The Final Hour (Victor The Assassin 7)

by Tom Wood

  Alvarez said, ‘Send them both. Tell them to hurry. If this is the killer, they’re to shoot on sight.’

  Victor threw himself at Raven, charging her into the side of a sheeted cabinet. The wood shuddered and flexed and splintered. Raven grunted, air-less, as Victor grabbed her arms and hauled her away, throwing her into the table.

  She tumbled backwards over it, falling off the far side and knocking over chairs as she went to the floor, landing on her front.

  Victor heaved the table to one side and kicked a chair out of his path as he rushed to take advantage of Raven’s prone position. She rolled out of the way of a heel intended for her neck, going on to her back and kicking out a heel of her own that caught Victor in the abdomen and doubled him over.

  He fell forward, on to Raven, who threw up an elbow to protect herself and catch Victor as he fell. The elbow glanced off Victor’s forehead but didn’t stop his size and weight pinning Raven in place, trapping her arms for a brief moment, long enough for him to shoot out both hands to squeeze Raven’s neck.

  Victor had tremendous grip strength, but Raven tensed her neck to flare the tendons and harden the muscles, giving her enough respite to bring up her left foot and kick it into Victor’s hip while she sprawled on to one side.

  The kick forced Victor to release his hold on her neck and he thumped a palm against the floor to prevent himself crashing prone as Raven scrambled out from underneath him.

  Raven rolled away and flipped to her feet. She backed off and grabbed the babysitter’s knife from the dining table as Victor stood and picked up a chair. He used it as a club, swinging it by two legs at Raven’s head.

  She ducked the first attack and sidestepped the second, the chair creating too much distance to strike back.

  Victor changed tack and switched to faster jabs, thrusting the chair forward, catching Raven by surprise and hitting her in the chest and forcing her backwards, off balance. She released the knife to grab a doorframe to stop her falling over in the doorway.

  She ducked the chair as he swung it at her face. Instead, it struck the doorframe and broke apart.

  Muir had noticed her tail, of course, because she was CIA and even with a rotating pattern she couldn’t fail to spot the three different but identical black SUVs full of tough-looking guys. She pretended not to notice, because what was the point? There was nothing to be achieved in letting on they had been made. It wasn’t like it was the surveillance team’s fault they were giving themselves away. That was the fault of whoever sent them to watch her, because they were not full-time shadows. This was a gun team. She figured contractors or SAD paramilitaries ready to go into action the moment Tesseract tried to make contact with her. Which wouldn’t happen, because he wasn’t reckless enough to show up in Helsinki.

  Screeching tyres as the black SUV braked hard and pulled a fast U-turn told her something was very wrong.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  Raven had no choice but to back away, to create distance, to escape his relentless, stinging attacks. She gave Victor the room to kick her in the chest, in the sternum, a solid stomp kick that catapulted her backwards over the sofa, tipping it over with her, dust sheet wrapping around her.

  He went for the dropped gun while she untangled herself.

  He heard her behind him, recovering faster than he expected, standing, but there were no other guns in the room to concern himself with and too much distance between them for her to make some desperate lunge. He scooped the weapon up, turning as he did, raising his arm as his gaze sought the target.

  He glimpsed her back, her black hair in motion as she sprinted to the closest doorway to the hallway.

  The gun came up, and the front sights came into alignment with the back sights, muzzle aiming at the back of her skull, a moving target but running away from him in a straight line, but then disappearing as he increased pressure on the trigger; Raven dropping into a slide, anticipating a headshot and robbing him of it before he could fire, simultaneously making it to the hallway and out of his line of sight before he could adjust his aim.

  He chased after her. The apartment was big, but it wasn’t so large that she could lose him or hide. She was desperate, fleeing, no plan or tactics beyond trying to stay alive.

  She had one advantage: she knew the layout of the interior better than he did. Fatigue and a false sense of security had overridden his innate protocol to perform thorough checks. He realised that fatigue was slowing him now, even if he didn’t feel it. His reactions wouldn’t be as sharp. His movements would be sluggish. So she had two advantages, because she was well rested.

  But those two advantages were insignificant, because he had the gun.

  Raven made it to a bedroom, the closest haven. She couldn’t afford to be in the hallway a second longer. If he saw her again, she would be dead. There was a catch on the door, that she engaged. It wouldn’t stop him, but it bought her a moment to drag the bed in front of the door.

  Which was kicked open, but only a few inches before the bed blocked it.

  A single bed was no match for his strength. He pushed it aside; it took time, it took a matter of seconds, but she made the most of each and every one of them, heaving open the window, climbing out on to the sill.

