City of Endless Night

15

At two o’clock in the morning, the mansion in East Hampton, New York, was quiet. The eighteen-thousand-square-foot house occupied a twelve-acre lot between Further Lane and the Atlantic Ocean, set amid a park-like expanse of lawns, a putting green, an artificial pond, and a “folly” designed to resemble a miniature Egyptian temple. The house itself was a three-story modernist construction in cement, glass, steel, and chrome that looked like an upscale dentist’s office. Its large plate-glass windows glowed quietly in the night air, casting a warm light across the gigantic lawns surrounding it.

The man stood on the empty December beach, in the shadow of a stone breakwater, and examined the house with a pair of night-vision binoculars. The wintry Atlantic thundered and rolled at his back. The moon had set, and the faint river of light that was the Milky Way rose from the sea horizon and arched over his head. The estate gave every appearance of quiet and repose.

The man with the binoculars was keenly aware this was only an illusion.

He scanned the grounds, the levels of the house, and the windows, committing every detail to memory. From his vantage point he could not see the first floor, but he was intimately familiar with the layout of the house, which he had been able to obtain from the absurdly open and unprotected central computer system of Cutter Byquist, the celebrity architect who had designed the house. These included CAD-CAM diagrams of construction drawings, mechanical and electrical plans, security systems, plumbing, even the music system. The electronic security system was relatively basic. The owner was an old-fashioned individual who placed his trust not in electronics but in trained, well-paid human beings, many of whom were former South African special forces soldiers of the notorious and now-disbanded 8 Reconnaissance Commando regiment.

In his fifty-five-year life span, the target who owned this fortress-estate had made many, many formidable enemies. There were a number of individuals and organizations that would very much like to kill him, either for revenge, for silence, or merely to send a message. As a result, his estate would be well prepared against any kind of intrusion.

After a few minutes of recon, the man felt a faint, quick vibration from the cell phone in his pocket. That was the first of what would be many such timed reminders.

The op would now begin.

He had mapped out the details with military precision, down to the very second. He expected the unexpected, of course — and he was prepared for that, as well — but he always liked to start off following a timetable in which every step he took, every action, had been choreographed.

He lowered his binoculars and tucked them into his backpack. He checked his Glock; his SOG knife; his GPS device. He was not yet in a hurry. The plan for this initial phase was slow and methodical. Later, at the end, there would be a rush. That was due to the one weakness in his plan: the target had a panic room built in between his bedroom and his wife’s. If there was a premature alarm raised, the target would have time to take refuge within it — and the op would need to be aborted. The panic room appeared to be impregnable. It was the one hardened technological element of an otherwise simple system. In addition to sophisticated electronic locks, it had multiple sets of dead bolts. Again, the old-fashioned approach — you couldn’t hack a dead bolt.

The man now moved up the beach, slowly, keeping to the shadows, and was soon among the dunes. He was dressed in an outfit of tight black silk, his exposed skin darkened with black greasepaint. He had selected for the operation a late-December weekday night with no moon. The beach and the town were utterly dead.

He moved soundlessly among the dunes, keeping to the low areas, until he came to the rise of land that led to the estate. A slope of brush terminated at a nine-foot stone wall that marked the property boundary, with a row of iron spikes atop it. On the far side was a thick boxwood hedge surrounding a long, smooth, open lawn that led to the front porticoes of the mansion.

He ran his hand over the face of the wall. The stone was rough, and afforded enough hand- and footholds for an experienced rock climber like himself to scramble up it. He waited for the second vibration signal, and when it came he swarmed up the wall in a few simple moves. He knew that the iron spikes were more for show than protection, and that an invisible IR break-beam ran along the top, serving as a perimeter alarm.

On his way over the wall, he made sure to interrupt that beam.

He dropped down the other side, into the hidden space between the hedge and the inside of the wall. There he crouched, in a dark corner, invisible in the deep shadow, waiting. He could just see, through gaps in the hedge, the vast sweep of lawn and the façade of the house. The indirect glow from the house’s windows, along with some tastefully arranged spotlights, threw out enough ambient light to cast a glow across the greensward. The illumination was both a blessing and a curse.

Soon he heard two security men with a dog coming across the lawn on the far side. Another vibration from his phone marked his estimate of their arrival time. They were, so to speak, right on schedule. He was reassured in the soundness of his planning. He knew that outdoor IR break-beams like this one experienced frequent false alarms from animals and birds. That would probably be assumed to be the case with this beam. But to make sure, for the past several nights, at irregular intervals, he had tossed a small, weighted piece of canvas onto the wall and then pulled it back as a way to interrupt the beam at this very spot, triggering the same routine investigation that he had timed for the present moment.

He could hear the panting of the dog as the group approached the hedge, and the irritable murmuring of the two men. Special forces soldiers were normally trained not to talk and to use hand signals only. Not only that, he could smell cigarette smoke.

