wealthy world traveler.
The team had decided to travel over a mile overland to reach the outer gate at the rear of the property in lieu of using a helicopter. Nothing would have been more conspicuous than the taletell thump of rotor blades after dark in quiet Westchester County, New York.
The ten-man assault element watched as one of three security trucks negotiated the long driveway from the front of the mansion. They were nearly invisible in the dark, blending in well with the cloudy night in their Nomex clothing and hoods. The team was armed with MP-5s--lightweight, short-barreled automatic weapons.
The dark figure squatting beside a tree raised his hand as the small pickup truck cruised by, its spotlight swinging toward them but missing the ten men. He then held up two fingers and made a scissoring motion.
A large man in the middle of the line came forward after the truck had vanished around a curve. He removed a small black box and held it as close to the steel fence as he could without touching it, then he switched on the power to the box. The soft glow of the gauge was covered by the big man's hand as he studied the LED readout. He nodded and held up his left hand. He splayed his fingers wide, indicating five, then closed his hand again and spread them once more: ten. The man in the lead nodded, easily seeing the signal with his ambient-light-vision goggles, bringing the team into a silhouetted ghostly image of greens, blacks, and grays. The large man lowered his hand and removed the twin electrical leads. He was hearing the soft hum of ten thousand volts of electricity as it passed through the chain-link fence.
Another of the team duck-walked forward and brought out the insulated wire cutters, then he waited while the larger man ran rubber-coated wires from one link of the fence to another. He did this until he had a four-foot circle woven into and connecting the chain links. Then he held out his hand and took the cutters from the second man. Then he started snipping the thick wire of the fence.
The wiring he had woven into the fence was an electric-free corral, designed to isolate an electrical current and keep a connection of the fence to fool any alarm that would sound as the links were severed. With the last of the links cut, the man pulled free the circle of wire, and the team moved in.
Two three-man teams went left and right, hunkering low as they went. The leader took the last three and went straight ahead.
On the left, that team would make first contact, so they lowered themselves to the ground and waited. They were rewarded a moment later when headlights came around the corner from the back of the house. This was the second security truck. As it approached, one of the three men removed a small ball bearing from his armored vest and waited until the truck was ten yards away on the other side of the slope.
The first man in line crawled the last three feet to the top of the rise and pulled a funny-looking pistol from a holster at his side; then he aimed. The other drew back and threw the lightweight ball bearing in a nicely tossed arc. It struck the side of the truck, making a louder-than-expected crack as the vehicle came quickly to a stop, its driver curious as to the cause of impact. As soon as he stepped from the small truck and walked three steps to its hood, and looked to see what had struck the vehicle, the compressed-air dart caught him in the left side of his neck. The security guard yelped and then tried to make it to the driver's-side door, but he made only two steps before his legs refused to cooperate and gave out completely. He fell with a muffled thud. He would be that way for several hours, awakening with the worst headache of his life.
The three other vehicles and the three foot-patrol officers were dispatched just as easily. Only one had given the team a fright, as he had actually had the physical strength to get his hand on the radio clipped to his shoulder before giving up the ghost.
The team spread out into their designated entry points and waited for the signal. The large man who had cut the fence found the telephone and power boxes on the outside of the house near the basement door and placed a small, circular object against the incoming phone and power lines that ran in from the county grid. He set the timer for ten seconds and then backed away. A small electrical charge sent power racing back into both lines, popping the circuit breakers somewhere inside the house. The phone line would be useless until the phone company discovered that the fiber-optic line had been fused and clouded from the electrical charge.
The lights around the compound went out: that was the signal for step three in the structure assault. At that exact same instant, the front and rear doors, along with the center panel of French doors beside the pool, exploded inward with a shower of wood splinters and glass. The black-operations team entered with weapons held high.
On the ground floor, the unseen and invisible assailants roughly pushed several shrieking servants to the ground. They were expertly bound with plastic ties and then the men moved off quickly. The raid took exactly three minutes and twenty-two seconds from the time the first guard had been taken down.
The leader of the team stepped forward after counting heads and looking at each face. He came to a man who was looking up into the hooded face above him arrogantly.
'Your name is Talbot?' the man with the funny goggles asked.
The man only stared up into the darkness, not as arrogant now as he'd been before the man called him by name.
'Are you Talbot, the butler, the man in charge?' the man asked quietly again, this time kneeling down, bringing his science-fiction-looking outfit closer for inspection. For emphasis, he adjusted the MP-5 weapon on its strap menacingly.
'Yes, yes,' the man said quickly.
'Where is William Krueger?'
'He ... he ... was upstairs when we retired for the night.... I swear.'
The menacing figure glanced up at another even larger team member coming down the stairs. This man shook his head, negative, and then the man kneeling beside the butler unsafed his weapon, and everyone in the room, even the maids and cooks, knew a menacing click when they heard one.
'I'll ask one more time, and if I don't get the answer I want, you'll be serving your next high-paying master with a limp, because I will shoot you right through the kneecap--understood?' The threat was delivered with a menacingly cool voice.
'You can't do this ... you're ... you're police officers!'
The man chuckled and looked at the big man above him. 'Who in the world ever said we were police officers? This is what you would call a home invasion, and we're the invaders. I'm also running out of patience.'
The calm and sensible demeanor of the man wearing the strange goggles terrified the butler.
'For God's sake, Albert, tell them what they want to know!'
The man calmly looked over at the belly-down servants and saw an arrogant-looking woman trying to peer at him through the darkness. Then he remembered the detailed pictures shown to him by the recon team. She was Anita McMillan, the estate's chef.
'All right, all right. There's a panel in the library behind the desk. It's a false front, there are stairs behind it. Just slide it, it'll open right up. That's the only place Mr. Krueger can be.'
The leader nodded toward the larger man and he and three others went to the library.
'Thank you, Albert. Your cooperation has been noted.' The man gestured for another of his team and soon all the servants were blinded by black bags that were placed over their heads.
The leader joined the three men inside the library and watched as the paneled wall was probed. Then he heard the panel slide into the wall. He gestured for the middleman, the best rifleman on the team, to take point. As he did, the others waited until he was ten steps down the flight of stairs before they followed.
The men removed their night-vision scopes as there was a soft light coming from below. They were halfway down when the point man held up his hand with splayed fingers, and they stopped. As they watched him take another step, they were surprised by the sound of a pistol shot as it glanced off the stone wall, just missing the man in the lead position. They saw him grimace as stone chips struck the side of his face. Then he took a determined stance, braced himself against the stairwell's railing, and fired a ten-shot burst of 5.56-millimeter rounds into the basement. Then he waited another split second and fired ten more. The men behind him knew his routine and prayed it would work.
'Now, that was a warning! The next burst is going to chew your ass up. You have three seconds to surrender that popgun you have. Oh, hell, forget it. I'm not waiting.' The point man fired a three-round burst into the stairwell and the basement below. The men behind him on the stairs smiled as he did so.
'Okay, okay, you son of a bitch. You didn't have to do that. Give a man time to think goddammit!'
'You're all out of time, fuckhead! You took a shot at the wrong goddamn black man!'
'Who in the hell are you?'
