Chapter 18:// Abyss

Wrecked county and federal police vehicles came under the glare of a mercury vapor searchlight. The bomb disposal robot’s arm panned to reveal more carnage. A thousand feet away, a spectator in the control trailer whistled softly at the video image. A murmur went through the assembled agents. Special Agent Ellis Garvey released his hold on the joystick and awaited instructions.

The FBI’s Critical Incidence Response Group (or CIRG) had taken over operations for the siege of Sobol’s estate, but Steven Trear still had nominal control of strategy. He knew that he had to get this situation under control quickly, or it would be taken from him just as he had taken it from Decker.

Trear put a hand on Garvey’s shoulder. “Bring us up to the mansion’s front door.”

The lawn mower–sized robot turned in place on rubberized treads and started moving across a blood-streaked debris field of plastic car bumpers and shattered glass, toward the mansion’s front steps. Along the way the robot passed a crushed and twisted version of itself. It was the robot brought in by Guerner’s team the day before. Garvey’s camera lingered on the image. Ominously symbolic. Trear cleared his throat, and Garvey nudged the joystick again, sending the robot forward.

He halted the robot at the base of the mansion’s front steps and raised its camera arms—shining the bright lights into the yawning, black maw of the doorway. The door was still wedged open.

A score of federal agents in the command trailer craned their necks to see the monitors.

Trear nodded to Garvey, who took a breath and eased the left joystick forward. The little robot’s motors whined as it inched up the stone steps.

Before long it moved warily through the front door and into the foyer, where some type of fearsome technology had assaulted Guerner and his team. Washington wanted more information. The robot’s camera arm panned the room. Glass from a shattered vase littered the tiled floor—along with vomit and specks of blood.

Someone in the back muttered, “Jesus.”

One of the bomb squad guys leaned in. “Look for transceivers or sensors on the walls.”

Garvey started panning the walls with the camera lights.

It looked like a classic Mediterranean, but there was a lot more than paintings and sculpture alcoves along the winding stairs. Near the ceiling an array of mysterious, white plastic sensors lined the walls.

Trear called out. “Guys, what are we looking at?”

A deafening silence filled the darkened trailer. In the glow of the camera monitors Trear looked for Allen Wyckoff, an FBI senior systems analyst who always seemed to know what he was talking about. Although there were bomb squad agents and a couple of computer forensics experts on hand, this wasn’t a bomb and it wasn’t software. It looked like a system. “Wyckoff. What am I looking at here?”

Wyckoff was just a silhouette in the darkness, except for the lenses of his round glasses, which reflected the monitor images. “Those are standard motion detectors…also what looks to be infrared sensors…I have no idea what that is…. The round pod might be a transmitter of some sort.” He turned toward Trear, and the monitor reflections disappeared from his glasses. “Sir, we’re going to need to analyze this video. There’s a lot of technology there I’m not familiar with.”

Trear looked around at the assembled experts, who were silently nodding in the dark. “So no one can tell me how the bomb disposal team was incapacitated? No guesses?”

The agents exchanged glances in the shadows.

Garvey ventured, “Should I keep going?”

Trear nodded. “Get us into the server room.”

Garvey took another breath and eased the joystick forward again.

The robot moved easily across the floor toward the center doorway at the back of the foyer. The mercury light revealed a long hall with stone tile flooring and embroidered rugs. Mission-style furniture braced the walls here and there along the length of the hall.

One of Garvey’s team spoke from the console nearby while examining blueprints. “We want to take the next hall on the right. Then it’s the second door on the right.”

“Got it. Turning.” Garvey turned the robot in place and shined the camera lights down a short side hall. It led into the recreation room toward the back of the house. Garvey panned the hallway, examining the walls and ceilings. More of the mysterious sensors lined the walls. It was dark except for the lights on the robot.

“Cellar door, second on the right. It should lead down to the server room.”

Garvey brought the robot forward, then moved to a second set of controls to activate the robot’s arm. The mechanical hand slid into camera view and swiveled once to align with the lever door handle on the cellar door. The arm moved forward, grabbed the door handle, then depressed it.

Suddenly the camera image jolted wildly and shouts of alarm filled the trailer. In a moment all the screens were filled with snow.

Trear pushed forward. “What just happened?”

Garvey’s hands hovered over the useless controls, his mouth open in shock. He turned. “I don’t know. I…”

“Do we have any signal from the robot?”

Garvey and his assistant checked the console and shook their heads. Everyone was talking again.

Trear shouted, “Quiet down! Everyone shut up.” He turned back to Garvey. “Play back the video—in slow motion.”

Garvey nodded, then rewound the video. All the monitors flickered, then a still image came up again: the mansion side hall.

“Roll it forward slowly.”

On-screen, frame by frame, the robotic arm grabbed the door handle and pushed down.

“There.”

Garvey stopped the image.

There was an unmistakable gap in the floor toward the bottom of the frame. The floor looked like it was opening up.

“Okay, advance it slowly.”

