porch, and twenty feet from the house, he squeezed off a shot, hitting the man high on his torso, literally lifting him off his feet. Bert Langerford’s M 16 fired a quick burst as he went down, but he was dead before he hit the ground.
Deryugin lowered his rifle. Now there was only the woman and Trotter, left inside. Moving fast, he stepped around from behind the tree and zigzagged across the clearing toward the house.
Langerford was down and a darksuited figure was racing across the clearing from the woods. Trotter, standing a few feet inside the stairhall, led the man with his pistol and fired off three shots in rapid succession. The figure went down, rolled twice, and fired two shots, the bullets smacking into the wall behind Trotter. A silenced rifle, Trotter had time to note, as he dove left. His heart was hammering in his chest. Somehow they had managed to take out all four agents. There was no telling how many of them were out there. But Sills had said he had called for reinforcements. If they could only hold out here for a little longer. Lorraine Abbott was at the head of the stairs.
Langerford had told her to hide herself somewhere upstairs, but she had turned back when she’d heard the M16 firing. Deryugin fired a third shot, the bullet shattering a section of banister a few feet below where she stood. “Get back” Trotter shouted up at her. He started for the stairs when the back door burst open, and Lakomsky’s big frame suddenly filled the doorway. Trotter snapped off two shots, both of them hitting the Russian in the chest, driving him backward.
Ignoring it, Trotter took the stairs up two at a time. Lorraine had shrunk back against the corridor wall, her eyes wide with fright.
Grabbing her arm, he roughly hauled her the rest Of the way down the hall to the attic door, which he yanked open. The narrow stairs led up into the darkness. “They’ve come here to kill me, haven’t they”
Lorraine whispered. She was very frightened” Yes, but I’ve managed to kill one of them, and I may have wounded the one out front”
“There’s probably more than two of them”
“Possibly” Trotter admitted.
“But the FBI is sending someone else out here. They should be arriving very soon. “Can we hold out that long”
“We’re going to try, Doctor, believe me” Trotter said. His weapon was a six-shot .38 caliber revolver. He’d already fired five times. “For now I want you to go up to the attic, find the darkest spot, and hide yourself. No noise, no sounds, nothing. And I don’t want you coming out of there until you hear my voice or McGarvey’s”
“He’s coming here”
“I left the message for him. Now get up there. No noise” She looked at him for a long moment, then turned and headed up the stairs on the balls of her feet. As soon as she had disappeared into the darkness, Trotter closed the door and headed back down the corridor to the stairs, stopping just at the end of the corridor. Nothing moved below in the stairhall. The front door was still open. Turning, he hurried silently back down the corridor and went into one of the front bedrooms, where he cautiously approached the window and, parting the curtain slightly, looked down into the clearing. Langerford’s body still lay in the gravel driveway, but the Russian was gone. Where was he, and how many others were out there? There was no telling when Sills’s reinforcements would — god Until then it would be up to him to hold out here. His first task would be to find more ammunition for his weapon, or take the rifle from the dead Russian in the back hall. “Put your gun down, Mr. Trotter”
someone said from behind him. Trotter stiffened and started to turn. “I will kill you unless you do exactly as I say” Trotter weighed his chances, which at the moment were practically nil. The man behind him was almost certainly a Russian Department Viktor type. Highly trained, highly motivated. “We don’t do things like this on each other’s territory” he said. “Your gun. Drop it”
“If you know my name, then you know who and what I am. If you kill me, the political repercussions could even bring a man such as Baranov down”
“I have no time to argue with you. Either drop your gun this instant or I will kill you” Trotter had absolutely no doubt the man meant what he was saying. Time, it was all he needed. Slowly he bent over and laid the .38 on the floor, and straightening up he stepped away from it and turned around. The Russian was tall and very well built. His weapon was equipped with the latest night spotting scope, and silencer, which explained their effectiveness. “Where is Dr. Abbott”
“The FBI is sending reinforcements out here. They will be here momentarily”
