The Silent War

HUMPHRIES MANSION

Fuchs crouched behind the makeshift barricade jammed at the top of the stairs, peering into the shadows. Some light from the garden outside was leaking through the grills covering the upstairs windows. He could hear movement downstairs, but it was almost impossible to see anything with all the indoor lights off. Nodon has a hand torch, he knew, but to turn it on would simply give the guards a target to shoot at.

“Nodon,” he whispered, “pull down some of the drapes on the windows.”

The crewman scuttled away, and Fuchs heard ripping noises, then a muffled thud.

A strong voice called from the first floor, “Whoever you are, you can’t get out of here. You’re trapped. Better give yourselves up and let us turn you over to the authorities.”

Fuchs bit back the snarling reply he wanted to make. Nodon slithered up and pushed some bunched-up fabric into his hands. “Will this do, Captain?” he asked.

“We’ll see,” Fuchs whispered back.

A light flashed momentarily in the darkness and a man yowled with pain. Amarjagal, halfway across the landing, had fired her gun at someone creeping silently up the steps. But not silently enough. The Mongol woman had heard him and shot him with her laser pistol. Its beam was invisible, but the fabric of the guard’s clothing flashed when it was hit. Fuchs heard the man tumbling down the carpeted stairs.

We need some light, Fuchs said to himself. If I can set this drapery afire we can use it as a torch.

Another spark of light splashed against the table, just past Fuchs’s ear. He smelled burning wood.

“Behind us!” Sanja screamed in his native Mongol dialect.

Fuchs turned as both Sanja and Nodon fired blindly down the hallway. There’s another staircase! he realized. Fool! Fool! You should have thought of that, should have—

Nodon screamed with pain as a bolt struck him and grabbed his shoulder. Fuchs snatched the gun from Nodon’s fingers and fired blindly down the hall. In the corner of his eye he saw Amarjagal shooting at a pair of figures crawling up the steps.

Dropping Nodon’s gun, Fuchs bunched the drapery fabric in one hand and fired his gun into it. The stuff smoldered. He fired again, and it burst into flame. So much for fire-retardant materials, he thought. Put a hot enough source on it and it will burn.

“Shoot at them,” he ordered Sanja. “Keep their heads down.”

Sanja obediently fired down the hallway, even picking up Nodon’s gun and shooting with both hands.

Fuchs scrambled to his feet and plunged down the hall, bellowing like a charging bull, firing his own gun with one hand and waving the blazing drapery over his head with the other. Whoever was down there was still ducking, not firing back. Fuchs saw the back stairwell, skidded to a stop and threw the fiery fabric down the steps. For good measure he sprayed the stairwell with his gun.

He saw several men backing down the stairs as the drapery tumbled down. The carpeting on the steps began to smoke and an alarm started screeching in the flickering shadows.

Humphries had gone from his office into his adjoining bedroom, eyes wide with fright. He could feel his heart pounding beneath his ribs, hear the pulse thundering in his ears so loudly he barely heard Ferrer shouting at him.

Somebody’s broken into my house, screeched a voice in his head. Somebody’s gotten into my home!

The emergency lights were on and the cermet shutters had sealed off the bedroom from the office and the hallway beyond it. Nobody can get to me, Humphries told himself. There’s two fireproof doors between me and them. I’m safe. They can’t reach me. The guards will round them up. I’m safe in here.

Still in her white terrycloth robe, Ferrer grabbed him by both shoulders. “It’s Fuchs!” she shouted at him. “Look at the display!”

The wall screen showed a stubby miniature bear of a man charging down the hallway outside, swinging a blazing length of drapery.

“Fuchs?” Humphries gasped. It was difficult to make out the man’s face in the false-color image of the infrared camera. “It can’t be!”

Ferrer looked angry and disgusted. “It is! The computer’s matched his image and his voice. It’s Fuchs and three of his henchmen.”

“Here?”

“He’s come to kill you!” she snapped.

“No! He can’t! They’ll—”

“FIRE!” the computer’s emergency warning sounded. “FIRE IN THE REAR STAIRWELL.”

Humphries froze, staring at the wall screen, which now showed the rear stairs blazing.

“Why don’t the sprinklers come on?” he demanded.

“The water’s off,” she reminded him.

“No water?” Humphries bleated.

“The building’s concrete,” Ferrer said. “Seal off the burning area and let the fire consume all the oxygen and kill itself. And anybody in the burning section.”

Humphries felt the panic in him subside a little. She’s right, he thought. Let the fire burn itself out. He stood up straighter, watching the wallscreen’s display.

“Anybody caught in there,” he said, pointing shakily, “is going to get burned to death. Fuchs is going to roast, just as if he were in hell.”

Hurrying back to the makeshift barricade at the top of the main staircase, Fuchs could smell smoke wafting up from the rear stairs.

“FIRE!” said a synthesized voice, calm and flat but heavily amplified. “FIRE IN THE REAR STAIRWELL.”

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Sanja hissed in his ear.

“No!” Fuchs snapped. “Not till we get Humphries.”

Amarjagal crawled to them. “More guards down there,” she said. “They will charge up the stairs.”

From the corner of his eye Fuchs could see the flickering light of the flames in the rear stairwell. They can’t attack us from that direction, he thought. Then he realized, And we can’t retreat that way, either.

Laser bolts sizzled against the upturned table and scorched the wall behind them.

“Here they come!”

Even in the shadowy light Fuchs could see a team of guards charging up the stairs, firing their handguns as others down in the entryway also fired up at them.

Fuchs rolled to one side of the table, where his crew had laid a heavy marble bust from one of the tables down the hall. He noticed that one of the laser blasts had ignited a painting on the wall behind them. Grunting with the effort, he lifted the bust with both hands, raised it above the edge of the upturned table, and hurled it down the stairs. It bounced down the steps, scattering the approaching guards like a bowling ball. Sanja and Amargjagal fired at them. Fuchs heard screams of pain.

“We must get out of here,” Amarjagal said flatly. There was no panic in her voice, not even fear. It was simply a statement of fact.

And Fuchs knew she was right. But they were surrounded, trapped. And Humphries was untouched.