Act of Treason (11 page)

Rapp was scanning the rooftop again when a flash of movement caught his eye. Someone was on the roof next to the apartment building. Rapp’s room was on the fourth floor of the hotel. All of the buildings across the street were three stories high and their flat roofs pretty much matched up to within a few feet of each other. Rapp saw the movement again. Someone was moving from Rapp’s left to right, toward the café. Rapp leaned out to get a better look and saw a shadowy figure make the short hop from the building onto the roof where Gazich’s business was located.

Rapp smiled as he realized his instincts had been correct. When he’d checked out the building earlier in the day he questioned why their guy would set up shop on the third floor of a building that had no side or back alley. The only way out was through the front door. Not exactly code back in the States, but over here where the streets had been laid out thousands of years ago, they had to make do. It was almost unthinkable for a guy like Gazich to back himself into a corner with no avenue of escape. The answer was that he hadn’t. Gazich’s escape route was the roof. From there his options were plentiful.

Rapp’s eyes searched the darkness for more movement, but there was none. The roof was dotted with air-conditioning units as well as some ventilation pipes and a few other things. He assumed Gazich was hiding behind one of them, or that he had crawled over to the edge where there was a lip. Suddenly, the front left window on the third floor lit up. A few seconds later the silhouette of a man appeared on the cream colored shade. Rapp realized the access hatch must be located behind one of the air-conditioning units.

“Why the hell would you turn on that light?” Rapp asked himself.

The silhouette moved about, disappearing and then coming back into view. It looked like he was gathering something. Even so, Gazich had to know these guys were watching him. This made no sense. He could have easily snuck in, used a small penlight to get what he needed, and go back out through the roof without anyone ever knowing he’d been there.

Rapp was stuck on the stupidity of this when he suddenly realized what was going on. There was almost no time to react. Grabbing his phone off the bed, he stuffed his arms into his jacket and rushed for the door.

R
ussians,” Gazich growled to himself. “Goddamn Russians.”

He stood, bent at the waist, his forearms draped across the open window-frame of the car, his gun dangling out of site in his right hand.

Gazich hated Russians almost as much as he hated Muslims. The two groups had ruined his ethnic homeland: the Muslims with their all-or-nothing, backward religion and the Russians with their arrogant, clumsy, bullying, pagan ways. Bosnia could have been so much more if only they’d left her alone. But of course they hadn’t. The Muslims had encroached from the southeast and the Russians from the northeast. The Muslims did so slowly over centuries, while the Russians swept in after WWII and took everything by force. While Western Europe flourished, communist Yugoslavia suffered. The Russians were now gone and the Muslims had either been killed or turned into refugees.

Gazich looked at the dead man and resisted the urge to spit on him. Leaving DNA at the scene of a crime was not a wise move. He had shot the man once in the heart and then a second time because he was so pissed. He’d wanted to shoot him in the head, but given the relatively public environment he was in it was ill-advised. The man even smelled Russian. He reeked of cheap cologne and unfiltered cigarettes.

“What are you…KGB or Russian mob? Not that there’s a big difference anymore. I should shoot you again,” Gazich muttered.

He honestly didn’t know what upset him more; the man’s nationality or that the people who had hired him to do the job in the States thought so little of him that they had sent a Russian to kill him. Gazich casually took a drag of his cigarette and slipped the tip of the silencer into the waistband of his pants. With his right hand he pulled the bottom of his jacket over the gun. He spotted a small two-way radio on the seat and decided it might come in handy. After stuffing it in his pocket, he stood and took a step back. As he waved good-bye to the dead man, he pushed the gun further into his pants and looked up at the hotel across the street and to his left. About half the rooms were lit up.

Gazich had surreptitiously stopped by the café owner’s house earlier in the day. He had come in through the garden even though he doubted the Russians had enough men to watch both his office and the old man’s house. Gazich told Andreas that he was sorry he’d been caught up in the middle of this. Andreas accepted the apology and then eagerly agreed to do whatever he could to rid himself of these Russians. He told Gazich everything he knew about them including the fact that they had two rooms on the third floor of the hotel directly across the street.

