Vasily whispered into the small satphone mic dangling by his ear. “I think he’s onto me.”
He squinted through the low-light video lens. He could see the Monk had some sort of scope to his face, sweeping the tree line. He also seemed to be on the phone. Vasily could hear the Monk speaking but he was too far away for Vasily to make sense of it. Feeling exposed, he rose to a crouch and shuffled sideways behind a bush.
“How far out are you?”
“Bottom of the hill,” answered Leo. “Just hitting the gravel. Five minutes.”
“If we’re blown, what do we do?”
It was a good question. As the more senior of the two operators, Leo thought about how to answer as he skidded up the switchbacks.
Zoloto had said that the most important thing was to retrieve the USB and any other documents in the house. She’d also directed them to keep the surveillance target in sight. But what if the Monk bolted or, worse, came after them? Their first order of business was to avoid detection. Second was to gain intel. Leo thought of a way to do both.
“Snatch,” he replied.
While extreme, this was a Krasniy Odin, the highest-priority op, and he was definitely in extremis. They couldn’t afford to lose the Monk, whoever he was, and they couldn’t kill him—could they?
If they took him alive, they’d at least have options. Leo ran down the logic. “If you think we’re blown, he’s going to call the police. That can’t happen. And we need him—alive. Take him and let’s get out of here.”
“Okay,” said Vasily. “He’s running. Recovering target. Out.”
Dale sprinted at full speed back to the snowmobile shed. He pulled the bare bulb’s chain as he entered, killing the lights. He felt his way to his workbench and found the old NVGs. He put them over his head while fumbling through his still-open gun safe.
Whoever the armed man in the trees was, he wasn’t going to be open to reasoning. Dale knew he had to arm up fast. He wanted his Glock for mobility, but it was up in the small digital safe in his bedroom. He had the sniper rifle, unloaded, which wouldn’t be too helpful since he’d taken off the scope. He also had a twelve gauge he used for hunting geese. He knew it was loaded with five shells. He took it.
He figured the NVGs, now warmed up and functioning, would be his advantage. If the man out there was coming for him, he’d be entering the house first. But Dale knew his way around his own home, which would be another edge. Shotgun in hand, he ran from the shed to the basement below his two-bedroom cabin.
Once inside the cellar, he found his fuse box and killed the master power. The lights had been off anyway, but now his pursuer wouldn’t be able to turn them on. He pressed his back against the stony foundation walls and slowed his own breathing, feeling the cool of the concrete through his jacket. He listened to the creak of the stringers a few feet over his head.
He heard footsteps on the deck and the sliding grind of his back door opening. The footfalls advanced into the living room. They were slow, deliberate, gentle, hard to discern against the subfloor, but enough that Dale could follow. Because the pursuer was moving so easily in the dark house, Dale guessed he might have night vision too.
With a tactical eye, he surveyed the contents of his basement in the spooky green light of night vision. There was a washer and dryer. A basket of dirty clothes. A water heater. A sink and a counter with a pair of scissors on it.
He slithered along the wall toward the washer and fished a cotton sweat sock out of a basket. He pocketed the scissors from the counter. He continued on until he was within arm’s reach of the water heater. He quietly unscrewed the long metal magazine of the shotgun and carefully withdrew two shells.
Listening to the footfalls above, Dale could hear the man going from room to room. In less than a minute, the assaulter would find the obscure basement door next to the kitchen pantry.
He used scissors to cut off the sealed plastic cap of the shotgun shell and dumped the exposed metal pellets into the empty sock. He removed the plastic wadding and poured the exposed black gunpowder into the sock, over the top of the pellets. After repeating this process with the second shell, he twisted the end of the sock, knotting the powder and shot in a tight, massed-up ball. He set the loose, twisted end of the sock on fire with the pilot light at the bottom of the water heater.
As the long end of the sock began to burn, acting as a fuse, he crept outside and made his way quietly up the side of the house on his way to the deck. He silently slipped onto the wooden planks and crept forward through the open back door.
His pursuer was facing the front of the house now, scanning the small foyer and dining room. Dale could see from the other man’s profile that he also had night-vision goggles over his forehead. The assaulter kept his back to the wall, sweeping the rooms of Dale’s cabin with the HK machine pistol. He looked like a pro.
The assaulter found the basement door and carefully opened it.
Bang!
The blast rang out, plinking the water heater with shot. The tank began to hiss and gurgle. Dale saw the man fall back into the kitchen and assume a crouch toward the open door, ready to return fire, assuming he was under attack from below. But showing good fire discipline, the assaulter held off and shunted sideways to the threshold, waiting.
