handlers would probably discount the warning. After all,
There were motion sensors and sound detectors along the base inside the wall, but again, the security personnel would be alert to intruders coming over the wall elsewhere around the perimeter, not coming through the main gate where the guard’s scuffings and pacings, the noises from car engines, and the conversations as the guard challenged each arrival all rendered sonic data useless.
As for the lone guard, he was standing on the driveway inside the open gateway, his AKM carelessly slung over his shoulder, his night vision utterly blasted by the headlights of the car that had just passed through. He didn’t see the two figures in black approach the wall behind him, or notice as, one after the other, they slipped silently past his back. He wasn’t paying careful attention to the night around him because after all… that was what dogs and security cameras were for.
Watching from fifty-five hundred miles away, Rockman breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay, Lia,” he said. “You’re off the monitor. You weren’t seen.”
“Okay,” she replied. “We’re approaching the house.”
“The flier is on its way.”
On the pole overlooking the driveway entrance, the UAV broke off an inch-long section of its own head, leaving the piece attached by its two slender probes, then launched itself into the air. With a soft flutter of hard-beating wings, it arrowed through the night and came to rest on the outside sill of a second-floor window.
“I feel like a damned Peeping Tom,” Palatino muttered, shifting the remote device to walking mode and moving it higher until its camera could peer through the glass.
“Yeah, but it’s peeping in the line of duty,” Rockman told him. “Let’s have a look.”
The room beyond the glass was darkened, but the probe’s CCD visual pickups could resolve images in almost total darkness and could operate in the IR as well as visual wavelengths. At the same time, two slender wires, like antennas, extended from above the camera and rested against the glass, picking up faint vibrations.
The room might have been dark, but it was definitely occupied-rather enthusiastically so-by two people sharing a large bed.
“Oops,” Sarah Cassidy said, smirking. “I don’t think we want to go in that way.”
“Go to the next window,” Rockman told Palatino.
The next window was also a bedroom, but this one appeared to be empty. Rockman passed the word to Lia and Akulinin, who were already climbing up a pilaster to reach the second floor.
This part of the dacha had a roof extending out from the second story over a trellis-enclosed porch. The Deep Black insertion team had already made the assumption that the first-floor windows would be protected by some sort of security system but that the second floor might be clear. Targets who were lazy, cheap, or both sometimes left obvious holes in their security. Unfortunately, that was not the case here. Sensors inside the slender body of the flier had already detected the trickle of electrical current through a slender wire inside the closed window. If the window was opened or broken, the current would be interrupted and an alarm would sound. Rockman passed the news to the team.
“We’re on it,” Lia said.
Kotenko Dacha Sochi, Russia 2358 hours, GMT + 3
“We’re on it,” Lia murmured. In one hand she held a small device similar to the unit she’d used to look for security systems at the warehouse door on the St. Petersburg waterfront. The LED readout indicated an electrical current, and as she moved it around the edge of the window, she found the point where the sensor wire on the glass connected, through a metal contact, with a wire inside the window’s frame.
That was the weak point, the point of attack.
The flier clung to the wall a foot away, watching, looking like an odd and science-fictional mingling of large insect with small robot, its wings now folded along the length of its body and hanging off behind like a stiff, gauze cloak.
“This is a guy who takes his security seriously,” Akulinin whispered, double-checking the electrical circuit.
“
In response, the flier moved to the spot she was indicating with her finger. Again, a slender needle extended from beneath the robot’s head, touching the white-painted frame of the window. There was a faint whine as the drill bit chewed into the wood.
“Okay, Lia,” Rockman’s voice said a moment later. “We have a complete circuit.”
Akulinin tried lifting the window. It appeared to be locked. Extracting a jimmy tool from a thigh pouch, he inserted the flat blade between window and frame at the bottom, gently applying a steady downward pressure. There was a creak, but the window remained shut.
“Shit,” he said. “The damned thing’s locked.”
“Try the direct approach,” Lia suggested.
“Yeah.” He ran a gloved hand over the glass. “It might be damned noisy, though.”
The two listened for a moment. The sounds of laughter floated clearly across from the other side of the house, followed by a loud splash as someone hit the pool. “Laminated glass,” Lia said. “Should be more of a crunch than a crash. Go ahead. Give it a try.”
“You’re the boss.” He reversed the pry, wrapped the handle in a piece of cloth, and slammed the tool into the glass.
The window was plastic-coated and shatterproof, but the glass crazed and yielded under a second, harder blow. The two agents held their position for a moment, listening carefully for a full minute, waiting for some indication that they’d been heard.
Another splash sounded from the rear deck.
The security system wires attached to the inside of the pane were broken, but the needle drilled into the window frame by the robot was now shorting the contact, tricking the system into thinking the circuit was unbroken. Using the cloth to protect his already-gloved hands, Akulinin pushed in the now flexible sheet of fragmented glass, working it in and out until it popped free of the frame.
Replacing the jimmy, Akulinin drew his weapon and wiggled through the opening, headfirst. Lia followed.
“We’re in,” she said. She glanced around the room, verifying that it was, indeed, empty… though rhythmic creakings and moans were coming from the room next door. Her LI headset revealed the space clearly in monotone shades of green. “Tell us where we need to go.”
“Straight ahead,” was Rockman’s reply. “Through the bedroom door and to your left.”
Silently the two agents slipped forward through the darkness.
17
Kotenko Dacha Sochi, Russia 0007 hours, GMT + 3
DOWN A DARKENED HALLWAY, then right to a flight of stairs. Lia descended while Akulinin covered her from above, then returned the favor, holding her SIG-Sauer P220 gripped tightly in both hands. The weapon had been threaded to receive a sound suppressor, and the ungainly length of the thing extended beyond the ball of her hands like a police officer’s baton.
“There’s a security camera in the hall in front of you to the left,” Rockman whispered in their ears. “Wait one…”
The broken-off piece of the dragonfly probe still attached to the cable on the pole at the front gate now gave the Art Room a physical connection with the dacha’s security network, with the parked van as a communications relay. Back at Fort Meade, they would be running through a number of camera views, calling up the correct one, and feeding it a twenty-second loop of an empty hallway.
“Okay, Lia,” Rockman said. “The hall is empty and the camera is happy. You’re clear to move.”
Stealthily the two agents turned the corner and walked down the hall. Lia noticed a half sphere of darkened
