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  “Which is?”

  “President Cross spoke of a fourth man. Unknown. Some sort of benefactor that will take Royce and Moligoni international.”

  “We’re drawing a blank on that one so far,” Lukavina said. “But that kind of overseas connection certainly warrants our resources.”

  “I have another idea,” Dane said. “Keep tabs on Royce and DeRocca. We’ll start against Moligoni and send the other two running to wherever their pal is.”

  “Plans rarely work out that way, Mr. Dane.”

  “Don’t I know it..”

  “I HAVE pictures for you, Mr. Royce,” Andy Swindol said over the phone.

  Perry Royce placed the long aluminum pool sweep on the concrete. “Of what?”

  “Two people arrived today to see the director and Lukavina. I thought you might want their pictures. One of them used to work for us.”

  “Send them.” Royce ended the call and tapped the screen to open Swindol’s email when it arrived. The pictures showed a male and female at the security desk, a straight-on shot so their faces were perfectly visible.

  The faces meant nothing.

  Royce dialed Swindol.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Who am I looking at?”

  “The man is Steve Dane, who worked for Peter Cross when he was here. The woman is a Russian named Nina Talikova. They gave their contact address as the Watergate. I did a quick check and they’re under their real names. Room 522.”

  Royce hung up without another word, his heart racing, and looked at the picture again.

  Steve Dane. Son of Richard.

  The past had come back to haunt him. We should have killed the whole family in the very beginning. Leaving Dane alone to run around the world had been a monumental mistake.

  His pulse still pounding, he dialed Hal Miller.

  “I’m going to give you two names,” Royce said. “They’re at the Watergate. Room 522.”

  “Okay, go.”

  Royce spelled each name out and added, “I don’t want them to survive the day.”

  “WHY DID you let this man live after the helicopter crash, Perry?”

  “Because he left. Quit the agency. Quit the country. All he cared about was himself. From all appearances, he stopped looking for us.”

  “Was he ever specifically looking for you?”

  “No. He wanted to kill a Russian he thought had framed his father.”

  “So he left and you also stopped watching him,” Cyrus Lassen said. “Otherwise his reappearance wouldn’t surprise you. You’ve compromised our whole operation, Perry.”

  “Miller is on the way to deal with him. And the woman.”

  “What about Carlton Figg and Len Lukavina?”

  “They’re not hard to find.”

  “You’re going to need more than just Miller.”

  “We have Moligoni and his people.”

  “I expect this to be cleared up by the end of the day.”

  “It will be.”

  Lassen said nothing for a moment. Perry Royce stood in the center of his den, the cell phone to his ear, the face of the phone wet from the sweat on the side of his head.

  “Anything else, Cyrus?”

  Lassen remained quiet for another few seconds. Then: “Tell me this man’s name again.”

  8

  Hammer Party

  HAL MILLER ended his call with Royce and reached out to Moligoni. “I found who we’re looking for and need backup.” Moligoni said okay. Miller told the big boss where the extra guys should meet him and hung up.

  Miller presently arrived at the Watergate and parked at the curb along New Hampshire Avenue facing the Potomac. He left the car and began scouting the property, his eyes never far from the outside of the fifth floor. Room 522 sat near the opening of the crescent-shaped building near the river. On the sixth floor was an observation deck, above which a floor of conference rooms and more guest rooms stretched upward into the sky. The deck held his attention.

  He made a mental list of needed equipment and returned to his car, traveling a few blocks to a coffee shop, where he ordered a Coca-Cola and selected a table against the wall.

  When Moligoni’s gun monkeys arrived, Miller waved them over. They sat down and introduced themselves, but Miller didn’t bother to remember their names. They were Gun Monkey One and Gun Monkey Two. Cannon fodder in case Dane and Talikova got off a few rounds.

  After a trip to a sporting goods store, where Miller acquired the items on his list, they started preparing for the night.

