The Temporary Agent (15 page)

He raised his smartphone and said, “Proceed.”

Thirty

Tom stared at the netbook screen.

The video camera was a micro unit, which the cameraman attached to a pair of glasses that he put on as he followed the other two men to their motel room door.

When they opened it, the sound of the late-afternoon rain was all that could be heard through the netbook’s speakers.

The men exited and quietly made their way along the front of the motel to the next room.

Stella’s room.

At her door, the cameraman knelt and began to work.

A tension tool—a small piece of flattened metal with a ninety-degree bend at its end—appeared in his left hand, a stainless-steel lock pick gun in his right.

He inserted the bent end of the tension tool into to the deadbolt, then slid the pick gun’s smooth metal blade alongside it and began to rapidly pull the trigger.

Each trigger pull made a sharp clicking sound, but it took only a half-dozen pulls before the bolt was unlocked and the tension tool spun freely.

The cameraman then did the same with the doorknob lock, though it took considerably more clicks before the knob turned freely.

He backed away and pocketed his tools as one of his associates stepped to the door and gripped the handle.

Turning it, he opened the door just a crack.

As he did, a loud sound came from inside the room.

The jingle of metal coins being scattered on the floor.

Tom knew then that Stella had rigged the doorknob just as he had rigged their apartment door before leaving for the city: with a container of some kind filled with loose change and balanced on the knob.

The armed men, caught off guard by the abrupt sound, shoved their way into the room, tromping on the fallen coins as they fanned out with their weapons drawn.

As the cameraman swept the room, everything looked like a blur at first.

Tom felt two conflicting desperations—to see her and not to see her.

The view on the netbook’s screen slowed and came into focus.

The room appeared empty.

Behind the cameraman, someone closed the motel room door, muting the sound of the heavy rain.

It was then that another sound could be heard.

Running water, coming from behind the closed bathroom door.

The shower, judging by the volume of water flowing.

Any hope that Stella had heard the racket made by her improvised alarm was gone from Tom’s mind now.

What replaced it was the knowledge that she was as vulnerable as a person could get.

Naked and wet—but more than that, deaf and blind to the approaching threat.

The cameraman settled his line of sight finally on the closed bathroom door.

He gestured to his associates and began to move forward.

One of the two men cut in front of him and stood outside the door. He waited for the other two to take their breaching positions.

The cameraman to the right and the other man directly behind.

The point man looked into the camera, then faced the door and reached for the knob.

He tested it. Found it unlocked.

He nodded toward the camera before facing the door one more time, then turned the knob completely and eased the door open slightly, allowing the first churning wisps of steam to escape.

The door was ajar by maybe an inch when the first shot was fired.

From inside the bathroom.

The door exploded at dead center, splinters flying from a hole the size of a nickel.

Another gunshot followed the first, a second hole appearing just below the first one.

A perfect keyhole pattern.

Both bullets hit the point man in the chest.

He was dead before he knew what happened.

The second man, his Glock drawn, fired wildly into the steam-filled room.

Panic shots, a left-to-right spray of bullets aimed straight ahead.

He was halfway through his clip of eighteen rounds when another shot came from the bathroom.

The camera caught the bright-orange flash of .357 Magnum discharging a round.

This time, there was no wooden door to shoot through, nothing at all to diminish even slightly the speed or energy of the powerful round.

The second man folded and fell as if he’d been struck in the chest with a sledgehammer.

Only the cameraman remained now.

As he moved backward in quick retreat, his weapon drawn, he kept looking into the bathroom.

The amount of steam Tom saw told him that Stella had run hot water only.

So she wasn’t in the shower.

She had run it to provide cover.

And as a decoy.

It wasn’t until much of the steam that had collected in the tiny bathroom had been drawn out to the colder motel room that the cameraman finally glimpsed her.

The live video feed showed Stella, fully dressed and on her back on the tile floor, the soles of her feet planted firm and her knees raised and slightly spread.

Her head was up and the .357 was at a forty-five-degree angle to the floor.

