44
Outside of Washington, DC
USA
THE GRENADE HADN’T EXPLODED, which turned out to be a mixed blessing. Instead, it was rolling across an imported Oriental carpet spewing a bluish gas that Smith couldn’t identify. He held his breath and squinted in an effort to protect his eyes as Randi launched herself around and over furniture with customary athleticism. He had no idea where she was going, but she seemed to have a plan, so he followed with lungs already starting to burn. If it was a nerve agent, one breath was all it would take.
They made it to the hallway at the back of the house and Smith ducked when a sighting laser came through the window and diffused in the haze. Randi bounced off the doorjamb leading to the room she’d claimed when they arrived and immediately dropped, sliding across the polished floorboards until she slammed against the wall between the two east-facing windows. Smith hit the ground, too, staying out of the reddish beam probing above him while Randi pulled the shades. With the windows safely covered, she got to her feet again and ran for a small walk-in closet, grabbing his collar as she passed and dragging him along with her.
Despite the cramped fit—and the fact that even children considered closets too obvious a place to hide—she slammed the door behind them. Smith dropped to his knees in the darkness, ripping clothes from the wall and stuffing them in the crack beneath the door. If the gas was just some kind of an irritant or anesthetic, it might help. If not, there was probably already enough in the closet to kill them. And worse, now they’d cornered themselves. Had she taken a breath? Was her judgment compromised?
There was a muffled crack of wood and suddenly the closet was bathed in the dim glow of a keypad similar to the one next to the front door. Randi’s eyes were bulging a bit from lack of oxygen as she punched a code into it.
Was it a panic button that signaled the alarm company? Had she sucked in enough gas to think a bunch of rent-a-cops were going to come riding to their rescue?
It turned out that he’d once again underestimated her obsessive thoroughness and well-justified paranoia. Instead of connecting them to ADT, the entire wall slid silently back to revealing a room of about the same size as the closet, illuminated with red emergency lighting. He crawled in after her and she slammed an open hand against a large red button. The door slid shut and Smith felt a cold breeze as a fan came to life and began flushing the tiny space with outside air. His vision was blurring from lack of oxygen and he could see Randi’s chest starting to convulse as her body tried to force her to breathe, but they just stared at each other. Both wanted to let as much gas as possible clear but, even with people trying to kill them, there was no denying that it was also a competition.
No more than five seconds passed before the breath exploded from Randi. He lasted another two before they were both desperately sucking in air that might kill them.
There was a slight chemical odor that he couldn’t place but it was probably just coming off their clothes and seemed to have no effect. It took almost a full thirty seconds before he could pull himself to his feet and look around.
A short laugh was all he could get out.
Most of the back wall was hung with combat equipment—everything from gas masks to assault rifles to knives. There was even a crossbow. Smith wasn’t quite sure what she intended to do with that.
“I told you I spared no expense,” she said, pulling her shirt over her head and starting to unbutton her pants. Feeling inexplicably uncomfortable, he turned toward a bank of video monitors while she donned the camo fatigues neatly folded on a shelf.
“Does your friend know about this?”
“To be completely honest, I may have forgotten to mention it.”
In the reflection off a monitor, he saw her finish dressing and reach for an HK416 assault rifle suspended above a row of communications equipment. A moment later he spotted movement on the top left screen.
“We’ve got a man coming for the back door. Looks like he’s getting cover from someone in the trees on the west side. I can’t see anyone in front, but I think we can be sure there’s at least one man watching the north and east aspects. Okay, the man in back is kicking the door…He’s in.”
Despite the remaining haze in the rest of the house, Smith could make out the details that mattered. The man was wearing all-black and his helmet was a familiar custom carbon-fiber rig bristling with electronics that he not only recognized, but had helped design. The rifle was an M4 carbine with a Merge-linked targeting system.
“Shit…”
“What?” she said, pulling two throat mikes off the wall and handing him one.
“They’re Merged up. Military-issue.”
“What the hell, Jon? Are you guys selling those things at Walmart?”
Smith didn’t respond, instead inserting an earpiece that now felt like the technological equivalent of a plastic cup with a string attached.
The man moved through the gloom with complete confidence, using an efficient pattern that would make it impossible for anyone to get by him.
“He knows the layout of the house. Is there any way he could have found out about this room?”
Randi shook her head. “Not unless he notices that the closet and powder room are a little smaller than they were on the architectural drawings. A friend did it for me.”
“He’s headed for the bedroom…Okay, he’s in.”
They watched the man sweep his rifle smoothly around the small space and then turn. His teammates outside would undoubtedly be following his progress with an overhead map application, probably superimposed onto the house’s floor plan.
“He’s coming our way.”
Smith grabbed a silenced pistol from the wall when the man threw the closet door open, but Randi put a hand on his wrist.
“Half-inch steel,” she explained. “Even if he somehow figures out we’re in here, it’ll take a lot more than what he’s carrying to get through.”
The man backed into the center of the room again, standing next to the bed as he reported. A microphone picked up his voice, but Smith had designed the military version of the Merge to pick up very low-level speech and he had to strain to hear.
“The house is clear. Any activity out there?” Pause. “Damn. Well, we know they didn’t leave. Let’s burn it.”
“Oh, no, no, no,” Randi said, leaning over to the monitors as the man pulled off a small pack and begin digging through it. “Tina will kill me.”
“Let’s worry about her later,” Smith said. “Can we survive the fire?”
“No way. Basically we’ve got the steel, a little insulation for sound, and some drywall. One outside source for air, but it’s just a normal duct that connects to the roof.”
“Then we’ve got to get out of here. If we move fast, maybe we can take him out and get to the window—”
“Where they’ll be waiting for us with all that supercharged infrared targeting crap you seem to be handing out at parties.”
“You have a better idea?”
She pointed to a small wheel in the ceiling that looked like a submarine hatch mechanism. “That leads to the attic. According to the blueprints, though, the only way in or out is with a ladder on the back deck. There’s a little door about three meters up.”
She stepped up onto a stool that seemed to have been purpose-built and began opening the hatch while Smith selected a Swedish-made submachine gun from the wall. When he turned back to her, the hatch was open and she was pulling herself up into it.
He followed. Once he was safely through, she went to the door she’d described and quietly moved an old pair of skis out of the way.
“The guy covering the back looked like he was about forty degrees to our left at the edge of the trees. Call it twenty meters out. We should have the element of surprise, but it’s not going to last long. The Merge will lock on and the dark isn’t going to help you. This is a daylight fight to them.”
She pointed to a brass knob on the door and then walked to the back of the attic. “You pull it. I’ll go through first. Ready?”
He grabbed hold of it and nodded hesitantly. Normally, he preferred to put a little more thought into these kinds of things but there was no time.
“Don’t land on the grill when you go,” she said. “It cost five grand.”
Randi sprinted at the door and he jerked it open at the last possible moment, hearing the roar of her assault rifle as she launched herself into the air. He went through a moment later, seeing her hit the deck and roll into the overgrown grass beyond.
Flashes from the east immediately started tracking her as she sprinted for the cover of the woods. Despite her warning, Smith clipped the grill with his ankle on the way down and landed hard on his side, slamming a shoulder into the unforgiving wood planks.
By the time he’d struggled to his feet, Randi was in the trees firing controlled bursts at the men mobilizing against them. He ran toward her, but at a slower pace than he would have liked. The damage to his ankle caused it to want to collapse every time he approached a full sprint.
Smith held the compact weapon behind him, spraying blindly and trying to coax a little more speed from his awkward gait. Cover was only ten meters ahead, but with Merge-equipped men behind him, it would likely prove to be ten meters too far.