Dead Six (68 page)

This was as good as it was going to get. “I’m going in.” I sprung up and took a quick look through the dirty window. Jill was still slumped in a chair. There was nobody else in the room. The room was filled with old trash, rusted metal, and broken bits of wood. Thick spiderwebs clouded the corners. I pushed the heavy panes open slowly, rust binding in the hinge, begging to let out a screech. I gritted my teeth, pushing, praying for silence. Finally it was open wide enough to scramble through.

The door to the back room opened. I slid back down the outside wall. A man was coming into the room. He was wearing a suit, and a cigarette dangled from his lips. He was small, weasel-like, and had an MP5 slung over one shoulder. “Hey, baby. The boss man says we don’t need you much longer.”

Jill raised her head for the first time. There was duct-tape over her mouth. Having held her against her will once myself, I could understand the need for the tape. She struggled against the chair. The fierce anger in her eyes was very familiar. The man closed the door behind him. “See, the way I figure it, I’m your only hope right now. You do me a little favor, and maybe I do you a little favor, know what I mean?” If he was any more of a slimeball he’d be leaving a trail.

The man leaned the MP5 against the wall. He took his suit coat off, threw it on top of the gun, and began to loosen his tie. “You know you want it anyway, baby. Make this good for me, and I can talk the boss into letting you go.” Jill just glared at him.

I found the small dowels in my pocket, palmed them in one hand, then slowly put my hands on the windowsill and began to lever myself through as silently as possible. If I could take this guy out quietly, we still had a chance.

The man had his back to me, distracted as he ran one hand through Jill’s hair. She jerked her head away. “Fine, you wanna be a bitch, whatever. I like it when they fight.” He laughed.

What happened next was a surprise. Jill’s hands came around in a blur, bloody tape still tied around her wrists. She must have been working those against the back of the chair for hours. She slugged him right in the throat. He made a terrible
gahhwk
noise and stumbled. Then Jill stuck one thumb into his eye and locked the other hand around his larynx. The man started to scream, but she cranked down on his throat and choked it off. Her knee found his crotch, so violently hard that I cringed.

He punched her in the side, she cranked down harder, crushing his windpipe, forcing him to his knees. I pushed myself through the window, landing on my hands and rolling. The would-be rapist was on his back now, with Jill bearing down on his throat with both hands. He grabbed her by her hair and jerked her down, but she kept cranking on his neck.

The door opened. I stepped behind it without thinking, a dowel in each hand. “Davis, what the hell are you doing in here?” the second man asked. He stepped into the dark, his imagination filling in the blanks about the struggle before him, drawing all the wrong conclusions. “Can’t you just keep it in your—” I kicked the door closed after he stepped through, the length of piano wire stretched between the two dowels coming down over his head. I crossed my arms and tugged with all of my strength.

He never knew what hit him. The second man struggled, leaning forward I followed, all my weight dragging the wire inexorably through his flesh. The wire grated against vertebra in a matter of seconds, and we both fell to the ground in a spreading puddle of red. His head was barely attached.

I rolled off the twitching body and moved to assist Jill, but she didn’t need any help. She leaned back, shaking. The man’s eyes stared blankly at the ceiling, his tongue almost bit off between his teeth. Jill stood, angrily ripped the tape from her face, and kicked the body once.

“Jill? Are you okay?” I whispered, the sound of conversation barely audible on the other side of the door. The rest of Gordon’s men hadn’t heard. She fell into my arms and sobbed. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”

“You came for me.” She was trembling. “I thought I was dead. . . . I’ve never killed anyone before.”

“It’s okay; he deserved it. Let’s get out of here.”

We weren’t out of the woods yet. The radio crackled. “
Lorenzo, did you get her?
” It was Hawk.

“Yeah, we’re coming out. Two down.”

“
Hold on. There’s more vehicles coming in,
” Bob said. “
I’ve got an SUV and a couple of sedans.
” Headlights came through the window. Our escape route was illuminated.

“
Are they holding a convention?
” Hawk asked.

