That was the weak point, the point of attack.

The flier clung to the wall a foot away, watching, looking like an odd and science-fictional mingling of large insect with small robot, its wings now folded along the length of its body and hanging off behind like a stiff, gauze cloak.

“This is a guy who takes his security seriously,” Akulinin whispered, double-checking the electrical circuit.

“Any security system can be breached,” Lia replied. “Jeff? We need the drill right here.”

In response, the flier moved to the spot she was indicating with her finger. Again, a slender needle extended from beneath the robot’s head, touching the white-painted frame of the window. There was a faint whine as the drill bit chewed into the wood.

“Okay, Lia,” Rockman’s voice said a moment later. “We have a complete circuit.”

Akulinin tried lifting the window. It appeared to be locked. Extracting a jimmy tool from a thigh pouch, he inserted the flat blade between window and frame at the bottom, gently applying a steady downward pressure. There was a creak, but the window remained shut.

“Shit,” he said. “The damned thing’s locked.”

“Try the direct approach,” Lia suggested.

“Yeah.” He ran a gloved hand over the glass. “It might be damned noisy, though.”

The two listened for a moment. The sounds of laughter floated clearly across from the other side of the house, followed by a loud splash as someone hit the pool. “Laminated glass,” Lia said. “Should be more of a crunch than a crash. Go ahead. Give it a try.”

“You’re the boss.” He reversed the pry, wrapped the handle in a piece of cloth, and slammed the tool into the glass.

The window was plastic-coated and shatterproof, but the glass crazed and yielded under a second, harder blow. The two agents held their position for a moment, listening carefully for a full minute, waiting for some indication that they’d been heard.

Another splash sounded from the rear deck.

The security system wires attached to the inside of the pane were broken, but the needle drilled into the window frame by the robot was now shorting the contact, tricking the system into thinking the circuit was unbroken. Using the cloth to protect his already-gloved hands, Akulinin pushed in the now flexible sheet of fragmented glass, working it in and out until it popped free of the frame.

Replacing the jimmy, Akulinin drew his weapon and wiggled through the opening, headfirst. Lia followed.

“We’re in,” she said. She glanced around the room, verifying that it was, indeed, empty… though rhythmic creakings and moans were coming from the room next door. Her LI headset revealed the space clearly in monotone shades of green. “Tell us where we need to go.”

“Straight ahead,” was Rockman’s reply. “Through the bedroom door and to your left.”

Silently the two agents slipped forward through the darkness.

Kotenko Dacha Sochi, Russia 0007 hours, GMT + 3

DOWN A DARKENED HALLWAY, then right to a flight of stairs. Lia descended while Akulinin covered her from above, then returned the favor, holding her SIG-Sauer P220 gripped tightly in both hands. The weapon had been threaded to receive a sound suppressor, and the ungainly length of the thing extended beyond the ball of her hands like a police officer’s baton.

“There’s a security camera in the hall in front of you to the left,” Rockman whispered in their ears. “Wait one…”

The broken-off piece of the dragonfly probe still attached to the cable on the pole at the front gate now gave the Art Room a physical connection with the dacha’s security network, with the parked van as a communications relay. Back at Fort Meade, they would be running through a number of camera views, calling up the correct one, and feeding it a twenty-second loop of an empty hallway.

“Okay, Lia,” Rockman said. “The hall is empty and the camera is happy. You’re clear to move.”

Stealthily the two agents turned the corner and walked down the hall. Lia noticed a half sphere of darkened glass mounted on the ceiling-the security cam-and resisted an unprofessional impulse to wave. A few feet farther on, light spilled from beneath a closed door.

Damn…

“We’re at the door to the office,” Lia whispered. “Do you have a camera inside?”

“That’s negative, Lia,” Rockman replied. “It looks like there may be a hookup for another camera on the circuit diagram, but it’s switched off.”

Akulinin tried the doorknob, which turned easily, and gently edged the door open. Beside him, Lia slipped a length of fiber-optic cable through the opening, with the near end attached to her cell phone monitor. Twisting the cable gently between her fingers, she turned the end this way and that, checking out the room’s interior.

A man sat at a computer monitor, his back toward the door. The image resolution was too low to let her read over his shoulder, but he appeared to be about ten feet away, his fingers clattering over a keyboard.

There was no one else in the room within the reach of the fiber-optic viewer, though she did see another of the black hemispheres on the ceiling. Why was the security camera turned off?

Then the answer came to her. The man at the desk was almost certainly Grigor Kotenko, and as the head of one of the more powerful families within the Organizatsiya, he would be afraid not only of outside enemies breaking into his personal fortress but also of traitors among his own people. The camera’s position on the ceiling would have let his own security people see what was on his monitor; switching it off while he was working gave him an extra bit of peace of mind.

It also suggested that Kotenko was more afraid of betrayal from within his own organization than he was of outsiders, an interesting bit of intelligence.

The figure at the desk turned his head just far enough that Lia glimpsed the shaggy corner of his walrus mustache.

“I see Kotenko,” Lia whispered. “Back to the door. I can take him from here.”

“That’s a negative, Lia,” a new voice, Rubens’, replied. “Find another way.”

She bit off a silent expletive. She had the bastard in her sights… the thug who’d given the orders that had ended with Tommy’s death. It would be so easy to take him out. Two taps to the center of mass, a third in the back of the head…

“Lia, Ilya,” Rubens said. “If the op is to succeed, we need Kotenko alive.”

Lia closed her eyes, forcing the muscles of her hands and arms and jaw to relax, bringing herself back from the edge. God, she wanted to kill the man… but Rubens was right. She and Ilya had come here tonight to plant bugs that would give Desk Three an unparalleled window into the Tambov group’s operations. If Kotenko’s people came into the office later and found their boss dead, American intelligence would have to start all over again as some other crime family came to the fore, or as another leader within Tambov-Braslov, perhaps-took over.

In the long run, they could do a lot more damage to the Russian Mafiya-and not just the Tambov group-if Kotenko survived this night.

“Okay,” she whispered. “Ilya, you’re up. Remember, Russian only.”

“Da,” he murmured, and grasping his H &K P9S in both hands, he eased the door open with his shoulder and rolled through.

Lia followed, breaking left and cutting across the room as Akulinin moved right, lunging at Kotenko’s back. Attempting to sneak in quietly invited disaster-a squeak to a floorboard, a flicker of movement glimpsed from the corner of an eye… even a psychic awareness of someone else present in the room. Kotenko heard the movement and began to turn, one hand snapping toward the top drawer of his computer desk, but Akulinin was on him in three swift strides, reversing the pistol in his hand as he moved, grasping it at the meeting of muzzle and sound suppressor, and swinging the butt around from the side, aiming at the base of Kotenko’s skull.