ELEVEN

The explosion on the veranda ripped through the windows and sent shrapnel into the room, just feet above Court’s body on the floor. Metal fragments shredded the thin wooden walls. Smoke, dust, and other debris blew in and filled the darkened library with a haze.

It had been a high-explosive grenade, not a stun grenade, and this told Court that Drummond had severely overvalued the importance placed on him by his former employers.

Court rose and ran for the bathroom now. Adrenaline overcame the lethargy caused by the infection, and he moved as quickly and as adroitly as ever. He slid into the bathroom, knowing without a doubt that he’d torn the remaining stitches below his collarbone in the process, and as he winced with the fresh pain, he turned to the NSA man. “You hurt?”

Drummond knelt against the wall, next to a large, cast-iron, claw-foot bathtub.

“They can’t kill me, they need me!” the older man repeated.

A second grenade detonated, this time just outside the open doors to the veranda.

Court coughed dust, then said, “It’s starting to look like these guys didn’t get that memo, chief. If they’re slinging frags your way, they aren’t worried about your health.”

Drummond accepted Gentry’s logic. “Get me out of here. Please!”

There were only two ways to safety as far as Court could tell: going through the door to the hallway, or going over the side of the veranda. The hallway would have enemy there, he had little doubt of this, but he was equally certain there were bad guys outside, as evidenced by the grenades lobbed in his direction.

Court made his decision quickly, and though it was hardly ideal, he determined it to be the lesser of two evils. They’d go for the hall, then the stairs, then the front door, then Drummond’s Jeep. He had three pistols and a fully automatic Micro Uzi Pro loaded with thirty rounds. He had the guns and ammo to make this work; as long as he was alive, he could fight.

“Follow me,” he said. “Head low.”

Drummond grabbed him by the arm. “Listen. If I don’t make it, find Miriam. Israel wouldn’t kill me. Whoever she’s working for, it’s someone else.”

“Got it.”

They made it halfway across the library to the door, and then gunfire began tearing through the bookshelves on their left, emanating from the hallway. Court grabbed Drummond and threw him to the ground, then slammed down on top of him, returning short bursts of fire with the Uzi one-handed in the direction of the incoming rounds.

His rounds ripped into books and the wall, but he didn’t think the Uzi was powerful enough to penetrate with enough force to be deadly in the hallway, so he concentrated his fire on the closed hallway door. He expended his magazine quickly, hoping he was taking out at least one enemy on the other side in the process.

The Uzi ran empty; Court threw it aside and pulled his Glock pistol with one hand while he climbed up to a crouch, yanking Drummond with him by the collar of his shirt. They began moving forward again, and they were steps away from the hallway door now.

It exploded in front of them from a breaching charge; wood blasted through the library, narrowly missing the two men there. The concussion slammed into both Drummond and Gentry, but since Court had been in front, he fell all the way to the floor, while Drummond only stumbled back into the middle of the large room.

Books began burning in the shelves near the doorway.

Court took his concentration away from the NSA computer scientist for an instant to fire more rounds into the smoke-filled hallway, and when he climbed back to his feet, he turned to see that Drummond had begun running for the veranda.

Good idea, Court thought. Exfiltrating through the hallway was obviously too risky; they were going to have to jump over the railing and roll down the hillside.

Court turned back to face the doorway to provide suppressive fire for Drummond’s escape, but after only a few rounds something appeared out of the dark haze in front of him. Right before Court’s eyes, he saw a small green satchel tossed into the room. It landed on the floor just feet from the chairs where he’d been sitting with Drummond minutes before.

He knew what it was, and he knew he was fucked.

It was a satchel charge. Probably twenty times the power of the grenades that had been exploding outside the library. Drummond was on the veranda now, probably in the line of fire of shooters out there, but Court saw no way to get to him. He screamed, “Bomb! Get over the side!” and then he turned and took four rushed steps before diving headfirst into the bathroom, straight into the big iron tub against the wall.

Just as he slammed down against the bottom of the tub, he was engulfed with an impossible sound and light. His world shook, he flipped upside down and then back up, his wrecked body crashing like a pinball against the floor and walls of the bathtub, and he was thrown hard against his left side before coming to rest again facedown with his mouth on the drain.

The motion stopped abruptly, his ears rang, and he groaned in agony. Everything hurt. A second later something crashed down on top of his back, hard, and though there was too much dust in the air to see anything, he recognized that the material that hit him was plaster and wood.

Through the fog in his brain that came from the concussion of the detonation, Court thought that a portion of the ceiling had collapsed onto him. As he tried to push it off, the dust and smoke cleared a little, and soon in the low light he realized he’d fallen through the second-floor bathroom during the blast, kept alive only by the heavy tub, and now he and the tub were covered with building material on the ground floor.

He felt wet blood dripping from his nose, slickening the bottom of the tub where his gloved hands were pressed under his chest.

Above him, through the screeching ring in his ears, he heard voices, and he thought they were speaking English.

And then he passed out.