“You make enemies in the SAS,” Mac offered by way of curt explanation. “Some of them have been known to make house calls.” The gun held in one hand, he kept low and made his way to the desk to pick up the phone.

Another noise, a dull whump from the street outside.

Mac instantly dropped the phone and dived at Nina, tackling her to the ground to protect her with his body.

The window broke, a neat round two-inch hole punched through it-

“Cover your ears!” Mac shouted. Nina just barely managed to bring her hands up to her head-

The stun grenade exploded with a deafening bang.

Nina’s ears were ringing as Mac dragged her to her feet and pulled her onto the first floor landing, the shirt flapping around her legs. There was a loud crash from below, and she looked down to see two armed men, dressed all in black and wearing balaclavas, burst through the front door. Another bang of splintering wood came from the kitchen as the back door was simultaneously smashed open.

The two intruders already knew where she and Mac were, immediately looking up at the balcony. Mac aimed his shotgun at them-

Stained glass suddenly rained down from above as both skylights shattered. Mac ducked back from the jagged shards as two black nylon ropes dropped through the holes in the ceiling, uncoiling as they fell all the way to the floor of the hall. A moment later, two more men rapidly started descending the ropes. Boom!

Mac’s shotgun went off almost as loudly as the stun grenade. One of the hanging men flew backwards as the full force of the blast hit him in the chest, swinging from his rope over the balustrade. He smashed against the wall of the top floor landing and dropped to the floor.

But there had been no blood. The attackers were all wearing body armor. The man Mac had hit was dazed, but he was still alive, still a threat.

The wooden banister burst into splinters as the men below opened fire. Nina threw up her arms to protect her face. Next to her, Mac pumped his shotgun and raised it again as the other man above twisted to aim his MP9-

Mac fired first. But not at the armored man. Instead, he aimed above him, red-hot shotgun pellets shredding his rope. The man plunged downwards, his scream abruptly cut short by a crack of breaking bones.

The firing from below stopped. Nina’s hope that the two gunmen in the hall might be helping their fallen comrade was dashed when she realized they were running for the stairs.

“Upstairs!” Mac yelled, grabbing her arm and racing up to the top floor. His left foot made a metallic thud each time it hit the carpet, but the Scotsman was barely slowed by the prosthetic.

“There’s still one of them up here!” Nina warned him. The rappeller Mac had blasted in the chest was on the other side of the landing across the atrium, groggily lifting himself to his knees.

“And there’s four of them down there!” There was another crash from the ground floor as a door was kicked open, the men who had entered via the kitchen advancing through the house. “The library-there’s a passage to the back staircase!”

He pushed Nina ahead of him as they reached the top of the stairs. The library was at the rear of the landing, the door of the game room open to one side as they ran.

Automatic fire from the rappeller’s gun raked the wall ahead of Nina, shattered plaster and lath fountaining out. She screamed and dived into the game room, skidding across the wooden floor to end up at the head of the snooker table.

Mac ran through the door behind her. The MP9 chattered again-and a stream of bullets tore into his left leg above the ankle. Ripped cloth and shredded plastic flew in all directions as his foot was blown off.

Mac fell heavily to the floor. The shotgun was jolted from his grip and bounced away across the room.

Nina jumped up, adrenaline overcoming the resurgent pain from her ankle. Mac was sprawled on his front a few feet inside the door, the jagged metal “bone” of his severed artificial leg poking into the air above his bent knee. She looked for the shotgun. It was at the far end of the room against the wall. It would take her a couple of seconds to run around the table, more to pick up the gun and bring it about.

And the gunman was charging across the landing, almost at the door-

She grabbed the box of snooker balls and whipped it around. A cascade of brightly colored spheres flew over the fallen Mac to bang down on the floor and skitter towards the door just as the black-clad intruder ran through it, gun raised-

His foot shot out from under him as he slipped on the balls, falling forward.

Onto Mac’s upraised leg.

Mac’s yell of pain as the remains of the prosthesis crunched against his stump was nothing compared to the startled gasp of the gunman as the sharp metal spike burst through his rib cage into his heart. He convulsed for a moment, then slumped over Mac’s legs, a circle of dark blood rapidly swelling across the floor beneath him. Several snooker balls rolled through it, leaving thin red trails in their wake.

Nina only had a moment to stare before the sound of feet pounding up the stairs yanked her back to the remaining dangers. She grabbed the dead man’s gun, then ran to the end of the room to retrieve Mac’s shotgun.

“Get to the back stairs!” Mac ordered, twisting to kick off the impaled corpse.

“But you-”

“They want to catch you, not kill you! Go! I’ll hold them off!”

Nina hesitated, then gave him his gun and ran to the door. She glanced out. Two men were halfway up the second flight of stairs, another pair having just entered the hall. She gave a last look back at Mac, who frowned at her for still being there, then turned and ran through the connecting door to the library.

Another deafening retort from Mac’s shotgun blew a chunk of the balcony rail to smithereens as the first man ran past the door. But the shot was a fraction of a second too late to catch him. The second man jerked to a standstill just before reaching the door, the ka-chack of another shell being chambered deterring him from crossing in front of it.

“Get her!” he yelled to his companion. “I’ll nail the old bastard!”

He pointed his MP9 around the door frame, unleashing a devastating spray of fire into the room. Wood cracked and baize shredded as bullets ripped into the snooker table, the slate bed beneath the green surface splintering under the onslaught.

Already ejecting his spent magazine and reloading, the gunman jerked his head around the edge of the door for the briefest moment, not so much to see the results of his assault as to draw any fire, making his target waste both a round and the time it took to reload. The room remained silent. More confident now, the intruder swung through the door with his gun at the ready.

No sign of the old man, just one of the other members of the snatch team dead on the floor and a battle-scarred snooker table-

The shotgun blast from under the table ripped his thighs into bloody mince. Screaming in agony, the man staggered back-and toppled through the hole blown in the railing. He fell, still wailing, to land with a neck-breaking crunch beside the first of his dead compatriots.

Mac bumped an appreciative fist against the underside of the slate that had protected him as effectively as any armor, then crawled out from beneath it.

Nina ran across the library to the nearer of the two doors at its rear, throwing it open to find herself in a narrow passage that vanished into darkness in either direction. Only then did it occur to her that she didn’t know whether to go left or right to reach the stairs.

Her pursuer entered the library from the landing…

She went left. The light from behind her provided just enough illumination to pick out the door to the other half of the library as she passed it, then another door directly ahead. She grabbed the handle and threw it open, expecting to see the promised stairs-only to find a cupboard, dusty suitcases squatting on its shelves.