Guests were filling the halls. He could hear nothing over the drone of the fire alarm. Yuri threatened anyone who stepped into the stairwell.
Yuri shoved his weapon into his waistband as he encircled Maria’s thin waist and dragged her through the doorway to the ninth floor. He felt like a fish swimming upstream. Hotel guests were pushing against him as they bottlenecked and made for the emergency exits.
Yuri yelled at the top of his lungs as he loosened his grip on Maria. “Retroceder! Go back to your rooms!” Just for effect, he waved his .357 around and leveled it at no one in particular.
Yuri needed to use the crowd to his advantage. They could form a useful smoke screen, but he could not get bogged down in any kind of a hostage situation.
I have to get out of here and contact my crew! Yuri felt panic rise in his stomach.
Maria sobbed.
Yuri stepped back from the young girl, who was barely in her twenties. She was frozen in terror and was only going to slow him down.
“Go, Maria!” he barked. “Before I change my mind!”
Guests began to scream and push against each other, a fistfight broke out, and he heard shouts from inside the hallway.
“There is no fire. Get back in your rooms, or I will kill you all!” Yuri left Maria and plunged through the crowd, pushing and slashing, his knife in one hand and pistol in the other.
The crowd dispersed and stampeded like cattle back in the opposite direction.
Yuri had only one thought in his head now: escape and notify the Scorpions that they were being hunted.
Roger and Evan made it to the landing of the ninth floor with a crowd of about fifty people not but a few steps behind them. Evan felt as if he were fleeing a sinking ship. People screamed and yelled and did all the things that you were not supposed to do in an emergency. Some people were stealing TVs and towels from the rooms.
Evan made it to the landing first and opened the ninth-floor fire-exit door for Roger. “I will be behind you. There is another fire exit at the far end of the hall.”
Roger looked at Evan and shook his head. “Splittin’ up is not a good idea!”
“Crowd control.”
Roger looked at him for a second, shook his head, and went onto the ninth floor.
Evan yelled at the top of his lungs and tried to hide his weapon. “Listen, everybody, there is no fire! We are the police looking for a group of terrorists. Best thing you guys can do is quietly, calmly get down the stairs and evacuate.” Evan stood by for a few moments and made sure that the slower ones were guided down first.
Roger made it a few feet down the hall when he spotted a girl crouched on the floor trying to use her cell phone. She was sobbing and shaking so badly that she could hardly hit the numbers. Her hair was plastered to her face, and her nose was running. She was the beautiful girl from the bathroom.
The fire alarm was still blaring, and the guests on this floor had begun barricading themselves back in their rooms. Some had fled to the other fire exit down the hall.
“Get up, Maria.” He helped her gently to her feet and brushed her hair out of her eyes.
She looked relived when she recognized him.
“Still havin’ monster troubles, darlin’?”
She nodded and looked at Roger’s weapon.
“Where did he go?”
Maria pointed down the hall toward the other set of fire doors.
“Listen, Maria, I need ya to make it to the parking garage. First level, space 12A. There is a short, fat police officer named Victor Rosa. Tell him we are OK. You stay with him. Got it?”
She nodded, sniffed, and looked up and down the hall.
“You’ll be OK.” Roger turned and began to jog down the hall.
“Wait!” Maria called out.
“Aye?” He paused and turned around. Roger was feeling constricted by his body armor and was beginning to sweat.
“The monster?”
“Aye, don’t ye worry ’bout him.” He winked and gave her a nod.
Maria did as told. She watched the large Scotsman run down the hall and suddenly felt empowered. She sniffed and ran toward the door. As she opened it, she was face-to-face with another man—with a bigger gun.
He smiled and held the door for her. “It’s OK! OK? Hey, you need to get out of here!”
Maria took off her remaining high heel and fled.
Evan let the fire door slam and spun around to sprint down the hall. His chest hurt where he had been shot, and his lungs burned as he ran. Adrenaline kept him moving.