“
Lots of men moving now. These new ones seem to be paying attention. Don’t move,
” Bob insisted. “
These aren’t government.
”

“What’s wrong?” Jill asked desperately. She was wearing some sort of pink waitress outfit, but it was filthy and blood splattered. She looked exhausted. “Is that Carl on the radio?”

She didn’t know. It just strengthened my resolve. I had to get her out of here. “We can’t sneak out. We’re stuck. We might have to fight our way out.”

“
Lorenzo, we’re in position. Just say when,
” Valentine said. His demeanor had changed. He wasn’t the sarcastic, nervous asshole he’d been before. Now he sounded utterly
calm
. I’d seen him in that state before. I could only imagine what kind of childhood he must’ve had to have gotten so messed up.

Jill knelt by the nearly decapitated man and removed a Glock from his belt. She checked the chamber then stuck it into her waistband. “There’s a subgun under that coat.” She followed my pointing finger and nodded. I leaned against the door and listened. There were more voices on the other side now.

“So what do you want, Gordon?” Oily, British accent, effeminate. “I’ve got important business to conduct. I don’t have time to drive out to middle of the bloody desert. I had to fly into a pathetic little airport in the middle of this dreadful desert just to get here. And it was
closed.
There was nothing there but an empty hangar! I had to land at a closed airport like . . . like some kind of
vagrant!
”

Eddie?

“I would think by now you would trust me.” The voices were muffled through the ancient wooden door, but that had to be Gordon. “Why the entourage?”

“Associates of mine from Las Vegas. I had them pick me up. But I didn’t bring them just because I don’t trust you. I also have some personal business to conduct in the area.” In other words, these were the men that he was planning on using to kill me at the scarab drop.

“Well, Mr. Montalban, as for your personal business, it turns out that there might be another favor I can do for you.”

“Removing my brother from the equation did improve my affairs rather immensely. But all part of fulfilling Project Blue, to the benefit of your employers, of course. And in addition I paid you rather handsomely, so I would hardly call it a favor.”

“As was part of the agreement. My partner is at the Alpha Point for Blue now.”

“I always keep my promises, Mr. Willis. So tell me why you dragged me out here to this filthy, dreadful little place.”

After all of this, Eduard Montalban was in the next room. He’d killed my friends, tried to kill me, and had threatened my loved ones. All thoughts of escaping quietly were dismissed. There was no way he was getting out of here alive. I looked to Jill, eyes wide, stubby machine gun shaking in her hands, and she understood. I pulled a frag grenade from my vest and put one hand on the door knob. “Get ready,” I whispered into the radio.

“This thief, Lorenzo, that you asked me to keep an eye out for—”

Eddie cut him off. “Lorenzo is why I came to America in the first place.”

“How much would he be worth if I was able to deliver him into your hands?” Gordon asked.

Eddie didn’t hesitate. “Though a challenging diversion, he’s worth nothing; But he has something in his possession, an antique piece of
jewelry.
For that, I’d give you ten million.”

“What if I told you that a person of interest we were looking for was picked up by facial-recognition software while passing through Las Vegas? Once flagged, SIGINT eventually pinpointed her in Quagmire. Surprisingly enough, under interrogation it turns out she’s friends with this Lorenzo of yours. My men will be picking him up shortly, right down the road. And for you, a special deal. I’ve
neglected
to mention any of this to my superiors.”

“Of course. But if your men screw this up and I don’t get my property back, I’ll hold you responsible.” A small dog began to bark in the next room. Who the hell brings a dog to a meeting like this?

“It’s already in motion,” the government man said. Somewhere, an armed squad was lying in ambush for us. They hadn’t the faintest idea where we actually were.

“I hope you realize who you’re dealing with, Gordon. Underestimating a man like Lorenzo can be fatal.”

Damn straight.

I opened the door.

VALENTINE

My blood had run cold when I’d heard Gordon’s voice. Then
the
Calm
had washed over me, and suddenly I felt very detached. I couldn’t believe it. I had all but resolved myself to disappearing quietly. I had convinced myself that getting to Gordon was impossible, that it was just an angry fantasy. Now Gordon had been dropped right into my lap. He’d injected himself back into my life and screwed it up all over again. Beneath
the
Calm,
at the outermost limit of my perception
,
I was seething with anger. He wasn’t going to get away this time. He wasn’t going to do this to me
twice
.