“Yes, I know this” Deryugin replied calmly. “So you will either take me to Dr. Abbott or I will kill you and search the house myself” Trotter shook his head. “You will either kill me now or then, so it doesn’t matter”
“No. I don’t mean to kill either of you. My orders were to come here, kidnap Dr. Abbott, and take her to Freder City. If you cooperate, I will bring you as well. You would be quite a prize in Moscow” Was the man telling the truth? Probably not, Trotter decided. An assassination was infinitely easier than kidnapping. There would be no need for them to take the latter risk. Again it came down to a question of time. “She’s in the basement” Deryugin’s eyes narrowed. “I think she is up here somewhere”
“As soon as the shooting began, I sent her downstairs. I came up here to see what was happening outside. High ground” Deryugin was weighing the possibilities, Trotter could see it in the man’s eyes. “We will go to the basement. If you are lying I will kill you. Trotter nodded. “I think we’ve already established that”
They had followed Interstate 95 out of Washington, skirting Falmouth along the Rappahannock River which brought them in from the rear of the ninety-acre property on which the farmhouse was perched. At first they nearly overflew the place. There were absolutely no lights showing from the house. They came around in a tight circle, and McGarvey finally spotted Trotter’s car parked behind the FBI’s blue van. “There” McGarvey shouted, leaning forward. “Set us down in the clearing at the front of the house” Kurshin nodded. “Yes, sir” McGarvey sat back and studied the pilot’s neck and shoulders. The voice. There was something vaguely familiar about the man. He hadn’t gotten a very good look at him because of the helmet he wore, and the rush they were in. But all the way down something kept nagging at the back of his mind. “Kirk” Potok suddenly shouted. McGarvey turned to him. They were barely a hundred feet off the ground now. Potok was pointing down. There was a stenciled in yellow letters on the back of his dark blue windbreaker. “Get us down now”
McGarvey shouted. “And then call for backup”
“Yes, sir” Kurshin replied. McGarvey pulled out his Walther, checked the action, and switched the safety off. The instant the helicopter’s skids touched the gravel driveway, he popped the hatch and he and Potok scrambled out, separated and raced up toward the house. Behind them the helicopter rose up a few feet and sideslipped all the way across the clearing, where it set down just at the edge of the woods. It was a good move, McGarvey thought, getting the machine out of the line of fire. But he didn’t have time for that now. Potok reached Langerford’s body first and turned it over. “He’s dead” he called out. McGarvey nodded and pointed up toward the house. The front door was open. Together they raced the rest of the way up the driveway, mounted the three steps onto the porch, and stopped on either side of the door, their guns up and at the ready. They exchanged a look, and McGarvey rolled left, leaping into the stairhall, sweeping left to right as he ran. He pulled up at the bottom of the stairs. In the dim light filtering in from outside he could see another figure lying in a heap in the back corridor. This one was dressed in black. Potok came in a moment later, flattening against the opposite wall. For a moment they remained in position, listening.
But the house was absolutely still. “Trotter” McGarvey shouted. There was no answer. They were too late. While Kurshin had been running them around in circles at the hospital, he had sent his people out here to kill Lorraine. “We’ll start upstairs” he said.
“The body out front was oozing blood. He cannot have been dead for more than a few minutes”
“I hope you’re right” McGarvey replied. His gut was tight, and a rage threatened to engulf him. Control, he told himself. It always came down to that. The upstairs corridor was in nearly complete darkness. McGarvey started up the stairs, slowly, softly, his every sense straining to detect a noise, a movement, anything that would indicate someone was waiting above. At the top he stepped into the deeper shadows along the wall and cocked his ear. Had he heard something? Perhaps above, in the attic, a floorboard creaking. “Hold up” he whispered softly to Potok who was a few steps down. The Israeli stopped. “John” McGarvey called out.
“Lorraine” There was a definite movement above in the attic, and then someone was coming down the stairs at the end of the corridor.
McGarvey dropped back and brought his gun up, aiming into the darkness.
A door banged open. “Kirk” Lorraine Abbott cried. “Oh, God, is it you”
