Liars & Thieves

CHAPTER THREE

In the silence and gloom of the forest, the shot was the loudest noise I’d ever heard.

The man I fired at dropped instantly.

I didn’t wait to see how bad he was hit. I leaped up and ran at him, the pistol at the ready.

The guy never moved. Looked to me like the bullet went right though his heart and stopped it. Stopped it dead.

The man was a stranger. He was wearing a headset that contained an earpiece and a mike. A cord led from it to a radio in a holster on his belt. I helped myself — he didn’t need it anymore.

The submachine gun was an MP-5 with a red dot sight and a silencer. It had a doubled banana clip, each side holding forty rounds.

I slapped his pockets, found another double clip, and took it, found he had a pistol and pocketed that, too. No car keys. My hair was soaked, leaking water down my forehead into my eyes, so I wiped my face on my wet sleeve, then jammed his camo hat on my head.

The radio was on, but no one was saying anything.

The heft of the MP-5 gave me a fool’s confidence. I was cold, wet, scared, and mad. I started back toward the main complex with the submachine gun braced against my hip, my thumb on the safety. The gentle mist of rain was now a drizzle.

The dude who worried me the most was the one in the ghillie suit. When you are playing with guns in the woods, the man who sees the other fellow first has a huge advantage. The ghillie suit was the ultimate in camouflage, but only if the person wearing it stayed immobile, settled in to become one with the surrounding landscape. Movement negated the value of the suit.

Nearing the clearing, I stopped behind a tree to look and listen. Took a few steps to the dubious safety of another tree and scanned everything. I crawled the last twenty yards to a large tree that gave me a view of the house and yard.

I was thanking my stars the bushes and weeds were well leafed out, providing me some cover, when a large SUV drove up the road and stopped in front of the main house. The driver didn’t turn off the engine.

“I’m here, Joe.”

This had to be the ride they were waiting for, the one that dropped the man I killed.

Flat on my belly, I eased the muzzle of the MP-5 through the bushes and settled the red dot of the sighting reticle on the driver of the vehicle. The range was perhaps a hundred yards, maybe a few yards less.

The thought of the guy in the ghillie suit stopped me from pulling the trigger. Without moving my head, I scanned everything I could see in that gloomy wet universe.

They had undoubtedly heard the pistol shot and knew their man hadn’t reported on the radio. My only edge was that they didn’t know where I was. I hoped.

The guy in the ghillie could be anywhere in the brush surrounding the clearing waiting for me to reveal my position. I had no illusions — with an MP-5, he didn’t even have to be a good shot. Any one of that clipful of 9 mm slugs he could hose at me would be quite sufficient to terminate my miserable existence.

A man in a camo suit with a weapon in his hand came out onto the porch. He looked around, then keyed the radio on his belt. “Joe?”

The silence that followed that word was pregnant.

The seconds ticked by one by one, then another male voice spoke into my ear. “This intruder must have boogied, Frank. Maybe we’d better get the hell outta here, too.”

“I never saw so much goddamn paper.” That was the man on the porch, I thought. “Take at least an hour to burn all of it in the fireplace.”

“We don’t have an hour, man.”

“Come help. We’ll set the house on fire and get the hell out of here.”

That was when a bush off to my right began to move down the hill toward the house.

The man on the porch went back inside. The driver of the SUV turned off the ignition and climbed out. He took the steps to the porch two at a time and disappeared inside.

I waited until the walking bush was nearing the porch, then eased the red dot onto him. Bracing the gun against my shoulder, I thumbed the fire selector to full automatic, then squeezed the trigger. The noise was about as loud as a .22 rifle. The weapon walked off target and I muscled it back on, then released the trigger.

The bush collapsed on the ground; his weapon fell several feet away.

I had fired about a dozen rounds, I thought. A one-second burst or a little over. I pointed the MP-5 at the porch and waited, examining windows. Perhaps I should have moved, but I was betting they didn’t know where I was. Movement might give me away.

A flicker of light showed in one of the ground-floor windows. The bastards had indeed fired the place. The fire grew quickly in intensity.

