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  When he moved away, Janet killed the power to the IR sight and looked away to preserve her night vision.

  “Fire in the hole.” Jack’s voice was followed by a loud bang as the det cord opened a six-foot hole in the fence.

  As the flash died, Janet switched on the sight and once again swept the complex. The hole in the fence and some of the surrounding ground glowed bright as the explosion’s ghost lingered. But, except for Jack’s body heat, nothing else stirred.

  “Still clear.”

  “Looks like we wasted our time setting up the laser.”

  “Looks like,” she agreed. “If they’re waiting for us, they’re inside one or more of those warehouses.”

  “I’m going for the first one on the left.”

  “Ready.”

  Jack sprinted through the hole in the fence, his focus on making it to the warehouse wall as quickly as possible instead of ducking or seeking cover. And as Janet watched him run, she saw no other hint of life or movement. Just weird.

  Jack reached the warehouse’s east wall and then moved to a crouching position at the northeast corner.

  “Your turn.”

  “Moving now.”

  Janet slid the IR goggles back into place, adjusted the strap, and then didn’t stop running until she reached the warehouse. Leaning back against the wall next to Jack, she took several deep breaths, working on slowing her breathing and racing heart.

  “Okay. I’m good.”

  “Oh, I know.”

  She didn’t need the infrared goggles to spot his grin.

  “You’d better.”

  “I’m going for the door. Cover me.”

  Janet slid into a kneeling position at the corner, sliding her goggles up and picking up the AS50 scope’s sight picture.

  “It might be booby trapped.”

  “I’m going to blow it.”

  Jack ducked around the corner, stopping beside the small door just short of the huge rolling door designed for truck access. Sticking a small wad of C4 to the lock, Jack shoved in a wireless detonator and moved back a dozen meters.

  “Ready?”

  Janet again looked away. “Go.”

  This explosion was louder than the previous and, when she reacquired her sight picture, she saw that the door had been torn from its hinges and flung back into the warehouse. Moving up behind Jack, they went through the opening one after the other, him clearing right as she swept the left.

  Empty.

  Jack moved rapidly around the left side as Janet held her position by the door, searching for a target inside the building before swinging around to guard against an assault from outside the door.

  Jack’s voice in her ear carried a hint of frustration that the radio hiss couldn’t mask.

  “From the amount of dust on the floor, this warehouse hasn’t been used in over a month.”

  “Then why did they have two guards posted outside yesterday?”

  “Classic shell game. Make us guess which is important.”

  “If I had to pick one, it would be the one we saw the two trucks pulling inside in that last satellite image.”

  Jack stepped up beside her. “I agree. I’m going to need you on the roof. You should have clear firing angles all the way down the row to that center warehouse.”

  Janet didn’t like what she was hearing. “Then I won’t be able to help clear it when you get there. It splits us up too much. What if people are hiding in some of these other warehouses?”

  “You just make sure I get there. We’ll deal with other contingencies if they happen.”

  “Okay, but I don’t like it.”

  “There’s a steel ladder in that far corner. I’m guessing it goes to a roof hatch. Let me know when you’re in position.”

  Slinging the AS50 across her back, Janet readjusted her night-vision goggles and moved off toward the ladder, leaving Jack crouching beside the doorway behind her. She had the distinct impression that Jack felt something was about to go seriously wrong here. If she was paranoid she would be thinking that he was moving her away from him to keep her safe. But Jack Gregory wasn’t that kind of man. He expected her to carry her own load and she damn sure would do her own heavy lifting.

  She found the ladder where Jack had said it would be, steel rungs mounted a foot and a half apart, set into the concrete wall. When she reached the roof, forty feet above the warehouse floor, she hooked one arm through the top rung, leaned back, and pulled on the locking lever. When it failed to open, she rocked her body outward, giving a much harder tug. Although the lever moved, it took three pulls to get the job done.

  Once the hatch was free, Janet lifted it just enough to see out onto the empty roof. She knew no one was up here, but taking unnecessary chances wasn’t her way. She opened the hatch and climbed out onto the flat roof. It wasn’t completely flat, the center just a few inches higher to provide for water runoff. A foot-high lip rimmed the roof’s outer edge with gutter spouts every twenty to thirty feet around the perimeter.

  Staying low, Janet unslung the AS50 sniper rifle, crawled to the northeast corner, and moved into a prone firing position. Switching back to the IR sight, she scanned the surrounding rooftops and the alley Jack would be taking to the central warehouse. Satisfied she spoke into the jaw microphone.

  “All clear.”

  CHAPTER 87

  Vladimir Roskov exhaled a mouthful of cigar smoke that made the limousine air finally achieve the critical mass that caused him to crack a window. When his cell phone rang, he answered it.

  “Roskov.”

  “Boss, we’ve got action in the compound!”

  Vlad recognized the voice as that of Pavel Krupin, leader of the team of five that had been left to ensure that nobody followed them through the tunnel.

  “Where are you now?”

  “We are holding position inside Warehouse Five, as you instructed. But we heard two explosions from outside. Do you want us to go hunt down the intruders?”

  “No. Stay where you are. If anyone tries to come through that door, kill them. Understood?”

