I steady myself and press my right palm flat against the glass. I push against it, and then try to slide it up, hoping the window will move. It’s a struggle, and I put plenty of pressure on it, but it doesn’t budge. The window’s locked.
Well, shit…
13.
10:53 EDT
“Ah… Bob?” I say.
“What’s wrong?” he replies.
“The window’s locked.”
“Oh, shit…”
“Yeah, my thoughts exactly. I’m dangling thirty feet above Manhattan—a little help wouldn’t go amiss.”
“You should really plan things a little better. Did you not consider the possibility of the window being locked before you jumped?”
“Well, obviously I considered it… I just believe positive thinking creates opportunity.”
“Adrian, you’re an idiot.”
“Bob, if I wasn’t hanging from a window ledge, I would absolutely kick your ass right now. Enough with the lecture—fix this.”
“What do you want me to do, exactly?”
“I don’t know! Josh would’ve thought of something by now...”
“Well, I’m not Josh, am I?”
He falls silent. My arms are starting to ache.
“Bob, I’ve clearly hurt your feelings here, and I feel I should apologize,” I say. “But I won’t. Stop being such a fucking old woman and find me a way into the building!”
I can hear him go to say something, then stop himself, audibly catching his breath and his words. More silence on the line, and my arms are really starting to hurt, to the point where my grip is slowly weakening.
“Any time you want, Bob…” I say, trying to hurry him along without antagonizing him further.
“Well, I hate myself for saying this, but given the circumstances… why don’t you just break the window, climb in, and shoot anyone who comes looking? You know you want to.”
I smile to myself. About damn time.
“Bob, you’re a good man.”
“Whatever… just don’t shoot the targets, okay?”
“Cross my heart.”
Using my feet, I scramble up the wall as much as I can, renewing my hold on the ledge, then slowly reach behind me to get my gun. Holding it in my right hand, I look left as much as I can, to shield my face from any shards of glass that might go flying. Then, I slam the butt of the gun hard into the center of the window. The glass breaks first time, and I quickly heave myself up and through, dropping to the floor of the room while avoiding the few pieces of glass still sticking out from the frame.
In a crouch, I remain still; aiming my gun at the door, waiting for the guy outside the room to come barging in to investigate the noise. My heart rate is increasing as the adrenaline kicks in. I take some deep breaths to try to regulate it, so I can use it to my advantage.
Three seconds pass before the door swings open. The guard stands there, a look of shock and confusion on his face, probably not expecting to see someone in the room. He must be one of Hussein’s men, as he looks Eastern European, and is dressed in jeans and a sleeveless, insulated jacket. In his right hand is a submachine gun—looks like a MAC-10, with a suppressor attached. Using the split second of hesitation to my advantage, I fire once, putting a bullet in the center of his forehead. His head snaps back and he slumps straight to the floor; a light, crimson stain appears on the wall opposite, across the hallway.
I creep to the door, quickly searching the dead guy for anything useful. I retrieve a driver’s license, which states his name is—sorry, was Joseph Jameson, from Ohio. Presumably a fake...
I really dislike the MAC-10 as a weapon, so I leave that where it is. It’s bulky and inaccurate, and its hair-trigger means one squeeze practically empties the clip, which is of no use when you’re trying to be subtle and effective.
I look right, down the hallway to the stairs, waiting a moment, but after seeing no sign of life, I turn left and glance at the door across the hall. It’s a big, wooden thing, probably quite thick, and looks out of place in the otherwise modern-looking apartment. I suspect the last time the place was re-decorated, the owners decided to leave the original wooden door to give it a rustic, classical feel. Again, after a minute of waiting, there’s no sign of life.
I step out into the hallway, heading for the meeting room.
An American accent behind me says, “Hey! Who the fuck are you?”
Shit.
I turn around to see two men at the top of the stairs. The one on the left is wearing a suit and an earpiece. My guess is he’s the one who just spoke—the American. The guy next to him is dressed in jeans and a black, loose-fitting sweater. He doesn’t have an earpiece. He has thick, dark hair and matching beard, with dark, caramel skin. He doesn’t look American—more likely one of Hussein’s men.
Clark’s voice sounds in my ear. “Adrian, head’s up—I think they might have spotted you.”
I roll my eyes. “Thanks for the update, Bob…” I whisper back through gritted teeth.
Quickly, I drop to a crouch, firing twice. The first bullet hits the American in his left shoulder, close to the neck, and sends him crashing to the floor. The second bullet hits the guy in jeans square in the chest. He falls backward, his lifeless body tumbling down the stairs.
I know how it might look, but I’d rather injure someone I can’t identify—my spider sense is tingling about all these suited and booted Americans who are here. My gut tells me they’re not with the Armageddon Initiative, so I don’t want to risk killing someone and having a whole other bunch of people pissed at me. I’ve been there and done that, and it’s hard work.
The second guy, however, was definitely a terrorist, so fuck him.
I can hear commotion behind the wooden door now—I’m assuming everyone has been alerted to my presence...
“Adrian, you’ve got more guys heading up the stairs,” says Clark.