These men had become soft.

“I hope Scout gets the critter this time,” one of the men said.

“Yeah, fucking squirrel probably.”

The dog suddenly whined. It had scented him.

One of them spoke to the dog. “Scout, go get it. Go get it, boy.”

They released the dog and it shot through a gap in the hedge — coming straight at him, no barking, no warning: a dog trained to kill. He braced himself and met the dog straight on as it leapt at him, delivering a single swipe with his SOG knife to the animal’s throat, severing its windpipe. With a gurgling cough the animal struck him a glancing blow as it fell, tumbling to rest at his feet.

“Hey — did you hear that?” one of the men asked, his voice low. “Scout? Scout? Return, Scout. Return.”

Silence.

“What the fuck?”

“Scout, return.” A little louder now.

“Should we call for backup?”

“Not yet, for chrissakes. He’s probably off chasing the squirrel. Let me go in and see.”

He heard the first man noisily pushing his way into the hedge. This, he began to think, was proving too damn easy. But it would get harder; he was confident of that.

He set himself into a crouching position, ready to spring, still cloaked in darkness. As the blundering noise grew close, he sprang up and drove the SOG into the man’s throat, jerking it sideways, again cutting the windpipe before his victim could make a sound. Even as the man fell facedown the intruder shouldered him aside and rushed forward, driving through the hedge like a linebacker, bursting out and leaping straight at the second man, standing in the open about ten feet away, still smoking a cigarette. With a shout, the man reached for his sidearm and managed to get it partway out of its holster before the intruder, airborne, slashed him through the neck with the SOG. The guard fell backward and the man landed on top of him, taking a faceful of arterial blood. The firearm bounced away on the lawn, unfired.

The man lay on the body as it jerked about for a few seconds before going still. He waited, unmoving, listening. The action had taken place about three hundred yards from the house, and they were far enough away to be obscured by darkness. He doubted the man’s aborted shout had reached the ears of anyone else. There were klieg lights that would go on in a general alarm or intruder emergency, but nothing happened.

When the intruder was assured that the alarm had not been raised, he rose up from the dead guard. Kneeling, he searched the body, removing a radio, two magnetic key cards, a flashlight, and the man’s hat. He turned on the radio and saw it was set to broadcast at channel 15 in the VHF range. He left it on in reception mode and tucked it in his belt, left the gun where it was, put the hat on his head, and tucked the magnetic key cards into his shirt pocket.

He grabbed the feet of the body and dragged it back into the hedge, hiding it near where the man’s partner lay. Then he proceeded westward, walking in the gap between the hedge and the wall. When he came to the property corner, he turned and walked north, a distance — according to his GPS — of five hundred yards. He was now on the opposite side of the house and had only to cross a 150-yard expanse of lawn.

There he waited for the faint vibration of his cell phone’s timer to signal the next phase.

When it came, he snugged the dead guard’s hat tighter onto his head and proceeded across the grass, walking purposefully, flashlight on, moving it back and forth. While the hat wouldn’t fool anyone close up, he would look all right from a distance.

The intruder was almost completely soaked in blood, and he knew if the other dogs scented him, they would freak out. But that would not happen unless the wind, which was coming from the east, shifted: and it would not shift in the weather pattern at this time of night.

He made it across the space unseen, and merged into the bushes along the side of the house just as a man on patrol with a dog came around from the front, walking along the grass. The movement of air was still in his favor. He waited in the dark until they had passed around the corner, and then he moved between bushes and house to the beginning of the flagstone patio, which surrounded the pool. A long pergola ran alongside the patio, and he used that as cover to reach a small cabana containing the pool pump and filters. The door was locked, but it was standard hardware that came with the shed and therefore rudimentary. He jimmied it and stepped into the cramped, darkened space, closing the door only partway.

Again he waited for the vibration.

He now raised the radio and held it to his lips, while taking out a small magnet. He depressed the BROADCAST button while holding the magnet near the mike.

“I’m at the pool,” he whispered. “Got a big snake here, need backup.” His voice, muffled in static thanks to the magnet, was almost unintelligible.

“What’s that about a snake?” came the reply. “Didn’t copy, repeat.”

He repeated the message, easing up slightly on the magnet to reduce the static.

“Copy, who’s this?” came the reply.

Now he broadcast just static.

“All right, I’m on my way over.”

He knew it would be the closest responder: the man with the dog who had recently passed him. As expected, the man came around the corner again with the dog on a leash, and he paused, sweeping his light this way and that. “Hey, where are you? Is that Pretorious?”

He remained in the dark, waiting.

“Son of a bitch,” the guard muttered, and then did exactly as expected — he released the dog and said: “Go find the snake. Go find it.”

The dog, scenting the man in the cabana, naturally made a beeline for him and charged through the door, where he was met with the flashing point of the SOG. The dog fell forward silently.

