private militia? Everything about them suggested as much.
He was their target. But so was the team from Consular Operations. How could
that be?
There was no time. He poked his pistol between the ornamental sandstone
balusters and squeezed off two quick shots. The man with the AKS-74 staggered
backward, making an odd gurgling sound; one of the bullets had pierced his
throat, which exploded in a gush of arterial blood. As he slumped to the tiles,
his weapon fell with him, secured by the nylon sling around his shoulders.
That gun could be Janson’s salvation—if he could get to it.
Now Janson stood atop the balustrade and leaped the short distance to the
adjoining house. He had an objective. The AKS-74: a crude, chattering, powerful
submachine gun. He landed imperfectly, and pain shot like a bolt of electricity
up his left ankle. A bullet twanged through the air just inches from his head,
and he threw himself down on the tiled peak, a few feet away from the man he had
just shot dead. The too-familiar smell of blood wafted toward him. He reached
out and wrested the submachine gun from its nylon sling, hastily cutting it free
with a pocketknife. Without shifting his position, he craned his head around to
situate himself.
The planar geometry of the roofs was, he knew, deceptive. Peaks met peaks at
what looked like perpendicular angles, but the angles were not truly
perpendicular. Parapets that appeared parallel were not truly parallel. Eaves
that appeared level were not truly level. Cornices and balustrades, built and
rebuilt over the centuries, settled and shifted in ways that the quick glance
would not detect. Janson knew that the human mind had a powerful tendency to
abstract away such irregularities. It was a cognitive economy that was usually
adaptive. And yet when it came to the trajectory of a bullet, small
irregularities could make all the difference in the world.
No angles were true; intuition had to be overridden, again and again, with the
hard data of range finder and scope.
Now his hands patted down the dead man until he found and retrieved a small
device with two angled mirrors attached to a telescoping rod that resembled the
antenna of a transistor radio. It was standard equipment for an urban commando.
Janson carefully adjusted the mirrors and pulled out the rod. By extending it
over the cornice, he would be able to see what threats he still confronted
without putting himself in the line of fire.
The weapon that was nestled in Janson’s arms was hardly a precision
instrument—it was a fire hose, not a laser.
What he saw was far from encouraging. The deadly brunette was still in position,
and though he was currently protected from her by the roof-line geometry of the
eaves, peaks, and gables, she would be alert to any movement, and he could not
reposition himself without exposure.
A bullet thwacked into the chimney, chiseling off a piece of the centuries-old
brick. Janson rotated the periscope-like device to see who was responsible. One
roof over, standing with an M40 braced against his shoulder, was a former
colleague of his from Consular Operations. He recognized the broad nose and
quick eyes: an old-school specialist named Stephen Holmes.
Janson moved carefully, sheltering himself from the riflewoman by keeping
himself low and behind the projecting brick gable while he snaked himself up the
incline of the slate roof. He had to execute his next move perfectly, or he was
dead. Now he kept his head down as his hands lifted the muzzle of the AKS-74
over the roofline. He relied on memory, on a fleeting image from the periscope,
as he directed a burst of fire toward the long barrel of the rifle. An answering
clang—the sound of metal-jacketed bullets striking a long barrel fashioned of a
superhard composite resin—told him he had succeeded.
Now he raised his head over the roofline and directed a second, more targeted
burst: the steel-tipped bullets tore into the barrel of Holmes’s M40 until the
green-black shaft shattered.
Holmes was now defenseless, and when his eyes met Janson’s it was with the
resigned, almost weary look of someone convinced he was about to die.
Janson shook his head disgustedly. Holmes was not his enemy, even if he thought
he was. He craned around and, peering through a loophole in the elaborate
semicircular pediment, was able to glimpse the brunette diagonally opposite.
Would she take him out with one of her trademark double taps? She had seen what
had happened, knew that her colleague was out of commission and that she would
have to assume responsibility for a larger field. Would she wait until he moved
from the protection of the second gable? The slotlike loophole was too narrow
and deep to permit a clean shot from a diagonal perch. She would have to wait.
Time was a sniper’s best friend—and his mortal foe.
He squinted and brought her face into focus. She was no longer in shooting
position—had broken from her spot-weld with the rifle and was staring at her
colleague with a look filled with uncertainty. A moment later, Janson saw a
flicker of movement behind her, and then something more dramatic: an attic door
burst open and a giant of a man loomed suddenly behind the slight brunette. He
smashed something over her head—Janson could not quite make it out; it could
have been the butt of a long firearm. The brown-haired woman slumped limply to
the parapet, evidently unconscious. Now the giant seized her bolt-action rifle
and squeezed off one, two, three shots to his right. The strangled cry from the
adjoining roof told him that at least one had hit its target: Stephen Holmes.
Janson hazarded a quick look, and what he saw sickened him: the shots seemed
casual, but were well aimed. The large-caliber bullets had blown off Holmes’s
jaw. From the destroyed lower half of his face, blood drenched down his tunic; a
final breath was expelled like noisy gargle, half cough, half feckless scream.
Then Holmes toppled off his roof perch and tumbled down the tiled roof until he
slammed into the parapet. Through the ornamental stonework, his lifeless brown
eyes stared at Janson.
All that Janson knew was that the giant was no savior. He sprayed a long
fusillade toward the hulking man who stood where the Cons Op sniper had been—it
would force him into a defensive crouch, at least momentarily—then, using the
various stone ornaments as handholds, quickly clambered down the side of the
mansion, which was safely out of range. He hit the paved surface of the shadowed
alley with as little noise as he could manage and, positioning himself behind
two metal trash cans, studied the street scene in front of him.
The giant was fast, his agility astonishing for someone of his size. Already he
was charging out the front door of the building, dragging the unconscious
brunette with him like a sack. The man had a hideous, puckered scar running down
his cheek, a grotesque memento of a violent past. His blue eyes were small,
piggish but alert.
A second man, attired in similar drab, raced over, and Janson heard them
talking. The language was unfamiliar—but not entirely so. Straining, he could
make out a fair amount of it. It was Slavic—Serbo-Croatian, in fact. A distant
cousin to Czech, but close enough that, by concentrating, he was able to make
out the basics.
A small, powerful sedan roared up to them, and after another brief, barked
exchange, the two men leaped into the backseat. Police sirens screamed in the
distance.
They were leaving the scene because the police were beginning to arrive. Other
drab-clad gunmen piled into an SUV and drove off as well.
Battered, bloodied, Janson staggered to the side street where Barry Cooper,
sweating and wide-eyed, remained in the driver’s seat of the armored limo.
“You need to go to a hospital,” Cooper said, shaken.
For a moment Janson was silent, and his eyes were closed. Concentrating
intensely, he returned to the words he had heard. Korte Prinsen-gracht …
Centraal Station … Westerdok … Oosterdok …
“Get me to Centraal Station,” Janson said.
“We’re going to have half the cops in Amsterdam on our tail.” A light drizzle
had begun to fall, and Cooper switched on the window wipers.
“Pedal to the metal.”
Cooper nodded, and set off north on Prinsengracht, the wheels squealing against
the slick pavement. By the time they reached the bridge over Brouwersgracht, it
was apparent that they had no police pursuers. But were there pursuers of
another kind?
“Serbian irregulars,” Janson murmured. “They’re mostly mercenaries these days.
But whose?”
“Serbian mercenaries? You’re harshing my groove, man. I’m gonna pretend I didn’t
hear that.”
Separating Korte Prinsengracht from the Westerdok, where largely abandoned
warehouses stood, was the man-made island on which the Centraal Station was
built. But that was not where the giant and his friends were headed. They would