Great… so I can’t easily go that way. Plus, I need to get to Hussein and his friend, who are both in a room with six other people—who I can guarantee will be packing.
“Any ideas?” I ask Clark.
“I’m thinking… sorry, Adrian. We need Hussein, but you should maybe consider abandoning the mission, unless you want to run the risk of not getting out of there at all.”
“Rule number one, Bob—you never call off the mission. There’s always a way out—just gotta learn to think outside the box a little.”
I look around, searching for inspiration. Too time-consuming to go back the way I came, and too counter-productive to fight my way down the stairs and out of the building. My gaze keeps resting on the wooden door...
Going in that room would be crazy, wouldn’t it?
I mean, I don’t know who’s behind that door, where they are in the room, what weapons they have, anything…
It would just be sheer insanity to go bursting into the room.
I smile to myself.
I’ve always loved a little crazy…
I run at the door, barging into it shoulder first. I nearly take it off its hinges, and it swings open, revealing the room as I stand in the doorway, my right arm throbbing from the impact. Everything slows down—split seconds feel like hours as I take in every detail of the scene before me.
There’s a large rectangular table in the middle of the room, lengthways, facing the door. At the far end, standing and facing me with his back to the window, is Yalafi Hussein. I recognize him from the information I read on the flight over here. He’s just above average height, wearing a very expensive-looking suit and a small, fitted turban. His long, scraggly, black beard obscures much of his face, but in the split second I catch his eyes, I can see a glimpse of the hatred that lies beneath the surface. His mouth is open, frozen mid-speech, in shock.
On his left, my right, are three men all dressed in suits, with earpieces in, and conspicuous bulges underneath their left armpits. All are Caucasian and clean shaven, with a disciplined air about them.
On his right, my
left, facing the men in suits, are three more men. They’re dressed more casually, with no obvious weaponry, concealed or otherwise. They’re all from different ethnic backgrounds, but each has short hair and trimmed beards, with dark eyes hiding the same, underlying anger that I see in Hussein.
Across the table, with their backs to me, another man in a suit stands and faces Hussein. I note that he doesn’t turn around to look at me, but his suit is a light brown and, from my limited view of him, I’m sure I can see the glint of military decoration on the left breast of his jacket. He’s bald and about my height, his stance is very rigid and upright, with his shoulders back to their full width—exuding confidence.
As we enter the third split second since I burst into the room, everyone stares at me—the suits on the right slowly reach into their jackets, presumably to retrieve their firearms. In front of Hussein is an open laptop.
I assess the situation, looking at the probable outcome of every possible course of action, deciding quickly that I have absolutely no chance of getting Hussein and the guy with his back to me out of here alive.
So, what’s the next best thing?
Seeing everyone’s guns are almost drawn, time restarts, and I sprint across the room toward Hussein. My gun’s already in my hand, I fire off five shots in total—one goes in the table in front of Hussein to make him duck down, three go at the suited men reaching for their guns, and one goes in the window that looks down over the street.
I reach the end of the table and spin clockwise, closing and swiping up the laptop in one movement, before firing off another two rounds in quick succession, aimed at the chests of two of the three men there with Hussein, killing them instantly. This also gives me my first real look at the guy Hussein is meeting. It’s a very quick glance, but I take in his old, drawn, stern, weathered face and his emotionless, dark eyes. He’s wearing lots of medals on his suit, and stars on his shoulders. We look at each other for a brief moment, and then he calmly turns away from me as I turn away from him.
Tucking the laptop under my left arm, and without a second’s hesitation, I jump at the window, dropping my head to the right and rolling into it, so my left shoulder and back go first. With the glass already weakened from the bullet, I smash through, rolling naturally and falling the thirty feet down to the street.
Having developed the useful ability to accurately judge distances with the naked eye throughout my many years as a soldier and assassin, my calculations are spot on—I land, flat on my back, on the roof of the middle limousine parked out front, with a heavy thud. I let out an involuntary grunt of pain from the impact.
My momentum carries me over, and I continue to roll, dropping down onto the street. Still holding my gun, I put my right hand on the ground, stopping in a crouch and steadying myself. I quickly check to make sure the laptop wasn’t damaged—luckily, it seems intact. When I look up, a car’s speeding toward me. The driver slams on his brakes and the car screeches to a halt. I can only watch, rooted to the ground and unable to think to move quickly enough. Luckily, the car stops inches from my head.
Jesus…
I’m breathing heavily, and pain is pulsing through my entire body from the exertion and fall, but I manage to get to my feet. The smell of burning rubber from the tires drifts across the street, stinging my nostrils. I move to the driver’s door and open it, using my gun to gesture to the driver to get out. It’s a middle-aged man wearing chinos and a sweater, looking shaken up.
“I’m sorry,” I say to him. “But I really need a ride.”
The man says nothing; he just gets out of the car with a petrified look on his face. I throw a quick glance up at the apartment before I climb in. The men guarding the door outside have disappeared—I’m guessing they’ve gone inside to see what was going on. I look up at the window and see Hussein standing there—his expression a mixture of gloating that I didn’t capture him, and anger that I’d dare try to. I smile at him, then duck into the car, speeding off down West 81st Street, eager to put some distance between the roomful of angry terrorists and me.