Roger had just made it to the seventh floor landing and was turning to check the next set of stairs for any signs of movement when he saw the barrel of a handgun being held by the satanic, painted Russian.
Boom-boom!
Roger knew one thing about physics: every action had an equal reaction, and an object in motion tended to stay in motion. In the movies, they always showed someone getting shot and being thrown against a wall or something. If that was true, it would launch the shooter backward with the same force. Roger watched the muzzle flash and jumped. He thought about his father for a second and about the day when his father had finally shown him respect. The day his father hit him, and Roger had dared to hit him back. Now in hindsight, he knew that his father just wanted him to be raised to have a tough, fighting spirit, the bastard.
The bullets felt like hot pokers as they hit his vest and sent waves of pain into his abdomen.
Roger had not hesitated to leap down the four or so stairs onto the Russian. The Russian’s weapon fired one more shot, and it burned the side of Roger’s face point-blank just before both men crashed to the ground. Yuri’s ankle cracked under the weight, and he tried to spin out of the way. Roger tried to move as fast as he could to clear the weapon from the man’s grasp and bring up his own. The Russian was far quicker and rolled Roger over onto his back and came down hard with a knife in both hands. Terror, insanity, and death flashed in Roger’s eyes.
Evan made it to the end of the hall in seconds. He ripped the fire-exit door open and burst through. He heard the shots and yelling. He leapt down the steps five at a time with his left hand gripping his UMP .40 and using the railing for balance. He made it to the eighth-floor landing just as the fire door burst open and two men barreled through. Evan had no idea who they were, but he guessed two things. They had been waiting just inside the door. Evan was at the top of the landing ready to go down when he was ambushed. His peripheral vision told him that Roger and the Russian were locked in battle on the landing below, and had now rolled down the stairs to the sixth-floor landing.
The yelling and swearing were at a hysterical pitch.
“Shit!” Evan cursed as he was caught off guard and side tackled. He knew there were at least two. The three men tumbled down the stairs with Evan mostly on the bottom. He banged his elbows, back, and knee, possibly on someone’s jaw.
Evan emptied the last of his ammo into his assailant, who was swinging wildly. His heavy duffel bag was choking him and throwing him off balance. Evan felt a slash to his leg and realized he had been stabbed.
“Die!” his attacker yelled.
Evan heard the pop of a nine millimeter and the sound of bullets bouncing off the brick landing and walls around him.
For a second Evan about panicked. He was just on the cusp of being overwhelmed and underestimated by his enemy. The tide was not in his favor as he found himself on his back at the bottom of the stairs, using the dead body of what he now realized was a teenager as a bullet shield. Two more killers entered the stairwell and began firing wildly. No shooting discipline. They laughed hysterically and held their weapons sideways like gangsters.
A third kid emerged from the fire door at the top of the stairs with a machete. “Kill him already, motherfuckas!”
Evan used both hands to hold up the gangster’s dead friend while he lay on his back. The kids did not seem to mind that they were wasting all of their ammo shooting their own friend in the back. It was a hyst
erically funny game to them.
Evan’s wave of panic and glimpse of doom washed over him like a tide, but like any tide, they always come in and then go out. They always change.
The boys were done shooting and now started kicking Evan. One of them produced a switchblade. The dead gangster bullet sponge was dripping with blood from holes top to bottom.
“Just kick his ass. Reo wants him alive!” the gangster with the machete at the top of the stairs yelled.
Roger felt something hard hit the back of his head and he began to lose consciousness. Suddenly, he remembered where he was and what he was doing. He wasn’t sure if it was the Russian’s fist hitting him in the face or the back of his head hitting the floor that was causing his brain to see reality in waves. He heard fighting and shooting above him and hoped that it was Evan coming to his rescue. Truth was, Roger began to feel like he just did not have his edge anymore.
“You Scottish prick! You killed my men at the airport! You ruined my operation!”
Roger blocked the blows as best he could and went for a different tactic. He kicked upward and reached for Yuri’s lame foot as he knelt down over Roger. The pummeling stopped as Roger grabbed hold of the man’s ankle and foot and twisted. Roger was not sure how he had ended up on the floor again in the first place, but since he was down here, he had to grab what he could.
