Full Black - Brad Thor [10]
The man appeared to be in his midforties, doughy, with salt-and-pepper hair and a matching beard. He wore jeans, loafers, and an Oxford cloth shirt. He had been shot in the back of the head execution-style. Ralston rolled him over to see who he was. As with the body in the kitchen, he didn’t recognize the man.
Exiting the office, he went down the hall to the back stairs. If Salomon had retained any of the emergency response advice he had dispensed to him dozens of times, perhaps he would have headed straight upstairs. If so, maybe it had bought him some time, especially if he’d heard the shots and had been able to figure out what was going on.
Reaching the top of the stairs, Ralston crouched down and stole a quick peek around the doorframe. The hallway was empty.
Stepping into the hall, he moved as quickly as he could toward Salomon’s bedroom. He stopped only for open doors, and even then, it was for just long enough to make sure there were no threats on the other side.
He was fifteen feet away from the master bedroom, when a figure stepped into the hall and fired.
The bullet came so close to the side of Ralston’s head that it actually set his right ear ringing. On instinct, having fired hundreds of thousands of rounds during his Spec Ops career, he depressed the trigger of his own weapon twice in quick succession and dropped the shooter onto the carpeted floor of the hallway.
Ralston advanced on the man and kicked the suppressed pistol away before checking to see if he was still alive. One round had entered just below his nose; the other had entered through his throat. He was big and dressed in a cheap suit just like his partner downstairs. The back of his head was flat as well. What the hell was going on? Who were these people? Why were there Russians in the house?
Ralston’s questions were interrupted by the sound of a sharp crack from inside Salomon’s bedroom. It wasn’t the crack of a pistol. It was the crack of molding as drywall was being ripped away.
It told him two things. Salomon was still alive, but he had only seconds left to live.
CHAPTER 6
Larry Salomon had expected that a savvy intruder would probably cut his telephone hard line. That was why he always kept a charged cell phone in his panic room. A fixed external antenna had been installed to guarantee reception, but suddenly it wasn’t working either. He was panicked. No matter how many times he dialed 911, he couldn’t get through.
He’d been around enough weapons, even if only on movie sets where blanks were being fired, to know what real gunshots sounded like. Suppressed gunshots, contrary to what many people thought, were still audible. There was no such thing as completely silenced gunfire.
Having changed out of his evening attire, Salomon had been on his way out of his bedroom and back downstairs for one final drink, when he’d heard the first shot. He’d stood paralyzed, wondering what he’d actually heard. Then the second shot came. That’s when he knew.
He had turned and fled back to the master bedroom. He didn’t dare waste even a fraction of a second looking over his shoulder to see if he was being followed. He didn’t need to. His animal instinct for survival told him that he most definitely had someone pursuing him. He also knew that the two gunshots meant his houseguests were dead.
Charging into his walk-in closet cum panic room, he slammed the heavy metal door shut, threw the bolts home, and hit the panic button for the alarm system. He expected the high-pitched piercing shriek of the alarm to kick in instantly. It didn’t, and his fear mounted.
On a small monitor mounted inside the closet, he watched via the hidden bedroom camera as a large man with a gun rushed into the room just behind him. He pressed the panic button again and when the alarm failed to engage, he attempted to call the police, only to discover that neither his landline nor his cell phone were working.
He then watched as the intruder attempted to kick