Dale couldn’t get a reliable shot with the twelve gauge since the man was partially blocked by the kitchen island. The shotgun was notoriously slow to reload and a half hit against a man with a machine pistol would be certain death. It was now or never. Dale set the shotgun down on the deck.
As the man stayed focused on the basement stairs, Dale launched himself, springing forward past the island, blindsiding the assaulter violently on the stone floor. Smashed together, the two men slid into the gas range, where Dale smacked his own head.
Dale ignored the jolt to his skull. He quickly reached for the HK with a twisting motion, trying to wrench it free. He thought he felt it move in his direction. But he realized it was slung around the man’s back. It wasn’t going to work.
While the tackled man concentrated on retaining his weapon, Dale thrust the heel of his right hand into the man’s face with wicked force, crunching the assaulter’s nose. He ripped off the man’s NVGs and jabbed him in the middle of his face with a closed fist, working on the already smashed nose. He hit him with a third jab to the eyes, which turned the bridge of his nose to pulp. The man let out a guttural scream, as much in anger as pain.
The younger, stronger assaulter thrashed furiously, raising the weapon. Dale wouldn’t be able to hold it down with one hand. With the assistance of his shoulder sling, it was just a matter of time before the assaulter regained control of the HK.
Seeing the inevitable, Dale released his grip. In one smooth motion, he jerked himself free of the struggle and flung his own back flat on the floor. He raised his right leg and kicked the man with the heel of his boot, slamming it upward into his chin. As the assaulter took the blow and raised his weapon, Dale rolled to his side and twisted. He got a leg jab into the man’s knee, feeling it buckle. As the man reacted, Dale scrambled up and behind him. He kicked the knee again from the other direction, knocking him off-balance. Dale ended up behind him, gaining a choke hold. They were leaning back against the kitchen counter, both struggling for advantage. Dale pulled his own wrist to tighten the vise around the man’s neck.
The assaulter pulled the trigger of the automatic HK, attempting to raise the gun over his shoulder to hit Dale. But the burst was wild and erratic, splintering the kitchen cabinets, echoing loudly off the stone floor, hot brass shells skittering.
Dale pulled the man backward toward his kitchen sink. He risked a free hand to fumble for the knife block that he knew was on the counter, next to the sink. He found it and knocked it over, spilling a few blades. Cutting his hand in the process, he managed to get a steak knife by the blunt end.
The man fired another burst. Dale felt something graze his shoulder. Another inch to the left and it would have hit him in the head.
His shoulder burned now. He couldn’t know how bad it was, which also meant he couldn’t know how much time he would have to continue to act with strength. He ignored it. He squeezed the man’s neck harder in the vise between his left elbow and forearm, slightly angling his victim’s chin. With as much strength as he could muster in the awkward position, Dale inserted the steak knife just below the man’s jawline, near the rear of his head. He savagely buried the serrated blade up to its handle and twisted, screaming in fury as he did so. It had been a long time.
The assaulter got off one more burst of machine pistol fire before jerking his legs in a death rattle, then going abruptly limp.
His arm covered in the blood, Dale slid to the ground with the man in his arms, slapping away the business end of the red-hot HK barrel.
His breathing was out of control as adrenaline surged. His kitchen smelled of cordite and the metallic tang of blood. Chunks of broken wood were splayed across the floor. He pulled the gun from the dead man, raising the sling over the inert, slumping head.
Shaking, Dale stood, the smoking machine pistol in his hands. He could see from the mag’s orange dot that the HK had burned through its thirty-eight nine-millimeter rounds. He laid the body on the floor and looked it over in the bilious, otherworldly light. He forced himself to take several deep breaths.
The dead man wore an expensive ski jacket with a tactical H-harness, Gore-Tex snow pants over jeans, and Sorel snow boots. He was clean-shaven with a short but not-too-short civilian haircut. He looked like any other jackass coming off the slopes around here. He was a fit, otherwise average-looking white guy with blond hair, maybe thirty years old.
His hands quaking, Dale patted down the pockets of the nylon H-harness. He found a spare magazine for the HK. He ejected the used mag and inserted this one, cocking the slide.
He slung the HK over his neck and backed his way to his deck, sweeping the house for additional threats. He noticed his shoulder was wet and realized it was his own blood dripping down his forearm.
That was when he heard the truck coming up his driveway.
Its lights were off but a floodlight with a motion sensor on Dale’s barn lit it up. Dale carefully backed himself all the way to his deck, his eyes continuing to focus forward into the house. The deck was on the opposite side of the driveway. He wasn’t sure what was going on with the vehicle, but he recognized the black Yukon XL.
On the deck now, Dale saw his shotgun where he’d left it. With the dead man’s loaded HK in hand, he wouldn’t need the shotgun. But he’d been trained as an operator to create options whenever possible.