Reaper and I were in a shallow ravine that was about two-thirds of the way down the steep hill we’d come from. Hawk had crawled another twenty feet to a better position of cover. At the top of the hill was Bob with his rifle. At the bottom of the hill was the cinder-block building where they were holding Jill.

“Reaper, keep your head down,” I said. The nearest visible bad guy was far out of range of his stubby shotgun. “I’ll tell you when to move. Stay alert.”

There were two parties of men hanging around outside. One was presumably from Gordon’s group, since they had been driving the government Suburbans. Only three of them remained outside, doing a very poor job of keeping watch. The rest, more heavily armed in SWAT gear, had piled into a van and left. I figured that was the group that was supposed to be ambushing us at the arranged meeting point.

But several other cars that had just arrived, and these new guys were anxious. A handful of men got out and entered the building, including one of the biggest, fattest men I’d ever seen. This giant whale of a man was probably close to seven feet tall and had to weigh four hundred pounds.

“Who’s the fat guy?” I whispered into my radio.

“
Unknown,
” Bob tersely replied.

“Fat guy?” Reaper asked, suddenly sounding even more anxious. Before I could stop him, he poked his head over the ravine to see. A shocked look appeared on his face, and he immediately dropped back down.

“What is it?” I asked. But Reaper wouldn’t tell me anything. He just whispered into his radio that “the fat man” was here. Lorenzo clicked his microphone in reply.

Bob had said over the radio that these new arrivals were more alert, and that was definitely true. Compared to the government suits, the new guys looked like they belonged in a European fashion magazine, and they were all openly carrying weapons. Some had MP7 submachine guns, some had G36C assault rifles, and all were alert.

I was startled by the sound of a muffled explosion. The windows of the cinder-block building blew out, and the prison camp suddenly came alive.

The men outside were all startled by the blast. I put my aiming reticle on the upper chest of one of the new guys. He was hanging back by a sedan, his carbine shouldered, obviously providing rear security. I swiped my selector switch to the fire position and squeezed the trigger. I hit the man in the sternum, and blood from the giant exit wound on his back splashed onto the car door. He crumpled to the ground, landing in a small cloud of dust.

One of the others running full tilt toward the building caught a round in the chest and almost did a cartwheel into the dirt. With my hearing protection in I couldn’t hear the distant crack of Bob’s suppressed rifle, but I knew it was him. Another shooter, one of Gordon’s men, had drawn his pistol and was about to open the door to the cinder-block building. Before I could drop the hammer on him his head exploded into a red cloud, and down he went. Bob again.
Damn. Dude knows how to shoot!

The others had turned around and were running back toward their vehicles. I fired at one of them and missed, leading him too much. But he froze when he saw the bullet impact the dirt, like a deer in the headlights. I squeezed the trigger again, and down he went. Scanning through my scope for targets, I lined up one of the new guys just in time to see a muzzle flash. Sand and tiny pebbles hit my face as his bullet impacted the dirt a few feet from me. I ducked back down into the ravine and was out of his line of sight, but more and more bullets snapped overhead and hit the rocks around us. Off to the side, Hawk slid into the gulley, calmly rocking a new magazine into his rifle.

Reaper was to my left, trying to become one with the earth. His already pale skin had gone white, and he had a death grip on his little shotgun. I could tell that this really wasn’t his cup of tea. Honestly? I wasn’t exactly having the time of my life, either, but there are worse ways to spend your time.

I got on my radio. “Bob, they got me pinned down. Help me out here.”

“
Roger,
” was all Bob said in response. A moment later, he spoke up again. “
Hey, Nightcrawler . . . I got another one, but the rest are hunkered down pretty good. If you follow that ravine, it works its way down the hill and it’ll get you closer.”
I signaled Hawk and used my hands to indicate for him to cover us.
“It looks shallow as you get to the bottom, but there are some big rocks down there that’ll give you cover. You’ll come out pretty close to the corner of the building. Just make sure you watch both sides. Guys could come around the building either way. You up for it? I can’t get Lorenzo on the radio.
”