Hot Ice (26 page)

His head met the surface of the tile floor. The sickening thud of bone smashing into ceramic froze not only the man’s partner but the lavatory’s other patrons.

Jason was on the sprawling figure with the quickness of a striking viper. Plunging his hand inside the man’s jacket, he snatched loose the GSh-18 automatic from the nylon, angle-draw shoulder holster.

Jason looked up just in time to see the second man’s hand going for the inside of his windbreaker. Rolling violently to his left for momentum, Jason sprang to his feet, the front sight of the Russian automatic aligned with the spot where the man’s eyebrows met at the bridge of his nose.

“OK, OK!” Realizing Jason could get off a shot before his own weapon cleared the holster, the man slowly raised both hands.

Jason stepped out of range of the arms and legs of the man on the floor. “OK, folks,” he addressed the audience, “showtime’s over. Walk, do not run, to the exit.”

There is nothing like a gun in a man’s hand to ensure prompt, unquestioning obedience. Their eyes never leaving Jason, the five or six men in the restroom edged toward the door. Jason guessed he had maybe fifteen to thirty seconds before one of them found a cop.

Edging sideways so he could keep both the man on the floor and the other in sight, Jason indicated the near wall. “OK, now you assume the position.”

The man looked at him blankly.

“Don’t make it easier for me to kill you than take your weapon. You heard me!”

When the man was spread against the wall, Jason approached cautiously. With his shoe, he kicked the man’s feet a little farther away from the wall, ensuring that the man’s balance was such that any sudden movement would land him on the floor. Keeping the GSh-18 level in his right hand, Jason found its mate in another shoulder holster. Using his thumb, he pushed the clip release and let the magazine clatter to the floor. Ejecting the round in the chamber, he tossed the gun into the paper-towel disposal. The man on the floor was struggling to his feet.

“So long, boys. It’s been a real pleasure.”

Jason was no more than a dozen steps outside the entrance to the restroom when four burly men in police uniform, weapons drawn, dashed past. Once they were out of sight, he dumped the remaining gun in a trash bin. If the airport went into lockdown, he didn’t want to be caught with a firearm.

Outside, Jason was embraced by an envelope of humidity. Prickles of sweat tickled his back. He toyed with the idea of concealing himself in hopes of a chance to follow his assailants once they exited the airport. Too risky. There was too good a chance the local cops might be looking for the man with the gun in the men’s room.

Besides, he had a plan.

Instead, he slid into the first cab he saw, thankful for the air-conditioning.

The coquí were in full song in the little plaza in front of the hotel. The tiny tree frogs had voices far disproportionate to their one-inch sizes. Catty-corner to the hotel and small park, San Juan Cathedral’s alabaster facade, bathed in spotlights, pierced the night sky.

As he paid the cabbie and retrieved his bag, Jason was reminded of the church’s most celebrated occupant: Juan Ponce de León, entombed there since his death by an Indian arrow in 1521. The man had to be one of Spain’s more confused conquistadors. Searching for the Fountain of Youth, rumored to be on the island of Bimini, he found Florida, perhaps the last man to see the state with more flowers than high-rise condos.

Believing he had found an island rather than the southern part of North America, he set sail back to Puerto Rico, landing instead on the Yucatán Peninsula, this time convinced he had found Bimini.

Jason entered the hotel’s high-ceilinged reception area across an Andalusian floor of large black-and-white tiles. The walls around the lobby were hung with tapestries depicting medieval scenes of hunts and battles. Jason wondered how the fabric survived the mildew endemic to the tropical climate. Beyond the open lobby, he could see a three-tiered courtyard bordered on three sides by cloisters. It took little imagination for shadows to become nuns silently sliding by the three-hundred-year-old níspero fruit tree that dominated the center. At the rear, a pool shimmered an inviting cool blue. No doubt an addition since the nuns’ departure. At the end near Jason, a bar was doing a brisk business serving those waiting for a seat at the alfresco restaurant.

Jason resisted the temptation to join them, ignoring a protesting stomach. He’d had nothing but a light snack of pressed and tasteless chicken between dry bread garnished with wilted lettuce and perhaps a dozen potato chips on the plane. Through some oversight of the airline, though, the slice of dill pickle had a trace of flavor.