They must have used thermal grenades!

I snuggled the weapon in against my shoulder and waited. Anyone desiring to leave by SUV was going to get perforated.

They went out the back.

I didn’t see them go, but after a minute or so several of the lower windows shattered and smoke began puffing out of the upstairs windows. I didn’t think they were going to immolate themselves, so concluded they must have gone out the back and over the hill, precisely the way they had come in.

I took a deep breath and sprinted for the cover of the SUV.

That sprint would have gotten me a roster spot in the NFL. I have never run so fast in my life.

No shots. As I huddled behind the SUV and listened to the fire in the house snap, crackle, and pop, the thought occurred to me that one of those dudes might have stayed behind just for the fun of icing me point-blank as I went up the porch stairs.

If so, he was behind the door.

I emptied the magazine into the door, put in a fresh magazine, then put a burst into each window.

Feeling a tad bit better, I ran up the stairs and into the house, ready to shoot the first thing that moved.

They had used thermal grenades. The heat and smoke were intense. Yet the fire looked worse than it was. Crouching, I could see that the main room was covered with paper, heaping piles of it. And three bodies.

Two more bodies in the kitchen.

The back door was standing open.

I threw caution to the winds and hurried through the building, looking for anyone still alive. And sorta hoping I’d meet a bad guy, so I could have the fun of shooting him with the MP-5.

I did find someone, hiding in an upstairs closet.

She screamed as I jerked her out of there, screamed and went for my eyes with her fingernails.

I pushed her roughly, and she fell to the floor. “Goddamn, lady, get a grip. I’m one of the good guys.” I must have shouted it, because I was pretty pumped.

She stared at the submachine gun with eyes as big as saucers as the smoke roiled through the room. Her eyes rose to my face. I must have looked like something from the Black Lagoon standing there with that weapon in my hand, soaked to the skin, and covered with dirt and leaves.

“Who are you?” she whispered, staring at the weapon, her eyes wide.

“Let’s get the hell outta here, lady, and do the introductions some other time.” I jerked her off the floor and pushed her toward the door.

“The suitcase,” she shrieked, pointing back toward the closet.

“We ain’t got time for your fuckin’ clothes. The goddamn house is burning—”

“That’s what they came for! That’s what they wanted!”

I jerked the suitcase from the closet — it must have weighed fifty pounds — and pushed it at her.

“Get down the stairs and out of the house, right now, while I check to see if anyone else is alive up here.”

She disappeared into the smoke dragging the suitcase — it was just a bit too heavy to carry.

I ran from room to room, looking in closets and under beds, coughing and shouting. I didn’t find anyone; not that I searched everywhere, but I just ran out of time. The smoke was bad and getting worse. I could feel the heat in the floor and walls. I charged for the stairs hoping that I hadn’t waited too long. The staircase was like a chimney, funneling smoke and heat to the second and third floors. I held my breath and went down blind.

At the bottom of the stairs I tripped on something and went sprawling. She had collapsed coming down the stairs and lay in a heap beside the suitcase.

The fire was raging by then and the heat was unbelievable, but there was a little clear area near the floor, maybe two feet high. I crawled over to her, grabbed her by the arm, and began pulling. I couldn’t manage both girl and gun, so I abandoned the weapon.

When we reached the porch I half carried, half dragged her down the steps into the yard.

Then I lost my footing and dropped her. I went to my knees, gagging and retching and trying desperately to get some air. I stayed down until my head cleared somewhat. She was breathing shallowly. I put her on the grass, turned her over on her chest, and began pushing and pulling on her arms. After about thirty seconds of that she gagged, then gasped, “The suitcase! For Christ’s sake, get the suitcase!”

Okay, she was going to make it.

Figuring she knew more than I did, I went spider-walking back into the house for the damned suitcase and the MP-5. I wanted the gun more than the suitcase. The guys who iced these people and set the house afire might come back; if they did, I wanted that shooter. In our uncertain age, you must do unto others before they do it unto you.

