laced to the dead man’s forearm, and silently dashed to the boulder ten feet
away, where he waited in the gloom.
“There!” one of them called out. It took seconds for the effigy to attract their
attention. All they would be able to see was the glare of the flashlight; the
spill would illuminate the taupe-colored jacket and, perhaps just faintly, the
staring eyes of the crouching man. The inference would be nearly instantaneous:
here was the source of the lethal fusillade.
The response was as he expected: four of the commandos directed their automatic
weapons at the crouching figure. The simultaneous chattering of their
high-powered weapons, set at full fire, was nearly deafening: the men pumped
hundreds of bullets into their former comrade.
The noise and the gunmen’s furious concentration worked to Janson’s advantage:
with his small Beretta Tomcat, he squeezed off four carefully aimed shots in
rapid succession. The distance was only ten yards; his accuracy was flawless.
Each man slumped, lifeless, to the ground, his automatic weapon abruptly falling
silent.
One man remained; Janson could see his profile shadowed against the curtains on
the top floor. He was tall, his hair cut short but still curly, his bearing
rigid. His was one of the faces Janson had recognized, and he could identify him
now simply from his gait, the stiff, decisive efficiency of his movements. He
was a leader. He was their leader, their commanding officer. From what little
Janson had seen of their interactions earlier, that much, at least, had been
clear.
The name came to him: Simon Czerny. A Cons Op operative specializing in
clandestine assaults. Their paths had crossed more than once in El Salvador,
during the mid-eighties, and Janson had even then considered him a dangerous
man, reckless in his disregard for civilian life.
Janson would not kill him, though. Not until they had had a conversation.
Yet would the man allow himself to put in that position? He was smarter than the
others. He had seen through Janson’s subterfuge a little quicker than the
others, had been the first to recognize the decoy for what it was and called
warningly to his men. His tactical instincts were finely honed. A man like that
would not expose himself to danger unnecessarily, but would bide his time until
an opportunity presented itself.
Janson could not permit him that luxury.
Now the team commander was invisible; out of range of gunfire. Janson ran toward
the ruins of the parlor, saw the shattered glass everywhere, saw the splashes of
soot around the fireplace mantel from the exploded shotgun cartridges, saw the
steel pellets, the ruined glass-front cabinet.
Finally, he saw the gallon-sized jug of brandy, the poisonous pálinka.
A hairline crack now ran down the side, no doubt from the pinging of a stray
steel pellet, but it had not yet shattered. Janson knew what he had to do.
Frisking one of the slain gunmen, he extracted a Zippo lighter. Then he splashed
the 190-proof brandy around the room, extending to the hallway that led to the
kitchen, and used the lighter to ignite the volatile spirits. Within seconds, a
blue fire trail erupted across the room; soon the blue flames were joined by
yellow flames as curtains, newspapers, and the canework of the chairs caught on.
Before long, the heavier furniture would be flaming, and with it the planking of
the floor, the ceiling, the floor above.
Janson waited as the flames grew in strength; leaping and joining one another in
a rising sea of blue and yellow. Billows of smoke funneled up the narrow
staircase.
The commander, Simon Czerny, would have to make a choice—only, he had no real
choice. To remain where he was meant being consumed in an inferno. Nor could he
escape the back way, into the courtyard, without exposing himself to a wall of
flames: Janson had made sure of that. The only way out was down the stairs and
through the front door.
Still, Czerny was a consummate professional; he would expect Janson to be
waiting for him outside. He would take precautions.
Janson heard the man’s heavy footsteps, even sooner than he had expected. Just
as he reached the threshold, though, Czerny loosed a spray of bullets, sweeping
around an almost 180-degree range. Anybody laying in wait for him outside would
have been struck by the wildly chattering submachine gun. Janson admired
Czerny’s efficiency and forethought as he watched the gunman’s pivoting
torso—from behind.
Now he rose up from where he was hidden, by the staircase on the very floor of
the burning parlor, perilously near the gathering conflagration—the one place
the gunman would not have expected.
