“Why the bed?”
Jericho shrugged casually. “Human nature. If you’re in danger, where’s the safest place you can think of to go? You go home. You get in your bed. You pull the cover over your head. It’s something that’s instilled in you as a child—your bed’s the safest place in the world, right? It sounds crazy, but your brain is hardwired to stick with what it knows in a time of crisis. People who panic run to the safest place they can think of, which, believe it or not, is their bed.”
“Wow… okay.”
“Now, once the firing stops, they’ll see you’re not in there. Your room is a good size, but it’s an open space, which means, realistically, there’s only one more place you could be.”
“In here?”
“Exactly. So, in the interest of time and with their limited training, they’ll take aim at the wall and the door of the bathroom and open fire, aiming for your chest and head.”
“I see…”
‘But the mistake they will make… the mistake most people would make… is that they’ll assume you’re standing. So, if you stay low, statistically, you’re much safer than if you didn’t. They will finish shooting, kick the door open, and see there’s no body on the floor. They will want to look behind the curtain. If they do, they will find you lying in the tub, and that’s game over.”
Hyatt sighed. “P-please tell me there’s a but…”
Jericho nodded. “But… all that is assuming the entire situation has a chance to play out. It won’t.”
“So, you’ll…”
“They’ll all be dead or unconscious before they fire a single bullet.”
“You sound confident. I thought you said there aren’t any guarantees in a gunfight?”
“There aren’t. But they won’t get the chance to start firing, so technically, this won’t be a gunfight. And I’m confident because I’m very, very good at what I do.”
Hyatt lay flat in the tub, crossing his arms over his chest as if he were in a casket. He let out a long breath. His expression relaxed.
“Thank you,” he said.
Jericho got to his feet. “No problem. Now I’m going to pull the curtain around you. All you have to do is stay quiet… no matter what happens, no matter what you hear, okay?”
He nodded. “I… I’ll try.”
“That’s all I ask.”
Jericho pulled the curtain across and stepped out into the main room. As he turned to close the bathroom door, he heard Hyatt whimpering. The sound was amplified by the acoustics of the tub. He closed his eyes for a moment, then walked back inside.
“Mr. Hyatt, I… ah… I can hear you crying.”
He heard a hard sniff behind the curtain. “I’m n-not crying!”
Jericho yanked the curtain open and stared down. Hyatt’s eyes were bloodshot, and tears stained his cheeks. “Uh-huh…”
“Well, I’m sorry!” yelled Hyatt. “I’m not some insane, tough guy, super-soldier like you. I’m scared out of my mind, like any normal human being would be!”
“I understand that, Mr. Hyatt, and I’m sympathetic to your situation. But you need to understand that if you make a sound while even one of these assholes is still awake, you’re going to die.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?!”
“No, it’s supposed to give you some perspective.” Jericho took a short breath. “Okay, I know something else that might help. Do you want to try it?”
Hyatt nodded frantically. “Yes. Anything!”
“Okay…”
Jericho leaned over and delivered a short, precise jab to the side of Hyatt’s jaw. It was barely at half-power, but it was enough to knock him out.
“There we go,” he said to himself. “Nice and quiet.”
He closed the curtain again and headed out of the bathroom, shutting the door behind him. He crouched around the slight corner by the bed and drew his own weapon. He wouldn’t be seen by anyone until they were halfway into the room, and by that time, they would be within reach and the battle would be almost over.
He chambered a round and held the gun low and steady, his finger resting outside the trigger guard. He wouldn’t fire unless it was necessary. He wouldn’t kill unless it was necessary. But he would do whatever needed to ensure both Hyatt and Julie were safe.
He took a few deep breaths, allowing his mind to drift into its more basic, primal state.
“Come on, you bastards…”
Julie had reached the sixth floor, still flanked by the cartel soldiers. They had climbed the stairs in silence. She knew she had no move on the way up, so it was pointless trying anything.
