CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

Mama, just killed a man.

Put my gun against his head

Pulled my trigger; now he's dead

-Freddy Mercury, Queen, "Bohemian Rhapsody"

D-Day, Yemen

Lada knew the way. More than that, she knew the best way to get from the wall into the house without being seen. That way led a short distance along the wall, to a set of concrete stairs leading to the ground. At the base of the stairs all was shadow, under the parapet. This they followed, Musin lugging one leaking corpse and Kravchenko the other, to a noisy heat pump under the wall. There they dropped the bodies. Galkin and Litvinov, holding the dead guards' rifles, were left behind, manning the wall to cover the eventual retreat.

Covered by the heat pump's thrumm, Lada explained the next step. "There, through that door," she pointed across a shadowy way, "is a long corridor that runs all the way through the house. Halfway there's a side branch to the right-"

"What's down there?" Konstantin asked.

"Servants' quarters," she said, then amended that to, "Slaves quarters. Storage. And some machinery. Two flights of stairs and an elevator. That's on the side branch. I don't have a key to the elevator."

"No guards?"

"Only if they're fucking one of the slaves. Yusuf is generous with his property that way."

"Right," Konstantin said. He considered, Do we go slow up the corridor, listening at each door? No. what would be the point? If we don't hear anything it doesn't prove shit. And if we do, what do we do? Go in and kill the room's occupants? Too noisy. "Go on," he told Lada.

"The far staircase," she continued, "goes all the way to the third floor. The nearer only goes directly to the second. We have to go to the far one, go up to the third floor, then come back and use the branch to get to the door to Yusuf's private quarters."

"Guard on the door?" Konstantin asked.

"Always. Two of them, sometimes three. And the door will be locked."

"How thick is this door?"

"Stout," she answered. "Very stout. Unless you use explosives the occupants of the room are unlikely to hear what's going on in the corridor."

"Occupants?" the major asked, emphasizing the plural.

She nodded her head. "Almost always. Sometimes one girl, sometimes two. Sometimes a little boy. Sometimes one of each. Sometimes all three. Or more."

"How did you-" He stopped his question. For the purposes of the mission it hardly mattered.

Lada shook her head and answered anyway. "I volunteered. For the Service if not for the mission. Through an intermediary, the old man arranged to have me sold directly to Yusuf." She shrugged. "I'm really twenty-four but I look fourteen. I claimed here to be sixteen. Yusuf figured I was a mature looking thirteen and enjoyed fucking me all the more for that."

"And once you volunteer for the service," Konstantin added, "you don't get a lot of choice about the missions. Where ‘not a lot of' is defined as ‘none.'"

"No, ‘not a lot,'" she agreed. "Though I never imagined myself becoming a whore when I volunteered."

"You're not a whore," the major said. "You're just a soldier who uses a different set of weapons. Hang on to that; because it's true."

"Thank you, Major," she answered. She didn't sound convinced. "Questions?"

"How do we get through the door to Yusuf's quarters if it's so stout? I mean, we have explosives but . . . "

"There's a pad with a number control and a facial scan device." She smiled for the first time this night. "It knows me and I know the code."

"Works. Let's go."

People who had no business being there would have dashed across the open space between the wall and the ground floor door. People who belonged would have walked. Konstantin and his people walked. For added disguise, he pushed Lada's shoulder as she neared the door, causing her to stumble. It looked just as if she were going to be the main attraction at a gang bang somewhere inside.

So well did her discipline hold that she didn't even whisper, "Asshole!"

She thought it, though, even as she knew the major had done it only for effect.

The door squeaked, causing all of them but Lada to wince. "Relax," she said. "When something becomes routine, and I assure you that squeaking doors around here are the essence of normal and routine, people simply don't hear them anymore."

Konstantin knew that was true. Even so, he prodded everyone inside as quickly as possible without risking someone's tripping.

"It stinks down here," Musin observed, wrinkling his Tatar nose. "Stinks" was something of an understatement. "Reeks" would have been an understatement.

