Kill for Me

by Tom Wood

  “Good evening,” she said. “We were just talking about you.”

  Lavandier managed to take control of his nerves, but instead of speaking to Victor, he said to the squat man, “El Perro?”

  The squat man shook his head.

  “Interesting name,” Victor said. “How did you come by it?”

  El Perro was silent.

  “Chatty, isn’t he?” Victor said to Heloise.

  “He’s not one to waste words.”

  “Perhaps I’m not as he imagined. Maybe I’m not tall enough. Perhaps I’m not as pale as he was led to believe.”

  Lavandier stiffened. Just a little, but Victor saw it all the same. “What are you talking about?”

  “You hired another professional to kill Maria. I believe I was quite adamant that any violation of the terms would be unacceptable.”

  Lavandier said, “You’re mistaken. There is no such professional.”

  “Very tall, very pale,” Victor said. “Very . . . dead.”

  Lavandier opened his mouth to say something, but Heloise silenced him with a gentle rise of a hand.

  “There’s no need to lie, Luis. It doesn’t matter now, does it?”

  Lavandier said nothing.

  Heloise’s gaze returned to Victor. “You would like to get paid, I presume.”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Why shouldn’t I kill you?”

  “That’s a good question. You don’t need me any longer.”

  “That’s not your answer, is it?” she replied. “You wouldn’t come here if you thought you would be in danger.”

  Victor nodded. “I never walk into a room I can’t walk out of again.”

  “That’s still not an answer.”

  He pointed to the large wall-to-ceiling mirror that formed the east wall of the suite, to the view spoiled by the unfinished parking garage and the construction crane.

  “There’s my answer,” he said. “I have a fifty-caliber rifle set up on an automated rig, pointing this way.”

  “Like Madrid,” she said in response, curious, unafraid.

  “Exactly like Madrid.”

  She smiled. “I don’t believe you. You haven’t had the time.”

  “He wouldn’t have been able to get past my security,” El Perro added.

  Victor said, “It’s extensive, I’ll give you that, but we’re talking hypotheticals here, aren’t we? So, hypothetically, I would need a distraction to occupy the eye of your security while I set up inside the parking garage.”

  “There was no such distraction,” Heloise said. “Which means there’s no rig; there’s no rifle.”

  Her posture changed. El Perro noticed, and inched closer to Victor. Lavandier stiffened. Both men knew their employer well enough to know where this conversation was going.

  “But,” she added, “I’m not going to kill you because I don’t need you any longer. I would have paid you in full if you had actually killed Maria.”

  Victor remained silent.

  “You almost got away with it,” Lavandier said. “But I’m afraid this is our town, our house.”

  El Perro clapped his hands, and many sicarios entered the living area from deeper within the suite. They had guns, pistols, and SMGs. He took out one himself.

  Victor counted thirteen new enemies.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure you have enough guys?”

  Heloise asked, “Why did you come here if you thought there was even the remotest possibility I knew you had betrayed me?”

  “The best way to assault a fortress is from the inside.”

  She smiled. “You’re unarmed.”

  “You’re forgetting about the fifty-caliber rifle pointed at you.”

  Heloise took the gun from El Perro. “I think I’m going to call you on that bluff.”

  She aimed it at Victor.

  He said, “You’re going to shoot me here inside your casino? Seems a little reckless, doesn’t it?”

  “There’s no risk,” she said. “My men know how to clean up a mess.”

  Lavandier approached Heloise. “I would advise doing it elsewhere. Why risk leaving any evidence? Just one speck of blood we don’t notice, just one molecule of DNA left behind . . . Take him to the old cabaret club.”

  Heloise took a moment to consider his counsel, then gave the gun back to El Perro. “Fine, do that.” To Victor, she said, “You’ll have to forgive me if I’m not there to witness your end personally, but rest assured, I won’t forget you anytime soon.”

  “Comforting,” Victor said.

  She flashed him a smile that bordered on a smirk, then walked away, done with him.

