16

Nina’s ears were ringing as Mac dragged her to her feet and pulled her onto the first floor landing, the shirt flapping around her legs. There was a loud crash from below, and she looked down to see two armed men, dressed all in black and wearing balaclavas, burst through the front door. Another bang of splintering wood came from the kitchen as the back door was simultaneously smashed open.

The two intruders already knew where she and Mac were, immediately looking up at the balcony. Mac aimed his shotgun at them—

Stained glass suddenly rained down from above as both skylights shattered. Mac ducked back from the jagged shards as two black nylon ropes dropped through the holes in the ceiling, uncoiling as they fell all the way to the floor of the hall. A moment later, two more men rapidly started descending the ropes. Boom!

Mac’s shotgun went off almost as loudly as the stun grenade. One of the hanging men flew backwards as the full force of the blast hit him in the chest, swinging from his rope over the balustrade. He smashed against the wall of the top floor landing and dropped to the floor.

But there had been no blood. The attackers were all wearing body armor. The man Mac had hit was dazed, but he was still alive, still a threat.

The wooden banister burst into splinters as the men below opened fire. Nina threw up her arms to protect her face. Next to her, Mac pumped his shotgun and raised it again as the other man above twisted to aim his MP9—

Mac fired first. But not at the armored man. Instead, he aimed above him, red-hot shotgun pellets shredding his rope. The man plunged downwards, his scream abruptly cut short by a crack of breaking bones.

The firing from below stopped. Nina’s hope that the two gunmen in the hall might be helping their fallen comrade was dashed when she realized they were running for the stairs.

“Upstairs!” Mac yelled, grabbing her arm and racing up to the top floor. His left foot made a metallic thud each time it hit the carpet, but the Scotsman was barely slowed by the prosthetic.

“There’s still one of them up here!” Nina warned him. The rappeller Mac had blasted in the chest was on the other side of the landing across the atrium, groggily lifting himself to his knees.

“And there’s four of them down there!” There was another crash from the ground floor as a door was kicked open, the men who had entered via the kitchen advancing through the house. “The library—there’s a passage to the back staircase!”

He pushed Nina ahead of him as they reached the top of the stairs. The library was at the rear of the landing, the door of the game room open to one side as they ran.

Automatic fire from the rappeller’s gun raked the wall ahead of Nina, shattered plaster and lath fountaining out. She screamed and dived into the game room, skidding across the wooden floor to end up at the head of the snooker table.

Mac ran through the door behind her. The MP9 chattered again—and a stream of bullets tore into his left leg above the ankle. Ripped cloth and shredded plastic flew in all directions as his foot was blown off.

Mac fell heavily to the floor. The shotgun was jolted from his grip and bounced away across the room.

Nina jumped up, adrenaline overcoming the resurgent pain from her ankle. Mac was sprawled on his front a few feet inside the door, the jagged metal “bone” of his severed artificial leg poking into the air above his bent knee. She looked for the shotgun. It was at the far end of the room against the wall. It would take her a couple of seconds to run around the table, more to pick up the gun and bring it about.

And the gunman was charging across the landing, almost at the door—

She grabbed the box of snooker balls and whipped it around. A cascade of brightly colored spheres flew over the fallen Mac to bang down on the floor and skitter towards the door just as the black-clad intruder ran through it, gun raised—

His foot shot out from under him as he slipped on the balls, falling forward.

Onto Mac’s upraised leg.

Mac’s yell of pain as the remains of the prosthesis crunched against his stump was nothing compared to the startled gasp of the gunman as the sharp metal spike burst through his rib cage into his heart. He convulsed for a moment, then slumped over Mac’s legs, a circle of dark blood rapidly swelling across the floor beneath him. Several snooker balls rolled through it, leaving thin red trails in their wake.

Nina only had a moment to stare before the sound of feet pounding up the stairs yanked her back to the remaining dangers. She grabbed the dead man’s gun, then ran to the end of the room to retrieve Mac’s shotgun.

“Get to the back stairs!” Mac ordered, twisting to kick off the impaled corpse.

“But you—”

“They want to catch you, not kill you! Go! I’ll hold them off!”

Nina hesitated, then gave him his gun and ran to the door. She glanced out. Two men were halfway up the second flight of stairs, another pair having just entered the hall. She gave a last look back at Mac, who frowned at her for still being there, then turned and ran through the connecting door to the library.

