The Man of Bronze (6 page)

I held out my hand to Reuben again. “Hypo.”

“Hypo.”

He passed me a hypodermic syringe of truly prodigious dimensions. I wondered if Dr. Jacek sometimes needed to vaccinate elephants. Despite its monstrous proportions, the needle fit nicely on the slingshot’s rubber strap . . . and it flew nicely, too, as soon as I caught sight of another mercenary skulking toward us.

Who knew that syringes were aerodynamic? It shot forward like a javelin, spiking into the bad guy’s ski mask and burying itself deep, deep, deep. An instant after impact, the hypo’s glass body broke, splashing the man with its contents. I don’t know what the fluid was—Dr. Jacek had simply handed me a bottle and said, “Fill the needle with this”—but whatever was in the hypo, it worked a wicked treat. The villain gave a gagging cough, loosed a three-bullet burst into the ceiling, and collapsed like a sack of bananas.

Two down.

The next mercenary tried to learn from his comrades’ mistakes. He charged toward the gurney, shooting suppression bursts down the middle of the corridor in an attempt to discourage answering fire.

“Ether,” I said to Reuben.

“Ether.”

We had a big bottle of the stuff, easy to launch with the slingshot. By reflex, the gunman shot the bottle as it hurtled toward him. The glass broke; the flammable ether inside caught fire from the muzzle flash and continued forward in accordance with the usual laws of momentum. The hooligan was inundated with a faceful of blazing liquid he’d ignited himself.

Howling ensued. A torch dance.

Three down.

The corridor wasn’t wide enough for two, but a pair of mercenaries tried it anyway. They opted for caution; they also opted to pop a few bullets at the emergency lamp, shooting out the bulb.

I’d wondered when someone would think of that.

In the resulting blackness, the gunmen moved forward as silently as they could. Bulletproof vests make stealth difficult, but I gave the men points for effort—they kept the rustling to a minimum. I held out my hand to Reuben and said, clearly and distinctly, “Grenade.”

“Grenade.”

This was a ruse we’d arranged earlier. Instead of a grenade—which we didn’t have—Reuben gave me a cake of antiseptic soap. I counted under my breath, softly but audibly, “Five, four, three . . .”

I threw the soap down the corridor. It bounced off the wall with a thump. Both mercenaries turned tail and ran, causing a ruckus that I augmented by hurling a couple of bedpans I’d been keeping for just this moment. Under cover of the noise and darkness, I leapt from the OR doorway, cleared the gurney that blocked the way forward, and slipped inside the next door along the hall into a room that smelled fiercely of disinfectant.

This was the main examination room. Every patient passed through here for preliminary inspection and treatment. It might have been full of items I could use for bringing down prey, but I couldn’t see a thing. I had only one weapon left in my arsenal: a roll of suture cord, used for stitching up wounds. I pulled it out of my pocket. The cord was strong and tough, like high-pound-test fishing line—practically unbreakable. I unwound a length, holding the spool in one hand and wrapping the loose end around a small metal clamp I’d taken from the OR. Holding my breath, I waited.

The pair of mercenaries who’d just run away soon realized there’d been no grenade. “Just a trick,” one man muttered. “A lousy trick!” Unwisely, the man stormed back without waiting for his partner; I suppose he was eager to dish out payback on those who’d fooled him. In the dark, of course, he couldn’t see. After bumping into the wall once—bumping hard, by the sound of it—he continued forward a little more slowly, dragging his fingers along the wall to keep himself oriented. He must have thought his opposition was still on the far side of the gurney. He had no idea I was inches away, silent and unseen.

I located my target by sound; he was quite the noisy fellow, still grumbling under his breath, “Just a lousy trick!” My ambush silenced the grumbling along with his breath: suture cord circled the man’s throat from behind in a cuttingly effective garrote. The thug struggled a bit, but couldn’t squeeze out a sound . . . nothing except a soft squirt as the suture cord sliced into his skin.

It was over quickly. Four down. And as I lowered the corpse to join the growing pile by the gurney, I helped myself to the strangled man’s Uzi.

A moment later, the mercenary’s partner plodded up. He heard me moving in the dark. “Charlie?” he said. “Charlie?”

I could have been subtle; but why?