But at least he had arrived, nearly on time, on the flight he had booked and in the seat he had purchased. Today’s air traveler was learning to be thankful for things taken for granted a few years earlier.

He needed to get to his room. If the bully boys at the airport had learned of his arrival before he had even deplaned, there was a good chance they knew where he was staying, as well. The downside of modern computerized society was that there was little information not available to even a modestly talented hacker.

His third-floor accommodation, the one he had requested after a virtual tour before booking his reservations, was at the end of an open-air corridor looking down on the courtyard. Designed and furnished to remind the occupant of its origins, the room had a high, oak-beamed ceiling, making the space seem as tall as it was wide and long, the dimensions of a monastic cell. The floor was Spanish tile. Furnishings, though stark in appearance, were tasteful and certainly more comfortable than the sisters would have enjoyed. Floor-to-ceiling French doors opened onto a terrace looking onto the plaza and cathedral below. He guessed daylight would bring a view of the rain forest beyond.

Jason stepped into the steamy night and paced the terrace. Empty lounge chairs were his only company. Only two rooms, including his, had access other than by way of the hall outside his door. All as he had seen on the computer before leaving home.

Perfect.

During the summer in San Juan, you can set your watch by the rain showers. Between four and four thirty a downpour of short duration sweeps the city streets clean but leaves the air saturated. Shortly after dark, the cooling temperature squeezes the afternoon’s lingering moisture out of the air like wringing a wet rag. This shower passes quickly also, making alfresco dining on Old Town’s myriad patios almost comfortable.

By late night, the evening’s rain was only a steamy memory. The sound of the patrons of the bar in the courtyard was diminishing. Guests were retiring to their rooms and other customers were slowly leaving for a livelier scene, for a nighttime flirtation with chance at the casinos, or to simply go home. Either way, the comparative quiet allowed Balduino, the night clerk, to slip into that semi-somnambulistic state of near sleep that would last until he was relieved at the hotel’s front desk in the morning.

The sound of high heels on tile followed by the tinkle of the bell on the desk snatched him from a half slumber and sent him scurrying from the comfort of the lounge chair in the hotel’s office to the front desk. For an instant, he thought he might still be dreaming. A blond woman fidgeted impatiently in front of the registration desk. Although she was dressed in simple jeans and a shirt, it was obvious she would more than adequately fill a bikini.

He suddenly wished he had taken the time to brush his hair and rinse his mouth before dashing out. “Yes, ma’am?”

Long fingers drummed on the desktop. “My name is Ferris. I believe I have a reservation.”

Normal procedure, if there were anything normal about a check-in at this hour, would have required an explanation that the guest would be charged for tonight even though it was tomorrow. But Balduino was having too hard a time just trying to keep his eyes away from her blouse’s top button at the beginning valley between her breasts. The button looked as though it might give way with the next breath. The anticipation was distracting to say the least.

“You
do
have my room?”

With no small effort, he tore his gaze away and sat down in front of the computer. For reasons he could not have explained, he had the impression that if an error had been made, if her reservation wasn’t in the computer, he was going to be extremely sorry.

His breath whistled through his teeth as he let out a long sigh. “Yes, Ms. Ferris, right here. I see it’s prepaid. I’m sorry that we have no staff at this hour to carry your bag and I’m not allowed …”

She extended a hand. “The key?”

“The key?”

If she was amused by the confusion she seemed to induce, she didn’t show it. “I assume entry to the room is by key.”

“Of course! The room key.”

Hand inexplicably shaking, he reached to the rack over the computer, where a number of oversized keys hung, each attached to a decorative weight heavy enough to encourage guests to leave their room keys at the front desk when they went out rather than carrying—and possibly losing—them. It was a concept common in Europe.

“Third floor,” he said, almost apologetically. “The elevator is around the corner there on your left.”

Without another word, she swooped up her single bag and was gone, leaving Balduino leaning over the desk for a last look.

