Lifting off the ballistic helmet, she watches them. There’s a tall guy, Delta, with dark-skinned hands, who’s shouldering a heavy combat shotgun. Bravo is a wiry figure of medium height, wholly anonymous, and Alpha is bullish and compact. Both are carrying short-barrelled Heckler & Koch sub-machine guns and multiple bandoliers of ammunition. All three are, without question, male, and she’s aware of them checking her out in return, eyes expressionless behind their face masks. Half-a-dozen paces away the sniper, armed with a Lobaev SVL rifle and night-scope, is measuring crosswind vectors with a velocity meter.
Inside the farmhouse the team finalises communications and radio procedure. The voices of the others are unrevealing; all speak fluent English, although with differing accents. Alpha sounds Eastern European, Bravo is definitely southern-states American, and Delta’s first language is probably Arabic. Echo, the woman, is Russian. And to these faceless creatures, Villanelle muses, I have to entrust my life. Fucking hell.
Smoothing out the maps and architectural plans, Anton beckons to them.
“OK. Last run-through, then we go. I’d have liked to hit the house some time before dawn tomorrow morning, but we can’t risk leaving the hostage there that long. So listen in.”
As he speaks, Villanelle is aware of the sniper, Echo, standing beside her. Their eyes meet, and she recognises the slate-grey gaze of Lara Farmanyants.
Yet again, Villanelle feels her bearings shift. Lara naked and supine beneath her is one thing, Lara hefting a high-precision rifle quite another. Is she there merely to take out the guards, or is she part of some unfathomably devious plan of Anton’s?
The two women regard each other for a moment, expressionless.
“Nice weapon,” Villanelle says.
“It’s my favourite for this kind of work. Chambered for .408 Chey-Tac.” Lara works the Lobaev’s soundlessly smooth bolt action. “I’m not so easily distracted from my aim, these days.”
“I’m sure you’re not. Good hunting.”
Lara nods, and a minute later climbs into the SUV which will take her to her firing position.
The minutes creep past. Villanelle fits the ear cups of her helmet, adjusts her microphone boom, and tightens her chinstrap. Finally, a signal from Echo informs Anton that she is in position and ready. Anton nods at the four assaulters and they make their way through the darkened farmyard to the matt-black Little Bird. The pilot is waiting in the unlit cockpit, and readies the craft for take-off as the assaulters take their places on the outboard fuselage platforms. Seating herself on the starboard platform, with the KRISS Vector slung across her chest, Villanelle clips on the retaining harness. Next to her, Delta is holding the shotgun across his knees. His eyes narrow, and they exchange wary nods.
There’s a muted roar as the Little Bird’s engine engages, followed by the accelerating whump-whump of the rotors. The craft shudders, Delta extends a gloved arm, and he and Villanelle bump fists. For now, whatever the future might hold, they’re a team, and Villanelle forces her apprehensions to the back of her mind. The Little Bird lifts a few metres and hovers. Then the ground falls away as they climb into the night sky.
The helicopter approaches the villa upwind, then angles in fast, skimming over the chain-link fence before dancing in the air a metre above the lawn to the east of the main entrance. Releasing their harnesses the assaulters jump down, weapons levelled, and seconds later the Little Bird lifts and swings away into the darkness.
As they sprint for the cover of the side of the house, high-intensity security floodlights bathe the area in dazzling white. Two figures race towards them across the driveway. There’s a wet smack, then another, and both go down on the gravel. One writhes like a pinned insect, and the other lies still, all but decapitated by the silenced .408 sniper round.
“Nice shooting, Echo,” murmurs Bravo, his Southern drawl pin-sharp in Villanelle’s earphones, and with a series of aimed shots, begins to knock out the LED floodlights mounted on the lawn and the front of the building. Alpha runs to the rear corner of the building to perform the same operation there. Villanelle watches and waits. Muted by her helmet’s noise-suppression system, the shots sound distant and unreal.
With only the far wall of the house still spotlit, the western portion of the grounds is thrown into sharp relief. Villanelle risks a quick glance round the angle of the building and feels the air ripple as a round passes her face. The shooter must have betrayed his position because Villanelle hears, once again, the meaty thwack of a sniper round finding its target. In her headphones, Lara’s voice is calm. “Echo to all players, you are now clear to breach. Repeat, you are clear to breach.”
What follows is a study in time and motion. Alpha runs out to the large central front door, places shaped explosive charges against it, and rejoins the others. The front door blows with a deafening whoomph, but this is a diversion. The real assault is through a small side door, which Delta blows off its hinges with his shotgun. The assaulters pour through, into the deserted kitchens.
There’s a formal choreography to house clearance. It’s a self-propelling process that cannot and must not be halted. The team moves from room to room, with each member assigned a quadrant, sweeping, clearing, moving on. Villanelle knows the dance well, has rehearsed every step in the killing house at Delta Force’s training facility at Fort Bragg. The instructors there knew her as Sylvie Dazat, on secondment from the GIGN, France’s National Gendarmerie Intervention Group, and in her final assessment described her as an exceptionally fast learner with instinctive weapon skills, but with a personality so antisocial as to rule her out of any teamwork role. Her hostile behaviour had been deliberate. Men make themselves forget women who are unimpressed by them; Konstantin had taught her that.
