Boiling Point (An Ethan Galaal Thriller Book 4)

by Isaac T. Hooke

  Ethan saw the fire extinguisher fly out from the stairwell. Watched as it connected hard with the big man’s temple.

  They want us alive? Why? Do they think we still have Kiana somewhere in the city?

  William went over with the grace of a six-foot-five marble stature toppling from its plinth. He crashed onto his side, his AK underneath him, senseless before he hit the floor.

  Ethan couldn’t see the assailant behind the swinging metal door, but he saw the muzzle of a rifle raise and point in the stricken man’s direction.

  They’re wanting to keep one of us alive then, but someone specific––and William isn’t that person.

  Ethan had nothing to shoot at. Instead, he shoulder-charged the door, going through it like a human battering ram.

  The door caught Bedouin in the side and sent him stumbling into the opposite wall. A single shot rang out as the Israeli depressed the trigger of his compact X95 assault rifle, sending a round sparking off the metal handrail of the stairwell. If Ethan had been a little less vigorous, Bedouin might not have bounced quite so heavily off the opposite wall, and Ethan might have been able to bring his own rifle to bear on the man and end things then and there. However, such as it was, the man had rebounded back into his arms before he knew what was happening.

  There was nothing, absolutely nothing, that Ethan had found more intimate than being nose-to-nose with another person while the two of you endeavored to murder one another. In that struggle, there was a sort of distillation of what it meant to truly be alive. Ethan found himself feeling every breath in his own lungs, each tortuous beat of his straining heart, the putrid garlic scent of the other man’s hot breath in his face, and the stink of his nervous sweat.

  Bedouin was a strong, fit man, and fast too. In the second or two it took the two professional soldiers––both trained to survive at all costs and to kill without question––to get to grips with one another, the Israeli had already managed to unfasten the buckle that strapped Ethan’s rifle to his chest webbing.

  For a moment the two men strove against each other, each one trying to push the barrel of his weapon towards the other while simultaneously keeping the other man’s weapon pointed away from him. Teeth were bared, eyes scrunched tight in concentration, muscles strained.

  Bedouin jerked unexpectedly and Ethan’s weapon clattered to the ground. The Israeli kicked it through the double doors before Ethan could get to it, then used both hands to slowly tilt his compact rifle toward Ethan’s chest.

  Ethan realized he couldn’t best this man in brute strength; Bedouin had more height and weight. So, while he used one hand to slow the inexorable creep of the gun barrel towards his own chest, he darted out his other hand to fumble with the magazine release. The mag dropped from the weapon with a clatter and then, just as the muzzle was almost pointed directly at his right lung, Ethan managed to fumble the bolt and send the bullet in the firing chamber cartwheeling out of the ejection port.

  Bedouin pulled the trigger and was greeted with a hollow click. He scowled and dropped the useless rifle.

  Both men scrambled for their hand guns. Bedouin managed to free his from his holster but Ethan kicked it deftly away and it skittered out of sight. He cleared his own pistol at the same time, brought it down and fired twice, but Bedouin had already knocked his hand aside and the shots punched into the wall.

  Ethan grunted as Bedouin delivered an athletic high knee to his sternum while maintaining a grip on Ethan’s gun hand. Another few bullets went into the ceiling as Ethan staggered back and the two of them entered the empty corridor, leaving William to moan feebly by the stairs. Ethan struck out at Bedouin’s face with a hook, but the man angled his head so that Ethan only hit his skull in a glancing blow.

  The Israeli snapped out a reverse elbow at Ethan, forcing him back, then chopped down with the edge of his hand on Ethan’s forearm. The blow was akin to being hit with a lead pipe and Ethan’s arm went numb. He snarled as his gun dropped from his nerveless fingers onto the hard, dirty floor.

  Bedouin made a grab for the weapon but Ethan, bellowing like a mad bull, grabbed the bigger man under the thighs and ploughed him into the drywall of the corridor. The wall cracked and dented under the impact. The two of them spun as Bedouin fought to regain his footing and, with another roar of adrenaline-fueled fury, Ethan launched the man backward into the wall again.