He remembered now: the guest, Peters, had made her reservation by phone the same time he had made his own. He had been very specific: two end-of-hall rooms, each letting out onto the terrace. Why a man would provide a separate room for someone like the Ferris woman was beyond Balduino’s imagination. Ah well, the proclivities of the hotel’s guests were not his to question.

With a little luck, when he returned to his dreams, Ms. Ferris would be in them.

Exiting the single slow elevator on the third floor, Judith turned left down an open, arcaded gallery of a cloister. The lights of the pool in the patio below made shimmering blue designs on the ceiling above her head as she stopped in front of the room at the end of the hall. Inserting the key, she pushed the door open, letting the light from outside probe the dark room before she entered and flipped on the wall switch.

Satisfied she was alone, she dropped her single bag on the bed and stepped over to the drawn curtains. She pulled them aside, revealing French doors opening onto a terrace. She gave the door to the bathroom a longing gaze. A hot shower would strip away the coat of sweaty grime with which she imagined the cloying humidity had covered her body.

No time.

Making certain the door to the hallway was securely locked and latched from the inside, she stepped out onto the terrace. For an instant she was blinded by the contrast between the brightly lit room and the indirect light outside. The coquí in the surrounding potted palms went silent.

A hoarse whisper came from her right. “Here!”

As her eyes adjusted, she moved toward the sound. “Jason?”

A figure materialized out of nowhere. “You were expecting someone else?”

They embraced briefly before she gently pushed back. “So far, nothing?”

He took her hand, leading into deeper shadow. “So far, nothing. But the night is young, to employ a rather trite phrase. Best get to your post.”

“Think I have time to clean up?”

Jason shrugged. “The schedule isn’t ours.”

In seconds, Judith was gone, back to her room. She turned out the lights before crouching behind the curtains she had closed over the open French doors.

Jason was good at waiting. Long ago Delta Force training had inculcated patience by employing an indifference to time and applying the mind elsewhere while remaining alert to surroundings. He could only hope Judith was naturally patient. How long they waited at their separate positions, neither could have said. An hour, two, or only fifteen minutes.

Judith heard him before she saw him. Or, rather, the tree frogs in the terrace’s foliage did. Their song went silent as suddenly as if some amphibian maestro had waved his conductor’s wand. Alerted by the sudden silence, she risked a peek between widened curtains.

A wraith of a shadow, a specter without substance, glided across the terrace toward the French doors to Jason’s room. It was only at the last moment the apparition gained substance, the shape of a man, a large man, climbing inside from the terrace.

Jason had also been brought to full alert by the termination of the tree frogs’ serenade, and the vibration of his BlackBerry, his and Judith’s prearranged signal. The closest thing he had been able to find to serve as a weapon was a lamp, two feet high, made of what he supposed was meant to look like forged Toledo steel. Hardly a defense of choice against a pistol or knife; but when combined with surprise, it should serve. Concealed behind curtains that barely moved in the fitful night breeze, he waited, the lamp raised in both hands above his head.

Leaving the French doors open had been a calculated risk. Any job made too easy aroused suspicions but a slip in prying the doors open, any undue noise was likely to frighten away the would-be intruder. The last thing Jason wanted was for his enemies to change plans, to strike at a less predictable time.

The curtains jiggled with a motion not induced by wind. With the advantage of having his target outlined by the slight illumination from the terrace, Jason could see a form, as yet indistinct except for an extended arm holding something long. Jason guessed an automatic with sound suppressor.

He waited until the shape seemed to float past him, intent on the mound of pillows Jason had carefully arranged in the bed. The arm extended.

There were two quick spitting, puffing sounds before the form moved closer to the bed. It was reaching for a light when Jason moved.

With a single step, he used his full weight to bring the lamp down on the back of the head. The neck would have been a better target, but the chances were too good that a blow there would fatally snap the spinal cord. Dead, the guy would be useless.

With a grunt, the figure stumbled forward, falling against the far wall. Jason took a second swing with the lamp, this time sideways, splintering the knuckles of the man’s gun hand. The weapon thumped once on the bed and bounced to the tile floor with a metallic clank that was almost drowned out by a scream of pain.