Another deafening retort from Mac’s shotgun blew a chunk of the balcony rail to smithereens as the first man ran past the door. But the shot was a fraction of a second too late to catch him. The second man jerked to a standstill just before reaching the door, the ka-chack of another shell being chambered deterring him from crossing in front of it.

“Get her!” he yelled to his companion. “I’ll nail the old bastard!”

He pointed his MP9 around the door frame, unleashing a devastating spray of fire into the room. Wood cracked and baize shredded as bullets ripped into the snooker table, the slate bed beneath the green surface splintering under the onslaught.

Already ejecting his spent magazine and reloading, the gunman jerked his head around the edge of the door for the briefest moment, not so much to see the results of his assault as to draw any fire, making his target waste both a round and the time it took to reload. The room remained silent. More confident now, the intruder swung through the door with his gun at the ready.

No sign of the old man, just one of the other members of the snatch team dead on the floor and a battle-scarred snooker table—

The shotgun blast from under the table ripped his thighs into bloody mince. Screaming in agony, the man staggered back—and toppled through the hole blown in the railing. He fell, still wailing, to land with a neck-breaking crunch beside the first of his dead compatriots.

Mac bumped an appreciative fist against the underside of the slate that had protected him as effectively as any armor, then crawled out from beneath it.

Nina ran across the library to the nearer of the two doors at its rear, throwing it open to find herself in a narrow passage that vanished into darkness in either direction. Only then did it occur to her that she didn’t know whether to go left or right to reach the stairs.

Her pursuer entered the library from the landing …

She went left. The light from behind her provided just enough illumination to pick out the door to the other half of the library as she passed it, then another door directly ahead. She grabbed the handle and threw it open, expecting to see the promised stairs—only to find a cupboard, dusty suitcases squatting on its shelves.

“Shit!”

The level of illumination plunged. She whirled, seeing the man standing in the open doorway, blocking the light. The gun was a menacing black shape in his hand.

The gun—

She had one of her own!

Nina snapped up the stolen MP9 and yelled a battle cry of pure fury as she hosed the passage with the entire contents of the clip. Spent shell casings pinged off the wall and sizzled past her as she swung the gun back and forth, almost blinded by the muzzle flash.

The hail of fire ceased abruptly as the magazine ran dry. Her shout died as she tried to blink away the wafting afterimages of flame, hoping to see the man lying dead on the floor…

He wasn’t. He wasn’t even in sight. He must have flung himself back into the library just as she started shooting—

The second, nearer library door opened, more light filling the passage. The man stepped through it, gun raised. Through the hole in his black balaclava, his mouth twisted into an unpleasant smile.

“Ooh, out of bullets,” he said in a patronizing tone. “Never mind, I’ve still got plenty.”

“You won’t shoot me,” said Nina, faking defiance. “You need me alive.”

The gun tilted down to aim at her bare legs beneath the long shirt. “You can shoot someone and not kill them, you know.” He advanced on her. “Just give me an excuse—”

There was a discordant squeal from the other end of the passage as something flew through the far door and hit the wall before dropping to the floor. The startled gunman whirled, gun blazing—and blew Mac’s wailing bagpipes to shreds.

He stepped forward. “What the fu—”

The shotgun boomed from the library, blowing the man’s knees to a gruesome pulp. He fell, howling in agony.

Mac hobbled over with a snooker cue wedged under his arm as a makeshift crutch. “Oh, shut up,” he growled at the screaming man, slamming the butt of his shotgun against his head. The noise stopped immediately. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Nina said.

“Get to the stairs. Go!”

She didn’t hesitate this time, running for the far end of the corridor to find another door. To her relief, there were stairs beyond this one. She started to run down them—only to stop at a noise from below. Someone was running up them!

She turned back, reentering the library. “They’ve cut us off!”

Mac muttered a curse. “Onto the landing!”

“But they’ll be coming up the stairs—”

“Come on!” The tip of the cue banging against the floor, he staggered to the door. Nina followed.

Another man was on the landing below. Mac loosed a shotgun blast at him, forcing him to dive back behind a support pillar for cover.

The intact rope still hung from the broken skylight. “Can you climb a rope?” Mac asked, swinging the barrel of his gun to snag it.