Garvey hit a button.

The gap expanded. In a quick succession of frames, the door handle pulled from the robot’s grip, and the entire machine slid down a chute that opened beneath it. Its mercury lights illuminated the dark hole, revealing a cinderblock-lined pit—the bottom of which was filled with water. Successive video images showed the water washing up onto its cameras and the robot shorting out. The entire process took about one and a half seconds.

Sidebar conversations filled the trailer.

Trear clasped a hand on Garvey’s shoulder. “It’s all right. That’s why we have robots.” Trear looked unruffled, almost serene.

He turned to the assembled agents. “I think we’ve established that there’s no power in the house.” He pointed to some techs sitting at a frequency-scanning console. “And there’s no radio transmissions emanating from the house, correct?”

The techs nodded.

Trear continued. “What we’re looking at here is a simple pit trap. Sobol’s high-tech weaponry is down. He’s gone medieval on us. That’s great news.”

Garvey turned from the robot command console. “That’s our last robot. We’ll have to send back to L.A. for another one.”

Trear nodded. “Bring in several. Fly them in if you have to. But we need to get our hands on Sobol’s personal computers as soon as possible.”

There was silence for a moment in the trailer.

Garvey hesitated, then asked, “Meaning that we…?”

“Send in the Hostage Rescue Team. Have them go in as far as the pit. I want the area around the cellar entrance ramped over by the time we get the extra robots here.”

Wyckoff looked surprised. “Sir, are you certain that’s a good idea?”

“Certain? No, not certain. But Sobol’s home computers might hold the key to destroying this monster. That’s what we came to do. So let’s do it.”

Everyone murmured in agreement.

Someone in back asked, “What about the Hummer, sir?”

“Pull out the wreckage and ship it down to the L.A. lab. Cover it with a tarpaulin before pulling it out. I don’t want to see any more pictures of the ‘death machine’ on the front page tomorrow.” He clapped his hands once. “Let’s get moving, people. The world’s watching.”

 

Special Agent Michael Kirchner sat poring over financial documents with five other agents in an unassuming accountant’s office in Thousand Oaks. The desks were littered with open folders, receipts, tax returns, and ledgers. Another agent was busy imaging computer hard drives. Kirchner, a CPA and a tax attorney, believed that he and his team did more to fight crime than any field office in the bureau. Organized crime couldn’t accomplish much without money.

They had spent the last eight hours scrutinizing the detailed financial history of Matthew Sobol. It was quite a trail. Sobol was an officer in thirty-seven corporations. He had three sole proprietorships, two partnerships, eleven LLCs—and a slew of international business corporations, holding companies, and offshore trusts. Tons of financial activity over the last two years, with equipment purchases, wire transfers, professional and consulting fees. It was a rat’s nest. The finances of the rich usually were.

Kirchner reviewed a report of the largest capital expenditures. Technical components from the looks of it. Purchased by one company but shipped to Sobol’s Thousand Oaks address.

Kirchner looked up at his partner, Lou Galbraith, who was sifting through filing cabinets nearby. “Lou, you lost money in fuel cells a few years back, didn’t you?”

Galbraith stopped, raised his reading glasses up onto his forehead, and gave Kirchner an impatient look. “I don’t want to talk about it. Why?”

Kirchner held up the printed report. “Sobol made some big purchases that I thought you might be interested in….” He leafed through the report. “Here, identical hydrogen fuel cell power units purchased by two separate holding corporations, both shipped to his estate. $146,000 a pop.”

“Tax dodge?”

Kirchner frowned. “We’re not trying to nail him on tax evasion, Lou.” He looked down at the report. “Fuel cell power units? Things like that really work?”

“I wasn’t an idiot, Mike. Of course they work. Hospitals and big companies use them to generate electrical power from natural gas. You know, where the electrical grid is unreliable or too expensive. It was supposed to be huge. Just before its time, that’s all, and—”

“These things were shipped to Sobol’s estate.” Kirchner looked even more concerned.

“What’s wrong, Mike?”

“Call the SAC at the Sobol estate. I want to make sure he knows about this.”

 

Agent Roy “Tripwire” Merritt took a deep breath, gathering in the last of the night air, redolent with moist earth. A sliver of moon hung just above the horizon, silhouetting the tree-dotted hills. He scanned the terrain without night vision gear, taking joy in this simple pleasure. It reminded him of the Basque region of Spain by moonlight—or South Africa’s Transvaal. He’d seen a lot of the world by night, and usually from behind third-generation night vision goggles.

The predawn air was crisp and cool on Merritt’s face as he stood in the payload area of an army ten-ton truck. Its powerful diesel engine labored in low gear as it climbed through a bulldozered breech in the estate wall. The canvas top had been removed, leaving it open to the night sky.