He twisted Yuri’s ankle as hard as he could and first heard it snap then saw it twist completely around until it was backward.
Yuri screamed.
He hopped backward and away from Roger as quickly as he could. Somehow he got loose. The fight was gone from him. He made to escape. Roger used his hips and legs, rolled to regain balance, and got to his feet. He was far stronger than Yuri, and both men knew that if Roger got a good hold of him, no amount of training and quickness was going to overcome the angry, six-foot-four Scotsman.
Yuri lunged for the fire door on the sixth floor, opened it, and was gone, hopping and swearing as he fled. Roger was impressed that he could hop that fast.
“Evan, are you up there?” Roger yelled.
Evan rode the tide change and allowed the full fury of his pent-up anger and frustration with being in this country to overtake him. He remained calm and focused on the prize. For a brief second, something his judo coach had told him as a teenager in Japan burned into his mind. It sounded better in Japanese, he mused, but the logic was still sound: “The victory is already yours.”
Evan waited until both thugs were on the same landing before he struck. He rolled quickly onto his hips, scissoring his legs, and pushing the dead body from him. He clipped the ankles of one of the gangsters, and he went down, his head and elbows hitting the wall as he lost balance. The one with the knife leapt on Evan and stabbed at his face. Evan deflected the shot away from his face. He ignored the blade. It burned through his cheek and ear.
Three, maybe four, things happened at once. Evan was not sure, but he was in control. The first gangster, who had lost his balance, sprung back up with the grace of a youngster. Evan trapped the knife arm of the second gangster and twisted to his left, then changed directions and stood up, twisting to his right, locking the gangster’s arm and head down near the floor. The thug screamed.
The third gangster with the machete raised it over his head and leapt down the stairs.
Evan calculated motion, gravity, and confusion all in a split second. Hand-to-hand combat was like mental chess: “Consider fully—act decisively.”
Evan stomped down hard on the straight elbow, bending it backward until it cracked and went limp.
“Aaaahhh, perra!”
Evan spun to his right and caught the body of the gangster midair by the elbows and legs. The idiot had probably grown up playing video games and thinking they were real. Evan let the thug’s momentum carry him on his way down the stairs in a forward tumble and crash.
“Air is the best blocker.”
Evan punched the first thug, who had sprung to his feet so quickly, once in the throat and twice in the ribs. The kid went down. He turned blue, and his eyes bulged. Evan did not want to leave his back exposed, so he grabbed the fallen thug’s head, slammed it into the wall, and twisted his head till he heard vertebrae pop.
“I kill you!” The gangster with the broken arm tried to flee down the stairs, crying hysterically. He stepped on his friend, who had dropped the machete and was now trying to regain his balance.
“My leg, my back, something broken. Kill that motherf—”
Evan heard Roger’s voice from somewhere below. “Evan, you there?”
Evan kicked, punched, stomped, and twisted the thugs until the fight was gone and they yielded to the inevitable tide of darkness.
Their video game was over. There were no second plays.
Blood was running down Evan’s face. He cursed and leapt down the stairs, glancing at his watch. It had all been over in a few moments.
“Roger, you OK?”
Evan retrieved his UMP .40, put a fresh magazine in, and untangled his duffel bag from around his neck and waist.
“Yes! The Russian is getting away. He’s wounded. So am I!”
Roger and Evan paused and looked over the stairwell. The sound of firemen and policemen making their way up the stairs was getting closer. The building was strangely quiet, and the two men looked at each other.
Roger made a suggestion. “Now would be a good time to drop a smoke grenade.”
Evan smiled like a kid and pulled his smoke grenade and percussion grenade from his pockets. “Feeling lighter already.” He was glad to lose the weight.
Evan pulled the pins on both his grenades and tossed them up the stairwell. Both men made it through fire door quickly as the grenades exploded. Smoke and the smell filled the building.
