Дэвид Балдаччи: End Game

Panic.

When an army moved, it could not be kept a secret.

But when one man moved, a secret could be maintained.

And to avoid revealing what had been planned to the world and causing just such a panic that the terrorists no doubt would have rejoiced over, they had sent Robie in to have a shot at taking the terrorists down. Alone.

The Brits had special-ops people who could have performed this mission. But the higher-ups had concluded that if things went sideways, having a non-Brit involved gave the home team the best grounds for plausible deniability.

However, nothing was being left to chance. There was a hidden army surrounding the home. If Robie failed, the army wouldn’t, panic be damned.

There were two homes on either side of the target. The residents in them had been prevented from returning home that night, so Robie had a bit of a buffer in which to operate and try to keep the mission out of the morning news broadcasts.

Hence the trio of suppressors on his gun barrels.

He finished climbing the rungs to the trapdoor. Though the people inside had no idea their mission had been compromised, they had taken standard protection procedures. The trapdoor was securely locked and also alarmed. But using three different tools provided to him, Robie ensured that it no longer was locked or alarmed.

He received one more communication in his headset.

“Vee-one.”

It was the same call-out used by the aviation industry. Vee-one meant the aircraft had reached sufficient takeoff speed and there was no going back.

Robie acknowledged that command and turned his comm pack off. From now until either he or his opponents were dead, there would be nothing more said.

His helmet was fitted with a wireless camera so that his handlers could see everything that he could. They would either watch Robie win, or else see the bullets coming that would kill him.

An M11 in his right hand, he opened the trapdoor and looked around.

Nothing.

He climbed up and quietly set the trapdoor back into place. The basement was what one would expect in an old, crappy house in a tattered neighborhood — it was dirty and smelled of mold.

But there was one element of interest. In a far corner was a metal box about six feet in length. He slipped over to it, squatted down, pulled an instrument from his belt, and ran it over the box. He looked at the readout meter.

Cobalt bomb confirmed. It wasn’t armed yet. They wouldn’t do so until they moved it to Oxford Circus.

And Robie also knew that he would keep himself between them and the bomb at all times.

He holstered his M11 and readied his UMP.

He rose and moved to the wooden stairs. From his intelligence briefing on the house he knew that the fourth riser up squeaked, so he went from the third to the fifth.

In addition to him, there were currently seventeen people inside this place.

Robie’s goal was to kill sixteen of them.

The fire selector on his UMP was set to two shots. One shot was enough to kill any man if placed properly, but Robie had left no room for chance.

The basement door was partially open.

He peered through it into the kitchen.

Two men sat at a table drinking what looked to be cups of coffee. They apparently needed a stimulant at this late hour.

He looked at his watch through his panoramic goggles.

The second hand was just sweeping to twelve.

Four... three... two...

On cue, the lights in the house went out as the power was cut.

Through his helmet Robie saw the two men clear as day jerk forward and then stand.

Then he watched them fall from suppressed UMP bursts delivered to their chests.

Two down, fourteen to go.

Robie was through the kitchen in three seconds and then hit the hallway.

His finger nudged the shot selector to full auto.

He did so because darkness tended to make people congregate closer.

Sure enough, coming down the narrow hall were three men, all with guns.

They opened fire. With pistols.

Robie pulled the UMP’s trigger, and two seconds and twenty-six rounds of concentrated fire later there were three more dead men on the floor of this humble abode. The UMP’s ejector sent the spent casings tumbling to the floor, where they sounded like metal pearls cascading from a broken necklace.

Five down, eleven to go.

He ejected the mag, slapped in a fresh one, and turned and rolled to his right as more gunfire came at him.

He counted two heads through his goggles.

He emptied half his UMP mag at them.

Seven down, nine to go.

Two more men appeared at the head of the stairs and fired down at Robie.

He could see that they had on NVGs as well, so his tactical advantage had lessened.

He pulled a stun grenade, released the pin, and threw it up the stairs at the same time he looked away.

The stunning flash of light did not blind him, nor did the concussive sound paralyze him, since his helmet cushioned him from this effect.

The two men at the top of the stairs could not claim the same.

One tumbled down and landed at the bottom of the stairs.

One slash across the neck from the KM2000 severed two critical arteries, and Robie added another to his tally.

He reholstered the bloody blade.

Eight down, an equal number to go.

The other man slowly rose at the top of the stairs, but was obviously concussed. He then fell back down and lay unconscious. That was the only thing that saved his life.

That and two men attacking Robie from his right and left flanks.

The M11s came out, one in each hand. Robie aimed an M11 in each direction simultaneously and then trigger-pulled ten shots from each gun, sweeping up and down from chest to thigh, the arc of fire evenly spaced over a ten-foot radius. A kill zone field of fire delivered with max efficiency.

Jacketed rounds tore through flesh. These sounds were followed by two thumps, as corpses hit carpet.

Ten down, six to go.

Since the cat was definitely out of the bag, he sprayed the stairwell using the rest of his second mag on the UMP. He then raced up the steps, after reloading his M11s.

A bullet, fired from above, struck him in the abdomen.

The liquid armor vest he had on hardened within a millisecond, catching the round and wringing out virtually all of its kinetic energy by forcing it to be displaced along the breadth of the vest.

The armor then lost its rigidity and became flexible once more.

Robie had no idea who had invented this stuff, but if he survived tonight, he would buy the person a drink.

His second stun grenade flushed out the shooter. Robie shot him once in the knee with an M11 to incapacitate, then performed the kill shot to the head on the upper stairwell.

Eleven down, five to go.

He reached the upper hall, reholstered the M11, and reloaded the UMP with his final mag just as someone blindsided him. They tumbled back down the stairs. His attacker had a gutting knife and he managed to strike Robie in the thigh. His liquid armor once more seized up, and the knife didn’t even penetrate to the skin.

Robie’s right hand clamped down on the wrist with the knife. He torqued himself around so that he was on top when they slammed into the floor at the bottom of the stairs. The man beneath him was stunned by the impact but for only a second.

That was still a moment too long for survival.

Robie had used the man’s own knife to slit his throat. Arterial spray danced across his visor.

He hoped the handlers back in their safe space were enjoying the show.

It wasn’t nearly as much fun on his end.

Twelve down, four to go.

He rose, turned, and rolled out of the way as a volley of machine-gun fire blew down the stairs, ripping off part of the handrail, shredding the wall, and exploding a slew of the risers.