Merritt slung an HK MP-5/10 over his shoulder, then looked back toward his FBI Hostage Rescue Team. Six of the best-trained operators in the bureau sat on either side of the cargo bay, swaying in unison as the truck lurched over mounds of dirt and rock. These were his men, and they were intimidating as hell. Clad in black Nomex flight suits, body armor with ceramic trauma plates, Pro-Tec helmets, night vision goggles, and bulletproof face masks, they made Darth Vader look like a Wal-Mart greeter. But of all the missions they had carried out together—from Karachi to the wilds of Montana—Merritt had never had more misgivings than on this one. During the mission briefing he kept thinking that this was a job for the bomb disposal teams or the demining experts. It kept coming back to urgency. Six officers were dead, nine more injured. No one had any answers and time was apparently of the essence. Still…

Merritt looked down at the metal and wood scaffolding materials lying on the floor space between the benches. Four toolboxes lay there as well. His highly trained rapid response team was going to bridge a pit in a hostile environment. He wondered what sort of fuck-up happened upstairs to make this come about.

Merritt glanced over at the mansion three hundred yards away. No lights had appeared in it since last evening. Radio communications had been back up for the last hour, ever since the ultrawideband transmissions from the house died.

Merritt spoke normally, knowing his headset mic would pick it up. “Echo One to TOC. We’re at yellow. Request compromise authority and permission to move to green.”

“Copy, Echo One. I have your team at yellow. You have compromise authority and permission to move to green.”

“Copy that, TOC.” Merritt gave his men the thumbs-up signal. They returned it.

Waucheuer, the breaching specialist, flipped up his face mask and grinned. “Hey, Trip, why do we need guns? Sobol’s already dead.”

“Cut the chatter, Wack. Dead or not, Sobol managed to kill some good people here. Stay alert.”

Waucheuer shrugged, then nodded sharply, causing his face mask to flip back down.

Merritt stood and looked over the cab of the truck as it advanced slowly across the wide lawn of the estate. They were coming up on the burnt-out hulk of the automated Hummer now.

The other men stood to lean against the railing as the Hummer came up on the right-hand side. The truck slowed, then stopped about twenty feet from the wreckage. Two county SWAT team members were in the truck cab. The passenger kicked on a side-mounted searchlight, focusing it on the still smoldering remains. The Hummer was definitely nonoperational. The wheels were just blackened hubs, and the interior was gutted.

“Those marines ever hear of a little thing called evidence?”

Merritt could practically hear Waucheuer grinning behind his mask. Merritt ignored him. He spoke into his headset. “Echo One to TOC. The Hummer is nonoperational. Proceeding to green. Out.” Merritt pounded the cab roof twice. The truck lurched forward toward the mansion some one hundred yards away.

The truck searchlight swung toward the house. A three-foot-high terrace wall surrounded the mansion at a distance of about two hundred feet. The terrace leveled out the hilltop for the lawns around the pool and patio. The wall prevented the truck from driving all the way to the house, but Merritt agreed with the SAC that driving along the front entrance or rear service road was a bad idea; it was a chokepoint and could be booby-trapped.

Instead, the truck turned in front of the wall, then backed up; the ridiculous beep-beep of the backup warning filled the tense silence.

It looked like it was going to work out. The tailgate now stood about two feet off the ground as the truck backed up to the terrace wall. It would be easy to unload the scaffolding and tools. But first, they needed to scout ahead. Merritt shouted to the driver, “Cut the engine and the lights.”

Relative silence suddenly prevailed. The sound of crickets returned after a few moments. The only lights visible were the work lamps of the besieging FBI at the estate fence line—about three hundred yards away. Merritt swung down his night vision goggles and powered them up. His men did the same.

Merritt spoke into his bone mic. “Leave the scaffolding. Let’s make sure we have a clear path to the objective.” Merritt gave a hand signal, and his men fell in line behind him.

The plan was to circle around to the front of the house and enter through the open front door. They were on the east side of the house right now. So they were looking at a 150-yard infil over manicured lawns and gardens. Aerial radar had revealed no hidden pits or other apparent traps on the estate grounds to a depth of ten meters, but the approach to the mansion wasn’t what concerned Merritt. He was worried about entering the house itself—especially considering what happened to the last people to do so. Merritt stepped off the truck tailgate and started moving through the night. He felt and heard his men moving close behind him.

This wasn’t a hostage crisis. A flash-bang grenade wasn’t going to stun anyone here. Overwhelming firepower wouldn’t intimidate the opponent. This was a new situation.

Merritt turned and put a hand up to halt his men. “Wait here. I’m going to scout ahead. If you lose contact with me, pull back to the estate perimeter. Understood?”

They exchanged concerned looks. This went against everything they’d trained for. They were a team. Even Waucheuer had no wisecracks.

“That’s an order. Assume a defensive posture and wait here.” Merritt turned and moved cautiously toward the house.

 

Hundreds of yards away at the FBI Command and Control trailer, the SAC, Steven Trear, stood gazing through a FLIR scope at the distant figures of the HRT unit. He could see one moving ahead of the others—moving toward the side of Sobol’s mansion. Trear muttered to himself, “What’s he doing?”

