The Riddle (A James Acton Thriller, Book #11) (22 page)

“Here
they come,” announced Spock as a roar of false bravado erupted from below,
boots pounding on the concrete as they rounded the landing. They were firing
blindly and Dawson smiled as he saw they were only two abreast as he had
predicted. He raised his MP5 and squeezed off two rounds, taking the lead two
men out by shooting them in the legs. Cries rang out as they collapsed back on
the men behind.

One
wounded man takes two to carry, taking three out of the fight.

Those
behind tried to climb over them, the weapons fire halted. Dawson heard gunfire
from the other side of the building and Jimmy’s voice came in over the comm.
“Holding on seventh, they’ve begun their assault.”

“Take
them out,” ordered Dawson.

“Roger
that.”

Dawson
shot the next two, one of them dead.

The men
behind were now trying to pull their fallen comrades to safety while more
stumbled over the bodies attempting to execute their orders to advance. Cries
of pain with shouts of anger and confusion and the occasional gunshot echoed
through the stairwell. Dawson fired several more rounds, the thirty-round
magazine quickly getting used up.

Too
bad we didn’t have 100 round C-MAGs.

He
rushed down to the next flight, pressing their momentary advantage, sending off
bursts of two and three rounds at a time, their adversary starting to retreat.
One of the soldiers, almost a full flight behind, a Captain if Dawson wasn’t
mistaken by his insignia, glared up at Dawson then pulled the pin on a grenade.

Dawson
put a hole in his chest.

The man
dropped, the grenade falling from his dying hand.

“Fire in
the hole!” yelled Dawson, jumping back against the wall and covering his ears,
closing his eyes. The shouts and screams as the men below realized what had
happened became muffled then were quickly replaced by the deafening roar of the
explosion. Dawson checked his men then looked back down at the carnage below.

It was a
mess.

Blood
and body parts were everywhere, the confined space shredding those around the
lethal weapon. Moans and cries filled his ears as Dawson advanced, Spock and
the other DSS agents following. He pointed at two of them then the seventh
level doors. They held back to cover them just in case Jimmy’s team failed in
their efforts.

As they
pushed forward panic set in below. Those they could see were all turned now,
pushing back against the crowd farther down still trying to advance. As more
realized what was happening, encouraged by Dawson sending a burst of gunfire
every five to ten seconds into the walls behind them, the tide quickly turned,
the group no longer a threat.

Dawson
stopped on the fifth floor, the attacking force now well below them, at least a
dozen bodies left behind. He pointed. “Strip them of any weapons and ammo. This
might not be over.” He listened for a moment and could hear nothing from the
other end of the floor. Activating his comm, he opened the fifth floor door,
looking down the hallway. “West stairwell, report.”

“All
calm on the western front,” replied Jimmy. “They’ve retreated beyond the fourth
floor, still retreating. I get the impression though it wasn’t as much us as it
was them being ordered back.”

“Roger
that, return to the eighth floor, police any weapons and ammo that might have been
left behind.”

“Roger
that.”

The DSS
agents and Spock finished stripping the bodies of weapons and ammo, a decent
haul including a few grenades. Enough to add at least a few more minutes of
resistance should it become necessary.

But
judging from what he could see below, that resistance might not be necessary
for some while, the sounds of the last boots going silent as the door at the
main level clicked shut, returning them to an eerie quiet.

Somebody
moaned.

Dawson
looked over at one of the bodies, not quite dead yet. He motioned to Spock.
“Check him out.”

Spock
knelt beside the now conscious man and checked him over. “Sucking chest wound,”
he said. “He’s lost a lot of blood. He won’t make it unless he gets immediate
help.”

Dawson
frowned, pulling out his phone. “Time for an olive branch.” He hit the speed
dial for the hotel security booth.

The
phone was answered on the first ring, the initial words Vietnamese, followed by
English. “Hotel Security, Bao speaking.”

“This is
Special Agent White of Secretary Atwater’s security detail. Put me through to
whoever is in charge down there.”

“Y-yes,
sir.”

There
was some clicking then a man’s voice, deep and thickly accented, answered.
“This is Dimitri Yashkin of the Russian Foreign Ministry. To whom am I
speaking?”

“Special
Agent White, DSS.”

“Are you
prepared to surrender?”

Dawson
smiled. “I was about to ask you the same thing, sir. I have a wounded man—”

“We will
be happy to provide medical attention to all of your wounded—”

“One of
your
men, not ours. By my count we also have about a dozen dead here, all your men.
We have returned to our positions and will not fire upon medical personnel who
retrieve the dead and wounded, as long as they are unarmed.”

“You
will be held responsible for any deaths that occurred here today.”

“Considering
it was your men that attacked us with guns and grenades, I think not. We were
merely defending ourselves.” Dawson paused, deciding to give the man a
diplomatic out that he could take whether or not he was guilty. “Sir, I’m
willing to bet that you did not order this attack and that it was someone on
the Vietnamese side of things. We are prepared to evacuate our personnel and
equipment and return to the United States immediately, as is our right under
international law. Are you going to let us exercise this right, or continue to
deny it to us as your Vietnamese counterpart has done?”

“I
cannot let you go until the assassin has been handed over.”

“Sir,
Agent Green is innocent of the crime you have accused him of, however I am
under orders to cooperate fully, so I will tell you this. Agent Green is no
longer on the premises, and hasn’t been for some time.”

“What?!”