  DANE SNAPPED back the slide on the stainless steel Detonics ScoreMaster .45 and upped the safety. He popped the gun into his shoulder harness. He and Nina both wore black head to toe. She sat on the bed and gave the laces on her boots one extra tug before tying the knots.

  Dane moved a heavy case out of the closet and set it on the bed. The case, and the lethal items inside, had been supplied by Dane’s pal Devlin Stone, an arms dealer and a smuggler who had worked with Dane in his mercenary days. Lifting the lid, he started laying out loaded magazines and a pair of beat-up Uzi submachine guns. Nina selected one and worked the shoulder strap so it positioned the weapon under her right arm. She drew on a coat that covered the Uzi. Dane pulled on his own short topcoat and filled the pockets with spare magazines. Nina took the remaining mags. Finally, they helped themselves to a trio of hand grenades, which filled any remaining pocket space.

  Dane found a folding Buck knife and added that to a pocket.

  The last items Dane took from the case were six-inch tubes, black, also scuffed. Silencers. He handed one to Nina.

  “Ready?” he said.

  “Let’s have an old-fashioned hammer party,” she said.

  ROOM 522 sat in darkness, the drapes closed.

  Two taps on the door.

  Outside, slightly visible through the drapes, the end of a rope appeared. Presently Hal Miller lowered himself from the upper observation deck to the balcony outside 522, his feet touching the top of the railing. He jumped onto the patio, dropped behind a chair and pulled a silenced pistol.

  Two more knocks on the door.

  Miller used a glass cutter on the patio door. The blade made a light screech as he made a circle in the glass near the lock. Sliding his free hand in, he opened the sliding glass door and stepped into the empty room.

  Another knock.

  Miller turned on a light and made his way to the door. “It’s me,” he called, and unlocked the deadbolt and chain. Gun Monkey One and Two stood in the hallway. He stepped back for them to enter.

  “Now what?” said Monkey One.

  Miller took out his phone. “If they aren’t here, I have a feeling I know where they’ll be.” He dialed quickly.

  DANE STOPPED the car just off the shoulder on Riverview Road. He and Nina hopped out and crossed the pavement to a line of trees where the ground sloped into a ditch. They dropped into the ditch and leaned against the opposite rise. Across an open field, following a long access road, sat Moligoni’s mansion. Lights burned inside the house.

  It wasn’t a multi-story home, but instead single level and stretched out over the center of the surrounding grassy field. Trees lined the edge of the property and provided cover from the road.

  Starting on the left side of the mansion was an opening for a large garage; the main living spaces continued on to the right of the garage.

  Nina put a set of night-vision binoculars to her eyes. Dane scanned the darkness. The grass and the dirt below were dry, and he swiped away a bug that flew across his face. He had never liked grass, going back to hot summer days at home when it stuck to his skin during football and smelled funny when he was facedown in it after a tackle.

  “I don’t see any troops,” she said.

  “They’re out there. With dogs, more than likely.”

  “Do we want to risk a battle here?”

  “We’re isolated enough.”

  “But close enough that the neighbors will report the gunfire.”

/>   “That’s why we have silencers.”

  “Do they?”

  “We’re doing this, Nina.”

  She said nothing more and continued to look through the binoculars. “Wait. There they are. Doorway near the garage. No dogs. Two men, splitting up. They’re going in different directions for a walk around the property.”

  Dane checked his watch and made a note of the time. “Let’s watch what they do.”

  They passed the night-vision binoculars back and forth, noting the movements of the two troopers. Neither guard carried automatic weapons, only sidearms. They didn’t go more than fifty yards from the house, counting on flashlights to illuminate the areas before them. After thirty minutes they went back through the door.

  Dane and Nina waited another half hour until the troops exited the house once again for another round.

  “Thirty-minute intervals,” Dane said, checking his watch again. The troops made their usual rounds and went back inside.

  “Now,” Dane said. He bolted from the ditch, jamming the stock of the Uzi into his shoulder. His boots pounded on the grass and he heard Nina running behind him, her breathing faster than his. They blended into the dark, the mansion looming ahead. Within fifteen yards of the house, bright lights flashed to life, lighting up a twenty-yard radius. An alarm joined the lights.

