
“Okay, Mom,” Deeks shot back.
“We’re kind of sitting ducks out here,” Sam said.
“Yeah,” Callen agreed. “Back inside, I think.”
“That guy was one of the Americans, right?” Kensi asked. “The one on the wall?”
“That was Wehling,” Callen replied.
“So there might be more out that way.”
“Could be. For all we know, they’re all gone.”
He said it, but he didn’t believe it. The fight had started because of him, because he was exposed as an outsider who’d infiltrated what was supposed to be a private—and very illegal—transaction.
But the money and the tablet were still here. The people who’d cared about one or the other wouldn’t have left without at least trying to take them along.
Even as he thought it, he mentally corrected himself. The tablet and the money had been here—before he and the others had been lured outside.
“The living room,” he said. “The money.”
When they made it back, Yegor was hoisting the unopened money bag onto one shoulder. He still had his Kalashnikov in the other hand.
“Drop it, Yegor,” Callen snapped. He didn’t specify which the man should drop. Both would be good.
Instead, Yegor turned slowly around, pointing the barrel of his gun down. “Don’t shoot me, man,” he said in English. “You got plenty money there, and that stone. Belyakov’s dead. I don’t want the stone, just enough money to get home, set myself up.”
“You can’t take that much cash out of the country,” Callen said. “And I can’t let you leave with it. We’re federal agents, and you’re under arrest.”
“Arrest for what? Defending myself?”
“Just put them down,” Callen said. “The money and the gun.”
“You’ll have to sh—” Yegor began.
The sound of a gunshot drowned out the rest of his sentence, and the force of the round blew a hole the diameter of a golf ball in his forehead, ejecting blood and brain matter as it passed through.
Yegor pitched forward, landing on the money bag and rolling off.
Behind him stood Faulk, with a Glock in his left hand and a Kalashnikov in his right.
“If that guy was green,” Deeks said, “I’d think he was the incredible Hulk.”
“Or the Jolly Green Giant,” Kensi added. “Ho, ho, ho, indeed.”
35
“Federal agents, Faulk,” Callen said. “Put the guns down.”
“Yeah, I heard,” Faulk said. “You arresting me?”
“If you play your cards right, we are,” Sam said. “I’d recommend you drop all that hardware before any of us feel threatened.”
Sam could see the big man considering his options. He had a half-smile on his face, as if somebody had projected the Mona Lisa on a hairless giant. His eyes were shifting this way and that as he debated the merits. His guns were pointed toward them—if he squeezed the triggers, he’d hit somebody.
But he would almost certainly not hit everybody, and whoever was left standing would kill him.
He rolled his shoulders forward, almost as if he were weighing the guns along with his options. Then he leaned forward and put both guns gently on the floor. “I guess you win. Whoever the hell you are.”
Callen moved forward, shoved the guns aside, then held out a hand to his companions. “Handcuffs? Maybe two pairs? I’m a little short.”
“Right,” Deeks said. “Undercover. Here.” He handed a pair to Callen, and followed it with some zip ties. Callen went to work cuffing the man. He looked like he could snap the chain with a single flex, but in less than a minute, Callen seemed satisfied. He shoved the man down in a chair. “Wait there, Faulk,” he said. “Don’t try anything stupid. Seriously. We’ll be right back. You know where Shogren went?”
Faulk shrugged.
“His shrug moved the chair,” Sam said.
Callen nodded. “Yeah, he does that.”
“How many are left?” Kensi asked.
“There’s—” Callen started.
A burst of gunfire cut him off. Rounds sprayed into the room, hitting Faulk in the face and throat, and making the others duck. Callen and Sam returned fire, but the shooter had bounded off the stairs and out the front door, firing as he went.
“—Shogren!” Callen finished. “Come on!”
He started for the door. “Anyone else?” Sam called as he chased after.
“Yeah,” Callen said. “There’s also—”
A second enormous man charged out of the opposite doorway. This one had a thatch of dark hair, a five o’clock shadow, and a glowering expression, and he wasn’t quite as big as Faulk. Sam remembered him from the strip club. He had barely fit in the chair.
“—Pasha!” Callen cried.
The man bore down on him like an oncoming freight train. If he had any weapons, Sam didn’t see them. But Callen was already racing at full til
t for the front door, and between his momentum and Pasha’s, collision was inevitable.
Callen tried to veer away at the last second, but Pasha flung out an arm that would have made an ape proud, snagging him. They both went to the floor, Callen on the bottom.
Sam swung his HK416 like a baseball bat, catching Pasha squarely in the head. The blow rocked him a little, but not enough to get him off Callen.
“We’ll get Shogren!” Kensi called. “Come on, Deeks!”
Sam nodded and they tore out the door. He threw an arm around Pasha’s neck and tried to haul him away from Callen. No dice. The guy was not only gigantic, he was strong.
And silent. Sam realized he hadn’t heard the man make a sound.
“Come on,” he said, yanking again.
Nothing.
He had his hands on Callen’s throat. Callen’s face was turning purple.
“Man, I don’t want to do this,” Sam said. “Just get off him, okay?”
Callen’s face was darker, and his hands were flailing uselessly at Pasha.
“Last chance,” Sam said.
Pasha ignored him.
Callen wasn’t looking good.
Sam put his gun on the floor, went into the living room.
And came back, carrying a coffee table made from heavy wood. He ran with it tucked under his arm, front end forward like a battering ram.
The impact knocked the huge Russian sprawling. For good measure, Sam tossed the table down on top of him, and he lay still.
“I’m not even trying to cuff him,” Sam said, helping Callen to his feet.
“He’s small time,” Callen managed. His voice was a frail croak. “Shogren’s the one we need.”
He started toward the door, then stopped, turned around. Sam almost reached for him, afraid he’d had a dizzy spell, but Callen stepped back into the living room. “The other money bag’s gone,” he said. “Shogren’s on the run, and he must have the money.”
“Kensi and Deeks are on it,” Sam said.
“I want to be there,” Callen said. “Let’s go. We’ll call a cleanup team to come in and sweep up here.”
Sam thought about arguing, but decided it was pointless. Callen was right. Everybody left in the house was either dead or hurt so badly they’d wish they were. Shogren was the mastermind, if anyone involved in this operation could be called that. And he was the only one who’d gotten away with what he’d come for.
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