They shuffled along until they reached the junction by the elevators. The wall ahead was dominated by a painting that looked like an ear of corn resting in a field. The corridor stretched away in both directions.
“Which room?” asked the gunman behind her.
“Eleven,” she replied, pointing to her left. “This way.”
The group started walking, giving her no option but to follow. Their footsteps were loud, despite the thick carpet. Room eleven was roughly halfway along on the left. As they approached, Julie scanned the doors to the other rooms, wondering if Jericho was behind any of them. There was no sign of him in the hall.
They stopped outside the room, and the group of five moved into position, forming a shallow semi-circle in front of the door. The man with the gun stepped in front of Julie, a little ahead of her on her left. He took his weapon from his pocket. Julie noted the familiar shape and size.
A Glock, she thought. Nice piece.
She nodded to it. “I couldn’t help but notice you don’t have a suppressor on that thing. You know if you fire that, this entire building will be surrounded by SPVM in minutes. You won’t make it out with Hyatt.”
“Do you think I give a shit about the policia in this country? Bunch of pussies.”
She shrugged. “Hey, whatever… it’s your funeral. I mean, they’re probably on their way right now. You weren’t exactly discreet in the lobby.”
He whipped his body clockwise, driving his fist into her temple. Her legs buckled as the impact forced the consciousness out of her, and she slumped to the floor. He then stepped into the semi-circle, shoving one of the men toward the door and taking his place.
“Open it,” he said. “Let’s get this over with.”
The rest of the men reached into their jackets and retrieved identical Glocks. The sound of rounds being chambered filled the hallway. The man closest to the door took aim at the handle and brought his other hand up to his face as a symbolic shield.
Then he squeezed the trigger.
12.
Jericho heard the loud ping of the gunshot and the sound of the lock popping inside the frame. He fought to keep his finger outside the trigger guard. To remain patient. He looked around the room—a final check of his surroundings; a final run-through of his plan.
The door flew open, hitting the side wall with a bang. He chanced a split-second peek around the corner. A flash that his subconscious mind was trained to scrutinize with inhuman efficiency. From his vantage point, he saw two men dead ahead, and the arm of a third to the right. Behind them, on the floor, he saw an outstretched leg and a shoe he recognized as Julie’s.
“Sonofabitch…” he whispered to himself.
He heard the steps as the first of them entered the room. They were heavy and deliberate, with no clear effort of discretion. He listened closely, learning the speed and the rhythm of the first man through the door. The first casualty.
He held his breath, willing his heart rate to slow. To embrace the calm before the storm. The simmering of peace before an eruption of war.
The man’s foot and leg appeared in his line of sight, level with the corner.
Jericho straightened, jumping up to meet the guy as he stepped into the room and slamming the thick part of his forearm, close to the point of his elbow, hard into the side of his head. The man never saw it coming. He barely registered the m
ovement before it was too late.
The impact was dull and unforgiving. It sent a wave like an electric shock shooting up Jericho’s arm and into his shoulder, such was the power behind the blow.
The man was knocked out almost instantly, but his body still flew into the near wall and bounced off the desk facing the bed before sprawling onto the floor.
One down.
He looked out into the hallway as two more men filed in through the open door. The first had his gun raised.
Jericho dove back around the corner as the first bullets whizzed past, chipping the plaster and splintering the thin walls inches above his head. He held his own gun out and fired blind, ensuring he aimed high to avoid catching Julie, whom he assumed was still on the floor outside.
He shot three rounds and heard the first guy hit the floor. A moment later, he slid into view, carried forward by his own momentum. His torso was stained crimson, his eyes wide with shock and fear. His gun had flown from his hand, but he stubbornly reached for Jericho, crawling slowly toward him along the floor as blood leaked all around him, like something from a zombie movie.
Jericho hesitated for a moment before putting another round in the man’s head to finish the job. He didn’t want to kill anyone unnecessarily, but the guy was mortally wounded and clearly suffering. The final bullet was a mercy.