Held there by two steady hands.

Right arm bent slightly with the elbow outward, left arm bent more deeply, elbow pointed down to the floor.

A perfect Weaver-style grip.

But the cameraman saw her too late.

Before he could lower his weapon and take aim, Stella fired the .357 once, then again.

The last view the camera showed was of the ceiling as its operator reeled backward. A blur of motion and background noise that ended when the video feed on the netbook’s screen turned to static.

Silence fell as the Slav stared, dumbfounded, at the display.

Even his men were frozen, distracted.

The Glock at the right side of Tom’s head had drifted slightly off target.

In his peripheral vision to the left, he saw that Hammerton was cutting through his plasticuffs with a blade he had retrieved from a hidden sheath located at the small of his back.

Little more than the tip of a double-edged blade connected to a metal handle designed to fit between the index and middle fingers of a clenched fist.

Thin, too—but more than enough for the task.

It only took a second, maybe two, tops—forever, it felt to Tom—but then the plastic tie was finally severed and Hammerton’s hands were free.

In his right hand was the stubby but gleaming blade, held ready in a fist the size of a grapefruit.

Instantly, Hammerton scrambled to his feet.

And Tom, still bound, his heart pounding adrenaline into his bloodstream, rose up fast from his knees.

Thirty-One

Hammerton moved like an enraged bull.

He went first for the man holding the Glock to Simpson’s head.

Grabbing the weapon with his left hand and controlling it expertly as he guided it off target, he slashed at the man’s throat with the blade in his right.

A horizontal motion, lightning fast.

Nothing short of a killing stroke.

Riding the momentum of his swing, Hammerton spun slightly, stripping the Glock from the man’s grip just as the man, raising both hands to his open throat, began to drop.

Tom knew they had entered a world—a confined world, a surreal world—in which violence of action was all that mattered.

Moments from now—seconds from now—the fastest and the strongest and the most savagely vicious would be the winners.

And the losers would be dead.

The rules were simple enough.

Once Tom was on his feet, he charged the man next to him, whose firearm had also drifted off its target.

Bending at the knees and turning to the left slightly, he drove his right shoulder squarely into the man’s solar plexus.

Running as fast as he could, he drove the off-balance man into the nearby brick wall with all his force and weight, then straightened up fast, cocked his head to the right, and slammed the top of his skull into the bottom of the man’s chin, snapping the man’s open jaw shut.

Tom knew that, at best, he had only stunned his adversary.

He knew, too, that a stunned man could still make effective use of a pistol.

Wasting no time, Tom raised his left leg and kneed the man in the groin.

If once was good, twice was better, so Tom kneed him again, then a third time.

The man was in agony, yes, but all that was needed for him to end the relentless assault was simply to bend his wrist or reposition his arm a few degrees to aim the Glock at some part of Tom.

The man obviously knew this, too, because he began to do both.

His finger was inside the trigger guard, ready to twitch the moment the muzzle was aligned with his attacker.

Tom saw this and did the only thing he could.

He lunged at the man’s arm face-first, digging his teeth into the man’s forearm just above the wrist.

Dropping to his knees, Tom pulled the man’s arm downward, forcing him to bend at the waist.

Screaming but undeterred, the man grabbed the Glock with his left hand, seizing it by the barrel and releasing his right hand.

Holding it like a club, he was raising it in preparation to strike Tom’s head when the first shot was fired.

In the confined space of that small room, the retort was like an open-palm slap to Tom’s ears.

And it took Tom a second—a desperate second—to realize that the shot had been fired by Hammerton.

Armed with the pistol he had taken from the man he had knifed.

Another shot immediately followed the first—a double tap, both shots hitting the bent-over man above Tom in the top of his head.

Tom would have expected nothing less from a former SAS.

The dead man fell, his lifeless weight crashing down on top of Tom and pinning him with his hands still bound behind his back.

Maybe four or five seconds had passed since Hammerton had first swung into action, Tom right behind him.