  El Perro gestured for his men to approach, and as they closed, Lavandier said, “If you didn’t kill Maria, how did you come by the pendant? We can assume the blood is not hers, but how did you know the pendant would be recognized?”

  Victor shrugged again. “That’s simple, and it is in fact Maria’s blood. She’s paying me to kill Heloise. That’s the real reason I’m here now.”

  Heloise stopped and turned around, suddenly not done with him after all. She wanted to know more. She wanted more answers.

  Lavandier stood before Victor. He looked confused but also amused. Smiling. Maybe impressed. He had questions of his own, but before he could ask them, his head exploded.

  • Chapter 71 •

  The .50-caliber round left the AX50’s muzzle at almost two-and-a-half times the speed of sound. Even slowed by the dense, humid air, it put a huge hole in Lavandier’s face half a second before the thunderous roar of the gunshot arrived. Which meant the Frenchman’s head disintegrated before anyone in the suite understood why. One instant he was smiling; the next a huge amount of kinetic energy was ripping through his skull, causing a pressure wave inside the cranial cavity akin to a bomb blast. The head was erupting even before the bullet punched through the plate at the rear and sucked out half the contents of his skull along with it.

  The mess was absolute. Blood spatter reached every wall. Fragments of bones and morsels of skin and brain peppered Heloise and El Perro.

  Lavandier was left with only a partial face, with strips of scalp flopping over it, silver-blond hair matted with blood and brain matter. He collapsed straight down, lips still poised in that final smile.

  Victor was first to react, dropping to the floor an instant before El Perro launched himself at Heloise, tackling her to the carpet as more rounds split the wall-to-ceiling window.

  The sicarios were slower to react, and two were killed by the next two rifle rounds, one’s torso split in two, the other’s arm blown clean from his shoulder.

  Glass rained amid the thunderous sound of the gunshots, one after another, blowing huge holes in the wall opposite, disintegrating anything in the path of the bullets. The air became thick and dark with dust and misting blood.

  The AX50 was no automatic weapon. There was a discernible pause between each shot. Boom. Boom. Boom . . .

  Ten rounds in a full magazine meant it would be over soon, and Victor couldn’t let the chaos go to waste. Aside from him, everyone was locked in a state of surprise and panic. No one was paying any attention to him—they were too busy trying to stay alive—but he would be remembered when the shooting stopped.

  Lavandier’s corpse was nearby, and he patted it down for weapons and found a small .22 SIG that he used to kill the closest threat, the tinny pops of the handgun muffled and ignored while the booms of the .50-cal rushed through the suite.

  Victor discarded the SIG and retrieved the weapon the sicario had been holding. It was an MP5-N. A fine weapon with ambidextrous operation. It had been set for a left-handed shooter. Victor reset it to right firing. He checked it was indeed reloaded and thumbed the selector switch to single shot. He rarely felt the need for full auto. One good shot was bette
r than an inaccurate burst.

  He searched the dead guy for spare magazines and found one tucked into the man’s belt. He took it, and also the Knight’s Armament suppressor protruding from a pocket of the guy’s leather jacket. This was no time for stealth, but there was still a benefit to screwing it in place. He would hear enemy gunshots easier with his own quieted.

  The AX50 fell silent at last, and ten smoking craters lay in the floor or interior wall. Three more victims’ corpses littered the floor, as did torn-off body parts and huge quantities of blood. The air was so dense it seemed as though a cloud of ochre fog had filled the suite.

  Victor crouched with his back against a pillar. On the other side of it were more sicarios, and beyond them El Perro and Heloise. Victor waited. He heard movement, shuffling, but he wasn’t prepared to expose himself just yet.

  He heard El Perro shout, “Cover us.”

  The sicarios responded with automatic gunfire cutting through the air. No one had a line of sight to Victor, but it didn’t matter. They filled the suite with lead, shooting at random, putting down enough suppressing fire that it would have been suicide to leave cover.

  He didn’t have time to shoot, but he glimpsed El Perro ushering Heloise out of immediate danger, farther into the suite.