One of the agents from the Command Trailer emerged and called to Trear. “Sir, a Special Agent Kirchner on the line for you. Something about Sobol’s purchase records.”

Trear didn’t look up from the night vision scope. “Kirchner’s heading the audit team?”

“I believe so, sir.”

“Tell him I’ll call him back.”

“He says it’s important—“

Another Command Center agent pushed his head out through the doorway. “Sir! I’m picking up noise from the parabolic mics. Noise from inside the house.”

Everyone stopped and looked at the guy with something resembling terror. Trear started walking toward him. “What kind of noise?”

“It sounds like a pump motor, sir.”

“Get those men out of there!”

 

About sixty feet ahead of his men, Merritt heard the click and stopped cold. His men did likewise. They’d all heard it, too, and they instinctively spun to face every direction—training their weapons. Against what, they didn’t know.

Suddenly Merritt’s radio crackled. Someone shouted in an urgent voice over the channel, “Echo One, abort immediately! Repeat, abort immediately!”

Before he could react, Merritt heard a disquieting hiss start to emanate from the ground. Just as suddenly the air around him sprang to life, and he and his men nearly jumped out of their skins.

Retractable lawn sprinklers popped up and started spraying the lush terrace lawn with cold water. His team burst out laughing as they stood getting soaked by the lawn sprinklers.

Waucheuer shielded his night vision goggles and shouted the distance to Merritt. “Shit, Trip, I just aged ten years!”

Even Merritt smiled behind his mask this time. “You heard ’em. Pull out!”

Then something changed. Suddenly Merritt was aware of an overpowering odor. His eyes narrowed behind his goggles. The sprinklers were no longer spraying water.

He looked to his men and shouted, “Gasoline!”

Before they could turn and run, a high-precision motor whirred in the distant cupola tower. A deep choom sound issued from it, and the last thing Merritt saw through his goggles was a blinding green flare arcing over the distance between him and the tower.

 

The rolling fireball lit up the sky for a mile around. Its dull roar echoed off the side of the trailer, and the orange light illuminated three hundred horrified faces. Trear still held the radio in his hand. He stood paralyzed as shrieks of agony came over the radio channel. All around him men raced into action—or anarchy, it was hard to tell.

“Get the fire trucks over there!”

“Ambulance! Bring up an ambulance!”

“We’ve got agents down!”

The fireball climbed to the sky, and in its stark light Trear could see the lawn sprinklers surrounding it still running. They were spraying water—to contain the fire in the precise spot where the HRT unit had infiltrated. Trear felt like he was watching something on TV. It had the surreal feeling of the impossible. People were grabbing him, shouting at him. He couldn’t take his eyes off the raging fire and the wildly thrashing dark forms dancing in the flames like damned souls—then falling. The ten-ton truck was burning like a Texas A&M bonfire.

Someone shouted in his ear about radio transmissions, and Trear absently looked down at the radio in his hand. Only static hissed out of it now. That’s when it happened.

Suddenly all the lights went on in Sobol’s mansion, glowing with a frightful intensity. Then lights kicked back on all across the estate. An audible groan ran through the ranks of the besieging agents.

Trear snapped out of it and shoved the now useless radio into another agent’s hands. “Get to cover! Everybody get to cover!”

 

The pain (because it must have been pain) was white noise that Merritt had no time for. On the imaginary control board in his mind, every light was flashing red. He ran as only men on fire can run, yanking his Nomex balaclava up to cover his mouth. The whole world had turned into the surface of the sun. He resisted the panic-stricken need to breathe the superheated air. To breathe was to die.

But then it turned dark again—the bright glow beyond his clenched eyelids had gone away. Had the night vision goggles failed? Probably. But he’d have to open his eyes to find out, and he wasn’t ready for that. But the heat was gone—and now there was only cold. His entire body tingled. It was almost pleasant. Experience told him that, in combat, tingling sensations meant you had just been seriously injured.

Merritt staggered on blindly. Finally he stopped and tore off his night vision goggles and opened his eyes. Instantly he was blinded by cold water spraying into his face. It felt wonderful. He smelled a combination of gasoline, burnt flesh, melted plastic, and hot metal. He turned in place dizzily—feeling shock creep up on him. He stood in a manicured section of lawn right next to a rising mushroom of orange flame fifty feet tall. The cold water spraying over him made it tolerable to be this close. His men were in those flames somewhere.

He reached for his bone mic, melted against his cheek. “Waucheuer! Reese! Littleton! Report! Kirkson! Engels! Report!” The microphone pulled off in his hands. His earphones were dead under his Kevlar helmet.

His men were gone. All gone.

Merritt was numb. He spun in place to orient himself and saw the mansion blazing white light a hundred feet farther on. He held his arm up and saw that the stock of his MP-5 had melted onto the back of his sleeve. His nylon web belt containing ammunition clips had melted into his jumpsuit and Kevlar body armor. He wasn’t sure whether he was badly injured, but his temper was beginning to flare. He decided to go with it.