A quick survey of the windows told Gazich they were every bit as lazy as he expected them to be. No one was keeping an eye on the street. Who knew with Russians, there was a very good chance they were already drunk. The Bosnian stuffed his hands in his pockets and started down the street with renewed anger. Part of him wanted to march over to the hotel, kick in their door, and shoot them in the head, but as tempted as he was, he needed to talk to them. He needed to find out who had sent them.

Two doors down, Gazich entered an apartment building and proceeded to the top floor. At the back of the building, in a maintenance closet, there was a metal ladder screwed into the wall. Gazich climbed it and popped the hatch that led to the roof. He pulled himself up, lowered the hatch, and started working his way toward his building. He stayed in a crouch, not because he was worried that someone would see him, but because he was afraid he’d walk into a clothesline. A minute later he knelt next to the hatch that accessed his building. Gazich lifted it up and descended into the darkness, closing the hatch behind him. He was now in the center hall at the rear of the building. He walked toward the front and pulled out his cell phone. He punched in the number for the café and after a few rings one of the daughters answered. A half a minute after that the patriarch was on the phone.

“Hello?” the old man answered.

Andreas had told him the phones were tapped, but at this point Gazich didn’t care. “Andreas, it is me, Alexander. How are you?” Gazich slid his key into his office door and turned the lock.

“Fine, my friend. Are you coming to see me?”

“Yes. In fact I’m up in my office.” Gazich hit the light switch. “I have a little work to do and then I’ll be down for a drink.”

“Good. I’ll see you when I see you.”

Gazich put his phone away and looked around his office. Everything was not as he had left it. They had tried to put things back, but they were too sloppy to do it right. In addition to the slight disorder he could smell their cigarettes. They had been so arrogant they actually smoked while pilfering his stuff. Gazich continued surveying the room. There was a large wood desk with the usual stuff on top: a lamp, an old Rolodex, computer monitor, keyboard, mouse, and phone. The walls were lined with bookcases. Gazich turned to look back at the door. That was when he noticed something. It was a motion sensor placed just above the trim board by the floor.

“Good,” he said aloud. “We can get this over with sooner rather than later.”

Gazich grabbed the two-way radio and clipped it to his belt. Next, he moved the coat rack next to the desk and draped his jacket around the top pegs. To finish it off he set his baseball hat on top and turned on the desk lamp. The radio on his hip crackled to life and a male voice began speaking in Russian. Gazich didn’t know Russian, but he didn’t need to. He knew what they were asking. Two similar radios sat in a charger on the bookcase across from the desk. Gazich grabbed one, turned it on, and set it to the same channel as the one he’d take from the dead Russian. Next, he held them within inches of each other and pressed the transmit buttons. High-pitched feedback squawked from each box, creating an extremely irritating noise.

Gazich released the transmit buttons and walked back out into the hallway. He closed the frosted glass door and inspected his work. The silhouette of the jacket and hat on the coat rack wasn’t perfect, but it would be enough to confuse them. The two-way erupted again, with an angry Russian voice yelling what Gazich guessed were curses. The Bosnian held the devices next to each other one more time and let loose a blast of feedback. As he walked to the window, he pressed the button one more time and then turned his attention to the entrance of the hotel across the street. Five seconds later two large men came tearing out the front door shoving a pedestrian out of their way. One of them was still struggling with his jacket, a shoulder holstered pistol clearly visible against his off-white shirt.

With pure professional disdain, Gazich shook his head and positioned himself for the ambush.