“That will keep them busy for a while.”
Both men were covered in sweat and a mixture of their and others’ blood. They stank like smoke and gunpowder.
The two men covered each other and moved into the hallway.
That’s when things got bizarre.
Yuri had backtracked and headed for the original stairwell. His foot burned and throbbed. He cursed and hoped he could escape. The elevators were not working, and hiding in a room would eventually lead to his arrest. He had to escape, and he hopped on his good foot as best he could. He made it to the fire door of the original stairwell and was about to open it when he glanced over his shoulder. He saw Roger and another man charging, as best they could, down the hall. He paused for a second and realized something.
“You’re Ivan!”
Evan and Roger kept their weapons trained on the Russian as they closed the distance. Yuri looked at both of them in disbelief as they narrowed the distance.
“Now I get it. You guys are all part of some kind of plot!” Yuri said and reached for the door.
Evan spoke to Roger as he aimed at Yuri’s head and placed his finger on the trigger.
“Roger, something I need to tell you.”
“Can it wait?”
Yuri flipped off Roger and Evan and pushed open the door, preparing to hobble through.
Evan never had a chance to shoot.
Boom!
The back of Yuri’s head came off in a shower of red. He stumbled backward for a second and looked unseeingly at the man who had just shot him from inside the stairwell.
“Take cover!” Evan yelled.
Roger moved to the right, trying to take cover in a doorway while Evan took a knee.
Evan heard a click behind him and knew within a second that he and Roger had just been outflanked.
“Crap!” Evan spat.
Roger looked at Evan clearly disturbed. He heard someone racking a shotgun shell behind him.
“No se mueven!” a voice yelled.
Evan and Roger froze in place. They watched a skinny white kid with no tattoos or piercings step over Yuri’s dead body and into the hallway. He held a sawed-off shotgun. He had a meth smile with partially black gums. He wore a tie-
dye T-shirt, ripped shorts, and Timberland boots.
“Hi, boys!” The snarky, familiar voice of Reo could be heard behind them.
Tanya looked in disbelief from her chair as Reo and two of his remaining teenagers escorted Evan and Roger into the empty hotel room, where she was duct-taped to a chair.
The occupants had fled and left the door wide open. Reo and his crew had spotted Evan, Roger, and the Russian’s gang during their struggle. Using radios and quick planning, Reo had managed to beat them down the stairs and set up a hasty ambush. He had never suspected that Evan would kill most of his crew in the stairwell, but he had adjusted.
Reo smiled and breathed heavily. He looked at his two remaining gangsters and shook his head. “OK, we have to make this quick,” Reo explained. “Jose, shoot this one first.” Reo pointed at Roger.
“Did you get the thumb drive, Evan?” Reo asked between breaths.
Evan stood with his hands by his sides next to Roger. One gangster was behind them with a shotgun, and the other was in front of them holding Evan’s UMP.40.
“No, didn’t really look, Reo, you double-crossing lil’ bitch. You know Nathan scammed us all! I notice he is not here. You’re doing his dirty work again. Where is he?”
Evan grinned and mocked Reo. “The police say he is gone. Left you holding the bag. Must have taken him months to steal all that money, the planes, the logistics. Mmm, did he keep you in the dark, or were you in on it?”
Reo’s eyes flashed with rage, and he jumped forward to slap Evan.
Evan laughed. “You hit like a girl—no offense to girls.” He nodded toward Tanya.
“He has not left me!”
“He has, you wuss,” Roger growled.
Reo pulled his cell phone from his pocket and backed up so that he was standing next to Tanya. She was duct-taped across her chest and arms to a wooden chair.
Reo was sweating heavily and looked concerned. He pressed his Glock 20 against Tanya’s temple with his left hand and made a phone call with his right.
“Ever use a gun before, lassie?” Roger joked.
Evan heard voices in the hall and decided it was now or never to make a move. “Roger, you know about the Spartans, huh?”
Silver Lead and Dead (Evan Hernandez series Book 1) Page 27