As Czerny directed another raking fusillade at the grounds outside, Janson
lunged, lashing his arm around the gunman’s neck, his fingers hurtling toward
the trigger enclosure, tearing the weapon from his hands. Czerny thrashed
violently, but rage made Janson unstoppable. He smashed his right knee into
Czerny’s kidney and dragged him onto the stone porch. Now he scissored the man’s
waist with his legs and forced his neck into a painful backward arch.
“You and I are going to spend some quality time together,” Janson said, his lips
close to Czerny’s ear.
With an almost supernal effort, Czerny reared up and threw Janson off him. He
ran down the yard, away from the burning house. Janson raced after him, taking
him down with a powerful shoulder tackle, throwing him to the stony ground.
Czerny let out a groan as Janson sharply wrenched one of his arms upward behind
him, simultaneously dislocating the arm and turning him over onto his back.
Tightening his grip on the man’s neck, he leaned in close.
“Now, where was I? That’s right: if you don’t tell me what I want to hear,
you’ll never speak again.” Janson yanked a combat blade from a holster in
Czerny’s belt. “I will peel the skin off your face until your own mother
wouldn’t recognize you. Now come clean—you still with Consular Operations?”
Czerny laughed bitterly. “Goddamn overgrown Eagle Scouts—that’s all they were.
Should have been selling cookies door-to-door, for all the difference they made,
any of them.”
“But you’re making a difference now?”
“Tell me something. How the fuck do you live with yourself? You’re a piece of
shit and you always were. I’m talking way back. The shit you pulled—you goddamn
traitor. Somebody once tried to help you, a true-blue hero, and how did you
repay him? You gave him up, turned him in, pushed him in front of a firing
squad. That should have been you at Mesa Grande, you son of a bitch—that should
have been you!”
“You twisted bastard,” Janson roared, sickened and dizzy. He pressed the flat of
the man’s knife against his lightly bearded cheek. The threat would not be
abstract. “You part of some Da Nang revenge squad?”
“You gotta be joking.”
“Who are you working for?” Janson demanded. “Goddammit! Who are you working
for!”
“Who are you working for?” the man coughed. “You don’t even know. You’ve been
programmed like a goddamn laptop.”
“Time to face the music,” Janson said in a low, steely voice. “Or you won’t have
a face.”
“They’ve messed with your head so bad, you don’t know which end is up, Janson.
And you never will.”
“Freeze!” The abruptly shouted command came from above him; Janson looked and
saw the big-bellied tavernkeeper they had spoken to earlier that day.
He was no longer wearing his white apron. And his large, reddened hands were
clutching a double-barreled shotgun.
“Isn’t that what they’re always saying on your crappy American cop shows? I told
you that you were not welcome,” the beetle-browed man said. “Now I will have to
show you how unwelcome you are.”
Janson heard the noise of a runner, vaulting over boulders and branches,
plunging through thickets. But even from a distance, he could identify the
lithe, leaping figure. Seconds later, Jessie Kincaid emerged, her sniper rifle
strapped to her back.
“Drop the goddamn antique!” she shouted. She held a pistol in her hand.
The Hungarian did not even look in her direction as he carefully cocked the
Second World War-era shotgun.
Jessie squeezed one well-aimed shot into his head. The big-bellied man toppled
backward like a felled tree.
Now Janson grabbed the shotgun and scrambled to his feet. “I’ve run out of
patience, Czerny. And you’ve run out of allies.”
“I don’t understand,” Czerny blurted.
Kincaid shook her head. “Drilled four fuckers up the hill.” She hocked on the
ground near Czerny. “Your boys, right? Thought so. Didn’t like their attitude.”
Fear flashed in Czerny’s eyes.
“And get a load of that barkeep showing up. You’d have thought we stiffed him on
the tab.”
“Nice shooting,” Janson said, tossing her the shotgun.
Jessie shrugged. “I never liked him.”
“Eagle Scout,” Czerny said. “Collecting your merit badges while the world
burns.”
“I’ll ask you one more time: Who are you working for?” Janson demanded.
“The same person you are.”