R
app turned the phone to vibrate mode, dialed Coleman’s number, and stuffed the phone in the breast pocket of his coat. As he grabbed the door handle with his right hand his left hand slid around to the small of his back and gripped the handle of his Glock 19 pistol. Rapp drew the weapon and looked through the peephole to make sure no one was waiting outside his door. With the gun at the ready, he flipped the dead bolt and opened the door. A stubby suppressor added another three inches to the gun. He did a quick check of the hallway, slid the gun into a specially designed pocket on the inside right side of his jacket, and moved out. Rapp bypassed the elevator and went straight for the staircase. As he opened the fire door, Coleman’s voice came over his wireless earpiece.

“Brooks says we’re five to ten minutes out. Traffic’s pretty bad.”

“This whole damn thing might be over by the time you get here.”

Rapp had just reached the first step when he heard a commotion from below.

“What do you mean it might be over?” Coleman asked.

Rapp couldn’t answer right away. Two men burst into the stairwell one floor beneath. One of them was speaking loudly in Russian. He recognized one of them as the man who had shoved money in the old man’s shirt earlier in the evening. It was exactly as Rapp had feared. Gazich had already killed one of them, and now he was drawing these two into a trap.

“What’s going on?” Coleman asked.

Rapp waited for the two men to get to the second landing before he whispered his reply. “I think we’ve got an unsatisfied customer.”

“What in the hell are you talking about?”

“I’ll explain it when you get here.” Rapp started down the stairs. “That is, if I’m still alive.”

“Slow down, Mitch. You’re not making any sense.”

“Tell Brooks to call Marcus so he can bring her up to speed on who this Deckas guy really is, and tell him the guys in the surveillance photos are Russian.” Rapp hit the next flight.

“Where are you?”

Rapp glanced over the railing as the two men hit the first floor landing. “I’m in the hotel following two Russian idiots who are about to get killed.”

“Just wait until we get there.”

The men hit the fire door hard and burst into the lobby.

“You don’t think I can take care of myself?” Rapp bounded down the steps two at a time, now that he was the only one in the stairwell.

“That’s not what I said. You’re going into this blind with no backup. That is not what I would call a prudent tactical decision.”

Rapp laughed. “You SEALs are all such pussies.”

“Don’t make this about some macho bullshit. Just hang tight for a few more minutes.”

As Rapp hit the first floor landing he could hear Coleman yelling at Brooks to step on it. He pushed the fire door open and entered the lobby.

“Two minutes okay?” Coleman pleaded.

“Sorry buddy, the train is leaving the station. I need to make sure these idiots don’t all kill each other.” Rapp walked casually through the lobby so as to not raise any unwanted attention. This was not difficult due to the fact that everyone was staring at the two bulls squeezing through the turnstile door. “Just stay on the line,” Rapp said, “and I’ll keep you appraised as best I can.”

Rapp calmly smiled at the bellman as he reached the door. Out in front of the hotel one of the Russians was stopped in the middle of the street trying to get the attention of his friend sitting in the parked car. The other Russian was already across the street and yelling at the man to follow him. Rapp continued to give Coleman the tactical update as he waited for a car to pass. He watched as the Russians bullied their way through the crowd of people waiting to get into the café. Rapp moved to the left and crossed between a row of parked scooters. He avoided the dozen-plus people standing by the hostess stand. While all of the patrons were focused on the commotion caused by the two rude men shoving their way through the crowd, Rapp stepped over the sagging, faded, velvet rope that formed the perimeter of the patio. He discretely threaded his way through the tight tables and bobbed his head to avoid the corners of table umbrellas.

Rapp checked the patio to see if the old man was about, but he was nowhere to be found. This thing was going to go one of two ways. Either bad or good. Rapp was not exactly sure how he was going to proceed, but he had a rough idea what his rules of engagement were going to be. The Russians were now pressing through the front door of the restaurant. Through the large plate glass window Rapp watched them start up the stairs to the right. With a dose of caution he slid through the front door and resisted the urge to follow them. Going up a set of stairs blind like this was a good way to get shot, which Rapp presumed was exactly what was about to happen to them.

