Page 43 of Dead Fall

Arriving at the ground floor, he thought that maybe the person in the attic had been killed. He was about to exhale when the ceiling erupted in a hail of automatic weapons fire and everything around them began exploding.

Harvath pointed at the fireplace, yelled for her to take cover, and lunged for his rifle as he dove under the table and the bullets kept coming.

So much for the question of whether the guy in the attic had been neutralized. Now it was all about who could take out whom first.

In any interior fight, Harvath would always take the ground floor over being higher up. On the ground floor, he had that advantage because he controlled the house. He was going to use it to force the shooter’s hand. He was going to try to smoke the guy out. Literally.

Using his rifle to extend his reach, he hooked the AK-47 belonging to the first man he had killed and pulled it to him under the table.

“Know how to use this?” he yelled to the woman.

She nodded and Harvath slid it to her.

“When I tell you to begin, I want you to shoot back and forth across the ceiling. Short bursts. Keep him pinned down. Okay?”

The woman checked the bolt carrier to make sure the weapon was charged, flipped off the safety, and nodded.

Harvath counted backward from three in his head and then ordered, “Now!”

Exactly as she had been told, the woman strafed the ceiling with short, controlled bursts.

With the AK-47 booming behind him and providing cover fire, Harvath raced into the kitchen.

He didn’t know exactly what he would find. He only prayed that the ingredients he needed would be there.

Dish soap was a slam dunk. There were also rags and glass bottles. What there weren’t, were any sort of flammable liquids. That meant that Molotov cocktails were out of the question. But it didn’t mean that getting one hell of a fire going was off the table.

There was a roll of paper towels, a large bag of mothballs, flour, and a box of kitchen matches. Along with a frying pan, he had everything he needed.

Pulling a rifle magazine from his chest rig, he set it on the floor and kicked it over to the woman so she could continue laying down cover fire. He then quickly lined the frying pan with paper towels and then assembled a mountain of mothballs on top.

As soon that was done, he struck several matches, ignited the paper towels, and dropped the others into the pan.

He knew that when mothballs got hot, they underwent a chemical process called sublimation in which they went right from being a solid into a vapor. And those vapors were flammable as hell. They stank to high heaven, but they were the ultimate fire starters, especially those made of naphthalene.

Within seconds an enormous flame was leaping out of the pan. Careful not to drop it, he hurried over to the stairwell, cocked it back, and launched the flaming mass onto the stairs covered with the cotton runner.

Tossing the pan into the sink, he snatched the bag of flour and raced back to the stairwell. Flour, powdered nondairy creamer, spices, or dried milk were some of the nastiest, most flammable food items you could find in a kitchen.

Packed densely in a bag, it was relatively benign. But when Harvath tore open the top of that bag and threw the highly flammable flour into the oxygen-rich air over burning mothballs, it created a huge column of fire.

By the time he had picked his rifle back up, the cotton runner was completely on fire and the walls of the stairwell were alight as well.

He rushed to the fireplace and handed the woman another magazine.

“What now?” she asked, reloading.

No sooner had she stopped firing than the man in the attic began shooting down on them again.

At any moment, he was going to realize that the cottage was on fire. Considering its age, and the fact that it was built entirely from wood, it wouldn’t take long for it to be entirely engulfed. Only a madman would remain in the attic hoping to take a shot at a couple of people as they fled. The man in the attic would need to make his escape, too.

The challenge for Harvath was in timing their exit. But he had something the man in the attic didn’t—a partner. He also had a plan.

After Harvath told the woman what he wanted to do, they awaited a pause from the shooting upstairs. As soon as it came, she raised her weapon and began firing.

Harvath rushed over to the two dead bodies, grabbed what he needed, and then moved with the woman to one of the broken windows on the far side of the living room, where he ripped down the plastic.

Based on the dacha’s design, if there was a vent of some sort up in the attic that the shooter might use, he expected it to overlook the front, or the back, of the structure. That made bailing out on the side their best option.

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