  Dane and Nina cut left, heading for the door near the garage. As they approached, the door opened and two men with drawn pistols emerged. Dane opened fire. The Uzi bucked against his shoulder, the clicking of the action mechanism making more noise than the phuts coming from the silenced snout. Nina stopped beside him and loosed her own salvo. The two gunners screamed as the rounds split them open, their bodies tumbling to the ground in a tangle.

  Dane and Nina moved onto the polished concrete floor of a side room connected to the main garage, full of antique and exotic cars parked on either side. They stopped beside a yellow Lamborghini with tinted windows. Between them and a door that presumably led into the main house was a wide-open space of more polished concrete. The door opened and another pair of gunmen came out, splitting up, shouting orders for them to surrender.

  “They’re not going to shoot at us with the cars here,” Dane said.

  “What do you suggest?”

  Dane slung the Uzi and plucked a grenade from his belt. “I hate to do this,” he said, yanking the pin and rolling the grenade across the floor. It stopped near the front end of a Model T. He pulled Nina further behind the yellow Lambo. The explosion rocked the walls and shook the floor and sent a fireball into the ceiling, peppering the surrounding vehicles with debris. One gunman let out a scream.

  “Go!”

  Dane charged ahead, through the growing gray smoke, Nina behind him. He sprayed rounds at the spot where he thought the gunmen were hiding. One tumbled out of the smoke into the open, coughing; Nina zipped him stomach to chest with a quick burst. They reached the opposite door as the fire alarm began to blare. Dane’s lungs strained in the heat and smoke. He and Nina crashed through the doorway and into the house, breathing in the untainted air.

  A circular room with a checkered tile floor, the front door to their left. They met a gunman halfway. He was out of breath, clutching a pistol. Dane shot him in the chest. The man’s momentum carried him forward, and he fell at their feet. Stepping over him, Dane and Nina continued their advance, reloading as they reached a guest room. Properly made bed, Renaissance paintings on the wall. Dane entered and scanned with his eyes and weapon. Empty. They moved to another door. Somebody started yelling from the other side.

  IT HAD been a quiet night until the explosion rocked the garage.

  Gino Moligoni sat in the large family room, behind a table, working on a puzzle. The picture forming showed a horse in the middle of a field of green not unlike the field that surrounded his home, though the puzzle included a touch of fog they hardly ever saw. Two of his bodyguards sat on a nearby couch reading and watching ESPN. They and the others patrolled the property in shifts, as usual, and as Moligoni fitted one piece to another and found where they belonged in the big picture, he had expected another quiet night.

  Then the house shook as something went boom.

  The bodyguards jumped from the couch, drawing weapons. Moligoni stepped back from the table, crossed to a desk and took out his own pistol. As he checked the load, one of the bodyguards left the room. The other said, “If that came from the garage—”

  “Where else?”

  The fire alarm began blaring.

  “We stand and fight right here,” the capo said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Moligoni’s cell phone rang. “What?”

  Miller identified himself and explained that the people they were looking for weren’t in the hotel and might be on their way to his place.

  “I oughta give you a prize or something,” Moligoni said, a little louder than he intended. “They’re here and we’re outgunned!” He threw the phone down.

  Moligoni tipped over the table, the half-completed puzzle and stray pieces crashing to the floor. He helped his bodyguard move the couch to block the door.

  They took cover behind the overturned table. The capo’s heart pounded in his chest. His eyes never left the door. This wasn’t his first fight, and he had no intention of its being his last.

  DANE AND Nina approached the door, Dane dropping to his stomach and crawling. Nina shouldered her Uzi as he readied another grenade. He turned the doorknob and gave it a pull. Gunfire cracked from the opposite side, punching through the wood, the bullets whizzing by, the wooden shards flying in all directions. Nina fired a burst, tearing more holes in the door, and Dane pitched the grenade through the gap. It detonated with a crash that blew the door off the hinges. It fell like a tree. Somebody screamed.