"What do you expect?" Lada answered. "Sixty-seven slaves, give or take, two toilets-Turkish type, and two showers that sometimes work and sometimes don't. And no laundry facilities except a utility sink. And the master wouldn't waste air conditioning on the slaves. His favorite camel? Sure. The slaves? Never. Of course it stinks."

"And you've put up with this for . . .?"

"About four months," she answered.

Musin nodded and said, respectfully, "Honey, you do serve the motherland."

Lada smiled for the second time that night.

The woman walked on bare feet. The footgear for the men were boots, but soft ones more akin to very high topped sneakers. They made hardly a sound in the long corridor. Neither did they hear anything coming from the rooms, barring only some snoring.

Konstantin shot a questioning look at Lada.

"It's late," she replied, bitterly adding, "They're probably all done with their little boy bunging and little girl raping. Now hurry."

The stench of the slaves' quarters ended as soon as they'd shut the door behind them. Konstantin formed them in a Y, with Musin and Kravchenko up front, himself behind them, and Lada behind himself.

"You are the only way of getting into Yusuf's quarters quietly," he explained. "That won't matter if we run into somebody on the way, in a place we're not supposed to be, since massive shooting with unsuppressed firearms and quiet are pretty much mutually exclusive. But you may also be the only way of getting into the bastard's quarters at all, if the door is as stout as you've described."

"Fine," she agreed. "Two full flights up then. Pay no attention to the last flight; it only goes to the roof."

"Are there guards on the roof?" the major asked.

Lada chewed her lower lip for a moment, then answered, hesitatingly, "Routinely? I don't know. I've never been permitted up there. Helicopters sometimes land up there. I've seen guards go up there then."

The woman went first through the door that led from the staircase to the third floor. She walked down the corridor, with considerably more confidence than she, in fact, felt. Indeed, her heart was thumping against her chest enough for her to worry that the guards she knew she would meet when she entered the branch corridor would hear it or, at least, sense it.

For a second, she had to stop and force herself to calm. Konstantin's team, following close, barely stopped in time to prevent ramming her from behind.

A few deep breaths, a little act of will, and she nodded to herself, ready to proceed. A few feet ahead of the men, she turned the corner and uttered greetings to the guard, "Rashid, Abdul Rahman, sabah inuur." Then she stood in front of a small numeric pad and began to enter a code.

"The master sent for me," she told them, by way of explanation.

Konstantin heard the greetings to two men. Fine, he thought. Just right. He tapped Musin for attention, temporarily stuck his false beard back into place, then signaled for the Tatar to go first. In unconscious imitation of the girl, Musin forced himself to utter calm, then proceeded to walk down the corridor as if something on the very far end was his business, and nothing too close to where it branched off. His submachine gun was held with easy, practiced grace in both hands. True, if the inner guard looked they might well see that it was an unusual model. And the suppressor would surely seem strange, if they noticed the gun at all.

"As-salama alaykum." Tim said, waving casually with one hand as he crossed the open area. The other hand remained curled around the pistol grip. The guards waved back, giving in return, "Wa alaykum essalamu."

So the trick is don't give them a lot of time to think about it. As soon as he reached the far edge of the branch corridor, and thus could be reasonably sure Krav and the major were waiting to pounce, Tim spun counterclockwise, firing instantly at the guard farthest to the left as he faced the door. Simultaneously, or near enough as made no difference, Kravchenko presented and fired at the guard to the right of the door as he faced.

Lada never heard a shot, so she never flinched from the keypad. While the bodies flopped to the floor, she hit "enter" and then stepped in front of a facial scanner.

"NVGs, on," Major Konstantin ordered.

At that moment, they heard a volley of fire coming from the yard, in the direction in which they'd left Galkin and Litvinov on guard. There came, too, the sound of a large and heavy door bolt being automatically thrown open.

"Ignore it," the major ordered. "Through the door. NOW!"