They were going close to 60 mph by the time the house came into full view-their engines roaring and the red, white, and blue emergency lights flashing their official warning. A man in a suit was waiting for them at the edge of the circular drive. He had a radio in one hand and his other hand rested on the butt of his still-holstered gun.
Castillo smiled and told his driver, "Run him over."
The heavy Suburban took the turn, its wheels squealing and emergency lights flashing. The man in the suit was still under the illusion that he was about to have a confrontation with a fellow federal employee. He'd been told by Kennedy that Director Ross wanted to put Rapp under protective custody. At the last second the driver jerked the wheel to the right, blew through a three-foot hedge, and hit the guard with the Suburban's front right fender. The passenger-side rear wheel came to a stop on the man's chest. Every door on the Suburban flew open except the driver's. Five men, all dressed in matching coveralls and baseball caps, jumped out. Castillo was barely out the door when a second guard came around the corner of the house. This man had his gun drawn. Castillo raised his Uzi submachine gun with one arm and pulled the trigger.
Castillo wasn't the only man who had seen the guard. Within two seconds the man was hammered to the ground by no fewer than ten bullets. A third guard was dispatched in roughly the same manner as he came around the other side of the house. One of Castillo's men dropped to a knee to line up the first RPG shot on the house. Castillo banged his fist on the hood of the Suburban and yelled at the driver to move the vehicle farther away. Two seconds later the truck was clear and the first RPG was fired.
Four men, three of them with machine guns and one of them with an RPG, were headed around to the back of the house. Castillo surveyed the scene. So far everything was going according to plan. The debris from the first RPG was beginning to settle and the third vehicle had just arrived after getting rid of the gate. Castillo looked at the door. As far as he could tell, it was still intact. "Hit it again!" he yelled.
A second round was loaded. Castillo checked the area behind the man to make sure no one was standing in the back blast zone, which was a good way to get killed or severely burned. "Shoot!" he screamed.
The round hit the door squarely and a large section of the portico's ceiling broke free and crashed to the ground. Castillo ran along the sidewalk and up the three steps. He covered his mouth against the cloud of dust and gave the door a solid kick. He might as well have been kicking the side of a mountain. The door didn't budge an inch. As more of the dust settled Castillo bent over to examine the damage done by the RPGs. There were two holes in the door not quite big enough for him to fit his fist through. The wood was splintered away but beneath it, he could see the rough edges of bent steel. "What the fuck?" he exclaimed.
The Salvadoran ran his hand along the door and gave the handle a twist. This was when he noticed that the door opened out, not in. Aware that he didn't have all the time in the world, Castillo ran back to the driveway and grabbed the RPG from his man. "Give me that damn thing!" He loaded another round, took careful aim and squeezed the trigger. There was yet another explosion, and more of the porch ceiling came crashing down. Castillo's men were now firing at the windows and fanning out around the house. When enough of the dust had settled, Castillo was happy to see that there was a hole where the door handle used to be. He barked at one of the drivers, "Grab a crowbar and go open that thing."
Castillo realized his ears were ringing and he worked his jaw from one side to the other to see if it would help eliminate the harsh noise. It was then that he noticed the pock marks the bullets were making on the windows. "Why am I fucking around with this door?" he asked himself. "Here," he handed the RPG to the man standing next to him, "reload this thing."
How stupid, Castillo thought. He heard an explosion from the rear of the house and hoped the other men were making better progress.
57
Rapp raced into his bedroom and didn't bother with the light switch. There was no sense letting them know where he was. The bag of stuff Coleman had brought him was on the floor next to the bed. Rapp dropped down a little too quickly and pain shot through his left knee. He swore under his breath as he screwed the silencer onto the end of the Glock, slammed in a magazine, and chambered a round. He grabbed the two extra magazines and stuffed one in each back pocket. Training, skill, instinct, and a little bit of luck was what kept people alive in these situations. It was his training that told him to grab the earplugs, the tactical knife, and the flashlight.
Holding the earplugs in his hand, he paused for a split second, his mind registering that something didn't seem quite right. He'd been through enough of this stuff before to know what certain types of battles sounded like. This one was decidedly not covert, and although Rapp had yet to stop and think of who might be attacking a CIA safe house, he had noted that something seemed out of place. Professionals preferred silenced weapons for three reasons. The first was that they drew less attention and they allowed you to sneak up on people. The second was to differentiate yourself from the opponent. If everyone on the team used a silenced weapon and you heard an unsuppressed weapon fired during an operation, you knew the bad guys were on to you. The third and last reason was practical. Silenced weapons saved your hearing.
With that in mind, Rapp put in his foam earplugs and crawled over to the window. He stayed off to one side and peeked down onto the patio area around the pool. The first thing he noticed, he'd expected. There were four men, three of whom were firing machine guns at the house. They were all dressed in dark coveralls. A fourth man was loading an RPG and doing a very clumsy job of it. Rapp looked beyond the men toward the stables and was relieved to see no one paying any attention to the place. Irene, Tommy, and Steven should be safe by now. Rapp turned his attention back to the four men and noted again that something wasn't right. Tactical teams didn't use RPGs. They used shaped charges to blow open doors and windows. The RPG was an infantry weapon, originally designed to be used against tanks. The next oddity that Rapp noticed was that these guys were standing way too close to one another, and they were firing their weapons from the hip. Rapp's eyes and brain were experiencing what a fine art dealer goes through when he looks at a reproduction of a well-known original for the first time. From a distance everything looks fine, but upon closer inspection all of the details are wrong. He noticed for the first time that the men were wearing FBI baseball caps. Rapp knew his fair share of FBI agents. They had a certain demeanor about them, and none of these guys fit the bill.
Rapp reached out and turned the lock on the window. With his hand as close to the edge as possible he slowly pushed up on the bottom half of the double hung window. The din from outside rushed into the room along with the chill night air. Rapp was on his right knee, his left foot planted firmly on the ground, the sill of the window at his chest. He took a quick peek, noted the position of each man, and then raised the silenced Glock and held it next to his face, the thick black silencer pointed at the ceiling. They were approximately fifty feet from the house and standing still as they fired at the house. This was going to be like shooting fish in a barrel. Rapp took in a deep breath, extended his left hand through the open window, and revealed only a third of his body as he moved into firing position. As was his habit, he started on the left and moved to the right.