  Only this time, there was no wall.

  They crashed through the glass observation window in a cascade of shattered safety glass, with shards spreading out across the floor like diamonds.

  They were in an old quality control lab. There were a few benches, some dusty stools and empty cabinets. Sacks of cement lined one wall.

  Ethan thought of his knife but there was no time to unsheathe it. As soon as he scrambled to his feet Bedouin was on him, the punches coming in flurries. The man had a dancer’s agility and balance.

  Ethan blocked a side snap kick and then dodged a roundhouse kick that might have taken his head clean off his shoulders. He countered with a couple of jabs. He needed to stay in tight so that the man couldn’t make use of his superior reach.

  As if in anticipation of Ethan’s tactic, the tall Israeli lashed out with another roundhouse kick that connected with Ethan’s shoulder and sent him reeling across the room into the stack of cement bags.

  Ethan wasn’t sure how much more of that sort of thing he could take. It felt like he’d just been hit by a car, his entire side a hotbed of pain. He didn’t have long to dwell on it though as Bedouin launched himself at Ethan once again. His forearm rammed into Ethan’s throat, crushing him against the stack of cement bags.

  The pressure the man exerted on Ethan’s windpipe was incredible. Ethan’s vision filled with Bedouin’s sweating face and sharp, hawk nose. He could see a drop of perspiration clinging to one of the man’s eyelashes.

  Ethan struck out at his assailant’s ribs with a couple of hard palm heel punches. Bedouin grunted, but only pressed all the harder against Ethan’s throat. Bedouin drove a thunderous knee into Ethan’s thigh and his leg collapsed under him so that Ethan was propped only on one foot. Meanwhile Bedouin slowly crushed him towards unconsciousness.

  Ethan felt his pulse thrumming through his ears, and knew that he only had a few seconds before he blacked out.

  Ethan’s hand fumbled for his knife holster. His fingers scrabbled at it, while his other hand tried vainly to ease the pressure on his windpipe. The knife came free––

  ––and fell from his clumsy fingers to the floor.

  Bedouin’s gaze flicked down to the blade, then back up to Ethan’s own popping eyes. He smiled––not a smirk of joy or pleasure, but the satisfied smile of a craftsman sitting back to contemplate a job well done. He adjusted his position, the better to apply his full weight against Ethan’s throat.

  Shit… Ethan thought, as his fingers roved sluggishly over his combat webbing. Shit… They came to rest on something then, something unfamiliar. His fading consciousness struggled to pinpoint what it was. Then he remembered.

  He slid the Breachpen from its place by his ribs. Then, taking his remaining hand away from Bedouin’s arm, he cracked the top of the little thermal breach and rammed it into the side of the man’s head.

  The average heat of a barbecue grill ranged from anywhere between three-hundred and fifty to five-hundred degrees Fahrenheit. As far as the human body was concerned, that was plenty hot enough. At four and a half thousand degrees, the temperature that the Breachpen burned at, most metals and alloys––including iron, stainless steel and titanium––ran like butter.

  The effect that the thermal breach had, when stuck inside Bedouin’s ear canal, was instantaneous, predictable and quite horrible.

  Ethan gasped in a great lungful of life-giving oxygen as the very dead Israeli toppled sideways off of him. The Breachpen burned on unconcernedly in Ethan’s hand, spitting and sizzling a couple of times as the melted fat and skin from the side of the Kidon’s face was reduced quickl
y to carbon. Ethan rolled the thermal breach carefully away from him across the bare concrete floor and watched it sputter out through his half-closed lids as he got his breath back.

  The room was thick with the smell of charred, cooked meat–all the encouragement Ethan needed to stagger to his feet and make for the door. He didn’t look back at the mess he’d made. He had a hard enough time sleeping as it was.

  He retrieved his pistol from where he had lost it in the hallway, reloaded it and slipped it back into his holster. He found William, conscious, leaning propped against a wall by the stairs. His friend was very pale; blood matted his hair and covered one side of his face. The fact he had taken so long to come back to consciousness told Ethan his friend likely had a concussion. Perhaps severe.