  “Understood.”

  Roskov terminated the call and turned to look into Jacob’s black eyes.

  “My boys have company.”

  “I told you The Ripper would come to me.”

  “We stay on target. My guys will kill him or keep him jammed up so long it won’t matter.”

  Jacob laughed in his face. “You think so? Then you’re as big a fool as Trent and Koenig.”

  Vlad felt a sudden fury boil up inside. For a handful of seconds he was tempted to pull his gun and shoot out those black eyes. But Vladimir Roskov had seen Jacob Knox in action, and that dark memory stilled his hand.

  At least for tonight, he’d let it pass.

  CHAPTER 88

  “All clear.”

  Janet’s voice in his earpiece put Jack in motion. Hugging the north wall, he paused at the gap between this warehouse and the next, double-checked the crossing road, and then continued working his way toward his objective. It practically called to him.

  “Roof hatch opening.”

  “Close it.”

  The sound of the fifty-caliber rifle was so loud in the shallow canyons between the warehouses that he could almost see the concrete walls vibrate with the echoes.

  “Target down.” Janet’s words sent an electric thrill up his spine.

  Moving faster now, Jack crossed to the north side of the street and reached his objective, moving along the south wall toward the access door. He attached a palm-sized brick of C4 and then backed off around the east side of the warehouse.

  “Have you got line of sight to the door?” he asked.

  “Yes. But I won’t have much of an angle to the inside of the building once you blow it.”

  “That’s okay. Watch me and wait for it.”

  Leaning back against the wall, Jack removed the folding grappling-hook from his utility vest, uncoiled twenty meters of cord, and secured it with an end-of-line bowline knot
, followed by two half-hitches. Stepping away from the wall, Jack whirled the hook, launching it up and over the lip. On the second toss, the grapple caught firmly. A minute later, his AK47 slung over his back, Jack climbed over the ledge.

  With the hook left in place, he unslung the assault rifle and crawled silently across the roof to the hatch. On the northwest side of the partially opened hatch, the spray of blood, brain, and hairy chunks of skull confirmed the kill shot. The fifty-caliber round had sent the body tumbling back down to the warehouse floor. It didn’t surprise him that nobody else had followed the man up.

  Jack moved up beside the hatch, took two high-explosive grenades and one thermite grenade from his vest, and set them on the roof beside it. Then he removed his night-vision goggles and set them on the roof. Jack pulled the pins and tossed the grenades through the hatch in different directions. A lone scream accompanied the explosions that followed as the blinding glare from the burning thermite grenade obliterated the darkness within.

  Janet’s fifty-caliber barked again, its echoes seeming to come from all directions, and Jack swung the barrel of his AK47 into the hatch, sending a three-round burst toward the spot from which the scream had sounded. The answering twin muzzle flashes sprayed rounds wildly, some in his general direction. Jack ducked away from the hatch and waited until the volley subsided.

  Now that he knew the precise location of the two shooters, Jack repositioned himself, popped up, and fired twice. His first round lifted the rightmost of the shooters from his covered position behind a forklift and flung him back into the far wall. The second shot punched a hole through the door at the top of a fifteen-foot metal stairway as the man’s partner ducked through it. This time Jack did not duck back from the opening, maintaining his sight picture on that door.

  As the arm holding the submachine gun swung out, Jack put a bullet through it, sprawling the man backward and sending his weapon clattering down the stairs to the concrete warehouse floor. With the warehouse illuminated by the intense white-orange glow of the hot gasses and flame of the thermite reaction eating a hole in the center of the concrete floor, Jack had a clear view of this room that formed the southern half of the warehouse.

  The body of the man Janet had killed lay in a pool of blood directly below the hatch. Besides the two men he had just shot, two grenade-mangled bodies lay near several overturned barrels; a total of four dead and one wounded.

  “Status?”

  “Four dead men in a big room. Except for a loading platform and a forklift, it’s mostly empty. There is one door at the top of a metal stairway in the wall opposite the one in the south wall. I wounded the guy inside.”

  “You think anybody else is waiting on the other side of that door?”

  “I’m not feeling it.”

  Moving away from the hatch, Jack picked up the NVGs and hooked them to his vest, then moved back to the rope, stepped over the edge, and slid back to the ground. At the corner of the building, he saw the central street was still empty. Moving back up the alley where he’d grappled up to the roof, he ran to the warehouse’s northeast corner.

  “I’m going in through the back door. Kill anyone who sticks his head out the front or up top.”

  His ears still ringing from the gunfire and the explosions, Janet’s response in his earpiece sounded faint. “Got it covered.”

  A glance around the corner showed that the warehouse’s north wall was a mirror image of the one on the south side. A man-sized door occupied a spot in the wall just to the east of a huge rolling metal door. When Jack reached it, he sensed the desperation emanating from the man that waited somewhere on the other side and fought the adrenaline rush that pulled him in that direction.

  He attached a block of C4, hooked it up, and retreated to the corner. Slapping a fresh magazine into the assault rifle, he fingered the remote. He’d do this, not the demon way, but his.

  “Going in.”