Going back into that burning building was one of the dumber things I have done since I got out of diapers and stopped eating mud. The heat and smoke were damn near intolerable.

Miracle of miracles, I found the gun and suitcase and reversed course for the door. Got lost and started getting dizzy again from the smoke, then found the door just in time. I tossed the case into the yard and fell beside it on the grass.

While I gagged and coughed, she loaded the suitcase into the SUV.

Finally I got my breathing under control. I struggled to my feet and almost fell on my face. After thirty more seconds of hands on knees, I stood. She was bent over the dead man in the ghillie suit. She had pulled off his headpiece and had it in her hand.

“You know him?” I managed.

“No,” she said, and tossed his head rag on the ground. She turned back toward me.

“Name’s Carmellini, lady. Who the hell are you?”

“Kelly.” She said her last name, but I didn’t catch it. She was about medium height, had short dark hair and large brown eyes, and was in her late twenties, maybe a few years older. She might even have been pretty; it was hard to tell. Her face and clothes were covered with soot and grime. Behind us the fire was roaring. The heat was getting worse, and I found myself moving away from it. She did, too. Although she glanced at the fire from time to time, most of the time she kept her eyes on me.

“Well, Kel, this is how it is. Those assholes shot everyone they could find and set the goddamn house on fire. The worst of it is that they may come back. I suggest that we borrow this fine vehicle and get the hell outta here.”

I managed to stagger over to the SUV and look in. The key was still in the ignition. I picked up the MP-5 and put it in the rear seat, then got behind the wheel. Kelly got into the passenger seat.

We were sitting ducks if the killers elected to stay around to ambush us, but I was praying they hadn’t. Still, Fred’s pistol felt good in my lap. As the wipers smeared the water on the windshield, I got the SUV going and turned it around.

The guy in the ghillie suit looked like a small brush pile in the lawn.

I put the transmission in park, leaped out, and ran over to him. I turned his head and took a good look. Nope. Never saw him before. And he had an MP-5 lying beside him. I had forgotten about it. Hell, I could have left the other one in the house and just taken his.

His weapon sported a double banana clip in it that might come in handy later, so I jerked it out. I left the weapon.

“Where did you get your submachine gun?” she asked, her eyes on my face.

“The guy carrying it left it to me in his will.”

She glanced back at the house, then at the suitcase on the rear seat.

As we were going down the drive, I asked Kelly, “What happened back there?”

“They came this morning. I was upstairs, heard the shooting, went to the top of the stairs. There’s a place where you can look over the balcony into the main room downstairs, and I saw they had shot Mikhail. That’s when I grabbed the suitcase in his room and hid.”

“Who is Mikhail? What’s in the suitcase?”

She took a deep breath before she answered. “Mikhail Goncharov was the chief archivist for SVR, the successor to the KGB. He was like… their librarian, in charge of the central records depository. He defected last week. We had just started to debrief him. He spent the last twenty years making notes from the case files of the Soviet foreign intelligence service, and then Russia’s after the breakup. He had seven suitcases full of notes that he brought with him when we extracted him.”

She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “That’s the last one.”

With the house on fire, the man hiding in the washing machine in the basement decided he could wait no longer. He could smell the smoke, hear the roar of the fire, and knew if he waited much longer, he would never get out of the building.

Perhaps he had already waited too long…

The basement had not yet filled with smoke. There had to be an exit door… somewhere! He ran from room to room, fighting back the panic. There was a furnace in one room, several storerooms full of canned food and large freezers… and at the end of the hallway, a door.

It was locked with a massive dead bolt, one that could be opened from the inside. The man opened it, and found himself in a stairwell. He went up it slowly, trying to see, as the fire raged in the house above him.

No one in sight. Scraggly grass covered with autumn leaves for forty yards, then the forest.

The man ran toward the forest.

Safely behind a large tree, he paused and looked back at the house, which was engulfed in flames.

The blood pounded in his temples.

Biting his lip, trying to contain his emotions, he turned his back on the burning house and walked into the dark dripping forest.