The man
was clearly surprised by the revelation and immediately the line went silent as
he was placed on hold. Dawson heard an update through the comm that the upper
floors and roof were clear and that a helicopter rescue wasn’t in the cards. He
had doubted it, but it was worth the call. It also conveyed a message to
Washington about how desperate the situation actually was.

The phone
line clicked.

“We will
be sending in medical teams now.”

“Unarmed.”

“Unarmed.
I also request a meeting with your Secretary Atwater.”

“I will
try to arrange it. I will call you back shortly.”

The line
went dead and Dawson took the stairs two at a time to the ninth floor, jogging
down the hallway to Atwater’s suite. He entered the large multi-roomed suite to
find all the windows blacked out as per protocol, the senior staff, including
Atwater herself, located outside the direct line of sight of any window or
door.

“Are you
okay, Madame Secretary?”

The
woman clearly wasn’t, her face red, her eyes wide with fear. But to her credit
she hadn’t lost it yet, though her white knuckles as she gripped the arms of
the chair she was sitting on suggested she was close.

“What-the-hell-is-going-on?”
she managed, each word punctuated with a gasp for air.

“Vietnamese
troops assaulted both stairwells simultaneously. We repelled both attacks
successfully and they have since withdrawn. I have established a dialogue with
a Russian Foreign Ministry representative—”

“The one
from before? Sarkov was it?”

Dawson
shook his head. “No, I’m suspecting this is the senior man Mr. Sarkov referred
to. He demanded we handover Agent Green but—”

“I don’t
see how we have much choice.”

“We
don’t, ma’am. He’s no longer on the premises.”

Atwater’s
eyebrows shot up, her eyes opening even wider. “Excuse me?”

“He
managed to escape just before the attack began. I haven’t established contact
with him yet, however the fact the attack continued for as long as it did
suggests he made a clean escape.”

“Why the
hell would he run? It just makes him look even more guilty!”

“Keeping
in mind he isn’t guilty.”

Atwater
caught herself. “Of course, of course. But still, the optics!”

“I
ordered him to effect an escape and meet us if possible on our evac route. If
not, to make his way to the embassy when things cooled down.” He could see
Atwater was about to blow a gasket. “By getting him off the premises and
separating him from you, there should no longer be any reason for them to try
and hold us here.” He lowered his voice. “Ma’am, based upon what just happened,
there was no way they were going to let us leave with him. We can now let them
confirm he’s gone then leave. There’s no way they’ll risk furthering this incident
when their prime suspect isn’t even here anymore.”

“And
what are we going to tell them? Are we just going to say he ran away?”

“Not at
all. As you said, that would just make him look guilty. We’ll tell them that I
ordered him to leave the hotel so we could evacuate you, and to get to the
embassy immediately. He left under orders given to him by your head of
security, unknown to you. You were shocked to hear this—”

“I am!”

“—and
you didn’t authorize his departure, but now that he has left, you and your team
will be leaving, promising full cooperation in the investigation and access to
Agent Green when he arrives at the American Embassy.”

“You’ve
really thought this out, haven’t you, Agent?”

Dawson
smiled slightly. “Experience, ma’am. This is what we’re trained for. Now, Mr. Dimitri
Yashkin would like to meet with you. I suggest we do so in about ten minutes.
That will give us a few minutes to regroup and finalize our prep for evac, and
give Mr. Green some additional time to escape, though I have no doubt that
every cop in the city is now looking for him.”

“He
better get to the embassy quickly.”

Dawson
shook his head. “If I know him, he’ll be nowhere near it.”

Kentucky Fried Chicken, Nguyen Thai Hoc Street, Hanoi, Vietnam

Niner marched into the ground floor of a three story building, the
large red KFC logo shocking the hell out of him until he remembered his
briefing. Fast food joints were popping up everywhere in Vietnam, including the
biggies like McDonalds. KFC had actually been one of the first in 1997.

He eyed
the menu as his stomach grumbled from the smell. It reminded him of home.
Growing up he used to bike past the local KFC, swearing they intentionally
pumped the delicious smell of deep fried chicken to the outside just to lure
people in. It drove his mother nuts every time they rode past the place, his
young nostrils catching a waft, immediately triggering the required, “Can we, Mom,
can we get some?”

Too
often she had spoiled him.

Fortunately
he was blessed with the skinny gene so was able to indulge in the finer points
of American cuisine when he was younger, and now as an adult, training
constantly, he had no clue if he was still blessed, or just burned off every
damned calorie he got near. His eating habits were shit, fast food and pizza
the order of the day, but when you lived a job that might kill you tomorrow,
the saturated fat content of a meal enjoyed today meant little.

Besides,
his cholesterol was fine and his doctor had let him in on a little secret—they
really had no clue whether dietary cholesterol was important or not, since the
body produced the vast majority of it.

He chose
to ignore it all. As part of the job they were monitored constantly, bloodwork
being taken all the time just in case they had been exposed to something while
on assignment. He didn’t do drugs, drank like a fish when it was appropriate to
do so, and ate what he wanted.

And
today his stomach was telling him it wanted KFC.

Too bad
he’d only be seeing the inside of their bathroom.

Which
is where?

He
spotted the universal blue sign pointing up a set of stairs and stood almost
bewildered as he watched the customers who had just placed and paid for their
orders climb the same stairs. He followed, most giving him a wide berth and
avoiding eye contact, the AKM still slung over his shoulder. Reaching the top
he saw a dining area where there appeared to be a large number of disgruntled
customers waiting for the food that they were apparently supposed to pick up
here.

And a
group of teenage staff playing what appeared to be tag.

Corporate
should hear about this.