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She made a mental note to talk to Rapp about that. “He just wants you to be the best you can be.”
“I know, Mom. But it’s a little . . .” His voice trailed off and she smiled sympathetically. What could the kid do? He’d inherited his parents’ four left feet.
“Is it fun?”
“Sure. The guys are great. And we have cheerleaders now.”
“Then go out there and have a good time, Tommy. Don’t worry about impressing Mitch. Worry about impressing those cheerleaders.”
CHAPTER 30
NEAR LAKE CONSTANCE
SWITZERLAND
RAPP swung his Glock right, tracking motion at the end of the hallway. He lined his sights up on the head of the maid he’d seen earlier and watched her disappear back through the doorway with a strangled scream.
He continued moving along the hazy corridor, clearing rooms as he went. According to Coleman, at least one tango was in the attic with a sniper rifle. Another would be operating the Gatling gun, but there was no way to know if he was doing it directly or remotely. Rapp guessed the latter. When he’d started in this business, setting something like that up would have cost millions of dollars and required an army of engineers. Now it could be done by a couple of teenagers with an iPhone.
As he passed, Rapp closed the door to the room the maid was hiding in. Judging from her expression, she could be trusted to stay put until this was over. Hopefully, Obrecht’s other civilian employees were similarly holed up.
Near the end of the hallway, he paused again. The question was whether to take the wide-open stairs that dominated the front of the building or the less prominent servants’ access he and Gould had come up. Neither option was good, but he calculated his odds as slightly better on the main staircase. The other offered no room to maneuver and his gut said it was being covered.
On this rare occasion, his gut was wrong. He eased down the steps, staying low behind the railing and searching for targets. Nothing. In the ground-floor entryway, he slipped by an elaborate flower arrangement and passed the entrance to the service stairs unchallenged. With their limited remaining manpower, the mercs appeared to have retreated to prearranged defensive positions—probably concentrated on the front and rear entrances.
Outside, there was still silence. Coleman was stuck and Obrecht’s men were satisfied to turn this into a stalemate. Time was on their side. The local authorities were likely already on their way.
Rapp slid with his back against the wall until he came to the closed door leading to the basement. Obrecht would either be down there trying to figure out why he couldn’t get his safe room door open, or he’d be in the tunnel heading for Joe Maslick’s position. Either way, that little Swiss prick was going to spill everything he knew before Rapp put him in the ground.
He reached out and twisted the knob, throwing the door open. The sharp hiss of a silenced weapon followed immediately and two holes appeared in the wall across from him. Obrecht? Probably not. Based on the speed of the trigger finger and the tight grouping, one of his security team.
The light in the basement was on and Rapp slapped a hand around the jamb, sliding it down the wall and catching the switch. A round hit close enough to send splinters of wood into his unprotected forearm. He ignored the superficial wound and retreated behind a heavy sideboard, using his shoulder to shove it toward the open door. More shots sounded as he squeezed it through the opening, but they couldn’t penetrate the thick mahogany. He followed it inside, pushing it along the landing until it tipped partially down the stairs. Movement became audible below as the shooter tried to find an angle.
Rapp grabbed one of the night-vision-enabled helmets he’d hidden by the stairs and slammed the door behind him. The darkness closed in and he heard the man below free
ze, suddenly unable to navigate the cluttered space. After toggling the goggles’ power switch, Rapp gave the sideboard one last shove.
The heavy piece of furniture careened down the stairs with Rapp following inches behind. The puff of silenced shots joined the crackle of splintering wood as the man below attempted to aim by ear. He was effective enough that halfway down Rapp ducked under the railing and took the short drop, landing next to a stack of decaying pallets.
The sideboard hit the floor a moment later, barely holding together as it came to a stop. Rapp moved right, holding his breath and watching his foot placements to remain completely silent. Everything was bathed in a computer-generated false light and he immediately picked out two separate targets in the bright orange that denoted body heat. The one near the safe room was slumped against the closed door in a seated position. The other was lying in the dirt holding something that Rapp’s goggles painted half blue and half red. The cool metal of a gun tipped with a hot silencer.
Every man had his breaking point and the prone merc finally reached his. Trails of color streaked from the hazy image as he switched to full automatic and started spraying bullets randomly around the basement. Rapp ignored the rounds flying past him and ricocheting off the stone walls. He squeezed off a single shot and a moment later the only sound in the basement was emanating from a nicked water pipe.
He approached the mercenary carefully despite the fact that he was picking up specks of body-heat orange spread out around what a moment ago had been the man’s head. Satisfied that he was dead, Rapp moved silently toward the tango near the safe room.
It was slow going, but he managed to come within three feet without making any sound at all. Once in position, he reached out and touched his silencer to the side of the man’s head.
Nothing.
Rapp retracted the night-vision gear and fished a small penlight from his pocket. He switched it on and found exactly what he’d feared: Leo Obrecht with his throat slit ear to ear. Whatever had been locked up in his head was going to stay there.
Rapp used the penlight to find the tunnel entrance and punched the code Gould had given him into the keypad. The chances of it working were close to zero but it was worth a try. He still needed to retrieve Hurley’s body and if he could slip it out this way, there was a good chance his entire team could be on a jet back to the States before sundown. The surviving mercs would tell their story and at the end of a multiyear investigation, the German authorities would chalk this up to Obrecht getting in over his head with a professional assassin.
Of course, Gould’s code didn’t work. So that left the hard way.
Rapp skirted the sideboard at the bottom of the steps and ascended to the door again. There was no sound on the other side, so he eased it open. A quick check in both directions suggested that Obrecht’s guards either were ignorant of what had just happened to their comrade or didn’t care enough to come to his aid. Probably the latter.
The servants’ stairs still appeared to be unguarded, so Rapp ran for them, ascending the tightly winding steps three at a time. He continued until they dead-ended into a bare wood door leading into the attic. The way it was aligned meant that it should open directly onto the west-facing dormers where the rifleman worrying Coleman would be set up.