  “Are you okay?” Ethan asked.

  Without waiting for an answer, Ethan picked up Bedouin’s IWI Tavor X95 and slotted the magazine back into it. A compact assault rifle produced for the Israeli Defense Force, it took 5.56mm ammunition and the barrel was a highly maneuverable thirty-three centimeters long. On full-auto it had a firing rate of between seven-hundred and fifty to nine-hundred and fifty rounds per minute.

  Just the thing I want to be holding if I run into those other two Kidon.

  “Yeah, I’m––I’m okay… I think,” William said. His AK was in his hands, but Ethan could see that his gaze was still slightly unfocused.

  William tried to get to his feet, but Ethan put a hand to the big man’s shoulder. Up close, Ethan could discern the bruise that had started to color the side of his face.

  “That was the big guy, was it?” William asked. “The guy who almost knocked me straight into next week?”

  Ethan nodded, racked the bolt on the X95.

  “You––” William began.

  Ethan nodded.

  “He’s definitely––” William continued.

  “Oh, yeah,” Ethan said.

  William smiled, then stopped abruptly, grimacing.

  There was a crackle through the TCAPS earpieces.

  “––perhead, do you copy?” came Aaron’s voice through the comm link.

  “Copy, Constrictor,” Ethan said. “What’s your sit-rep?”

  “Huntsman is down. I repeat, Huntsman is KIA,” Aaron replied, succinct as any soldier could be.

  Ethan and William looked at one another.

  “Goddamn it,” William said.

  A sudden, furious, thrilling urgency shot through Ethan at Aaron’s words. He had known Huntsman only a couple of hours it was true, but the fact that the man had been willing to risk––and ultimately sacrifice––his life in the name of liberating a fellow DIA operative that he had never met had formed a bond between the two of them.

  I won’t lose the one he sacrificed himself for.

  “Copperhead, I have one Kidon down,” Aaron continued. His voice was level, and ice cold.

  “Confirmed kill?” Ethan asked him.

  “Copy that.”

  “We have one confirmed here too, Constrictor. That leaves one more…” His voice trailed away, as he suddenly realized the implications of what he was saying.

  He and William exchanged glances.

  “Ah, shit,” William said, attempting to haul himself to his feet.

  Ethan shook his head, already moving for the stairs.

  “Get in that corner and cover me,” he yelled, pointing to a spot that covered the stairwell, the entrance to the corridor he and Bedouin had fought in, and the doors leading in from the main factory floor. “You see anyone come through here that isn’t Aaron, Bretta or myself, you burn them!”

  Ethan bounded up the stairs, his aches from the beating he’d just taken momentarily forgotten.

  His only care in the world right then was finding Bretta before the last of the Kidon did.

  31

  Bretta unloaded the last few bullets from the bolt-action rifle, tossed them over the side of the railing and dropped the empty weapon onto the gantry with a clang. Gunfire forced her forward. She moved quickly along the echoing walkway until she reached the door and passed through it.

  There was only one way to go after exiting, and that was up the stairs to her left. She hobbled up, Glock in hand. The adrenaline was fading a little now, although she knew she was far from safe yet. She pinched herself hard on the eyebrow, trying to will her body to stay alert, to coerce it into vigilance with just a little more pain.

  She heard the distant, muted explosion of a fragmentation grenade, and wondered if it had been Ethan who had thrown it, or the enemy. She tried not to think about it.

  She peered around the corner of the next flight of metal steps, saw the coast was clear and started to limp up it. Ahead of her was the emergency door that led to the roof, with a metal push-bar across it and no sign of a lock.

  Bretta opened the door quickly and firmly; she took care not to smash it open too hard, which would only cause it to rebound into her.

  Her pistol was up and steady in her hand. She scanned the dark roof from the cover of the stairwell. It was very much as she had anticipated, the same as countless other roofs she had found herself on during her varied and interesting career: a huge open space, set at a very slight incline so that rainwater would not pool, tarred and sealed and covered in a thin layer of gravel to protect the roof from the elements, with numerous air-conditioning and ventilation ducts sprouting up through the gritty surface like giant, curious, metallic earthworms. In the dark of the fallen night, it was a place of stark crisscrossing shadows thrown by the orange streetlights that ringed the complex and lit the yard below. Impenetrable patches of black shade pooled at the bases of the ventilation ducts like spilled ink.

