Storm Front

Any other man might have at least considered aborting the mission. Not Volkov. He just retreated and reassessed, scrambling up a chunky baobab tree that gave him a view of the entire compound. This was not yet a loss. Just a setback.

He surveyed the scene with his thermal goggles, using their telephoto function to zoom in and out until he located all four of his men’s bodies, confirming that he was now alone. He also found the three dead security guards and watched as the wounded one joined the healthy three in withdrawing back to the main house.

Volkov knew that for whatever training they had, they would still be terrified and uncertain. If he waited, they might think the attack had ended and then he’d be able to move on the house and pick them off. Four against one — rather, three and a half against one — was not particularly daunting to a man of Volkov’s ability.

That changed quickly when the South African Police Service arrived. They came in force, with five marked cars and three unmarked pulling through the front gate and parking in the broad, circular driveway adjacent to the main house. Volkov counted fourteen cops disembarking from those vehicles. Fourteen cops plus three remaining healthy security guards. Volkov could handle four-to-one. Seventeen-to-one was beyond even him.

Then more forces arrived. Crime scene techs. Other cops, whose purpose he could not immediately identify. Some uniformed. Others not. It was a small army against one man.

All the one man had was the element of surprise. They didn’t know he was out there. They would make the assumption that they had either killed all of the invaders, or that any other thugs had run off when the gun battle turned against them.

Sure enough, the cops soon began overtaking the grounds as if they owned the place and had nothing to fear. The bulk of them busied themselves by throwing up lights over the bodies of Volkov’s fallen teammates, then hustling and bustling around the corpses, taking photos and collecting shell casings.

But four of them, all uniformed officers, began combing the compound with flashlights, likely looking for other evidence. They spread out — ten acres was a lot of ground to cover — and made the terrible mistake of not working in pairs. Volkov noted their vulnerability, but hadn’t decided how to capitalize on it until a meat wagon from the local coroner’s office arrived. It was as he watched Nicolai getting carted away that he formulated his new plan.

Volkov waited until one of the officers, a young constable, was directly under his tree. He dropped on him from above. With two hundred twenty pounds landing on top of him at high velocity, the man immediately went down, letting out a muffled grunt as he fell. Not giving him a chance to make another sound, Volkov clamped one hand on the cop’s mouth then wrapped his arm around the constable’s neck. The young man — really, not much more than a boy — struggled briefly but was soon asphyxiated. He was no match for Volkov’s enormous strength.

Once he was sure the constable was dead, Volkov released his grip and began pulling off the man’s uniform and then putting it on himself, starting with the hat and working down. It was far from a perfect fit, but Volkov wasn’t attending a police fashion show. Mostly, he was relying on the fact that it was dark. He rolled the sleeves of the shirt and used his knife to do a quick, barbaric alteration on the length of the pants. He donned the man’s utility belt and his gun. He could feel the weight of the constable’s car keys in his front pocket and a wallet in his back one.

Volkov knew he had no time to get rid of the body properly. He improvised, leaning it up against the trunk of the tree on the opposite side of the house, where it would remain in shadows until morning. Good enough. He began walking through the trees toward the main house.

Now for the nervy part: the two hundred feet of open turf between the wooded parts of the property and the house. Pulling the dead cop’s hat low over his face, he passed by teams of crime scene techs and medical examiners, albeit with his face in shadow. They paid him no attention. Volkov entered through the front door without encountering any resistance.

Once inside, he was relieved to discover there was no police presence. The assailants, as far as the investigators knew, had not made it in or near the house. Volkov moved through the rooms with confidence, until he came across one of the security guards, sitting in a chair outside a closed door. Volkov could hear classical music coming from inside. He squared his body to the man.

“Can I help you, mate?” the man asked.

“Yes,” Volkov said. “Can you tell me what time it is?”