  Through the doorway—right into the couch. Dane dropped behind it, Nina landing beside him. Smoke hovered below the ceiling as a section of carpet burned. Somebody shot from behind an overturned table. Dane returned fire and watched a bodyguard jerk with the impact of the burst. As he fell, a second man, Moligoni, bolted across the room, using furniture for cover as he made for the windows. Dane fired and missed. The smoke obscured his aim and covered the target well. Glass crashed as Moligoni appeared again, throwing a heavy end table through the window. Dane raised the Uzi. Moligoni fired two rounds over his shoulder, driving Dane and Nina down as he leaped into the night.

  Nina moved around the side of the couch and fired through what remained of the window, stitching a pattern through the wall, trying to hit the fleeing capo. Dane vaulted over the couch and ran through the smoke. She called after him as she reloaded once again. Dane dived through the window and landed hard on the cold grass outside. As he gained his feet, he brought up his weapon. Moligoni, caught in the blaze of the security lights, huffed as he ran into the darkness.

  The fire alarm echoed in the night—or were sirens screeching in the distance? Dane could not hear. The gunfire and grenade blasts had left his ears ringing.

  He and Nina entered the splash of security light as Moligoni disappeared into the night. Dane thought he saw the man turn and raise his gun. Dane and Nina dropped and rolled as the shots cracked above them. Dane stopped on his stomach and let a long burst go. Moligoni yelled. Dane fired again. The yelling stopped.

  Dane ran to the body, kicking the man’s gun away and dragging him back into the pool of light. Moligoni let out a moan, blood bubbling out of his mouth, his chest and legs opened by the salvo of 9-millimeter stingers. Then his eyes froze open and he breathed no more.

  DANE AND Nina ran breathlessly across the field, back toward the road. Sirens were unmistakable now. They had minutes—maybe less—to escape. Someone’s spotting them at a scene of such carnage was the last thing they needed.

  At the car, Dane opened the trunk and they stripped off their weapons and gear. Nina jumped behind the wheel and started the engine. Dane slammed the trunk.

  And the headlights of an onrushing car lit him up.

>   Dane moved quickly around the passenger side. The other car sped by, then the brake lights flared and the tires screeched. Somebody leaned out the back window and raised his right arm. Dane yelled for Nina to get down as a flame flashed from the man’s gun. Dane dived into the car. Nina shifted into reverse and powered backward, leaving a cloud of tire smoke behind. She grabbed the handbrake and yanked up hard. The tires squealed again as she wrenched the wheel and spun the car 180 degrees. She released the brake and stomped on the gas. The car lurched forward, the engine letting out a strangled roar.

  “Don’t give me too many bumps,” Dane said as he crawled from the front seat to the back. As the car surged ahead, rocking to and fro as Nina took turns too sharply, Dane found the rear seat’s release cable and pulled. A section of the rear backrest folded his way, and he felt around in the trunk for their weapons. His hands grasped his shoulder harness, and he grabbed the .45. Flashes of light from streetlamps highlighted the bright stainless steel of his Detonics ScoreMaster.

  “They’re still with us and gaining fast,” Nina said.

  The road straightened. Dane raised his head enough to see the pursuing car but couldn’t make out the driver’s face or the number of occupants.

  Who was in that car?

  “GET CLOSER!” said Gun Monkey Two from the back seat.

  Hal Miller was giving the motor everything it had now that the road had straightened and their target wasn’t pulling away. Cold air filled the car as Monkey Two rolled down the window.

  Gun Monkey One, in the passenger seat next to Miller, readied his own pistol.

  Miller had seen the flames from Moligoni’s house as they’d approached. The capo was a goner. What mattered now was taking out the two troublemakers.

  They were roaches in the kitchen, as far as Miller was concerned.

  DANE POWERED down the back passenger window, and the cold chill bit hard.

  “Turn coming!” Nina shouted.