Jerome Preisler - Net Force--Attack Protocol

Lazlo sprang up from his crouch and took a wide stance atop the rocking, unstable vehicle.

“Sure,” he said, and kicked him hard in the face to knock him back down through the Rezvani’s door. He’d had enough of his frightened squeals but wasn’t going to waste a single bullet on him.

As Bogdan crashed heavily back inside, Lazlo balanced himself upright and watched the BearCat come on big and loud with its headlights hurling brightness across the apron. His pupils were dilated from a rush of adrenaline and alarm pheromones, and he could see as clearly as a hawk.

He waited until the last moment before he turned away from the advancing lights, spread his arms, and leaped toward the castle’s door.

Dixon saw the guy outside the Rezvani drop-kick the guy climbing through the door but had no time to think about what the hell it meant.

“We done yet?” Schultz said.

“Almost,” Dixon said. He was thinking the thinnest armor on any armored vehicle was always on top. He was also thinking the stairs ran up from the apron at about a thirty-five degree incline. There were six in all, and while they were wide, they weren’t particularly high or deep.

He had made higher and steeper climbs in vehicles with lower suspensions and much less horsepower.

He radioed the crew to sit tight and clicked the shifter into Drive, his foot going down on the gas.

The Cat thrust forward again. It rumbled over the cobbles, slow and inexorable, climbed the stairs in a series of thumping, jarring little hops, and struck the partially overturned vehicle at sixty miles per hour. The physics of the collision turned his front end into a high-speed fulcrum. The Rezvani flipped up onto its passenger doors, listed and swayed and rocked for the briefest of moments. Then its center of gravity shifted all the way, and it rolled over completely on the wide top step.

Dixon reversed and braked halfway down the stairs. The upended Rezvani reminded him of a turtle rolled over on its back. The guy who’d been drop-kicked by his friend was still squirming around inside. Dixon could see him through the Rezvani’s passenger window.

Shifting the Cat into first gear, he jockeyed it up the steps again and uppercut the front of the rolled-over Rezvani just behind its left-front fender. The Rezvani bounced up and down and spun halfway around in a circle, its front end slamming into the already-splintered castle door. Sparks flew as the vehicle’s roof scraped over the top step and caved inward. The outer panes of its bullet-resistant front windows and windshield spider-webbed, puckered, fragmented, and spilled out onto the cobbles in pools of crumbled laminate glass.

Dixon backed down the stairs and stopped with his headlights beaming on the overturned wreck. No one inside would be in any condition to pose a threat.

“Everyone okay?” Dixon glanced over his shoulder into the crew section.

“Affirmative,” Spencer said. There were nods from Singh and the others.

Dixon faced front and peered out the windshield.

“Did you see what happened to the guy that jumped?” Schultz asked.

“No,” Dixon said. “But he didn’t go left or right across the plaza, and he didn’t run toward us.”

“So he must have ducked into the castle.”

“So we forget him and move on,” Dixon said. “We can’t exactly bulldoze the front door and drive around in there looking for him.”

“You sure?”

Dixon smiled a little. Carmody was rubbing off on them. They had all worked together for a very long time.

He sat there taking stock. Emerick was dead. Carmody and Kali were off chasing the target through the hills, and Wheeler’s squad was somewhere deep under the castle, very possibly out of radio contact. Nor had he heard anything from Long in Rover Two, but he would break his silence if things got hairy at his position.

Unless ordered otherwise, Long’s job was to keep his eyes open for hostiles and be ready to extract Wheeler and his boys when the moment arose.

Dixon thought quietly for another minute and turned away from the stairs, arbitrarily pointing the vehicle eastward. Dealing with unpredictability was part of the action plan. But he’d already lost the poor kid in back, and it concerned him that the teams were so divided. He was only hoping to ride out of Transylvania without the mission taking any more unexpected turns.

He would not come close to getting his wish.

If the heart of a medieval castle was its Great Hall, then the Castle Graguscu’s heart was a joyless chasm, its murals chronicling generations of brutal and bloody tribal warfare; the swords, shields, and pole arms along the walls giving coldly tangible emphasis to these graphic renderings of siege and conquest. Carved in the shape of grinning human heads, the stones that supported the massive wooden roof beams seemed to look down upon visitors with their own secret amusement. Opposite the main door was a yawning fireplace where the flames were once occasionally fed by the bodies of the mad count’s real and imagined enemies; even the balcony overlooking the hall, typically occupied by musicians at balls and banquets, contributed to the sinister ambience for those familiar with Graguscu’s infamous practice of calling nervous guests to the waltz while his victims sizzled and burned.

Lazlo had been unaffected by these bleak surroundings moments ago, after racing into the hall through the bashed-in wicket door. The violent visions on the walls were nothing compared to what he’d seen and done in his line of work, and he was only glad he wasn’t in pitch darkness. There was a hierarchical system by which different parts of the estate received juice from the standby generators during a blackout. Priority was given to the monitoring stations, computer rooms, garage, gatehouses, and of course the tower suite. Then the other rooms and halls and exterior lights would come online in order of importance.

Lazlo didn’t know where the Great Hall fell on the list. That was all Matei’s business, and none of his. That the lights were on was the only thing that counted.

He looked around a minute, standing a foot or two inside the archway, his Sig Rattler still in his right fist. Though the hall’s lighting appeared to spill from crystal chandeliers and electric sconces, he knew LED panels had been discreetly installed to augment their output. To his left, a flight of narrow stairs climbed to the balcony. To his right, a more elaborate spiral staircase wound up to the castle heights. What was it he’d once read? The spiral stairs were designed to slow down raiding parties and make it easier for defenders to hide in wait around each turn.

The question for him was basic, if not quite simple: Should he stick around and defend the premises or take off for someplace safe? Matei and his men were either scrubbing the computers down below or preventing the intruders from accessing them. The rest of the premises were being evacuated. Moreover, there was no way operations could resume here. The estate was compromised. This was the end of the road for the Wolf’s syndicate in Castle Graguscu, Rosalvea, and probably all of Romania. In fact, it had been over months ago. Tonight Drajan Petrovik was calling his own last waltz.

When he reviewed things thoroughly and rationally, Lazlo didn’t see any real choice. He needed to make a getaway.

He stood inert for a long moment, thinking and listening. He heard nothing outside the door. Nothing at all. Which told him the men in the armored vehicle must have moved on. It made total sense. The Americans weren’t going to waste their time and resources on him. Weren’t going to divide their manpower in his pursuit. They wanted their man and whatever intel and information they could extract from his computers. He, Lazlo, wasn’t the object of their hunt. He wasn’t in their main sights. They would be focused on Zolcu, thinking he was the Wolf, never knowing Drajan Petrovik had quit the premises weeks ago.