As he scrambled to his feet, the second man ran into the room, spear-tackling him onto the bed. The momentum and the bounce of the mattress carried them both over and onto the floor beneath the window. Jericho landed on his back, with the man on top of him, his Negotiator flying from his grip.
Jericho held onto the guy’s left wrist with one hand, preventing him from wrapping their hand around his throat, while wrestling with the gun with the other, trying to disarm him. In the struggle, two rounds were fired before Jericho had the position and leverage to bury his knee into the back of his attacker. The impact sent him off-balance, and Jericho used the opportunity to roll him to the side while simultaneously shifting his own hips in the other direction. With the cartel soldier now on his back, Jericho pushed himself up into a crouch and delivered two hard punches to the guy’s face. The first broke his nose. The second knocked him out.
Staying low behind the bed, Jericho quickly retrieved his gun and took aim at the door. Julie’s leg was still visible, but there was no sign of anyone else. He figured they would be waiting on either side of the doorway for a chance to shoot.
In his peripheral vision, he noticed two bullet holes in the bathroom wall—the result of the stray rounds fired during his brief tussle moments earlier. They were in a near-perfect horizontal line, roughly two inches above the level of the mattress. The thin wall had done nothing to stop them. They had punched right through and into the bathroom. By his reckoning, at the same height as the bathtub.
“Ah, shit!” he grimaced.
He made his way around the bed, keeping low as he drew level with the bathroom door. He saw the feet of someone standing to the right of the room just outside.
“Screw this…”
He aimed at the wall inside the room, roughly waist height, and fired four rounds in quick succession. The first two laid the groundwork, violently chipping away at the plaster. The third and fourth forced their way through. A moment later, a body hit the floor in the hallway.
Another man emerged from the left, stepping into the room with his gun aimed high in an unsteady hand. Jericho anticipated it and stood to meet him, grabbing the outstretched wrist and pushing it down and left, allowing him to jam the butt of his gun hard into the guy’s nose. The cartilage gave way beneath the impact with little resistance.
He always tried to aim for the nose. It’s easy to break, restricts breathing, and makes the eyes water. If your opponent can’t breathe or see, they are much easier to beat.
Jericho spun the guy around and gripped his neck, holding him still. Then he placed the barrel of the Negotiator to the back of his head and edged forward, ensuring he could check both directions before he committed to exposing himself in the openness of the hallway.
He peered around the doorframe to the right. There was a guy standing a few feet away, his gun trained on Hyatt’s room. Jericho shifted his human shield to the left, protecting himself from the side he hadn’t yet checked. As he did, he raised his own weapon and fired two more shots with rapid, lethal precision. The first bullet hit the man just above the knee. The second punched through the center of his chest, leaving a contained, dark red splatter on the wall behind him.
He immediately spun left, resting his gun on the right shoulder of his hostage as he hunched behind him.
He had miscalculated. There were six men, not five. The last one stood facing him, aiming a Glock from behind his own human shield. From behind Julie.
“Enough,” said the man. “Give me Hyatt, or I kill the woman.”
“Give me the woman, or I’ll kill your guy,” replied Jericho.
The man smiled. “Go ahead. I don’t care about him.”
Jericho believed him. He locked eyes with Julie. She was struggling to focus, having been dragged upright and conscious not a minute earlier. She was coming to her senses but not quickly enough.
A door opened to his right. A middle-aged man wearing a suit tentatively peered outside. Everybody turned to him.
“Sir, for your own safety, you should really stay in your room,” said Jericho, firmly. “I’m with GlobaTech and I’m handling the situation, but feel free to call the police.”
The man disappeared hurriedly back inside his room and slammed the door closed. Jericho re-focused on the gunman.
“You’re running out of time,” he said. “Who sent you?”
He shrugged. “What does it matter to you? You’re worse than her. Give me Hyatt, or I’ll shoot you both.”