Merritt grabbed the gun’s barrel with his left hand and wrenched the twisted mass free from his arm. The Nomex appeared to have protected him from the worst of it, but he felt the confused buzzing in his nerve endings that was the neurological equivalent of “Please Stand By For Pain….”

Merritt started running, not toward the perimeter wall and safety, but toward the mansion. He raced for the fenced-in pool area and a set of white French doors with polished brass handles—its windows blazing light. His eyes never left it as he leapt over stone benches and herb gardens.

Around him, in the sprinkler wash, he smelled gasoline again, and he heard the whoosh of flames racing to overtake him, but he outran it and stayed in the cool clear water that served as a buffer against the flames reaching the house.

As he ran, Merritt clutched at his back for the sawed-off shotgun strapped there. He was still tugging on its rubberized pistol grip, trying to free it from the melted mass of his web belt, when he kicked in the wooden pool gate. Metal gate hardware clattered across the paving stones—but he was already smashing through a field of teak wood patio chairs and flipping tables in his quest for the French doors. Almost there. He was vaguely aware of spotlights focusing on him from the house, but he didn’t give a damn what Sobol was up to. He might drop dead once he got there, but he was getting inside that house.

He whipped out his Mark V knife and slashed the melted bits of the web belt from the shotgun. To save time he hurled the knife ahead, where it stuck quivering in the door frame. He drew the Remington 870 shotgun into his gloved hands and chambered a round with a satisfying click-clack.

Merritt hit the door hard with his booted foot—and damn near shattered his shinbone. His forward momentum sent him hurtling into the door, where his knee came up into his mouth—driving a sharp nail of pain straight to the center of his skull. He staggered back and reflexively wiped the back of his glove across his mouth. It came back covered with blood. His front teeth felt loose.

Doesn’t matter.

Merritt leveled the shotgun at the door handles and blasted a foot-wide hole in their place. He chambered another breaching round and quickly blasted similar holes at the top and bottom where the doors met—the most likely spot for reinforcing bolts.

 

Hundreds of yards away, the FBI camp was pandemonium. Agents and police scrambled to gather rescue gear while others scrambled to order no one to go anywhere near the site of the attack. It was a disorganized mess. Somewhere in the chaos Trear heard distant shotgun blasts.

He shouted, “Who’s shooting? Decker, order them to cease fire!”

“Com is down.”

 

Merritt rammed his shoulder into the French doors, bashing them in. He stumbled into a neo-mission-style entertainment room with wide-plank wooden floors. There was a sunken area of sectional sofas in front of a large plasma screen television. The lights here blazed brilliantly, practically blinding him. Nonetheless he craned his neck and weaved from side to side. He knew what he had to do.

The bomb disposal team was taken out by weaponized acoustics, and he wasn’t going to let that happen to him. Merritt raised his shotgun and noticed half a dozen different sensors spaced along the ceiling over each wall—behind the brilliant lights.

A clear and commanding voice called from the doorway leading farther into the house. “You don’t belong here!”

Merritt’s response came out reflexively. “Fuck you, Sobol.”

Merritt heard footsteps approaching him over the wooden floor. It was uncanny. There was definitely the sense that someone was there. A change in the echoes of the room. That’s when Merritt felt as much as heard the deepest sound he’d ever experienced pass over and through him. The nearby coffee table started vibrating so badly that the glass panels fell out of it.

Merritt twisted to look back up at the ceiling and noticed a reflected LED light pulsating on the back of one of the round sensor pods. He raised the shotgun just as an ungodly feeling of horror gripped him. His intestines were trying to strangle him, and he felt his eyes preparing to explode. He screamed in agony and fired the shotgun.

Immediately the pain stopped. Merritt paused for a second to lean over and vomit on the floor, but he was immediately back up. His eyes and nose were bleeding, but he wiped it away and swiveled around to blast another Hatton round into an identical sensor on the far wall. Then the interior wall. He swayed as he pulled more shotgun shells from his cargo pants pockets and started reloading the Remington. Blood dripped onto his fingers from his nose.

“You son of a bitch! I’m going to shut you down, Sobol!” Merritt slid a shell into the magazine. “You hear me?” His words echoed in the big house.

A voice right behind him said, “There’s no need to shout. I can hear you.”

Merritt jumped and turned around, letting loose a shotgun blast into the wall behind him.

The voice was still there, just inches from his face. “I see you got past the firewall.”

How the hell was this possible? The sound was appearing in midair. No stereo could possibly do that. Merritt scanned the arrays of sensors again, but none were visibly active.

The voice was right in his ear, whispering. “They knew you would die, but they sent you, anyway.”

Merritt jumped away, twisting his gloved finger in his ear as though an insect had flown into it. “Son of a—”

Merritt let the shotgun hang from its shoulder strap while he drew one of his twin P14-45 pistols. The voice continued in his ear, but there was no pain. No agonizing constriction of his intestines.