Straight ahead the old man was conversing with a table of customers, but it was obvious his concern was elsewhere. He kept looking up at the stairs. Rapp turned to his left. There were two tables between the bar and the front window. The bar ran a good thirty feet, taking up the front third of the restaurant. In the back and to his right there were more tables. The customers were stacked three deep at the bar and virtually every single person had a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other. The place was loud. Plaster walls, with a tin ceiling and tile floor. Wood tables and wood trim. Lots of hard surfaces.

As Rapp smiled, excused, and nudged his way through the crowd he kept an eye on the mirror behind the bar. Two shelves of liquor bracketed the top and bottom of the mirror, and in its reflection he could watch both the old man and the staircase. Rapp did not hear the noise, but he did catch the mirror and the bottles shake ever so briefly. No more than a second later the liquid in the bottles danced yet again. Rapp sighed and cracked his neck from one side to the other. As he thought about what had just happened upstairs he flexed his fingers, extended them and then scrunched them into the palm of his hands. One dead for sure, probably two dead.

His left hand slid over to his right wrist and without looking, he pressed the stopwatch function on his digital watch. Next came his breathing. It automatically settled into a steady, almost hypnotic rhythm. He was about ninety-nine percent sure the tremors were a result of the Russians hitting the ground one after the other as they’d been shot by Gazich. Was there a chance Gazich was already climbing onto the roof? Rapp doubted it. The way he’d stood next to the car after he’d killed the first man suggested he was too cool to turn and run. There were also the police to consider. Simply leaving the bodies lying around would mean the police would show up at some point. And they would have a lot of questions. Rapp’s bet was that he would stay and clean up his mess.

Someone was still alive upstairs. In truth, any of the three would do, but Rapp wanted it to be Gazich. He was the man who had been standing on the street that day in Georgetown. Someone had hired him to do the job and now they wanted him dead. Rapp wanted that information, and playing it safe wasn’t going to get it. In life there’s the phrase, the calm after the storm. In war there is the letdown after the battle. Some people call it an adrenalin hangover. Elite soldiers train methodically in an effort to reprogram their biology to fight off this letdown. It is drilled into them to replenish spent magazines, clean weapons, and make sure they are battle ready before they so much as relieve themselves in a roadside ditch. Gazich was not an elite soldier. He was a sniper and an assassin. He would be focused on other things right now.

Rapp was going upstairs. That much he’d already decided. There’d been too much watching and waiting lately. The only real question was how long should he wait? At least a minute. That would allow for the post adrenalin hangover to kick in.

The old man started to move. Rapp watched him in the mirror. He came toward the front of the restaurant. One of the waitresses tried to ask him a question, but he ignored her and went straight for the staircase. Rapp checked his watch and casually pivoted away from the bar. He brought his right hand up, squinted his eyes, and covered his mouth and nose as if he was about to sneeze.

Instead of sneezing he said, “I’m going up to his office.”

The steps were worn, checkered, linoleum tiles turned on their side so as to give the squares a diamondlike appearance. Black and white with a black rubber cap on the edge of each riser. To the left and right the tiles and cap were in good shape, but in the middle they were so worn the tan backing of the linoleum was beginning to show through. Rapp smiled at two women who were standing at the bottom of the steps. He placed his hand on the shoulders of one and slid around behind her. Rapp stayed to the right. Less noise and almost no chance of being seen until he made the turn at each landing. He moved quickly to the first landing.

Assumptions—more often than not that’s what it came down to. Educated guesses based on real-life experiences were what gave you the edge in these situations. Rapp pictured what was going on upstairs as he placed each foot carefully on the treads. The old man was about five foot eight and weighed close to two hundred pounds. On top of that, he favored his right side when he walked. His hips and knees were probably shit from working on his feet all day and carrying an extra forty pounds around. He’d make it up one flight all right, but the second would really get his heart and lungs going. Add to that the stress of the situation and there was probably a pretty good chance that by the time he got to the third floor he’d be on the verge of cardiac arrest.

