"RPGs," said Baby Doc and turned in the direction of the driveway.
"Wait!" called Kurtz.
Baby Doc turned but did not stop jogging.
"I thought you were staying with the chopper," whispered Kurtz.
Baby Doc grinned. "I never said I would."
"What if you get killed?"
The grin stayed in place. "You guys will either have to take flying lessons or start walking." He turned his back and ran toward the head of the driveway.
There was a dead man lying in the guardhouse gazebo. Nothing stirred except the six of them jogging toward the house. The external security lights were on in the back, but the house remained dark.
Angelina Farino Ferrara set the C-4 charge on the door, triggered the tuned detonator, and stepped back with the other three just as Kurtz came jogging up. The blast wasn't as loud as Kurtz expected, but it was pretty sure to wake everyone in the house. The door flew inward, showing steel reinforcements blown off at the hinges.
Gonzaga went in first. His bodyguard followed a second later. Angelina and her man lunged in a second after that.
This is nuts , thought Kurtz, not for the first time that night. One did not assault a house without knowing the houseplans intimately. He raised the Browning and threw himself through the door.
The foyer and hall lights had come on, which was not good. The layout was as he rememberedthe foyer opening on the center hall straight ahead, staircase to the rightAngelina and her man were already pounding up ita dark, formal living room was visible to his left, closed doors along the hallway to the left and right.
Gonzaga kicked open the first door to the right of the foyer and tossed in a flash-bang. The explosion was very loud. Bobby, the bodyguard, kicked in the second door to the right and dodged back as a hail of automatic weapons fire slashed across the foyer, shattering the chandelier and tearing apart vases and furniture in the living room across the way. Bobby fired his shotgun into the room, pumped it, fired again, pumped it, fired again. The machine gun fire stopped abruptly.
Upstairs, two explosions poured smoke down the stairway.
Kurtz ran across the foyer, scattering crystal as he ran. Plaster was falling from the high ceiling. He could see the glass library
doors fifty feet or so straight ahead and anyone in that dark room could see him. There were too many lights in this broad hallway, and they were too recessed to shoot out, so he felt like the target he was as he dodged from one side to the other and paused where the hallway began.
Gonzaga came out of the room behind him and fired up the staircase to Kurtz's right. A black-garbed figure tumbled down the steps and an M-16 fell onto the foyer tiles. Not one of ours , thought Kurtz.
"You take the left, Bobby and I'll take the right," shouted Toma Gonzaga.
Kurtz nodded and dodged left just as the library doors exploded shards of glass outward. Toma, Bobby, and Kurtz jumped against doorways. Two shotguns and Kurtz's Browning fired at the same time, smashing the last shards of the glass doors. Kurtz wanted to get to the Major's room, which opened off the left side of the library at the end of the hall, but right now he wasn't going anywhere as someone fired an M-16 again from the darkness of the library.
The second door on the left along that hallway opened and one of the Vietnamese bodyguards peered out, ducked back behind the door, held out an M-16, and sprayed the hallway. Gonzaga and Bobby were out of sight behind Kurtz, in the rooms along the opposite side of the hallway. Shotgun blasts roared and filled the air with cordite stink.
Kurtz pressed into the first doorway on the leftthe door was lockedand waited until the spray of plaster and ricochets from the M-16 blast let up. Then he aimed the Browning at the center of the open wooden doorway and fired five slugs into it, about chest high. There was a cry and the sound of a body tumbling down the stairs.
Basement . Kurtz wanted to go down thereit was his job tobut he had to secure the library first. He ran, firing, to the basement doorway. There was no return fire from beyond the shattered glass of the library.
There was a light on downstairs and Kurtz could see the bodyguard's body crumpled at the base of the steps. Kurtz pulled a flash-bang grenade from his bag, flipped the primer, and tossed it down the stairs, stepping back behind the door while it exploded. When he peered around, the basement was full of smoke and the bodyguard's clothing was burning. He hadn't moved.
More explosions from the second floor. The gunfire up there was horrendous. Kurtz wondered if Angelina had survived the Battle of the North Bedroom or whatever the hell it was.
As Kurtz lunged around and crouched on the top step of the basement stairs, still focused on the library doors, Gonzaga and Bobby poked their heads out of their doorways.
"These rooms are clear," shouted Gonzaga. "At least two down here. What about the library?"
Automatic weapons fire exploded from the dark library again, stitching the walls along the wide hallway and making all three men duck back. Kurtz had caught a glimpse of two splaying muzzle flashes.