  Bretta took a single step out onto the roof, her Glock still swinging from left to right in precise arcs. Her footsteps crunched loudly on the gravel. Her eyes darted from potential ambush spot to potential ambush spot. Her intention was to cross the roof until she found another way down, so that she could enter the main room below from the far side and outflank any remaining enemies that might have Ethan and William pinned.

  A bead of sweat trickled from out of her hairline and ran down behind her ear. She hadn’t realized how close and stuffy it had been inside the factory until she’d set foot in the cool of the night. She took a long slow breath through her nose, savoring the invigorating freshness of the air.

  She caught the smell––a familiar scent that she couldn’t identify straightaway, though she was aware that it was part of her own identity somehow––at the exact same moment the gun barrel touched the back of her neck; a touch as light and gentle as a lover’s kiss.

  I didn’t hear a fucking thing, she thought, impressed despite herself.

  The smell was still in her nostrils. She knew what it was now. Not a perfume––no spec-ops soldier would wear perfume––but a scent that was as unique as one person’s irises are from another.

  “Celeste.” Slowly, ever so slowly, Bretta held the Glock 20 she had taken from Mia out to her side. She let go of the grip so that the weapon dangled from her forefinger and then let the gun slide from her trigger finger onto the rooftop. It landed with a very final-sounding crunch in the gravel at her feet. Without waiting to be asked, Bretta took a couple of steps forward so that her Glock was behind her. The barrel followed her, tightly pressed to her neck.

  “It’s just the two of us up here, Bretta,” Celeste replied. “Surely we can dispense with the call-signs?”

  Bretta snorted. “Whatever you like, Lyra. You’re the one with the gun.”

  The barrel never left the back of her , but Celeste––Lyra––must have stooped to pick up the dropped Glock, because a second later Bretta saw a flash of silver at the corner of her eye as her adversary tossed the pistol over the edge of the roof.

  Shit. Bretta had been hoping she might have been able to get a jump on Lyra when she bent down to get the dropped handgun. Must be more tired than I thought.

  A nudge at the back of her head sent her walking out on
to the vast empty roof.

  Nowhere to run. Nothing even within leaping distance to hide behind.

  “So.” Bretta could feel an itching in her palms as they started to sweat, could feel another slow flood of adrenaline––surely her body could not have much left in reserve––building in the pit of her stomach. Bretta had made a point of studying her own body, of knowing when everything was functioning normally––it was only through this could one really know that something was wrong during the heat of battle. The hyperarousal response never ceased to amaze her; the elevated heart rate, the dilating of the pupils, the tensing of the muscles––things that you could actually feel as your body prepared to defend itself.

  Lyra’s gun nudged her hard in the back of the neck yet again, and sent her stumbling forward. The muzzle finally left the nape of her neck.

  “So,” Bretta said again, and she turned quickly on her heel to face the female Kidon operative. “What happens now?”

  Lyra––codename Celeste––regarded Bretta coolly over the top of her Brugger & Thomet APC9K submachine gun. It was an ironic choice of firearm, considering it was the submachine gun the U.S Army had opted to spend two and a half million dollars on in 2019 to outfit their PSD––personal security details––personnel. It was the gun, in short, that the United States military had chosen to equip the men and women responsible for guarding their VIPs with.

  And here it is, in the hands of a woman who would like nothing better than to use it to take out one of those high value targets, pretty little brainbox Kiana Avesta.

  “What do you think happens now?” Lyra asked. Her tone was clipped and cold, but there was no anger in it. “Your friends are here by the sounds of it. If they’re half as good as you, our chances of getting you out of here are quite slim. Alive, that is.”

  Bretta nodded. “And Mossad SOP dictates that if they can’t have a toy, no one can, is that it? You’re just going to pop me on this Spanish rooftop? Is that how this ends? I know one person who’ll never forgive you. Her name is––”