During that time the third armed man—the one who had been holding the netbook, the one who had stomp-kicked Hammerton with such power—had dropped the device and begun to guide the limping Slav toward the only door.

The action of a trained bodyguard.

As he did that, he reached for the pistol in his shoulder rig.

The holster was vertical, old school, meaning he had to reach across his broad chest to where the weapon had been positioned under his left armpit for maximum concealment.

Drawing fast from such a rig took two hands—the right hand reached for the weapon while the left assisted by grasping the bottom of the holster and tipping it forward slightly to move the weapon within reach.

But the bodyguard’s left hand was still on the Slav’s back, pushing his employer forward, which meant he could only reach the firearm’s grip with the tips of his right fingers.

Drawing was still possible—it would just take a few seconds of fumbling to get a secure enough hold on the grip to extract the weapon from the molded leather.

And extraction could only be done by pulling straight up.

The bodyguard was in the process of overcoming this problem when Simpson, his hands still bound, crashed into him.

Simpson obviously intended to drive the man into the wall and pin his right arm against his chest with his own body, preventing the man from completing his draw.

A sacrifice play meant to buy Hammerton the time needed to open fire on the last of the Slav’s armed men.

But Simpson’s all-out tackle did little more than cause the bodyguard to adjust his actions—instead of guiding the Slav through the door, he pushed the limping man through it.

Once his employer was safely out of the kill box the small room had become, the bodyguard turned his attention to Simpson.

A man on whom he had a good forty pounds.

Simpson was still close, crowding the bodyguard, preventing him from completing his draw, but the man was clearly no stranger to close-quarter combat.

Throwing a swift, hooking elbow strike, he broke Simpson’s nose.

And like Tom, the bodyguard knew to keep throwing strikes, landing each one on or as close as possible to the same target.

Violence of action and overwhelming force.

Simpson was like a boxer who had been tagged hard—his knees buckled and his eyes glassed over. But before he could drop, the bodyguard grabbed him and spun him around.

Using Simpson as human shield, the bodyguard completed his draw.

His weapon was no cheap Glock, though.

It was a chrome-plated, .50-caliber Desert Eagle.

Huge by handgun standards—thus the need for the old-school vertical holster.

The bodyguard pressed the weapon’s muzzle against Simpson’s head and began backing toward the door.

Tom noticed that Simpson looked confused, as if none of what was occurring made any sense to him.

Not scared, not angry, not determined—confused.

Hammerton had already shifted his aim to the man, but Simpson’s proximity to his target had prevented Hammerton from firing.

Now the two men were in a standoff.

Once he had made his way to the doorway, the bodyguard made a quick visual sweep of the room before looking back at Hammerton.

Simpson opened his mouth to speak, his eyes turned in a way that made it appear that he was about to address the man behind him.

The man with his left arm around Simpson’s neck and the powerful handgun to his head.

But the bodyguard tightened his arm, choking Simpson and keeping him from speaking.

Then the bodyguard smiled.

A smile that was directed at Hammerton.

The smile of a man who enjoyed his work.

Relished in it.

Tom knew what was about to happen.

But there was nothing he could do.

Without hesitation, the Slav’s bodyguard squeezed the trigger.

Thirty-Two

In the confined room, the Desert Eagle’s retort was unbearable.

Despite being pinned under the dead man, Tom could still feel the concussive wave move through him.

A quick blast of pressurized air traveling at thousands of feet per second.

It hit him like a violent shove.

And once again, Tom could only hear ringing.

He could see this time, though.

But when Simpson dropped into his view, he wished he couldn’t.

The top of the man’s head and much of the left side of his face were missing.

Sickened, Tom closed his eyes and felt an anger he hadn’t experienced in a long time.

A rage that threatened to rise and overtake him whenever he witnessed a pointless loss of life.

But he knew not to grasp on to that rage, or to let it take hold of him.

Giving into anger during battle was a sure way of getting killed.

Calmly but with purpose, Tom scrambled out from beneath the dead man.