He stood on the arm of an Adirondack and put the shotgun in the roof gutter. He lodged his healthy left elbow into the gutter and swung his right leg like a pendulum, gaining momentum. After a few swings he had enough centrifugal force to rotate his body sideways onto the roof. He lay there, gasping for a moment, marshaling his strength.
Dale’s house had four roof gables pointed in each direction, like an X. Except over the back deck, which had a flat extension, the metal roofs were steep in order to let the snow slide clear. In order to ascend to the top, Dale had to wedge his body between the angled gables with his shoulders against one end, his feet on the other. Using his body as leverage, he inched to the peak, where the four gables came together. From this high perch, he looked down at the Yukon in the driveway.
It sat there idling, lights off. He couldn’t see the driver behind the blacked-out windows. The engine stopped and a door opened. A man crept out, moving slowly in a tactical crouch. He had a longer weapon than the dead man in the kitchen. Dale recognized the shape instantly— its banana-shape clip gave it away as an AK-12, the modern Russian assault rifle, the descendant of the famed AK-47. This assaulter also wore a set of NVGs over his eyes. He had a pistol strapped to his thigh. Other than the pistol, he was outfitted exactly like the man now lying dead on Dale’s kitchen floor.
Dale’s shoulder stung and burned. He could feel the moisture of his own blood running cold down his arm. With that kind of loss, he knew he wouldn’t have much time to eliminate this new threat.
But he also knew the threat wouldn’t just go away. It was pretty clear that Yukon man was going to enter the house just like his partner had, but with a more accurate rifle. He was going to find his dead buddy and then start hunting for Dale directly. Who knew what other weapons he had stashed in that SUV?
Even if Dale opened up a gunfight from this position on the roof, tactically a superior position, he estimated he’d lose. Yukon man had a far-more-accurate weapon and loads of concealment to work with. Dale studied the SUV. He was now willing to bet that the man was alone. Tactics would dictate that a second assaulter should have crept out and swept toward the house in the other direction.
Dale’s borrowed HK was a PDW—a personal-defense weapon—designed to spew lead at a target only a few feet away. It was horribly inaccurate outside of close range. The only way to kill Yukon man would be to draw him in and shock him.
Dale watched the other man advance carefully in a practiced crouch, making no noise whatsoever in the snow, sweeping for targets. Dale heard wind in the trees. He might be able to get a shot off here, he thought. But then he guessed he would make too much noise squaring up on the metal roof before the man ran under the eaves for cover. He held off, waiting for an option with a higher PK, probability of kill.
Dale watched to see whether the assaulter would head straight into the house via the front door or move down the sides. If it were Dale, he would have moved down the sides and inspected the quiet, dark interior before entering.
Sure enough, that was what the man did. He turned left, moving toward Dale’s right, his weapon before him, ready to fire.
There was accumulated snow in the angled corner between the gables on this side of the roof. The old snow was as hard as ice, having thawed and refrozen several times in the recent stretch of sunny weather. Some of it was even blue, a tiny glacier. On the ground below lay the snowbank where the snow would eventually fall.
But on this cold night, the roof snow was frozen in place, not about to move anywhere. Dale climbed on top of it, slinging the HK to his back. He lay on his stomach, his face toward the ground, watching the man. He could barely get a view of the man’s head, moving slowly along the house. There was a large window just below the gable here. Dale guessed the man would pause to watch through the window with his night-vision goggles.
He guessed right.
As the man paused, watching and listening at the window, Dale pushed himself into position on the sheet of icy snow, aiming himself. The whisper of night wind in the trees was just enough to conceal the sound of his maneuvering. He pushed forward with his hands. Within seconds he was sliding quickly, silently, gaining speed, flying off the roof in a suicidal luge.
He shot off the gable with his arms extended, flying downward toward the top of the man’s head. He managed to hook the assaulter’s neck in his elbow as he flew forward, toppling him into the snowbank, where they both landed.
Stunned by the hit and the plunge into the frozen snow, the man took a moment to get his bearings. He rolled onto his back and raised the AK toward Dale, who lay right next to him. But the longer barrel of the Kalashnikov was a hindrance in the short space between them. Dale blocked it with his leg, swung the HK out from behind his back, and cooked off a burst of three machine pistol rounds that obliterated the top half of the other man’s head, shattering the large picture window behind him, spraying blood over the snowbank.
Dale lay back in the snow, panting. He looked up at the bright stars in the clear sky above, listening to the wind and his own breathing. He dropped the weapon by his side. He wanted to just lie there, getting his breath, trying to make sense of it.
But he knew there was no time for that. He had to get the hell out of here.