“They’re willing to sacrifice you to find out what I’m capable of.”

“Keep talking, asshole.” Merritt stood in formal range stance—aiming at the ceiling sensors. He started shooting them out, one by one, waiting a second after each shot.

“Did they even tell you—”

The fourth shot cut him off. A reflective, white plastic panel shattered as the bullet hit it. The voice was gone. Merritt shot out another identical sensor on the far wall, then flipped the safety on the pistol, holstering it. “Blah, blah, blah.”

Merritt noticed his reflection in a mirror over the mantel as he walked farther into the room. His whole face was crimson red and covered in blisters, with the headset melted onto his cheek. His Pro-Tec helmet had protected his scalp, but the whites of his eyes were shockingly blood red—and blood trailed down from his nose over his burnt chin. The Nomex hood and suit had kept him alive, but he might soon be entering cataleptic shock. The dizziness came at him in waves. He felt the rage building in him again. His men had had much worse.

Merritt heard a slight tick sound and a sizzle of static electricity. He spun around to see the plasma-screen television come to life. A 3-D graphic of the mansion as seen from the air resolved on-screen. It looked like a briefing schematic.

“You’re here for the server room. It’s down the hall, to the left, and to the left again. I’m sure they gave you a map, but in case it burned up, here are directions….” The 3-D graphic leaped into action, with the camera performing a virtual fly-through, coming down on the mansion from above, straight through the doors Merritt had entered by. The camera flew down the adjoining hall, banked left, then sailed through the billiard room, left, and up to the cellar door—which flung open as the camera went down into blackness. It was like a first-person video game.

Merritt grabbed an end table nearby, clearing off the lamp standing on it.

Sobol’s voice continued, oblivious. “Did you want me to replay that? Yes or no.”

The face of the plasma-screen television shattered under the impact of the heavy end table, and the entire thing keeled over backward on its stand—sending up a puff of electrical smoke as it died hitting the floor.

“No more mind games.” Merritt strode past it and grabbed a piece of the sectional sofa, pulling it up with great effort from the sunken area onto the main floor level. He shouldered it in front of him as he advanced toward the doorway leading farther into the house. He held the shotgun in his free hand.

The dimensions of Sobol’s house went beyond anything Merritt would consider a home. To him it felt more like a university building. He guessed these were twelve-to sixteen-foot ceilings, and the doors and adjoining hallways were all two or three times wider and taller than necessary. The hall adjoining the entertainment area was easily ten feet wide, with terra cotta tile flooring in two-foot squares. The hall could pass as a serviceable elevator lobby for the Biltmore. It ran along the center of the house and was braced here and there with gargantuan furniture—angry-looking armoires and iron-studded cabinets done in something akin to Spanish Inquisition style. They looked large enough to serve as a redoubt in the event of Indian attack.

As he stood at the entrance to the wide hallway, Merritt leaned right and left to glimpse a little of what lay ahead. He couldn’t see into any of the doorways. He pushed the sofa section onward, down the left side of the hall. The sofa’s metal-studded feet scraped the tile like nails on a chalkboard.

Suddenly the floor dropped away beneath the sofa section, and Merritt caught himself just before pitching forward into the yawning blackness below the trapdoor. The sofa splashed into a water-filled pit, and then the floor section snapped up, almost hitting Merritt in the face. He heard a latch click, locking the floor in place. It was obviously meant to prevent escape from the pit once a victim fell in.

Merritt pounded the trapdoor with the butt of his shotgun. The floor seemed firm. He didn’t want to take any chances, so he backed up to get a running start. He sprinted and leaped over the farthest seam of the trapdoor, landing in a tumble he purposely shortened by rolling hard into an armoire the size and height of a squatter’s shack. In a moment he was up and ready with the shotgun.

He felt the humming sound of the acoustic weapons powering up. He glanced right and left up near the ceiling and found the nearest acoustic pod. A blast from the shotgun took it clean off the wall. He found its twin behind him and blasted that as well. He collected his breath in the resulting silence.

Suddenly a voice in front of him said, “Slap a pair of tits and a ponytail on you, and we’ve got ourselves a game.”

Merritt just gave Sobol’s voice the finger. Let him talk. Merritt had to conserve ammunition.

It was time to orient himself. He pulled a laminated floor plan card of Sobol’s house from his chest pocket. It was warped from the heat of the fire but still legible. Merritt found his location and realized he wasn’t far from the cellar door—and the pit that swallowed the bomb disposal robot. Merritt looked up and noticed the silence.

“What’s the matter, Sobol? Run out of things to say?”

The voice spoke from the same place—right in front of him. “I didn’t catch that.”

“I said, cat got your tongue?”

“I didn’t catch that.”

It couldn’t really understand him. This was all an elaborate technological trick. A logic tree with weaponry.