“Sadie? Sadie? What the hell?” The guard pulled his sidearm and, gripping it, ran into the cabana, only to be met with the same knife to the throat. The pistol fired as the man went down.

Now, this was an unfortunate development. The alarm would be raised prematurely. But knowing the psychology of his target — the man’s macho instincts, his brutal toughness, his loathing of cowardly behavior — he felt sure that one gunshot wouldn’t be enough to send him into the panic room. No: the man would arm himself, call his guards, figure out what was going on, and stay put — for the time being.

He was well along on his plan, with three men and two dogs down, which was exactly half the security complement. But he now had to move much faster, before the remainder could discover the extent of their losses, organize themselves, and close ranks in defense of the target.

All this consideration took less than a second in the intruder’s mind. He snatched up the dying guard’s radio and jumped over the body, still flopping and gurgling. Removing another magnet from his pocket and a piece of sticky tape, he taped down the TRANSMIT button of the man’s radio, slapped the magnet on, and dropped them onto the lawn. The sound of the gunshot had of course alerted the other security guards, and his radio had burst into overlapping queries as the guards tried to check in with each other, figure out where each was, and determine who if anyone might be missing. With the magnet and tape, he had at least rendered their main channel useless with loud static, and with the other guard’s radio he did the same to the emergency backup channel. That would sow confusion for at least a few minutes until the remaining guards found and agreed on a clear channel.

A few minutes were all he needed.

The klieg lights were snapping on. A siren sounded. He had to move very fast. There was no longer any point in stealth: he heaved a piece of porch furniture through the sliding glass doors, setting off another alarm, and then he leapt through the breach and raced across the living room to the stairs, taking them three at a time to the second floor.

“Hey!” He heard a guard running behind him.

He stopped, whirled about, dropped to one knee, and fired his Glock, taking off the top of the guard’s head and then dropping a second guard who came tearing around the corner after him.

Five guards, two dogs.

Sprinting along the second-floor corridor, he reached the target’s bedroom door. It was made of solid steel and was, as expected, locked. Reaching into his backpack, he slapped a pre-prepared packet of C-4 with detonator and sticky pad onto the lock, ran around the corner, and entered the wife’s room. They had recently divorced, and the steel door to her empty room was wide open, as he’d expected. The panic room stood between the target and his wife’s room, and each had their own door into it. The panic room’s door lay behind a panel on the wall, which he yanked open. The door beyond was shut, but it wasn’t yet in full lockdown mode and could be opened — unlike the target’s huge steel bedroom door — with a single charge of C-4. He slapped a second charge on the wife’s panic room door, retreated to a safe distance, and then, with a remote detonator, blew both charges simultaneously — the target’s bedroom door and the wife’s panic room door — so they sounded like one charge. The charge on the steel bedroom door wasn’t strong enough to blow it open — it was merely intended to scare the shit out of the owner.

But the charge on the panic room door was heavier, and it did indeed knock the unsecured but locked door open. The intruder slipped inside the panic room, where the air was filled with smoke and dust. The lights were off. He quickly took up a position just next to the door in the far wall of the little room: that is, the door leading into the target’s bedroom. Almost immediately he heard the target opening the door and stumbling inside, in terror and confusion due to the ineffectual explosion he’d just heard outside his bedroom door. The man turned, pulled shut the door, and slammed home the bolts. Then he scrabbled along the wall, found the switch, and turned on the lights.

And then he stared at the intruder already inside the panic room, his eyes widening. Yes, indeed, the target had just locked himself inside the panic room with his about-to-be killer. The intruder deeply enjoyed this moment of irony. The target was dressed only in boxer shorts, his comb-over askew, eyes bloodshot and bulging, slack jowls quivering, belly protruding. He still carried the sour reek of vodka.

“Mr. Viktor Alexeievich Bogachyov, I presume?”

The victim stared at him in abject terror. “What…who…are you…and for God’s sake—why?”

“Why not?” said the intruder, raising the SOG knife.

Two minutes and fifteen seconds later, the intruder slipped over the stone wall and dropped down onto the other side. He could hear, from the compound, the sounds of multiple alarms and, beyond that, in the distance, approaching police sirens. He had killed the last guard on the way out, but in his kindness had spared the dog, who proved to be more intelligent than the humans and had fallen quivering and whining at his feet, urinating on himself — and thereby saving his own life.

He sprinted across the beach to the stone breakwater and ran along it to a small speedboat, sheltered between two big boulders in the lee of the breakwater, its quiet four-stroke engine still idling in neutral. He tossed his now-heavy backpack into the boat, jumped in after it, gently depressed the throttle, and headed into the black, heaving Atlantic Ocean. As he sped into the night, pleasant thoughts went through his head of the mise-en-scène the police were just now discovering as they entered the estate and began to search the grounds.