“I can hang on to a rope,” Nina said nervously, realizing what he had in mind, “but that’s not the same thing!”

“It’s your only way down! Just get out the front door, and run!” He thrust the black line into her hands, then pumped another round and fired again at the man on the floor below. Plaster spat from the pillar. “Go!”

“Oh, God!” Nina wailed as she gripped the rope as tightly as she could …

And swung out from the landing over empty space.

If she hadn’t trained with Chase, she would have lost her grip. Shirt billowing in the breeze, one slipper falling from her foot, she lowered herself hand over hand as quickly as she dared.

It wasn’t quickly enough. Even as she heard Mac reloading, the man leaned out from behind the pillar and saw her. He jerked his gun towards her, then hesitated, remembering his orders to take her alive. He ducked back as Mac fired again, pellets cratering the walls. “She’s going down on her own!” the man yelled, Nina for the first time seeing the line of a radio microphone curving in front of his mouth.

She increased her pace, dropping faster. Her hands, damp with sweat and fear, started to slip on the rope, friction burning her palms—

“Fire in the hole!” The man, now level with her, swung out of cover to throw something up at Mac’s position.

A grenade—

Mac saw it arc through the air towards him. He turned and dived into the bathroom.

Nina loosened her grip and slid down the rope, barely able to control her descent. Her hands seared. Above, she heard a clack as the grenade landed just outside the bathroom.

Mac dropped his gun and the makeshift crutch, using his one good leg to propel himself over the rim of the bath—

The grenade detonated.

This was no stun grenade, but a lethal explosive.

The balustrade was blasted to pieces, shattered wood spinning through the air into the hall below. The blast ripped through the open door of the bathroom, the window blowing out.

The rope shuddered in Nina’s hands, then went slack, severed. She was still more than ten feet above the unforgiving marble floor, and unprepared for the fall. She plummeted—

And landed on the body of the man Mac had shot in the thighs. The impact knocked the breath from her, her ankle flaring with pain.

Gasping, she looked up as the echo of the explosion died away. The man who had thrown the grenade was running back down the stairs after her. On the top floor, she saw another black-clad figure toss something considerably larger than a grenade onto the floor outside the bathroom, then run like hell back into the library, slamming the door behind him.

Covered in broken pieces of wood and plaster and tile, Mac sat up. The thick sides of the old bath had shielded him from the direct blast of the grenade. Dust and smoke swirled through the room, but he could still see clearly enough to make out what was outside the broken doorway, a squat cylinder lying on its side on the smoldering carpet…

“Bastards!” he hissed.

He knew what it was. He’d used similar devices in his own career.

It was a fuel-air explosive charge. An antiterrorist weapon, designed to clear large but confined spaces like cave systems by releasing a cloud of highly flammable vapor and then detonating, creating a massive fireball that raced outwards to fill every nook and cranny, consuming whatever lay in its path.

And it would work just as well in a London house as an Afghan cavern.

A gray mist spewed from the cylinder.

“Nina!” he yelled as he stood. “Get out of the house! Get out!”

The desperate urgency in his voice spurred Nina to action even more than the sight of the gunman racing down the stairs. She jumped up, fear overcoming the pain as fragments of stained glass stabbed into her bare foot, and sprinted for the front door.

The man charged after her, rapidly closing the gap—

A small electrical arc cracked across the nozzle of the explosive cylinder.

A millisecond later, the vapor cloud ignited, expanding at near-supersonic speed into a ball of liquid fire that incinerated everything it touched as it swept outwards to fill the bathroom, the upper landing, the entire hall—

Nina cleared the front door and ran down the stone steps as the bomb detonated. She threw herself flat.

The house’s windows exploded in rapid floor-by-floor succession, huge jets of flame bursting through them and boiling skywards. Another burst of fire erupted from the front door as the gunman hurtled through it, the blast propelling him over Nina to land in the street. He yelled and rolled frantically onto his back, trying to smother his burning clothes.

Nina looked up. One of her attackers was occupied with his own survival, the other had escaped through the back of the house and would have to run around the block to reach her—this was her chance to flee and find help.

She stood—

And a metal dart thudded into her thigh.

There was a white van parked across the street, another man climbing out of its side door with an odd-looking gun in his hand.

“Son of a bitch …” Nina just had time to mumble before blackness swallowed her senses.