And who was that guy meeting with Hussein? He looked important, and vaguely familiar, but I can’t place him.
“Clark, you there?” I say.
“Adrian! What the hell’s going on? Did you just get thrown out of a second story window?”
“No, I jumped.”
“Of course you did… what happened?”
“My only way out of that room was straight down. No way was I getting out of there with Hussein, or his friend. I got a decent look at the guy, but I don’t know who he is.”
“So you didn’t get either target? I’m glad you’re alright, Adrian, but I’m disappointed the mission was such a bust. All that risk for nothing...”
“It wasn’t a complete write-off,” I say, looking at the laptop on the seat next to me. “I managed to swipe Hussein’s computer before I jumped. I don’t think it’s damaged, so we might be able to get something off it.”
“That’s damn good work, Adrian. Sorry I wasn’t more use to you.”
“You did fine, Bob, honestly. Where are you?”
“I’m still at the other safe house, over in Brooklyn.”
“I’ll make sure I’m not followed and head over to you now. See you soon.”
I navigate the traffic, heading back through Central Park and turning right onto FDR Drive. I follow it for over six miles, eventually turning onto the Brooklyn Bridge.
I hope there’s something useful on this laptop. As it stands, we’re still none the wiser as to who this Armageddon Initiative really is; what they want, or who’s working with them. We need a victory and fast, as, after today, they know I’m on their trail.
I can’t help but think about Tori, back home in Texas… I need to stop these assholes before they get the urge to retaliate.
14.
12:09 EDT
I arrived at the secondary safe house about fifteen minutes ago. I ditched the car a couple of blocks away and approached on foot—taking an indirect route to make sure no one followed me.
Once inside, I handed the laptop I’d taken over to Clark, and he’d set about hacking into it. I’m standing behind him, watching him work.
“Do you mind?” he asks, glancing over his shoulder.
“Sorry,” I say, realizing I’m probably putting him off. “I always used to watch Josh do this kind of thing, because he’d talk me through it as he went along…”
I trail off, seeing the look on his face. Thinking about it, I’ve compared him to Josh a lot in the last few hours, and he’s probably pissed at me. I hold my hands up in apology and step away, pacing aimlessly around the room.
The safe house is an apartment in a run-down tenement block in Brooklyn. The neighborhood isn’t the best advertisement for living in New York, purely based on the aesthetics—graffiti riddles a lot of the apartment buildings, and they look abandoned. And the people walking the streets all look like they’re affiliated with a local gang. You can’t deny it’s a great location for a safe house, but I have to smile at the irony, as the place itself looks anything but safe.
The apartment is on the third floor of the building, and is a simple three-room place. The main living room is spacious—mostly due to the fact it’s got very little furniture in it—with a kitchenette built into one side of it. There’s a table against the opposite wall with two chairs tucked under it. Clark’s currently sitting in one of them, working away on the laptop.
But that’s it, really. The carpet’s worn and discolored. There’s no TV, and only a battered sofa against the far wall, facing the door. There’s also a faint stale odor in every room, a smell of damp and neglect.
On either side, as you enter the apartment, is another door. On the left, it takes you to a small, barely-practical bathroom, complete with stained tiles, a toilet that’s not seen a cleaning agent in decades, and a shower stall that Norman Bates would’ve been ashamed of. Opposite, on the right, is the bedroom. There’s a single bed, unmade, i
n the center of the room, but otherwise it’s empty.
“Anyway, are you alright?” asks Clark after a few minutes of slightly awkward silence.
I shrug. “I’m fine. I’ve been in far worse situations than that.”
He nods to signify he’s listening, but doesn’t look up from the screen. “You don’t need to tell me,” he says, sounding distracted. “Anything more come to mind about who was there meeting with Hussein?”
I must admit, that’s had my spider sense going haywire. Yalafi Hussein is your typical terrorist, by all accounts. He has a superior; he has armed men from all over the world—though from what I’ve seen so far, they seem to predominantly come from Middle Eastern countries. The powers that be seem to be as aware of him as I am, but no one in the intelligence community seems to have any idea what this Armageddon Initiative is actually planning.
Which is what’s baffling me… Especially with all the funding these people have nowadays, how can no one have any solid intel whatsoever on a terrorist organization seemingly as large as these guys?
And, in addition to that, for him to be meeting someone who is almost certainly American, dressed in military garb, and surrounded by American-looking, military-trained men in suits, with earpieces… and on American soil… something isn’t right.
“There’s something seriously wrong with all of this,” I reply. “I only got a quick look at the guy, and he wasn’t immediately familiar to me or anything. But I’m pretty sure he was a four-star general, and the men he brought to the meeting all looked suspiciously like government agents.”
Clark finally looks up from the laptop, concerned and surprised. “Are you sure?”
I nod. “No other explanation I can see as to who the muscle was. And as for him, he was definitely a high-ranking U.S. military official. Either that, or he was really committed to his fancy dress outfit.”
Deadly Intent: An Action Thriller (Adrian Hell Series Book 4) Page 9