  His words entered the mike a half-second before he triggered the twin explosions that obliterated both the north and south doors. Unclipping the NVGs, Jack slid them into place, switched them on, and moved into the waiting darkness.

  CHAPTER 89

  With his back against Vladimir Roskov’s steel-case desk, Pavel Krupin ripped his shirt off, wrapped it around his torn left bicep, and, with his right hand and teeth, tied it into a knot. When the arterial blood flow showed no sign of slowing, he unfastened his ankle knife and shoved it, sheath and all, through the knot. With what was left of his rapidly draining strength, he gave the knife two hard twists, then used his belt to bind the tourniquet in place.

  How had it come to this? He’d sent his best man up to the roof, but a large-caliber bullet had blown Nikita’s head off as he tried to climb out of the hatch. The ferocity of the assault that followed had stunned Pavel. The Ripper had tossed grenades down the hatch as if he’d known exactly where Pavel’s men were positioned. Then he’d followed up with a volley of well-placed shots that had stripped Pavel of the rest of his team and had left him bleeding out inside Roskov’s office.

  The current silence terrified Pavel worse than the preceding bedlam. Except for the faint glow of the cooling thermite residue, darkness draped the warehouse. Pavel could have switched on the office lights, but that would just help the killer who had probably already descended the ladder into the southern half of the warehouse.

  Pavel fought to clear his mind as he gripped the Sig Sauer in his right hand. If he could make it to the switch that opened the tunnel ramp, maybe he’d have a chance of escape. But that meant he would have to go back out into the southern half of the warehouse. The Ripper would kill him before he got out the door. But staying where he was, hiding behind Roskov’s empty desk, wouldn’t save him either. Having lost the use of his left arm, he couldn’t easily change magazines on the Sig. Any second now, The Ripper would blast open that door and roll a hand grenade inside.

  Pavel’s only other option was to take the door that led to the clean room on the north side. But The Ripper had probably already thought of that.

  Pavel knew he was in shock. Not surprising. It was so damned hard to think.

  Twin explosions from the north and the south rocked the building and sent Pavel scrambling back into the corner, firing at first one door and then the other. With his breath coming in ragged gasps, he forced himself to stop shooting. He knew he should eject the magazine and slap in a new one, but he didn’t dare set the gun down to make the one-handed switch. Somewhere in that darkness, on one side of the warehouse or the other, The Ripper was coming for him.

  What if the man had shot him in the arm on purpose? What if he wanted Pavel alive?

  A sound from the clean-room section of the warehouse caused Pavel to swivel in that direction, his movement sending an electric arc of pain shooting up his left arm.

  What the hell was taking so long?

  A new thought wormed its way into his fevered brain. The Ripper had no intention of killing him. The man would keep him alive until he learned everything that Pavel knew, just as he had with Petor Kline.

  The metal stairs on the north side creaked under a man’s weight and, with his heart hammering to get out of his chest, he made a decision. Thrusting the gun barrel deep inside his mouth, with the taste of well-oiled steel heavy on his tongue, Pavel pulled the trigger.

  CHAPTER 90

  Captain Steve Cole watched the crew manning the U.S.S. Lake Erie’s Combat Information Center with a great feeling of pride. The Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser was a key piece of the Constellation Battle Group, currently sailing one hundred nautical miles southwest of Sapporo, Japan. With so much at stake during this latest round of tension between the United States and North Korea, his ship and his crew stood ready to provide antiballistic missile defense against a potential nuclear attack.

  As he stood looking at the four Aegis large-screen displays and the myriad other manned consoles, observing this watch finish the latest ballistic missile defense battle simulation, he noted
how much this team had improved over the last two months. It wasn’t that they hadn’t been good before. When he’d taken command, they’d been very good. But the legitimate threat of a nuclear attack on their homeland had narrowed their focus and increased their intensity such that Captain Cole knew that there was no finer crew in the fleet. And that applied to the entire ship’s crew, not just this CIC watch.

  Leaving the CIC, the captain made his way out onto the deck. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he gazed up at the beautiful, cloudless night sky, dusted with stars from horizon to horizon. Looking at that black sky, feeling the powerful ship move beneath his feet, tasting the salt spray on the cool ocean breeze, Captain Steve Cole felt like a Viking captain of old, listening for that distant call of battle.

  And when that call came, he and his mighty ship’s crew would stand ready.

  CHAPTER 91

  Seated in the back of the black sedan, surrounded by his security detail, Rolf Koenig watched as the small convoy of vehicles approached the roadside pullout where he waited. A glance at his watch showed the time, 10:45 p.m. As the five vehicles pulled off the road and another black sedan came to a stop a dozen feet in front of his, Rolf opened the door and climbed out into the rapidly cooling night.

  Vladimir Roskov and Jacob Knox climbed out of the other sedan and walked to the spot where he waited, just outside the splash of the headlights.

  The Russian mob boss spoke first. “We’ve lost contact with the five-man team I left behind at the warehouse.”

  Rolf stifled the curse before it made it to his lips.

  “That’s okay. We planned for this. It just means I’m going to have to bump up the launch.”

  “Bump up?” Knox asked, his strange black eyes giving Rolf the impression that the man had twin holes drilled in his head. “By how much?”