  Rounds cracked nearby floor tiles in a hellish rhythm. Victor dropped to the floor, staying low, lying on one hip, trying to ignore the beat of relentless gunshots and the ping of metal on stone, so he could pick out—

  Footsteps, nearing.

  He rolled out of cover, away from the gunfire but toward the sound of footsteps, iron sights of the MP5 sweeping the dust-thick air and falling onto a shape moving out of it, trying to flank. The gun kicked three times in Victor’s grip and the man contorted and stumbled backward a step, then two, then fell.

  The automatic fire paused and Victor waited a second to learn if the next shooter was responding to his fallen teammate or reloading.

  A click, clatter, slam told Victor the latter, and he leaped up to find a line of sight through the many obstacles of the suite, but saw no gunman because he had ducked into cover while reloading. From the holes in the nearest wall, however, Victor knew which direction the rounds had come from.

  When the shooter popped back up to resume firing, Victor was waiting.

  The bullet blew out the back of his skull.

  More shots came at Victor, tearing through a rug near his feet and cracking into the stone beneath. The gunman was in an elevated position.

  Victor dashed to better cover, glancing up to see a man on an overlooking balcony providing the advantage of higher ground and visibility, but it made the too exposed.

  The first round from the MP5 struck a railing, but the second hit him in the side of the knee and he staggered and fell, screaming, over the banister. He stopped screaming an instant later when he landed headfirst on the hard floor five meters below.

  Another gunman was rushing toward Victor’s position, fast and eager, loosing rounds at Victor, who was already moving behind a different pillar for more protection and using the opportunity to swap out the half-empty magazine for a fresh one. Bullets chipped at the pillar. More debris dirtied the air.

  They exchanged shots, each behind cover and making good use of it, the sicario firing in threes and fours, Victor returning single rounds.

  The sicario emptied his magazine first. It took him by surprise. He squeezed the trigger a couple of more times—click, click—before he understood. He hadn’t been counting rounds.

  Victor always counted. He had plenty left, but the MP5 jammed. A rare occurrence, but it hadn’t been well maintained.

  He waited for his enemy to drop out of sight behind a raised area of flooring on which stood a grand piano, and he was still reloading when Victor leaped up and ran over it.

  The gunman gasped when Victor dropped down on the other side of the piano, landing on both feet, knees bending as he absorbed the impact, before he transferred the energy into a kick that knocked the sicario’s weapon from his hands.

  Victor stepped inside the guy’s reach, elbows up high to deflect the incoming shots with his arms, driving the left elbow into the unprotected face beyond, twisting his hips to power an elbow strike from his right arm that slammed into the point of the man’s chin. The man slackened, eyes closing, falling into a heap that Victor stepped over to go after another enemy stepping out of cover.

  Victor disarmed him and caught the incoming kick with his left arm and locked the leg against his flank, leaving the guy hopping to stay on his single foot. Victor stomped a heel into the guy’s exposed ankle, then wrenched his leg to pull the guy closer and into an open palm. A follow-up stomp kicked the one vertical leg out from under him.

  He crashed to the floor—Victor releasing the trapped leg—but he wasn’t out of the fight, even with a broken ankle and a flat nose. He rolled away from Victor’s stamping foot, going for the gun on the floor, half rolling, half shuffling.

  He grabbed the pistol and shifted onto one hip to shoot, but Victor knocked the gun from his hand the instant it was in range.

  A kick to the ribs flipped the guy to his stomach. He tried to push himself up, but Victor was over him, lowering to one knee and driving the other down into his spine.

  Victor took hold of the guy’s head and twisted in a savage, upward spiral.

  Crack.

  The one he had dropped with the elbow to the chin had recovered and drew a matte black knife, then rushed to attack. Victor scooped up the pistol and shot the guy in the neck, the bullet hitting a little below the Adam’s apple. Blood bubbled from the wound. It bubbled from his mouth. It bubbled from his nostrils. He gasped and sputtered and dropped to his knees, eyes wide and fingers pressed over the hole, as if they could repair the damage done to his esophagus and arteries.

