Jack Du Brul - Vulcan's forge

A grenade rumbled somewhere within the mansion, shaking the entire building. It was immediately followed by the sound of huge chunks of glass shattering against the hard floor.

Up and running, Lurbud changed clips for his weapon with expert hands. Someone loomed out from the reeking smoke and Lurbud almost tore him apart, but stopped in time as he realized it was Demanov.

“What’s your estimate?” Lurbud panted.

“Ten to fifteen, maybe as many as twenty. It’s hard to tell because this place is so fucking big.”

Bullets flew over their heads as they both dove behind a sofa in what must have been the formal living room. Demanov returned fire quickly. Another fusillade pinned them back to the white-carpeted floor.

As soon as the firing stopped, Lurbud sprang to his feet and ran across the room. Bullets tracked his progress, edging closer and closer to his racing form. A Waterford crystal sculpture nearly seven feet tall exploded just behind him. He dove for the floor between two leather ottomans, breath jamming into his throat with the impact.

The firing stopped for a moment and he lifted himself. The gunman was in plain view. Lurbud opened up, stitching rounds across a massive Roy Lichtenstein painting before finding his mark. The gunman went down with three slugs buried deep in his torso.

Lurbud slithered across the room to the fallen assailant. Expecting to see a caucasian or Japanese from Ohnishi’s security detachment, he was shocked to find that the gunman was Chinese or possibly Korean.

“What the fuck is going on?” he wondered.

Lurbud heard the distinctive crack of a pistol shot just as a bullet slammed into the corpse’s chest inches from his hand. He lifted his machine pistol and fired instinctively, but his bullets hit nothing but more glass. The attacker had nimbly ducked behind a glass-cased suit of Japanese armor guarding a curve in the hallway leading to some of the guest suites.

Lurbud lurched to his feet and started down the hall, back pressed tight to the wall, hands steady on his weapon. He fired a burst at the priceless armor, which disintegrated under the hail of 9mm rounds. There was no one behind it. He continued on, passing the body of one of his own men further down the hallway. The Russian soldier’s head had been completely twisted around.

“Jesus,” Lurbud muttered, remembering that Ohnishi’s assistant Kenji was a black belt of the eight don, a master virtually without peer. The dead Russian had to be his handiwork.

Lurbud tightened the grip on his machine pistol now that he knew the power of his quarry. He searched each of the opulent guest suites quickly but calmly, mentally blocking out the firefight still raging within the building. The door at the far end of the hallway did not lead to a room, but rather opened onto a stark concrete and steel service staircase.

He ascended cautiously, the rancid sweat of fear snaking down his flanks. It was impossible to hear anything in the echoing stairway because of the cacophonous battle.

After a few minutes, Lurbud reached the top of the stairs but there was no sign of Kenji, just a dimly lit landing and a fire retardant door. Lurbud jerked open the door, keeping his body safely out of the way.

When the gunfire he expected didn’t occur, he ducked his head around the corner quickly. The room beyond was small, maybe twelve feet square, but tastefully furnished with a low bed, an antique dresser, and damascene wall coverings. A huge built-in mirror dominated the far wall. Lurbud knew it was one-way glass from the plans provided to his team.

Rather than waste time looking for the secret exit that Kenji must have used, Lurbud pumped a few rounds into the mirror and watched it tumble to the floor in a glittering cascade. Beyond lay Ohnishi’s private bedroom and on the beautiful four-poster bed lay Ohnishi himself, naked.

His head had been severed from his torso, as had his arms and legs. Each appendage lay neatly in its proper anatomical position, but about two inches separated each from the trunk of the billionaire’s body.

Evad Lurbud had been witness to and had in fact carried out some of the most vicious torture yet devised by mankind, but what lay before him brought vomit shooting out of his mouth. Ohnishi’s withered genitalia had been cut off and placed a few inches from his groin. Lurbud knew from the amount of blood in this region that this had been the first member carved off.

Trying to regain his composure, Lurbud thought for a moment and realized that such a death took more time than he’d given the fleeing Kenji. Either someone else had been here first, or Kenji had done this prior to Lurbud’s assault on the mansion.

If the presence of Korean guards was baffling, then Ohnishi’s death was truly confusing. Kenji was Ohnishi’s assistant of many years, by all accounts incredibly loyal. Why had he suddenly turned? Why had he killed his employer? Lurbud let these questions sink into the back of his mind as he continued his search.

Beyond the bedroom lay a dayroom as large as most suburban homes. The decor was very modern, including geometric and freeform art pieces and a glossy white pine floor. The pyramidal top of the mansion soared over Lurbud’s head, supporting a huge primary-colored mobile by Calder, a smaller version of the one hanging in the east wing of the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.

Lurbud dashed from the dayroom through the nine-foot-tall French doors at the far end and onto an open balcony that overlooked the back of Ohnishi’s estate. He took a few deep breaths of the humid air, glad to be out of the smoke-filled house. Amazingly, he could make out the sounds of night insects over the din of battle below.

Kenji stood on the back lawn, a lean shadowy form in the rich moonlight. The instant Lurbud saw him, he raised his machine pistol, but Kenji was too far out of range. A glance to his left showed Lurbud the rope ladder, hanging over the side of the balcony, that Kenji must have used to escape.

Below, Kenji stretched his arms over his head, and Lurbud swore he heard laughter. When Kenji’s hands met, though Lurbud could not see the gesture, his finger touched the detonation button on a small radio transmitter.

A deep rumbling shook the building, buckling the entire structure. Some of the few still intact glass plates popped from their supports and flew onto the lawn. The rumbling deepened and the house began to shiver as the chain of small explosives planted around the foundation by Kenji’s soldiers went off in a predetermined sequence.

The timing of the blasts corresponded with the harmonic resonance of the entire structure so that the rumbling deepened even as the sound of the small explosions diminished. Lurbud clutched at the railing as the building shook faster and faster. Huge rents appeared in the main support columns, those that took most of the strain of the massive glass roof.

The columns collapsed all at once and the roof shattered in a glittering explosion. The slab-sided glass walls toppled as the entire building turned into an endless shower of glass. Tons of it poured down, killing all those beneath, slicing through flesh and bone without check. One moment the Koreans and Russians had been fighting a desperate battle and the next they were torn apart by an unimaginable force.

Lurbud had felt the balcony sway as the support columns let go. The lighted, almost crystalline pyramid above him shattered as if a bomb had gone off directly beneath it. He ducked under Ohnishi’s breakfast table an instant before the shards sliced through the air like hypervelocity bullets. His left hand was caught in the hail of glass and he quickly pulled it to his chest. Three fingers were missing and a seven-inch-long fragment of glass was thrust halfway through his hand.