“Vee-one.”
It was the same call-out used by the aviation industry. Vee-one meant the aircraft had reached sufficient takeoff speed and there was no going back.
Robie acknowledged that command and turned his comm pack off. From now until either he or his opponents were dead, there would be nothing more said.
His helmet was fitted with a wireless camera so that his handlers could see everything that he could. They would either watch Robie win, or else see the bullets coming that would kill him.
An M11 in his right hand, he opened the trapdoor and looked around.
Nothing.
He climbed up and quietly set the trapdoor back into place. The basement was what one would expect in an old, crappy house in a tattered neighborhood—it was dirty and smelled of mold.
But there was one element of interest. In a far corner was a metal box about six feet in length. He slipped over to it, squatted down, pulled an instrument from his belt, and ran it over the box. He looked at the readout meter.
Cobalt bomb confirmed. It wasn’t armed yet. They wouldn’t do so until they moved it to Oxford Circus.
And Robie also knew that he would keep himself between them and the bomb at all times.
He holstered his M11 and readied his UMP.
He rose and moved to the wooden stairs. From his intelligence briefing on the house he knew that the fourth riser up squeaked, so he went from the third to the fifth.
In addition to him, there were currently seventeen people inside this place.
Robie’s goal was to kill sixteen of them.
The fire selector on his UMP was set to two shots. One shot was enough to kill any man if placed properly, but Robie had left no room for chance.
The basement door was partially open.
He peered through it into the kitchen.
Two men sat at a table drinking what looked to be cups of coffee. They apparently needed a stimulant at this late hour.
He looked at his watch through his panoramic goggles.
The second hand was just sweeping to twelve.
Four…three…two…
On cue, the lights in the house went out as the power was cut.
Through his helmet Robie saw the two men clear as day jerk forward and then stand.
Then he watched them fall from suppressed UMP bursts delivered to their chests.
Two down, fourteen to go.
Robie was through the kitchen in three seconds and then hit the hallway.
His finger nudged the shot selector to full auto.
He did so because darkness tended to make people congregate closer.
Sure enough, coming down the narrow hall were three men, all with guns.
They opened fire. With pistols.
Robie pulled the UMP’s trigger, and two seconds and twenty-six rounds of concentrated fire later there were three more dead men on the floor of this humble abode. The UMP’s ejector sent the spent casings tumbling to the floor, where they sounded like metal pearls cascading from a broken necklace.
Five down, eleven to go.
He ejected the mag, slapped in a fresh one, and turned and rolled to his right as more gunfire came at him.
He counted two heads through his goggles.
He emptied half his UMP mag at them.
Seven down, nine to go.
Two more men appeared at the head of the stairs and fired down at Robie.
He could see that they had on NVGs as well, so his tactical advantage had lessened.
It wasn’t nearly as much fun on his end.
Twelve down, four to go.
He rose, turned, and rolled out of the way as a volley of machine-gun fire blew down the stairs, ripping off part of the handrail, shredding the wall, and exploding a slew of the risers.
With his night vision, Robie could see where it was coming from.
Instead of trying to attack back up the stairs, he moved to his left, where the upper part of the stairway was partially covered by the wall rising from the lower floor.