Rules of Vengeance

70

They formed lines on both sides of the hallway, each with six policemen clad in assault gear, backs to the wall, with Graves and Ford pulling up the rear. Black Panthers were permitted to carry weapons of their own choosing. The first man in line clutched a Benelli semiautomatic twelve-gauge shotgun. The second followed with a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun. The strategy was blast and spray. And God help whoever was on the receiving end. The rest of them held pistols at the ready to fire on more precise targets.

The captain gave the signal to go forward. A policeman carrying a Remington Wingmaster ran down the hall and aimed the rifle at the door. The captain raised his gloved hand. His fingers counted down: five… four… three… two…

“Ready?” whispered Kate.

Graves nodded.

An earsplitting bang rent the hallway. The door careened off its hinges and slammed to the floor. There was a flash and a concussive change in the air pressure as the stun grenades exploded. One, then another. Smoke flooded the hallway. By now Graves was running into the apartment, his pistol extended, eyes watering. Someone was shouting, first in French, then in a language he couldn’t understand.

“Arrêtez! Arrêtez! Bougez pas!”

Shotgun blasts fired in rapid succession. Graves’s ears rang painfully. He registered the apartment in static frames. A run-down kitchen. A living room with threadbare furniture. The crate of machine guns. And another larger crate next to it, with the words “Property of Italian Armed Forces. Semtex-H. 50 kg.” It was the Semtex that Emma Ransom had stolen from the barracks near Rome. He heard a scream. He turned a corner to see a slew of black uniforms tackling someone to the ground. It was a man with gray hair, and he struggled fiercely, shouting something in a language Graves recognized but at first did not understand.

A staccato burst from an automatic weapon forced Graves to spin and look behind him. Pieces of drywall scattered through the air, clipping his face and neck. He ducked instinctively. The policeman next to him went down, half his face blown away. Graves leveled his gun at a woman who stood facing him, an AK-47 held in her hands. He squeezed the trigger, but before he could get off more than one round, there was another blast and another, and the woman was blown across the room and slammed high onto a wall. Graves looked and saw the French police captain, the Benelli shotgun pressed to his cheek.

And then, louder than all that had gone before, silence.

Seven seconds had passed.

Graves walked to the woman. She was dead, effectively sawed in half by the shotgun’s vicious barrage. He noted that a single bullet had pierced the center of her forehead. It was not Emma Ransom.

He walked into the bedroom.

A man lay facedown on the floor, his hands cuffed behind him. He was dressed in a gray suit; his hair was the color of steel wool. It’s him, thought Graves. Shvets.

“Turn him over,” he said.

A policeman rolled the body over and Graves swore very loudly.

At first glance, the man was of Middle Eastern extraction. He let loose with a violent protest in the suddenly familiar language. It was Farsi.

“He says they’re Iranian diplomats,” translated Graves. “You can find their passports in the bedroom.”

A moment later another policeman emerged from the back room, clutching two diplomatic passports from the Islamic Republic of Iran. Graves opened the first. It identified the holder as Pasha Gozhi and stated that he was attached to the Foreign Ministry. “Mr. Gozhi,” he said, “what are you doing with a crate of machine guns and plastic explosives in your apartment?”

“I wish to see the ambassador,” he said. “I have diplomatic immunity.

You have no right to break in. Where is my wife? Anisha! Are you all right?”

Graves looked at Kate. “I can’t believe this,” he said. “We’re royally screwed.”

Kate placed a hand on his arm. “Maybe we’ll get that reading on the location of the phone call Emma Ransom placed last night.”

“Yeah,” said Graves, without hope. “Maybe.”