Dead or Alive - Tom Clancy [222]
The muffled screams from inside the house started almost immediately. At the five-minute mark, Dominic looked up from his watch and nodded. Brian went over the edge first, hanging from the eaves, then dropping lightly to his feet. Hunched over and Browning pointed at the door, he sidestepped to the far wall, then knelt down and gave his brother a nod. Dominic was down ten seconds later and crouched beside the near wall.
Together they started forward, sliding along the wall in the shadows until Dominic gestured for a halt. He crept forward until his angle allowed him a glimpse through the door. He gestured to Brian: Three men visible; room to left through the door. Short hall straight through the door. Two unaccounted for.
Brian nodded, then signaled back the entry plan and got a nod in return. Dominic crossed the last ten feet to the door-side wall, then sidestepped along it until he was pressed flat beside the doorjamb. Brian moved forward and crouched beside the other jamb. Dominic took one last look, leaning out just enough to see through the door. He nodded.
Brian nodded one … two … three, then stood up, stepped through the door and turned left, the Browning up and leading him. Dominic was a step behind.
Two of the men had Bari pressed face-first into a wooden trestle table; the surface was slick with blood, which glistened blackly under the glow of a floor lamp in the corner. The leader sat across from Bari, a paring knife in his right hand; the blade and his hand were wet.
One of the men holding Bari looked up, saw Brian as he sidestepped into the room. Brian’s first shot struck the man in the throat, the second in the center of the forehead. Brian adjusted aim, put down the second man. The leader spun around, a gun in his hand. Dominic was already there. He slammed the butt of the Browning into the man’s temple, and he slumped sideways to the floor.
“Clear.”
“Clear,” Brian whispered. “Him?”
“Give him a nap.”
Brian rapped Bari behind the ear with the Browning’s butt, then checked him. “Good.”
They both turned, stalked back down the hall, glanced right through the open door and saw nothing, so they turned left, down the short hall. A silhouette appeared in the doorway at the end. Dominic fired twice. The man went down. From the room they heard the screeching of wood on wood.
“Window,” Dominic said.
“Got it.”
Brian was at the threshold in three steps. He peeked around the corner and saw a man climbing through a window on the other side of the room. He fired. The 9-millimeter hollow-point slammed into the man’s hip. His leg collapsed beneath him, and he fell backward into the room. In his left hand was a pistol. Dominic stepped forward and double-tapped the man in the chest.
“Clear.”
“Clear.”
The rest of the apartment consisted of a bathroom and a second bedroom, both off the short hall. Both rooms were empty, as were the closets. They found Bari’s second bodyguard in the bathtub, fully clothed, with a neat hole in the back of his head. They returned to the front room, which they realized was in fact a living room/kitchenette. Bari lay where they’d left him, face-first on the table, arms spread.
“Christ,” Brian said. “What the fuck …”
In the short five minutes in which Bari’s visitors had worked on him, they’d managed to cut two fingers off his left hand.
“Somebody green-lit this guy,” Dominic said.
“Yeah. The question is why?”
66
WHATEVER HIS EFFECTIVENESS as a bureaucrat, one thing about Agong Nayoan became quickly apparent to Clark, Jack, and Chavez: As an intelligence operative, either the man was untrained in the ways of fieldcraft or he’d chosen to ignore the rules, and nowhere was this more acutely obvious than his choice of online passwords, which Gavin Biery cracked within hours of Clark and company leaving Nayoan’s home. The Web browser on Nayoan’s laptop had the normal array of bookmarks—from shopping sites to reference sites and everything in between—but he also maintained several online e-mail accounts, one at Google, one at Yahoo!, and one at Hotmail. Each mailbox contained