“Dead retard.” Merritt pocketed the card and put a shoulder behind the heavy armoire, trying to push it ahead of him. It insisted on being stationary. He took a step back to look at it. He’d seen railroad trestles built with less wood. It looked a century old and its shelves were lined with Talavera plates and wooden carvings of Dia de los Muertos figurines. Merritt smiled humorlessly at the little skeletons cavorting and going about their daily business—apparently unaffected by their demise. Real cute.

He grabbed a bronze candlestick off the shelf and looked ahead of him. A twenty-foot stretch of barren hall lay before him. After that, he’d be at the doorway opening onto the billiards room—which led to the cellar door.

He slung the shotgun and got down onto his belly, spreading his weight over the tile floor. He turned back to rap the hollow floor behind him—to get a sense for its sound. Then he rapped the floor under him. Solid. Very different sound. Merritt faced forward again, and he started crawling, cautiously rapping on the floor with the heavy candlestick as he went.

Merritt was halfway along the open stretch of hall when Sobol’s voice spoke again a foot or so in front of Merritt’s face. “I hate to interrupt, but now I have to kill you.”

Merritt heard something from deep inside the house. It sounded like a sump pump—only many times larger than the one in Merritt’s house. The sound of water coursing through pipes came to his ears, and suddenly water began to silently spread out across the floor from an unseen vent beneath the baseboards. Then Merritt glanced left, right, and back behind him. The water was coming at him from ahead and behind—spreading out from the walls across the tile floor about a half-inch deep. Merritt got up into a crouch, not sure what to do next. He’d never reach the armoire before the water overtook him.

And what could the water do, anyway? Sobol could never fill this room—there were six or seven doorways leading into it. Merritt started scanning the walls for hidden danger. And he quickly found it.

Ahead of him, one of the electrical outlets in the wall suddenly extended out and down onto the floor. It was mounted on the end of a curved bar. A zap and pop were audible as the socket hit the surface of the water—which was now electrified.

“Shit!” Merritt leaped to his feet and looked around for something to stand on. Nothing. He quickly flipped the shotgun from his back and blasted two holes in the lath and plaster wall near him—one about a foot from the floor, and another at hand-holding height. He let the shotgun fall on its shoulder strap as he jumped, latching on to the jagged edges of the holes just as water collided beneath him from both directions.

Merritt almost lost his grip as the thin slats of broken wood snapped under his weight. But he soon found studs and cross-braces to cling to. He took a deep breath and leaned his burnt face against the cool plaster. He was really starting to feel the pain of his burns now. Second-degree burns were the worst for pain. He collected himself, then glanced beneath him.

The water was now about three inches deep on the floor and was draining through the seams of several pits. The cascade of water echoed below the floor. More water was constantly being pumped in, but it appeared to have found equilibrium. The humming sound of the electrified surface was unnerving.

Merritt looked ahead. He was only eight feet or so from the billiard room doorway, and there was a step up—so the water was not rushing into it.

Merritt began ripping out lath slats and kicking in the plaster wall ahead of him. His bulletproof gloves and armored knuckle plates helped as he repeatedly punched the cracked edge of the rapidly expanding hole. The debris fell into the buzzing water below.

It took him a good five minutes, but he was soon at the edge of the billiard room doorway. He leaned over to gaze inside. It contained twin pool tables and a bar that would suffice for a small town. He immediately considered the many ways this room could kill him. High-speed billiard balls fired from an antique cannon. Molotov cocktails of twenty-year-old scotch. Asbestos poisoning. Choking hazards. He couldn’t begin to guess.

Even at this distance, Merritt could see one of the acoustic weapon sensors up near the ceiling. He unholstered his pistol with his right hand while holding on to a wooden beam with the other. He raised the gun, aimed carefully, and sent three shots into the pod. Parts of it fell to the carpeted floor at the foot of the bar.

Merritt stared at the room. What the hell…

He unhooked a flash-bang grenade from his web harness. The grenade handle was melted onto the webbing, but he managed to pull it off. He struggled to remove the pin while still holding on to the beam. Most people thought you could pull the pin with your teeth, but that was a great way to crack a tooth or blast your head off—or both. He finally wrapped his hand around the beam and pulled the pin out with his forefinger. He tossed the grenade into the center of the nearest pool table—then he ducked around the corner.

The blast was deafening even at this distance. The beams of the house shook, and he heard lots of shattering glass. He hoped it would confuse any infrared or acoustical sensors. Merritt swung around the corner and ran headlong toward the nearest table—whose felt top was scorched and smoking from the blast.

Merritt lunged onto the tabletop and rolled over its far edge. Then he rolled over the next one as well, landing like a cat, crouched and ready for action with the shotgun. He covered the last ten feet to the opposite doorway and slammed his body against the wall there. He was breathing hard—but then again his heart had been beating 180 times a minute since he entered the house.

The telltale sound of acoustical weapons powering up reached him. He aimed upward and blasted the pod into plastic confetti that rained down on him. He scanned the ceiling, but none of the other pods seemed threatening.

