All the villa’s downstairs windows were barred, which meant Trace’s team was restricted to the front door, unless they used charges, which Reese nixed. The front door was massive. Reese clustered with two of the crew behind a huge elm as Trace and another man climbed the stairs. Trace swept the perimeter while his man picked the lock. Both teams were switched to the open frequency. Reese’s head was filled with the heavy breathing of nine highly amped men.
The lock picker opened the door a fraction, then backed up and scouted the perimeter. Trace slowly opened the door. He then turned and looked straight at Reese. She gave him a thumbs-up.
Through her earpiece, she heard him say, “Green light. I say again. We are green for go. Weapons hot. Remember your orders. First team, on my one. Three, two, one.”
The insertion was nothing like what she had expected. In her mind, the attack should have been full of testosterone and noise and speed. A lot of bangs, a lot of bullets, a lot of fear.
Instead, everything was silent. And slow.
The loudest sound was the screaming inside her brain.
As soon as they were all inside, Trace softly shut the front door. The entrance hall was paved in broad flagstones. Directly ahead rose the broad central staircase. To her left was a massive display case set in an alcove peaked like the front door. The glass shelves were filled with pottery and ceramics. To her right, a trio of stone steps led down to a gloomy hallway. The four men fanned out so that their backs were to the entrance. They scanned and they waited. In their left hands were spray canisters of nerve gas. One whiff and the recipient was out for ninety minutes. In their right hands were silenced pistols.
Back in the hotel Reese had heard Trace drill the men over and over. Left hand for the techies, right for everybody else. She had thought the repetition absurdly trivial. Now it was all she could do to remember which hand was which.
Trace pointed to his men. Two up the stairs. One with him down the hallway. He turned to Reese and pointed to his back. Then he pointed two fingers at his eyes. Stay behind him and watch. She nodded that she understood. Fine with her. Leading from behind suddenly held a huge amount of appeal. Trace must have understood her response, and his men as well. They all shared a final smile.
A voice in her ear whispered, “We’re on the roof. No movement.”
Trace whispered back, “Enter by the north and south balconies. Watch for our men coming up the stairs. Go.”
Trace and his man moved down the hall in a cautious rush. At each doorway the lead guy checked with Trace, then went in high, Trace low. Reese remained plastered to the wall just beyond the action. Her heart was a frantic bird, struggling for a way to escape her chest.
At the rear of the house the hall took a sharp left turn, then ended by a final door. The door was wooden, ancient, and painted a muted color that looked grey in the dim light. Reese watched as the two men positioned themselves. Steady as a pair of human rocks. Trace pointed to the man’s nerve gas, then to the floor. His crew member was to go for the people on the floor. Trace lifted his pistol. To Reese, the barrel and silencer looked six feet long.
Trace nodded. Go.
Then over her earphone, she heard a voice say, “What the—”
Trace’s man was already committed. But she felt Trace’s hand punch her back. Slamming her against the wall.
Over her earpiece she heard the sound of a sack dropping.
At the same moment, she watched as their lead man stiffened, slapped a hand to his neck, and fell. Hard.
He landed on a pallet. The pallet did not move. She realized with awful clarity that all the pallets were empty. There was nobody lying there.
Trace shouted, “Alert! The house is a kill zone! Shoot everything!”
Reese took a step back as Trace fired repeatedly through the open doorway. The gun’s flashes illuminated a room that was empty save for the man sprawled at his feet. Trace raked the room. He slapped a fresh load into his gun, leapt through the doorway, rolled, and came up firing.
Overhead and through her earpiece Reese heard a tempest of men yelling and the crash of furniture and the quick whuffs of silenced gunfire. A man yelled that he was hit. Then another.
Trace’s gun ran out. He dropped the empty case and reached for his belt.
A man separated himself from the corner. To Reese it seemed as though he had drawn himself from the shadows.
The stranger flitted across the room. The air was filled with a whirring sound.
Trace used his empty gun to block the blow. The man’s baton made sparks when it struck the pistol. Trace whipped the gun down, trapping the baton on the barrel and pulling it down to where he could stomp on the weapon.
The man released it and went for Trace’s neck. Trace dropped and rolled and responded with a pair of kicks that sent the man flying.
But the man came up like his body was spring-loaded. Trace swept his other arm in the air between them. Reese heard a quiet hiss and realized Trace had released the nerve gas.
The man backed up farther and came up against the desk. Suddenly the air was full of missiles. A laptop, cables, monitors, headphones. Trace deflected them in a series of blocks but lost the canister in the process. Then the man tossed the table, easy as a kid shooting a Frisbee. Trace flipped over backward and tumbled.
The man shot her one look. A killer’s glance, holding her so tight her heart lost its ability to beat. Only then did she realize it was Charlie Hazard.
He did not move forward so much as stalk Trace. The men came together in a flurry of moves so fast as to meld together in the dim light. Their limbs and bodies blurred. There was no way two human beings could move that fast. They danced to the tune of huffs and blows and crashes.
Charlie seemed to toss Trace over his arm like he was flipping a towel. The move was impossibly smooth, even graceful. Yet Trace landed so hard his head cracked against the stone floor. He lay there, blinking slowly, too stunned to move.
Only then did Reese realize she was screaming. A high-pitched shriek, a release of hyper-tense steam that had to get out somehow.
Charlie paid her no mind whatsoever. He reached back into the shadows and came up with a rifle. The haft was shattered, clearly from one of Trace’s bullets. The rifle dangled from his arm as he moved back over and shot Trace at point-blank range.
Reese turned and fled.