  No more gunmen in sight, so Victor collected the knife. Two sicarios remained, plus El Perro and Heloise, all of whom were farther inside the suite. The only exit was the elevator, behind him.

  No way out.

  • Chapter 72 •

  It was close quarters now he was out of the open-plan area, so Victor kept his elbows against his chest. He didn’t want to leave his arms out in front of him, exposed and vulnerable, free to be grabbed before they could be withdrawn. He stalked through the suite, never leaving a room or corner unchecked, fast but not rushed. He couldn’t make a mistake. They were waiting for him, but he didn’t want them to be ready for him.

  He took the first sicario by surprise as he entered a kitchen. He was tall and strong, armed with a submachine gun, but he didn’t hear Victor coming. Victor forced a palm over the guy’s mouth and nose and drove the matte black knife into his chest, blade on a horizontal plane to slip between ribs and into the heart beyond. Not an instant kill, but close enough. The man loosened and stumbled. Victor kept hold of the knife and steered him as he started to fall, so when his legs gave out underneath him, he dropped onto a rug to lessen the noise and lay twitching and wheezing for a second longer.

  The next had better hearing, better awareness. He was already responding, entering the room before Victor was prepared to deal with him.

  Victor batted the SMG from the guy’s grip, and the sicario threw a punch in response, a looping right haymaker destined for Victor’s jaw, but slow, predictable. Victor was dropping his head and bending his knees before the fist was halfway through its long arc, and by the time it reached the space above him, Victor’s shoulder was slamming into the man’s abdomen and powering him off his feet.

  They struck a table, the sicario falling backward over it and Victor falling over him in turn, but rolling with the energy, letting it take him over in a cartwheel that put him back on his feet.

  His opponent tried to fight the force and failed, hitting the ground with the table tipping on top of him. He wasn’t hurt, but it took time to slither out from under it. />
  Victor did not stand idle and let him. He used those few seconds to retrieve the sicario’s SMG and used the stock to crack open his skull.

  Only one room remained. The master bedroom.

  He approached, knowing there was just one more threat to deal with before he reached his target, no doubt close by and covering the doors, ready and waiting for the inevitable assault. Victor wanted to catch El Perro off guard, trusting to speed when his enemy would expect stealth.

  El Perro didn’t wait, however; he attacked, exiting the bedroom as Victor reached it.

  The gun went off as Victor pushed it away, his hand burning on the hot muzzle brake. He tried to shoot his own weapon but they were too close, too mobile to get an angle before the weapon was also grabbed.

  They wrestled for control of the guns, stumbling through the hallway. El Perro was skilled enough to resist Victor’s attempts to twist and wrench it from his grip. He knew how to go with the force instead of fighting it, to push when pulled and pull when pushed. He was strong and powerful. His wrists were so thick it seemed his hands were attached to his arms without joints.

  Victor changed tack, attacking instead, releasing one gun to throw short, looping uppercuts into the body. El Perro had a thick torso and a solid abdominal wall. He took the punches well, but he couldn’t keep resisting. Each blow took its toll.

  El Perro dropped the other gun so he could fight back.

  The strikes came fast, forcing Victor to retreat. Punches thrown in tight, stinging arcs to his body, punctuated by elbow strikes aimed for his face; an intermittent knee shooting for his abdomen or groin. He blocked and slipped, parried and dodged. His enemy was as relentless as he was quick and tireless.

  He was experienced too. Whatever his speed, whatever his stamina, no amateur fought like this. He had trained and practiced and learned. More than that, he had put those skills to the test. There was no substitute for the real thing. No amount of sparring could prepare for that first blow landed with intent or received in kind.

  Victor had the advantage of reach. He could strike from farther distance, but that came with disadvantages too. There was more of Victor to hit and to grab. El Perro’s strength was condensed into a small area. The result was more explosiveness. He kept close. He didn’t allow Victor to back away an inch.