Hammerton was beside him, the short blade in his fist ready.

He cut the plasticuffs with one hand while keeping the Glock aimed at the doorway with his other, in case the bodyguard doubled back.

Kneeling beside the man Hammerton had shot, Tom rolled him over and removed the Beretta from his waistband. He then removed the tactical flashlight, which he slipped into his back pocket as he rose to his feet.

The Beretta had been out of Tom’s sight for a period of time, so he confirmed that a round was still in the chamber, then dropped, examined, and reinserted the magazine.

He had no time to go looking for the spare mag that had been taken from his pocket.

Eleven rounds—one in the chamber, ten in the mag—would have to do.

As Tom was doing this, Hammerton also recovered his SIG p226, but kept the Glock as a backup, tucking it into his waistband at the small of his back.

Hammerton headed toward the open doorway, Tom following, but the moment they reached it, just as they were about to step over Simpson’s body, the end of the dark hallway lit up for a second with a burst of orange light as the Slav’s bodyguard, standing at the top of the stairs, fired a single shot.

Even with the distance between them, the shockwave rustled Tom’s clothing like a sudden wind.

In the same instant, the thick beam of the door frame exploded, sending splinters into Hammerton’s face.

Hammerton screamed and turned away, stunned into brief motionlessness, but Tom yanked him back against the wall.

He saw right away that Hammerton’s already-scarred face was bloody.

“Shit,” Tom whispered.

Hammerton wiped the blood from his eyes with the back of his hand. “I’m fine. I’m fine.”

Tom glanced down, spotting the outlet into which the two flood lamps were plugged.

He saw, too, the night-vision goggles hanging around the neck of the man Hammerton had shot.

Reaching down, he took hold of both electrical cords with one hand and pulled them from their sockets, casting the room into a darkness so complete that Tom couldn’t even see his own hands.

Then he knelt and blindly reached around until he’d pulled the goggles over the dead man’s bloodied head.

Straightening again against the wall, he listened.

Hearing and touch were the only senses relaying information to his brain right then.

The ringing in his ears was diminishing. He heard footsteps below.

By their broken rhythm, he knew that those steps belonged to the limping Slav.

What Tom could not hear was the bodyguard making his way down the stairs.

This meant that the man was holding his position at the end of the hall, covering the Slav as he made his escape.

But then the Slav’s footsteps stopped.

Directly below, from what Tom could tell.

In the room with the vast cache of weapons and demolition.

But had they stopped, or merely passed out of earshot?

Before Tom could decide, Hammerton pointed his SIG around the door frame, bent his wrist so the weapon was aimed down the hallway, and fired.

He got off two rounds before the bodyguard answered back with a single shot that punched several more holes through the door frame.

Scattering yet more wood splinters like shrapnel.

Grabbing Hammerton’s collar, Tom pulled him back against the wall again, more roughly this time.

Another’s anger could also get a person killed.

He shifted position, pinning Hammerton to the wall. He knew he’d made his point when Hammerton stayed put.

Listening again, Tom wondered where the Slav was.

And why his bodyguard was holding a defensive position at the end of the hallway.

Long moments passed before Tom heard anything.

What came up from below was a single word from the Slav, spoken loud enough for his bodyguard to hear.

“Set.”

But it hadn’t come from directly below, where the Slav’s steps had ended and the weapons were stored.

It had come instead from the machine shop.

The bodyguard opened fire again—two shots—and then immediately displaced from his defensive position, hurrying down the stairs.

He could be heard now moving through the room below them.

More than moving—he was running.

Tom handed Hammerton the night-vision goggles, then moved down the dark hallway in a crouch, Hammerton behind him.

At the least, the device would keep the blood out of Hammerton’s eyes.

Hammerton put the goggles on.

Tom readied the tactical flashlight but kept it off as Hammerton moved past him, taking point.

Though the total darkness was disorienting, Tom focused his mind and stayed as close to Hammerton as he could as they made their way down the stairs.