Mark Greaney - Full Force and Effect

Riley looked at the man for several seconds. Finally, he said, “Yes. Of course he can.”

The Latin man nodded and began heading toward the hallway to the back rooms; he had made it about ten feet when he heard the distinctive click of the hammer of a pistol two feet behind his head. The sound echoed in the sterile and spartan entryway of the modern house.

“Good evening, Mr. Domingo Chavez. How lovely of you to drop by.”

68

Chavez turned around slowly, his hands in the air. Riley faced him now, an excited smile on his face and a Beretta 92 pistol pointing at Chavez’s chest. Riley had apparently taken it from the man next to him.

From the moment Chavez walked into the house forty-five seconds earlier, two very bad things had happened. One was obvious; Riley had recognized him, though Ding didn’t know how the man knew about him in the first place.

But the other was potentially worse. The instant the Hispanic man began talking in the doorway, Chavez realized he was not some poorly trained cartel cowboy from Mexico’s west. No, he was Cuban, he was educated, and by virtue of the fact he was here involved with North Korean spies, Iranian terrorists, and a New York–based privately contracted British operative, there was no question in Chavez’s mind but that this man and his nine buddies were DI, Cuban Intelligence Directorate. Ding knew the Cubans turned out some skilled shooters, and he also knew his team of four men outside would be walking into a buzz saw.

Riley brought Chavez into the main room and stood him next to the seated Zarif. He then looked to the two other Cubans standing around. “Secure the building, tell the others. This man is CIA, and he probably has friends close by.” There were two men with guns left, both pointed at Chavez: Riley, who stood just six feet in front of Chavez, and the Cuban who answered the door, who had pulled a small backup pistol and was now ten feet away on Chavez’s right. The North Korean was also there, standing by the sofa, but Chavez did not see a weapon in his hand.

Riley addressed Kim now. “This man was following me a couple of weeks ago in New York. He was with others at the time. American operatives. If they are here, then we need to go.”

Kim said, “Let’s get in the cars.”

“First, we must deal with Zarif.” Riley pointed his gun at the badly beaten Iranian. Zarif seemed only peripherally aware of what was going on. “Running out of time, mate. I’m going to start shooting now. Kneecaps. Ankles. Privates. Then the head.”

He aimed his gun at Zarif’s knee. The Iranian cried out in fear, and Chavez leapt forward for Riley’s gun.

Riley realized Chavez was coming for him, closing the distance in a single step, so he tried to swing the Beretta back in Chavez’s direction. Chavez grabbed Riley’s wrist and turned it away, pointed it toward the other armed man in the room, and the jolt of the move caused the Englishman to squeeze his hand. The gun fired a nine-millimeter bullet across the room at 1,100 feet per second, and it hit the Cuban high in his right shoulder, spinning him around and causing his gun to discharge into the wall over Chavez’s head.

Chavez head-butted Riley now, sending him to the cold tile floor, and he pulled the pistol out of Riley’s hands as he fell. Chavez raised the weapon toward the North Korean, but once he saw the man was not going for a gun of his own, Chavez swung around toward the second-floor landing. Above him he saw an armed Cuban leaning over.

Chavez realized Zarif was directly behind him, and likely in the Cuban’s line of fire. He turned and knocked over the Iranian in his chair, and while doing so fired back over his shoulder to keep the Cuban’s head down.

Out of the corner of his eye Chavez saw the North Korean making a run for the stairs that led from the living room to the upstairs landing, with Edward Riley right on his heels.

Chavez grabbed Zarif by his collar and started to pull him across the floor to cover from the second floor as a second Cuban arrived. Chavez saw both men rise over the railing of the landing and aim down toward him, and a third and a fourth man came through the entryway. Chavez knew he wouldn’t be able to engage all threats in a four-on-one gunfight.

Jack Ryan, Jr., and Dominic Caruso came through the doorway to the kitchen, their Smith & Wesson pistols snapping and smoking. Both men in the hall to the entryway dove for cover, but only one made it back to the safety of the wall. The other dropped on his back as blood splattered across the white tile.

The men upstairs fired down, but now Chavez had sighted in on one of them. While he continued to try to pull Zarif around the couch and out of the line of fire, he shot one of the men on the landing; then he dove behind the heavy couch as more men appeared from the entryway.

—

Sam Driscoll leapt from the branch of the pecan tree onto the second-floor balcony at the western side of the house. His landing was silent enough, so he drew his Smith and moved stealthily the first few feet for the back door, but when the gunfire erupted downstairs, faster than anyone on the team had anticipated it would, he picked up the pace.

There had been a man at the back tower, but when Sam moved around the corner to engage him he saw the man had passed through the sliding glass door, presumably to check on the source of gunfire in the house. Sam made it through the glass doorway, then moved quickly across an empty guest bedroom. He ducked his head quickly into the hallway to take a mental picture of what was there. To his left were several doors and a darkened hallway, to his right the hall ended at the landing. Protracted gunfire came from there, but from his sliver of view here he could see no one.

He stepped out into the hall at the exact same moment the Cuban who’d left the balcony earlier came out of the room to Sam’s left. The two men saw each other simultaneously, four feet apart, and as they both brought their pistols up, the weapons slammed into each other and bounced free.

Sam swung at the man’s face, but the Cuban stepped out of the way and drew a knife. Sam had a blade of his own, but he didn’t reach for it. Instead, he closed the distance and locked on to the other man’s arms. The two men slammed against both walls of the hallway, then crashed onto the ground. Sam ended up on top of the man, facing up, away from him. The Cuban pulled his knife down to the American’s torso, but Sam still had his hands on the Cuban’s wrists, and he pushed the knife back with all his might, desperate to keep it from plunging into his chest.

—

Ryan was with Caruso, firing from the kitchen, across the living room, and into the entryway, where several attackers had congregated. Ding was on his knees behind the couch in the center of the room, and Zarif was still taped to a chair on his side next to Ding.

Ryan knew Sam was all alone upstairs. They had accounted for all of the combatants, killing two men on patrol silently with knives and then moving toward the house when the other patrol was around front, but no one had figured on the North Korean agent and Riley both running upstairs. If they had weapons already, or if they picked guns up from fallen men on the landing, that would leave Sam seriously outnumbered on the second floor.

Ryan chanced a run for the stairs, but he had to cross the open ground of the living room. With only four bullets left in his nine-shot subcompact, he darted behind Chavez, exposing himself to fire from the men in the entryway. Chavez and Caruso both saw what Ryan was doing, so they exposed themselves to draw some attention from the shooters, then fired one round each before dropping back to cover again.

Ryan leapt onto the stairs, slamming into the wall to get out of the sightline of the gunners in the entryway, and then he began running up, his pistol high and sweeping back and forth.