Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 107079 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107079 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
I slumped in relief and thanked her, then ended the call. About five minutes later, we pulled up outside 403 West Brenton, a beautiful old red-brick townhouse.
We crept around the back, and Valentin picked the lock. Mikhail stationed his dogs outside to catch anyone who ran. Then Gennadiy slipped through the door, with me tight behind him, a hand on his shoulder. Ahead was a hallway, scrupulously clean and lavishly finished, with aquamarine walls and polished wooden doors. It was surprisingly quiet, except for classical music coming from upstairs. Where are the guards? We passed a dining room with a table big enough for ten, and a study lined with books. Every wall was flawlessly painted, every doorknob polished to a shine. Grushin must have spent millions on the place, and I guessed he had similar homes in New York and LA.
The Irish spread out, searching the first floor and then descending silently down the stairs to check the basement. They were back in under a minute. “Servants' quarters and a guard room,” Finn told us quietly. “Empty.” Where is everyone? As one, we all looked up the wooden staircase, towards the music.
Gennadiy crept up the stairs, gun raised. My heart was hammering: I’d been on plenty of FBI raids, but I’d never had so little idea what we were walking into. It was only the feel of Gennadiy’s shoulder, solid and warm under my hand, that let me keep my feet moving.
We’d reached the second floor and were fanning out when it happened. There was a noise like someone slamming a sledgehammer into a solid block of iron, over and over again, right next to your ear. The wooden banister next to us disintegrated, and I smelled burning wood as splinters and chips sailed past my face. Two of the Irish fell to the floor. I thought a bomb had gone off, some sort of booby trap.
Gennadiy shoved me sideways into a bedroom, and we fell full-length on the floor with him on top. The destruction followed us. It was as if God was reaching down with an invisible finger and sweeping it across the room, obliterating everything it touched. Its path cut across the carpet, digging holes right down through the floorboards, then diagonally through the bed, pulverizing the mattress and exploding the pillows into clouds of feathers.
I finally realized we were being shot at, with a heavy machine gun, from the next floor up. The gunner was swinging his aim around, trying to hit us through the open door. I watched, wide-eyed, as the bullets crept towards us.
Gennadiy grabbed me and crawled, hauling me with him over to the far wall. But the bullets came mercilessly closer and closer. He flattened me against the wall and pressed me there, covering me with his body, determined to protect me as long as he could—
The bullets stopped an inch from his leg. The top of the door was blocking the gunner’s fire. The gunfire swung back the other way, chewing a line of plaster from the wall as it crept back out into the hallway. Then it finally fell silent.
I was still smooshed between Gennadiy’s big body and the wall, and I just stayed there for a moment, my ears ringing. I was panting in fear and coughing, too: the air was full of plaster dust, feathers, and smoke. Out in the hall, I could see one of the bullets lying on the blood-soaked floor: Jesus, it was the size of a pen! No wonder anything hit by that thing got shredded!
“Valentin?” yelled Gennadiy. “Mikhail?”
A second went by. Then they yelled back in Russian from another room. My heart started beating again.
“Nobody move!” ordered Gennadiy. He looked at me and shook his head. We’d walked right into a trap. Grushin must have seen us coming, maybe on a hidden security camera, and had pulled his men upstairs to lie in wait. Now no one could leave the rooms they were in: the machine gunner upstairs would tear them apart as soon as they stepped out into the hallway.
I heard a car outside and crawled over to the window. The bedroom looked out over the side of the house, and I saw Caroline’s blue minivan coming down the street. “The FBI’s here!” I told Gennadiy in relief. They could back us up and come in and get Grushin. But first we had to make sure they didn’t walk straight into the same trap we had.
We both looked at the door. I’d be dead as soon as I set foot in the hallway. But the windows were old-fashioned sliding ones. They had security locks to stop them opening too far, but maybe… I heaved the window open. The gap wasn’t wide enough for Gennadiy, but I could just squeeze through. It was dark enough outside that the ground below was just a black void, but it couldn’t be more than an eight-foot drop.