followed him, destined for the third floor, and two SEALs remained on the first floor, moving room to room, looking for anything living. Phelps hugged the wall on the second floor as his third team brushed by and continued up the stairs. Then he pointed to his companion to take the front of the house; he would take the rear. They split and moved into the rooms off the main hallway.
As Phelps moved into the first room on the right, two men in jeans and T-shirts opened fire with automatic weapons. Bullets chewed into the door frame, and the noise was deafening. Whatever stealth they had hoped to achieve was now gone, and the clock was ticking on a short fuse until the police arrived and cut off their escape route. Phelps leaped back from the door, dropped to the ground, thrust the barrel of his weapon around the doorjamb, and pulled the trigger, spraying the room with automatic fire. He heard grunts and the familiar sound of air escaping from punctured lungs. He rolled across the opening to the room, his eyes seeing one man down, the other still standing. He fired as he rolled and saw the second man take three direct hits in the chest. Blood gushed from the wounds. No Kevlar.
He jumped to his feet and entered the room. It was some sort of a coffee room with a card table and a microwave oven. A couple of couches faced a television, which was switched off. Other than the two bodies, there was no one in the room. Phelps ran the length of the hall to the rear of the house and kicked in the door.
Two slugs hit him in the center of his chest as he flew into the room. The impact knocked him back a few feet and winded him, but he didn’t lose his footing. The assailant was directly in front of him, a pistol leveled at his chest. He instinctively fired, the slugs from his M16A2 slamming into the man and knocking him back into a bench covered with lab equipment. He crashed over it, his finger tightening on the trigger as he died. One errant shot smashed into the wall just to the right of Phelps’s head, missing by less than an inch. Phelps sucked in the deepest breath he could and called his team.
“All clear, second rear,” he said into his microphone.
“All clear, main front.”
“All clear, rear third.”
“One bad guy, main rear.”
Phelps could hear the gunfire from the main floor. He had two men on that floor, and that was enough. He needed his science expert and he needed him fast.
“Joey,” he said. “Where are you?”
“Third, on my way down, LT,” came the response. A few seconds later, Joe Jameus burst into the room. “I’m on it, LT,” he said, swinging his rifle onto his back and assessing the mass of lab equipment in front of him. A small fridge sat off to one side, and he made a beeline for it. Inside against one side were a number of vials, all filled with a white powder. A glass canister containing what appeared to be large beans sat against the other side. Jameus snatched one of the vials, popped open the container with the beans, shook a few into a plastic bag, and resealed the container. He glanced at the system of beakers and test tubes, the centrifuge, and nodded.
“We’re done, LT.”
“Then let’s get the hell out of here,” Phelps said, calling to his men on the microphone. Extraction time. He called Anders Ljent. “Fifteen seconds,” he said, moving full speed for the front door. Above and below him, his men were on the move. The gunfire on the main level had stopped, and as Phelps came down the main staircase he saw both his men waiting. They had been successful in taking out the last defender. Behind him, two more SEALs came flying down the stairs. They met at the front door just as Ljent pulled up. They piled into the rear of the van, the sounds of police sirens now very audible and very close. They pulled onto Narodni, the main access to the bridge, just as the first police car entered Ostrovni Purkynova from the far end. The sounds of the sirens diminished as they put distance between themselves and the target.
“Good job, gentlemen,” he said. “What was our opposition?”
“Two on the main floor, LT.”
“Three on the third.”
“And three on the second,” Phelps said. “Eight bad guys, nobody injured. Excellent job.”
One of his men pointed at Phelps’s chest. “Good thing you had your vest on, LT.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Forgot to shoot him before he shot me.”
There were a few chuckles, and Phelps turned to Joey Jameus. “What have we got, Joey?”
Jameus held up the beans he had taken from the fridge.“Castor beans.” Then he pulled the vial of powder from his front pocket.“And unless I’m totally out to lunch, we have ricin.”
“Ricin,” Phelps said. “That shit’s pretty deadly, isn’t it?”
“Absolutely. Ricin inhibits protein synthesis in the body. If you inhale this stuff, you can suffer pulmonary edema and asphyxiation. Inject it and you get kidney and liver necrosis. Either can result in death.”
“So we just shut down a seriously dangerous lab,” Phelps said.
“Sure did, LT,” Joey said, tucking the ricin back into his pocket.
“Excellent,” Phelps said. “Let’s just hope it was what they were looking for.”
38
“I think I might have found a way to get into that floor safe in the basement at Albert Rousseau’s town house,” Gordon said, accepting the beers from the bartender and setting one in front of Jennifer Pearce.
“How? You said it’s embedded in the cement and you don’t have the combination,” she said, pouring the beer into a glass and taking a sip. They were in Richmond’s hottest sports bar, Out of Bounds. The old Chicago brick building, with its huge green-and-white-striped awning, eighteen televisions, and live bands, was infamous for drawing big crowds when big games were on. It was Saturday night but still early evening, and the bar was only about half full. The band had yet to set up.
“I went to see a locksmith today. Told him I had a STAR C-7 floor safe and I’d forgotten the combination and asked him if there was any way to open the safe, even if it meant destroying it.”
“What did he say?” she asked.
“Liquid nitrogen will freeze the metal bolts that slide into place when the safe is closed. Once they’re frozen, the metal fatigues, and with a few applications I should be able to snap the bolts like uncooked spaghetti.”
“Sounds easy. Why don’t crooks use it all the time?”
“Because most safes are wall mounted. When they try to apply the liquid nitrogen to the bolts on the safe, it just drips down the front. It’s useless. But this one is a floor safe, so I can pour the nitrogen in the cracks and wait for it to freeze the metal.”
“You going to give it a try?” she asked, finishing her beer and waving at the bartender for two more.
Gordon shifted on the red vinyl barstool. “I think so. I’ll wait until tomorrow when I can use a flashlight and I can’t be seen from the street. At night, the light might be visible.”
“Well, you’ve already been through the place once with the realtor, so if anyone asks what you’re doing, you can always tell them you’re taking a second look.”
He nodded. “It’s not all that risky. Just the problem of getting into the safe.”
A platter of chicken wings arrived and they dug in, Gordon going for the hot and Jennifer for the teriyaki. They finished the wings in a few minutes, had one more beer, then left the bar. Gordon waved down a taxi and they climbed into the backseat. They’d left her car and his rental on the street outside Jennifer’s house.
“You sure you want to stay at the hotel?” she asked. “I’ve got a guest room.”
He shook his head. “Maybe sometime, but not right now. I’m not trying to be rude, but I’ve got my reasons.”
“What reasons?” she asked playfully.
“Not telling,” he said. “Not yet, anyway.”
“Okay, maybe later.”
“Yeah, maybe later.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” she said as the taxi pulled up in front of the Jefferson Hotel. A series of arched porticos cut from limestone and trimmed with brick highlighted the front of the century-old hotel. The grand staircase, constructed from Italian marble, was visible through the main doors. He gave her hand a squeeze and slipped out of the cab.