The cellar door was four feet ahead and to his left. The floor before it was terra cotta tile—but he knew it concealed the pit that had swallowed the FBI’s bomb disposal robot. He looked for seams, but the pit was well concealed.

Merritt stood back at the edge of the short hall, then leaned forward and depressed the cellar’s lever door handle with the shotgun barrel.

Suddenly a four-foot section of floor in front of the cellar door fell away, revealing a brick-lined pit splashing with water. The tip of a robot arm extended above the water’s surface. Merritt quickly jumped to the far side of the pit, then leaned forward and grabbed the cellar door handle. He pried the door open as it resisted. He shoved the shotgun behind the door, pointing at the top hinge.

BOOM!

The top of the door fell away from the wall, and with a little twisting and kicking, the other hinge ripped off. The door fell into the pit, smacking the water with its flat face.

Merritt looked into the doorway and could see the top of a flight of steps leading downward. A barred gate blocked his path. They were stainless steel bars, like the kind found on the inner door of a bank vault. A numeric keypad was set into the steel strike plate.

The voice spoke, this time right behind Merritt’s head. “Dave, Stop. Stop, Dave.”

“Fuck off, Sobol.” Merritt concentrated on the keypad in the strike plate. He was no security specialist, and he knew it was probably booby-trapped. He aimed the shotgun at an angle and squeezed off a Hatton round into the strike plate. The lead and wax slug disintegrated into a pall of smoke. Merritt waved it away and looked at the strike plate. The keypad was entirely gone—leaving behind only a small round hole where its electronics entered the steel gate mechanism. Otherwise the strike plate was undamaged. Hot lead was useless against it.

Merritt unholstered his second P14 pistol. He’d give hot copper a try. Merritt aimed at the strike plate, then fired repeatedly at the same spot. Bullet holes appeared in the far wall as they ricocheted. After the last shot, he inspected the damage. Fourteen shots and he had successfully dulled the finish—barely.

Merritt sank down to lean his back against the wall. Waucheuer and the others had been carrying the heavy-duty breaching kit—the cutting charges and boosters. All Merritt had was a roll of strip explosives, and that wouldn’t take out this steel gate.

Sobol’s voice was right there with him. “Does it help to know that there’s nothing important here?”

Merritt looked down into the watery pit. He examined its walls. They were of brick painted with thick black marine paint. The pit was on the same level as the rest of the cellar—and presumably the server room.

Merritt holstered his pistol and took the remaining grenades from his web harness. He had four flash-bang grenades left. He took the roll of Primasheet and det cord from his thigh pocket and wrapped them tightly around the grenades. Then he stood, straddling the corner of the pit. He dropped the package into the water, reeling out detonator cord as it fell. Then he ducked around the corner and activated the detonator.

The muffled blast shot a geyser of water into the ceiling. The floor trembled for a few moments. Merritt soon heard the sound of water rushing through an opening. He had cracked the brick wall.

He came back to the edge of the pit and could see water draining through the wall and into the server room.

A klaxon suddenly sounded in the house, and fire strobes flickered on the ceiling. A British female voice spoke on a regular PA system, “Primary data center penetrated. Commencing self-destruct sequence.” There was a pause. “And there is no countdown.”

“Shit!” Merritt knew the front door was around the corner and down the front hall. He sprinted around the corner as a piercing beep filled the house. It was like a smoke detector on steroids—drilling into his brain.

The sprinkler caps popped off in the ceiling above him, and sprinkler heads clicked down. He heard the hiss of pressure building up. Merritt looked ahead. The front door of the mansion still stood wide open about a hundred feet ahead—wedged open by that blessed bomb squad team. He sprinted for the opening with everything he had.

The sprinkler heads came to life, spraying gasoline over the stylish décor. He was still sixty feet from the front door when he saw a bright halogen bulb start to burn intensely up near the ceiling in the foyer. The light grew so intense that Merritt couldn’t look directly at it.

When the bulb exploded—sending a wall of flame roaring toward him—Merritt’s brain trotted forward a candidate for his last mortal thought:

I’ll never see my daughters grow up.

Without warning, the floor gave way beneath him as he ran. A pit trap swallowed him. He fell into blackness, chased by flames that lit up the brackish water. Time slowed down, and Merritt had the leisure to consider what a bastard Sobol was; he’d activated a pit trap after letting the bomb disposal robot drive down the hallway safely.

The devious bastard.

Merritt hit the water face-first and blacked out as the trapdoor snapped shut above him.

 

Among the agents surrounding the mansion a shout went up. It was quickly followed by hundreds of other voices shouting. Sobol’s mansion was now glowing orange. Then flames burst out through literally all of its windows. In seconds the entire structure was engulfed in flames reaching fifty feet into the air. The half-dozen outbuildings burst into flames, too, and were quickly roaring infernos.

Trear numbly watched the scene. It was the nightmarish Waco visual he’d dreaded—one almost certainly combined with the worst casualties ever suffered by the FBI in a single operation. And all of Sobol’s data were going up in flames. Along with Trear’s career.