The first landing was no trouble. Rapp hugged the outside wall and kept moving, taking the turn and heading up the next flight to the second floor. The last thing he wanted was for one of the waitresses or bartenders to notice him and start yelling for him to come down. Back pressed flat against the wall, he stood completely still and listened. Below there was light music and loud conversation. Above there was darkness and silence. Rapp slid the pistol from its pocket. Three tiny green dots marked the tritium sights. Two in back and one in front. Rapp brought the pistol up and held it next to his face, the stubby suppressor pointing at the ceiling. The aroma of metal and oil mixed together to create a unique comforting smell.

There was one more choice to make. Rapp’s pistol was currently chambered with a Federal Hydra-Shok 9mm hollow-point cartridge. The ammunition was subsonic, and near silent. It was perfect for taking care of business in a discreet way, but it had one significant drawback. The subsonic round had eighty percent less velocity than its supersonic cousin. Forget body armor; the bullet could be stopped by a thick leather jacket at about thirty feet. It was not the type of round you wanted to use in a gunfight. The problem with the supersonic rounds, though, was that they were not silent. They made a fairly loud snapping noise as they broke the sound barrier. Rapp glanced down the staircase and remembered how loud it was in the bar area. The scale in his mind weighed velocity and stopping power against stealth. Velocity won.

Rapp switched the pistol from his left hand to his right and hit the magazine release. The black magazine dropped into his left hand, and he stowed it in his right front pocket. Rapp turned the weapon on its side, placing the butt of the grip against his chest. He cupped his left hand over the ejection port and moved his right thumb up under the slide release. Using his fingertips and the meaty part of his palm, he gripped the slide and pushed back until he felt the cold brass of the chambered round fall into his cupped hand. At the same time his right thumb pushed up on the slide release and locked the slide in the open position. He dropped the loose round into the same pocket as the magazine and fished out a different magazine from his left pocket. Rapp took the first supersonic round off the top of the magazine and placed it between his front teeth. He then quietly slid the magazine into the grip using the palm of his hand to make sure it was locked into place. The gun was switched again to the left hand. Rapp carefully took the single round from his teeth, and while pointing the muzzle at the ground he dropped the round into the chamber. It was a bit like loading a torpedo into a launch tube. Grabbing the top of the slide with his right hand, he pulled back just enough for the slide release to drop and then slowly let the slide come forward until the breach was closed.

This wasn’t Hollywood. Real shooters carried their weapons hot. That meant a round in the chamber. None of this racking the slide macho bullshit. All that did was slow you down and make a bunch of noise. Rapp’s only alternative to this complicated process would have been a soft rack, which basically meant putting a fresh magazine in the grip and then carefully letting the slide come forward in a slow, controlled motion. The problem with a soft rack was that you risked an improperly chambered round, which was the last thing you wanted. Especially when you planned on getting off the first shot.

Rapp gripped the weapon with both hands and extended it, pressing both hands away from his body. His arms formed a triangle. He moved to his right, his weight perfectly distributed, his footfalls as light as a featherweight boxer’s. He started up the stairs slowly, two steps at a time. When he reached the landing between the second and third floors he could hear voices. A swath of dim light shone on the wall up above. Rapp guessed it came from Gazich’s office. He stared at the wall for a few seconds to see if he could make out any shadows. There were none. That meant no one was standing in the doorway to the office. Rapp listened. The voices were faint. Barely audible. He thought it was Greek.

Suddenly, the silence of the third floor was shattered by an unsettling scream. Rapp instinctively took a step back. His whole body coiled, his muscles tensed as he prepared to strike out. The scream was followed by a harsh but controlled voice. The language was definitely Greek. The Greek was followed by heavy breathing and Russian. Rapp immediately knew what was going on. He crouched low and moved forward two steps to get a view of the landing above. The first thing he noticed was that the office door was closed. The second thing he noticed was a dead man lying on the floor.