Jericho shook his head. “I can’t do that. Give me the woman, and I’ll let you live. That’s my only offer.”
The man laughed. “You need to work on your bargaining. Tell me, were you in Mexico a few days ago?” He nodded at Julie. “With her? Are you the ones responsible for killing so many of my brothers?”
Jericho shrugged. “I don’t know. Who are you, and who do you work for? Tell me that, and I’ll tell you if I killed any of your friends.”
The man’s eyes narrowed. “I work for Bernardo Cortez. Our cartel family controls the single largest territory in all of Mexico. And you… you killed a lot of my friends. Senor Cortez will be very pleased if I bring him your head as well as Hyatt.”
“Whatever. What does the cartel want with Hyatt?”
“He has information regarding a shipment we want.”
“Right, so, your beef is really with Darius Silva? What if I deliver him to you instead? Will you let my friend go and leave without Hyatt?”
“Our beef is with whoever we’re paid to have a beef with. Today, it’s Hyatt. Darius Silva is nothing to us. But his shipment is important to Senor Cortez’s business associate. I have orders to bring Hyatt back alive, so I’m bringing him back alive. End of story.”
“Good to know. Thanks.”
Julie stamped down on the man’s foot, ducked, and drove her elbow into his gut. She broke free of his grip and sent him stumbling backward. The moment she was clear, Jericho put a single round in the man’s head. He dropped like a felled tree, landing hard on the floor. A narrow spray of blood dripped down the wall behind him.
Jericho then smashed the butt of his gun into the back of his human shield’s head, sending him tumbling to the floor. He then moved over to Julie, who was crouched a few feet away, just beside the door to Hyatt’s room.
“You okay?”
She nodded. “Yeah, I’m good. Nothing a couple of painkillers won’t fix. You?”
“I’m fine.”
“Hyatt?”
“Good question…”
He stepped urgently back into Hyatt’s room and opened the bathroom door. Two steps put him next to the tub. He yanked the curtain open and stared do
wn at Hyatt. His eyes were still closed, but he could see the rise and fall of his chest. He checked the holes in the wall and followed the path the bullets would have taken.
There were two large punctures in the side of the tub. He leaned over and looked at the inside. Two cracks, like spiderwebs, were lined up level with Hyatt’s body, but the bullets hadn’t penetrated the ceramic.
Jericho closed his eyes and breathed a sigh of relief before heading back out into the hall.
“He’s fine,” he announced. “He’s still out cold, but he’s alive and unharmed.”
Julie was sitting on the floor against the opposite wall. She frowned. “Why is he out cold?”
Jericho holstered his weapon and sheepishly scratched at the back of his head. “He wouldn’t stop crying, and I needed him to be quiet, so…”
“So… you hit him?”
“Only a little bit.”
She sighed and shook her head. “I don’t even care. What do we do now?”
Jericho looked around at the sea of scattered bodies. “Well, I should probably call Buchanan and explain this to him. He’ll be able to buy us some grace with local PD. I’ll stash Hyatt in my room tonight. We should move him first thing in the morning. And you need some rest too. If the cartel has managed to track Hyatt, we have to assume they’ll try again once word gets back that these assholes failed. I need you at your best.”
She struggled to her feet and took a couple of uncertain steps. “No arguments from me.”
Jericho chuckled. “First time for everything…”
She glared at him. “Hey, I can still kick your ass, big guy. Watch it.”
He smiled as she walked away toward the elevators. Behind him, he heard a groan. He turned to see one of the men he hadn’t killed stirring on the floor. He moved over to him and pulled him to his feet, pinning him to the wall.
“You and I need to have a little chat,” he said, smiling.
13.
Moses Buchanan hunched over his desk, his palms spread across the surface. He stared blankly at the calloused knuckles. His vision shifted in and out of focus as his mind raced between his current crisis and flashes of his life before a desk, back when those knuckles hadn’t yet earned their hardened skin.
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