The man lay on the body as it jerked about for a few seconds before going still. He waited, unmoving, listening. The action had taken place about three hundred yards from the house, and they were far enough away to be obscured by darkness. He doubted the man’s aborted shout had reached the ears of anyone else. There were klieg lights that would go on in a general alarm or intruder emergency, but nothing happened.

When the intruder was assured that the alarm had not been raised, he rose up from the dead guard. Kneeling, he searched the body, removing a radio, two magnetic key cards, a flashlight, and the man’s hat. He turned on the radio and saw it was set to broadcast at channel 15 in the VHF range. He left it on in reception mode and tucked it in his belt, left the gun where it was, put the hat on his head, and tucked the magnetic key cards into his shirt pocket.

He grabbed the feet of the body and dragged it back into the hedge, hiding it near where the man’s partner lay. Then he proceeded westward, walking in the gap between the hedge and the wall. When he came to the property corner, he turned and walked north, a distance—according to his GPS—of five hundred yards. He was now on the opposite side of the house and had only to cross a 150-yard expanse of lawn.

There he waited for the faint vibration of his cell phone’s timer to signal the next phase.

When it came, he snugged the dead guard’s hat tighter onto his head and proceeded across the grass, walking purposefully, flashlight on, moving it back and forth. While the hat wouldn’t fool anyone close up, he would look all right from a distance.

The intruder was almost completely soaked in blood, and he knew if the other dogs scented him, they would freak out. But that would not happen unless the wind, which was coming from the east, shifted: and it would not shift in the weather pattern at this time of night.

He made it across the space unseen, and merged into the bushes along the side of the house just as a man on patrol with a dog came around from the front, walking along the grass. The movement of air was still in his favor. He waited in the dark until they had passed around the corner, and then he moved between bushes and house to the beginning of the flagstone patio, which surrounded the pool. A long pergola ran alongside the patio, and he used that as cover to reach a small cabana containing the pool pump and filters. The door was locked, but it was standard hardware that came with the shed and therefore rudimentary. He jimmied it and stepped into the cramped, darkened space, closing the door only partway.

Again he waited for the vibration.

He now raised the radio and held it to his lips, while taking out a small magnet. He depressed the BROADCAST button while holding the magnet near the mike.

“I’m at the pool,” he whispered. “Got a big snake here, need backup.” His voice, muffled in static thanks to the magnet, was almost unintelligible.

“What’s that about a snake?” came the reply. “Didn’t copy, repeat.”

He repeated the message, easing up slightly on the magnet to reduce the static.

“Copy, who’s this?” came the reply.

Now he broadcast just static.

“All right, I’m on my way over.”

He knew it would be the closest responder: the man with the dog who had recently passed him. As expected, the man came around the corner again with the dog on a leash, and he paused, sweeping his light this way and that. “Hey, where are you? Is that Pretorious?”

He remained in the dark, waiting.

“Son of a bitch,” the guard muttered, and then did exactly as expected—he released the dog and said: “Go find the snake. Go find it.”

The dog, scenting the man in the cabana, naturally made a beeline for him and charged through the door, where he was met with the flashing point of the SOG. The dog fell forward silently.

“Sadie? Sadie? What the hell?” The guard pulled his sidearm and, gripping it, ran into the cabana, only to be met with the same knife to the throat. The pistol fired as the man went down.

Now, this was an unfortunate development. The alarm would be raised prematurely. But knowing the psychology of his target—the man’s macho instincts, his brutal toughness, his loathing of cowardly behavior—he felt sure that one gunshot wouldn’t be enough to send him into the panic room. No: the man would arm himself, call his guards, figure out what was going on, and stay put—for the time being.

He was well along on his plan, with three men and two dogs down, which was exactly half the security complement. But he now had to move much faster, before the remainder could discover the extent of their losses, organize themselves, and close ranks in defense of the target.

All this consideration took less than a second in the intruder’s mind. He snatched up the dying guard’s radio and jumped over the body, still flopping and gurgling. Removing another magnet from his pocket and a piece of sticky tape, he taped down the TRANSMIT button of the man’s radio, slapped the magnet on, and dropped them onto the lawn. The sound of the gunshot had of course alerted the other security guards, and his radio had burst into overlapping queries as the guards tried to check in with each other, figure out where each was, and determine who if anyone might be missing. With the magnet and tape, he had at least rendered their main channel useless with loud static, and with the other guard’s radio he did the same to the emergency backup channel. That would sow confusion for at least a few minutes until the remaining guards found and agreed on a clear channel.

A few minutes were all he needed.

The klieg lights were snapping on. A siren sounded. He had to move very fast. There was no longer any point in stealth: he heaved a piece of porch furniture through the sliding glass doors, setting off another alarm, and then he leapt through the breach and raced across the living room to the stairs, taking them three at a time to the second floor.

“Hey!” He heard a guard running behind him.

He stopped, whirled about, dropped to one knee, and fired his Glock, taking off the top of the guard’s head and then dropping a second guard who came tearing around the corner after him.

Five guards, two dogs.

Sprinting along the second-floor corridor, he reached the target’s bedroom door. It was made of solid steel and was, as expected, locked. Reaching into his backpack, he slapped a pre-prepared packet of C-4 with detonator and sticky pad onto the lock, ran around the corner, and entered the wife’s room. They had recently divorced, and the steel door to her empty room was wide open, as he’d expected. The panic room stood between the target and his wife’s room, and each had their own door into it. The panic room’s door lay behind a panel on the wall, which he yanked open. The door beyond was shut, but it wasn’t yet in full lockdown mode and could be opened—unlike the target’s huge steel bedroom door—with a single charge of C-4. He slapped a second charge on the wife’s panic room door, retreated to a safe distance, and then, with a remote detonator, blew both charges simultaneously—the target’s bedroom door and the wife’s panic room door—so they sounded like one charge. The charge on the steel bedroom door wasn’t strong enough to blow it open—it was merely intended to scare the shit out of the owner.

But the charge on the panic room door was heavier, and it did indeed knock the unsecured but locked door open. The intruder slipped inside the panic room, where the air was filled with smoke and dust. The lights were off. He quickly took up a position just next to the door in the far wall of the little room: that is, the door leading into the target’s bedroom. Almost immediately he heard the target opening the door and stumbling inside, in terror and confusion due to the ineffectual explosion he’d just heard outside his bedroom door. The man turned, pulled shut the door, and slammed home the bolts. Then he scrabbled along the wall, found the switch, and turned on the lights.

And then he stared at the intruder already inside the panic room, his eyes widening. Yes, indeed, the target had just locked himself inside the panic room with his about-to-be killer. The intruder deeply enjoyed this moment of irony. The target was dressed only in boxer shorts, his comb-over askew, eyes bloodshot and bulging, slack jowls quivering, belly protruding. He still carried the sour reek of vodka.

“Mr. Viktor Alexeievich Bogachyov, I presume?”

The victim stared at him in abject terror. “What…who…are you…and for God’s sake—why?”

“Why not?” said the intruder, raising the SOG knife.

*