It’s traditional to say SMGs sound like
buddah-buddah-buddah,
but I’ve always found Uzis are just a loud bright
trrrrrrr.

Two bursts at head level.
Trrrrrrr. Trrrrrrr.

Five down.

Ten men—nine by me, and one by the guard’s lucky shot—had now been eliminated. The remaining six might all have been injured or worse in the furor upstairs, but there was no way to tell.

I rummaged briefly through the heap of fallen gunmen, searching by feel for useful equipment. I found nothing but Uzis . . . not even another Kaybar. In a way, that was good news. If none of these hooligans had night-vision goggles or even a Maglite, I could breathe a little easier. Even better—sort of—I found no more silver-armor grenades. It would have been nice to get my hands on another, but I took solace in knowing that mirror shells weren’t standard equipment for
every
mercenary between me and the exit. If I was lucky, none of the remaining attackers had one of the little silver devils. After all, magic armor force fields must be expensive, right? Perhaps this group of mercenaries could only afford two grenades all told.

Especially since these thugs were clearly second-rate. Or third-rate. Poorly equipped and poorly coordinated. It didn’t say much for Reuben that his capture had been assigned to twits. Still, there’d been sixteen of them—quite a few to send after only one man. Whoever commanded this crew might have thought quantity would make up for quality. Or maybe there was more going on than met the casual eye.

I’d think about that later. For now, I had to finish my pest removal. Grabbing another Uzi from a fallen thug, I started quietly forward . . . listening for danger.

If I were a clever mercenary—or even a mutton head with a sense of self-preservation—and if I saw five of my comrades venture down a corridor without coming back, I’d think,
Perhaps going down there myself isn’t the best strategy.
Instead, I’d take a position watching the mouth of the corridor and prepare to shoot anything that emerged. On the off chance some of the bad guys had such a glimmering of intelligence, I stopped near the end of the corridor and lowered myself to the floor. Silently, I belly crawled the rest of the way forward. Then I tossed my spool of suture cord into the next room, bouncing the cord off a side wall.

Tink.

Immediately, two Uzis opened up on the source of the sound. Immediately, I opened up on the gunmen holding the Uzis. Aiming at the muzzle flashes, I scored shots on both men; but as soon as I’d fired, I rolled away fast from my original position, just in case I wasn’t the only one trying to trick the opposition into betraying its location.

Another gun flared in the darkness:
trrrrrrr.
Linoleum fragments stung me, kicked up by a flurry of 9-millimeter Parabellum blasting the floor where I’d been lying a split second earlier. I fired back at the source of this new attack, but the brief light of my muzzle flashes showed the man ducking out of sight behind something big and solid. Without hesitating, I dived back down the corridor, just as another rain of bullets slapped into my previous position.

Darkness and silence returned . . . giving me a chance to sort out what had just happened. The room in front of me was the entry area where the doorman met incoming patients and patted them down. The “something big and solid” between me and the mercenary could only be the doorman’s safe: the vault where he stored visitors’ weaponry. If I recalled correctly, the vault’s walls were four-inch steel that no bullet could penetrate.

The mercenary had taken cover behind the toughest protection in the building . . . certainly tougher than the flimsy walls around me. If the bad guy knew where to fire, he could kill me straight through the plasterboard. Fortunately, he
didn’t
know where to fire; and shooting at random would just waste ammunition.

I waited for what I knew would come next.

“Oi!” the man called. “Can we talk?”

His accent was Australian . . . not that it mattered. I didn’t answer because the moment I spoke, he’d know where to aim.

“I saw you just now by the muzzle flashes,” the man said. “A woman, right? Right? Don’t know who you are, but you aren’t our target. We’re after a sod named Reuben Baptiste. Actually, we aren’t after him either—just what he’s carrying.”

He waited for me to betray myself. I didn’t.

“Maybe it’s like this,” the gunman said. “You’re, what, a spy or something? An international assassin in Warsaw on a mission? You see guys with guns, and you think they’re after
you.
Understandable mistake. And I don’t give a damn even if you
have
killed everybody I came with. More money for me when I bring home the goods.”

Did that mean he was the last mercenary standing? Or was it a ruse? No, it was probably true. I’d seen nobody else in the front room . . . and since that’s where the stairs to the bell tower came out, that’s where the survivors from upstairs would gather.

