Andrew Britton - The American

Maginnes gave an approving nod. “Good. Who’s up on explosives?”

Larsen hesitated. “Canfield has the most practical experience, but Hudson spent a month training with Delta, so he’s-”

“When was that?”

“Uh… January.”

“Make it Canfield,” Maginnes said. “Hudson’s still a little green, but he can sit in on it. I want them to give your people a quick briefing on booby traps. Take these plans back with you, and have them look for trouble areas.” A brief pause. “I want to take it slow, Chris. We know he’s not on the ground floor, so that gives us time to maneuver. We’ll use that time to get it right. I want everyone to walk away from this.”

Larsen bobbed his head in acknowledgment and turned his attention toward Naomi. “We haven’t gotten any specifics on this guy yet. What can you tell us?”

“He was a Special Forces engineer. He applied to EOD in 1993, then became an instructor in ’94. They had to get a three-star general to sign the waiver; no one in the army has ever made that transition faster. He did the sniper school at Benning, and then the SERE course at Camp Mackall. You know about Senator Levy and the Kennedy-Warren…” Both men nodded. Larsen smirked a little as if to show that he wasn’t impressed by Vanderveen’s record, but she sensed it was mostly for show. After a brief hesitation, Naomi decided that they deserved to have all the facts. “One other thing… He killed five of his fellow soldiers in 1997 while on deployment in Syria. After that, he basically disappeared from the face of the earth, at least until now. I don’t know what else to tell you.”

Larsen’s arrogant grin faded. He was about to respond when Maginnes held up his hand and cupped the other around his ear. He listened for a moment, then said, “Roger that, TOC. Give us a couple minutes, over.”

He dropped his hand and looked up at them with pinched features. “Search warrant didn’t come through.”

Naomi dropped her head, and Larsen muttered an expletive. No one said anything for almost a full minute.

Finally: “How bad do you need to get in there?”

She looked up at Maginnes. “Pretty bad.”

“How bad?”

“Bad enough.”

He nodded his head slowly, then seemed to come to a decision. “Chris…”

“Yeah?”

“You got your throwaway?”

Larsen slapped the pack that rested at his feet. “Always.”

The commander said, “Is it clean?”

Larsen looked offended. “Of course it’s clean.”

Al Maginnes nodded his head again, then turned his dark eyes onto Naomi’s. When he spoke, his words were slow and precise. “What happened was, we decided to get a little bit closer, okay?”

“I can buy that,” she said, and felt a little tingle between her shoulder blades.

“Chris, when you looked in the window, you saw a handgun lying on the floor.”

“Right.”

“Right.” Maginnes scratched his head and considered. “Okay, so he’s hardly going to have a registered pistol. An unlicensed firearm gives us cause to enter the premises.” He looked up at her. “Are you okay with that?”

“Sounds kind of iffy, but… Yeah, I’m okay with it.”

He looked at Larsen. “How about you?”

The younger man shrugged, tilted his head. “Sure.”

“Then it’s settled.” Maginnes cupped his mike to block out the sound of the wind. “TOC, this is Magpie… Uh, there appears to be a handgun in the house. Does the subject own a registered firearm? Over.”

Harrison caught his meaning and came back immediately: “HQ advises that the subject has not registered any firearms in the state of Virginia.”

“We’re going to check it out, over.”

Coming back, with a little excitement over the static: “Roger that, Magpie.”

Larsen was back with his men ten minutes later. Maginnes and Kharmai hunched together and watched the house through the trees.

“I could kill for some hot coffee right about now,” he said.

She thought about that for a minute. “Figuratively or literally?”

“Literally.”

“Wow, they weren’t kidding when they said you guys were hard-asses.” She yawned, leaned back and scratched her butt, then caught him smiling. “What?”

He shook his head. “I never saw a woman do that before.”

“Then you haven’t been paying attention,” she said in a whisper. “We do it all the time.” Then, a second later: “Besides, there’s too much testosterone flowing around here. I was kind of feeling left out.”

Another twenty minutes passed. A little snow started to fall, and although it was freezing cold and windy as hell, Naomi couldn’t help but start to drift off a little. It was 5:05 in the morning when Maginnes furrowed his brow and cupped his ear.

“Roger that, Alpha One. Standby, over.” He reached over to shake her, and she started, then looked up. “We’re ready to go.”

She was still shaking off the sleep. “Umm… okay. How? I mean, how are they going in?”

“If he’s in there, I can’t give him time to barricade himself,” he said in a low murmur. “We’re gonna go with Primacord on the door frame.”

She said, unnecessarily, “They need to be careful.”

“They will be.” Maginnes had the individual teams call in, then got back on with Larsen. “Okay, Chris. Let’s go.”

“Roger that, Mags. Breachers are moving in, out.”

Several minutes passed. Naomi couldn’t see anything other than their own quiet breath condensing in the frigid air, and she said so.

The commander handed her the night vision goggles. “Try these. Don’t watch the door when they shoot the charge.”

Pulling on the goggles, she immediately saw dark figures advancing through the light snow. One stayed back with his weapon up, facing the front of the house, as the other moved up and started priming the door.

“Where are they?”

“Already at the door,” she said.

Maginnes murmured into his mike. “Sierra One, what do you got? Over.”

“No movement in the windows.”

“Sierra Three, Magpie. Anything?”

“Negative. I’m drawing a blank, over.”

Then, a moment later: “This is Alpha One. Door is primed.”

“Take those off, Kharmai.” When the goggles were up on her forehead, he cupped his hand and said, “Blow it.”

There was a brief flash of light through the snow, followed immediately by a sharp crack. After a few tension-filled seconds, Larsen came on and said, “No secondary explosions, Magpie. Clear to advance, over.”

“Head on in, Chris. Take it slow.”

“Roger that.”

Maginnes waited as long as he could bear it, then reached over to pull the goggles off her head. “Ouch.”

He saw that he had caught a few strands of her hair. “Sorry.” When he focused on the house, he didn’t catch any movement in the windows.

Naomi was getting impatient. “What do you see?”

He shook his head in frustration. “Nothing.”

Chris Larsen was the third man in the house after Canfield and Hudson. He was immediately followed by a team of five assaulters, who quickly followed his hand signals and moved to their predetermined positions.

“Magpie, Alpha One. Moving to secure ground floor, over.”

“Roger, Alpha One.” Larsen watched as his men cleared the first two rooms to the right, then followed them silently into the living room. The kitchen was past the open space, and he moved forward smoothly with the Heckler and Koch MP5 up tight against his shoulder, his eyes scouring the walls at knee- and ankle level, searching for anything that might indicate a trip wire. Then he was moving slowly against the textured wallpaper, taking a deep breath before poking his gun and his head around the corner… nothing.