The man unloads on me again, climbs the stairs as he fires.
I duck into the bedroom. Filmy curtains blow in the wind. Stein and Robyn are gone. I slam the door shut, lock it. The man kicks at the door. I raise the Mark 23, fire through the wood at face height. Miss.
There is a sound like tearing cloth as the MP7 cuts loose. The door splinters and I hit the floor as armor-piercing rounds thrash the air over my head. I fire back through the holes in the door. No effect. I’m pounding lead into armor. The gunman turns his weapon on the lock.
I swing a foot out the open window, go through it as the lock is shot away. The man crashes through the door. I jump.
In the air, falling. Fifteen feet. Equivalent to a fully loaded combat landing. I hit the lawn, crumple and roll. The world whirls around me.
The gunman leans out the window, looks for an angle.
On my back, I stare at him. The MP7 is pointed straight at me.
I’m dead.
A burst of fire. Stein’s captured MP7 is a great equalizer. Armor-piercing rounds shred the man’s Kevlar. In less than a second, Stein pumps a dozen bullets into his chest. He jerks like a puppet, drops his weapon, and falls back into the room.
Another gunman, MP7 raised, rushes around the side of the house.
Robyn stands flattened against the outer wall. In her two hands, the axe. With all her strength, she brings the blade down on the gunman’s head.
Whack.
The sound of the axe slamming into a solid object. The gunman collapses face-down on the lawn. Robyn plants a foot between his shoulder blades, hauls with all her strength. The curved blade, buried in the meat of the killer’s brain, catches on his shattered skull.
Robyn works the axe handle forward and back. Grinding, crunching sounds. A mighty tug, and the axe head comes free. Blood, pulp, and fragments of bone spatter the girl’s arms and face.
I get to my feet, stuff the Mark 23 into my waistband, and take the dead man’s MP7. Loot his vest for spare 4.6 mm mags. He has six. I stuff three in my pockets, hand three to Stein.
“That’s twice you’ve saved my life,” I tell her.
We’re standing at the side of the house. The pool and hill are on the opposite side. Tennis courts are to our right, the front of the house to our left. There are woods on this side, about fifteen feet away.
At least six attackers. Three inside the house. Two dead, one wounded… assuming Stein did not hit his femoral artery. One more dead outside, his head hacked in two. They must have killed Jimenez. I assume one more shooter on the hill with a long gun. Another in their vehicle, operating the ECM they used to disable Stein’s technology.
I wave to Robyn. “Let’s go. Into the woods.”
Inside the tree line, we sit in a huddle of three. Stein and I sit back-to-back. Robyn sits with her back to both of us. She clutches the axe to her chest, shaking.
“Is Quantico on the way?” I ask.
Stein holds the MP7 in one hand, mobile phone in the other. “Yes. ETA ten minutes.”
“Okay, we sit tight. If anything moves, kill it.”
Two Black Hawks carrying two dozen armed men descend on the property. The QRF clear the house and dispatch hunter-killer teams onto the hill and into the woods. They find Adcox and all his men dead. Jimenez, Nellis and Orcel were killed with silenced subsonic pistols.
At the house, the QRF finds three dead assassins and one wounded. They call for medevac.
Robyn sits in the living room, surrounded by burly operators carrying M4s. Stein and I go into the kitchen, the space at the foot of the steps. The officer in command of the QRF is standing over the bodies of two attackers. He nods to us.
I bend and pull the mask off the man I killed. Viscous threads of blood spill from his nose and mouth—my blow tore his trachea, burst the pharyngeal artery, separated his spine. He’s swarthy, distinctly Middle Eastern in appearance.
“Run a check on him,” I say. “You’ll find he’s Al Qaeda. A sleeper.”
Stein stares at the man she shot in the legs. He’s bleeding from half a dozen wounds, including two shattered knees. Bloody chips of bone are visible through the torn fabric of his pants. He’s staring at the ceiling, avoiding our eyes. Miraculously, she missed his femoral arteries. She gathers wool in her fingers and yanks off his mask.
Koenig.
I might have guessed. “Captain. Who else was in on it?”
A shake of the head.
“Captain Koenig,” Stein says. “You are going to be charged with the murder of five men in my security detail. Quite possibly, as an accessory in the murder of Colonel Grissom. You can help yourself. Tell us what you know.”
“Fuck you.”
I look sideways at the QRF commander. “I think you should get some air.”
“Good idea.” The man walks into the living room.
“The captain is a tough monkey,” I tell Stein. “He’ll go to Leavenworth before he says a word. Let’s save the taxpayers the expense.”
I chop Koenig under his rib cage. The air leaves his lungs with a painful grunt. I cover his nose and mouth with my right hand, slam his head back against the floor.
Squeeze.
Koenig struggles. His left hand grabs my wrist, his right reaches for my face. His eyes lose focus.
Before Koenig passes out, I let go. He sucks breath with greedy gulps.
“Tragic,” I say to Stein. “The shock, the blood loss. He didn’t make it.”
I’m not sure Stein believes I’ll kill him. Koenig knows me well enough to know I will.
“Okay,” he says. “I’ll tell you. Everything.”
37
West Wing
White House Sunday, 1400
We stayed in the house all night. Twenty operators on the premises provided security. In the morning, an advance team from State joined us. They closeted themselves with Stein and Robyn for hours. I was left to sit in the living room, to