I tallied up numbers again. If I’d disabled three hooligans with the oxygen tanks—a reasonable possibility—this man was my final opponent.

“I’m willing to let you go,” the man was saying. “I’ll even sweeten the offer with money. You get me Reuben Baptiste and the boss’ll put you on the payroll. He’s generous, you’ll see. And he’s got a good eye for talent. A woman like you, he’d give you a Silver Shield right off.”

A Silver Shield? Meaning a shiny force field? Apparently, the silver grenades were only given to lackeys of a certain rank . . . which explained why few gunmen had them. The man talking to me must not have earned his Silver Shield yet; otherwise, he’d just armor up and come for me.

“So what do you say?” the man asked. “Want to join? The boss’ll be glad to have you.”

I wanted to ask who this boss was. But talking wouldn’t get me answers; it would just get me shot.

Once more, I moved quietly to the mouth of the corridor. I lifted both my Uzis judiciously, trying to gauge which one was lighter—which had less ammo left. Probably the one in my right hand. I unstrapped it and tossed it into the middle of the next room.

Instant gunfire. A single three-bullet burst. Of course, the man hadn’t meant what he’d said . . . but his impulsive shots lit the room enough to show me everything: a chair where the doorman once sat, the safe, the front exit, the entrance to the stairwell.

“Sorry about that,” the man said . . . as if a simple apology could excuse his attempt to shoot me. “I overreacted. But, really, we can work something out . . .”

That was all I heard—I retreated, fast and quiet. Down the corridor, over the gurney, past the OR, back to the hole leading into the church. There was just enough light in the church sanctuary to let me find the spot where Reuben and I had leapt from the upper story. I jumped . . . grabbed the edge . . . pulled myself up . . . and was once more on the higher level, in the patient rooms. Forward, heading for the stairs . . . nearly falling when I tripped over a body but catching myself in time . . . stealthily down the stairs . . . and the last mercenary was still babbling, “Come on, can’t we talk? We can work things out . . .”

My whole journey upstairs and down had taken less than thirty seconds; but now I was on the other side of the room. The man taking cover behind the solid steel vault was totally exposed from this angle.

My Uzi went,
trrrrrrr.
Its muzzle flash showed the mercenary wearing a look of utter astonishment as he died.

One final errand: checking the getaway vehicles. I donned the winter jacket I’d left on the entrance room’s coat stand and slipped outside.

When I first saw the black Explorers pull up, I’d assumed the mercs would leave a driver in each to allow for fast escape. I therefore flattened myself in the clinic’s doorway, inched through shadows, dodged behind a lamppost, crawled across the pavement on my stomach . . . only to find the cars empty, unlocked, with keys in the ignition. It was a miracle they hadn’t been stolen; Warsaw is no worse for crime than any other city its size, but leaving brand-new SUVs unlocked in the middle of the night is asking for trouble. Then again, Stare Miasto is supposed to be a no-vehicle zone, so maybe carjackers never visited the district.

I took the keys from the nearest Explorer and locked all the doors before jogging back into the building. “Reuben!” I called. “Let’s go.”

“The coast is clear?” His voice came from the OR.

“It’s clear for now. But the police may arrive any second.”

“They’ll take their time.” That was Dr. Jacek talking. “The police try not to disturb us . . . and when they have no choice, they don’t come straight here. They find excuses to take a roundabout route. In case we need time to clean up.”

I wondered whom Jacek had to pay to receive such treatment. Maybe no one. Maybe influential people simply told the police Dr. Jacek was not to be raided. The rich and powerful occasionally need discreet clandestine clinics that deal with medical emergencies . . . and such gentry don’t like interruptions when they’re getting patched up or medicated.

Something clattered down the corridor—something accidentally knocked over in the dark—then Jacek and Reuben appeared. They looked relieved . . . maybe because the crisis was over, maybe just because they could finally see. I was holding the street door open, letting in light from outside. I told Jacek, “Sorry about the mess, Stanislaw. I didn’t mean to demolish your surgery, but I didn’t have much choice. Of course, I’ll pay for the damage.”

“Oh yes?” His voice was immediately cheerful. When he sent me the repair bill, I’d likely be paying for plasterboard at mahogany prices.