  There was a balcony below her.

  Victor forced his way into the room, saw it was empty, and hurried to the open window – no sign of Raven – and leaned out to see a balcony one floor below.

  One of her shoes lay on the balcony, having been lost in the climb and drop.

  He didn’t follow. If it was him, he would be waiting on the other side of the balcony doors, ready to ambush his pursuer when they dropped down, exposed, vulnerable, gun no longer in hand.

  Instead, he backed away, rushing through the apartment, making it along the hallway, through the lounge and to the front door, but stopping himself. Thinking. Realising. Remembering.

  He brought an arsenal.

  In the apartment’s second bedroom, Raven removed one of the Estonian’s weapons from the black sports bag. She was quiet but quick, knowing she didn’t have much time, regardless of his actions. She could hear him moving in the hallway, racing away, assuming she had dropped to the balcony below as she hoped to convince him with the discarded shoe. Instead, she had reached across to the next window, thankfully already open, and slipped inside an instant before he would have seen her. She was fast, knowing the exterior after tricking the babysitter.

  She loaded the weapon and racked the slide.

  It was a noise Victor knew well, a hard, metallic crunch that was impossible to lessen, to quieten. All guns made their own unique sounds that, like fingerprints, could identify them to the right ear. Victor never forgot the sound of a racking slide. Even muffled through the door and space between them, he knew the weapon.

  An MP7, a beast of an automatic gun he had last used in Russia, in a forest in Sochi. Incredible firepower.

  The pistol was no match for it.

  The MP7 was a short, light weapon, a perfect size and weight for Raven’s build. She had used one before too. Plenty of times. This particular one had a folding stock that was pressed against her upper right chest as she charged out of the opening door. The twenty-round magazine was loaded with subsonic ammunition to make the most of the long suppressor affixed to the muzzle. It was equipped with a holographic sight, perfect for close-quarters battle – perfect for this fight.

  As she exited the bedroom she only glimpsed his foot as he dashed out of the hallway. He must have heard her and recognised the noise of an automatic weapon racked. In a straight gunfight, he knew he would lose.

  Now it was his turn to run.

  Victor dashed out of the penthouse ahead of the storm of gunfire and descended the stairs fast, creating distance and cutting down lines of sight, but not so hurried that he didn’t hear the squeal of rubber on asphalt on the street outside. A hard brake. Not the action of a driver avoiding an accident, but a fast deceleration, controlled, going from speed to stationary i
n the shortest possible time. He spared a second to glance out of a window.

  From a black SUV he saw six men exit, quick and assured; each man knowing his job and how to act in relation to the others. They were dressed in casual clothes, from which they whipped out compact sub-machine guns or pistols while on the move towards the building, weapons snapping up and ready to fire. That wasn’t all. It was night and they were ready for that. He recognised the thermal-imaging goggles they wore.

  The first gunshot, he realised, had brought them here. How long ago did it happen? One minute? Two? It was hard to keep track of time in the chaos of combat. These guys weren’t the police but they had responded fast. So they were one unit of a larger contingent. The odds of the only team out looking for him just happening to be in the same area weren’t even worth considering. This unit had been the closest. There would be more further out, but closing fast. As more arrived, his odds of escape, of survival, exponentially diminished.

  One assassin above him, but six gunmen below him.

  He had to retreat back up the stairs. Raven, however capable, was the lesser threat. He pictured the building and the entrances and the hallways and rooms. They had to come for him because he wasn’t going out to them. No way. They could see in the dark. He would be a glowing white target long before he had any hope of spotting them in return. Outside, he had no chance against multiple shooters. Inside, he would still be a glowing white target, but at point-blank range he could see them too. Then it was down to tactics and speed. Then, he had a chance.

  They wouldn’t try to keep it quiet from the way they moved. They weren’t going to tranquillise him. They were a paramilitary unit of a foreign power. They would want this handled fast.

  The MP7 had forced them into action. Even suppressed, it wasn’t quiet. They had to act before the police arrived on scene.

  The apartment building. Nine stories. Three exterior walls. Only two external doors, but with ground-floor windows that made for multiple points of entry. Impossible for him to cover them all.

  That didn’t matter, because unless they were planning on scaling rendered walls or had brought ladders to get up onto the scaffolding, there was only one way to reach him. The stairwell.

  Choke point.

  He kicked open a door to the closest apartment and went inside. Like the penthouse above, it was unoccupied for renovation, and like the penthouse it had some items of furniture protected by dust sheets. He yanked away a sheet that covered a sofa, hurried into the nearby bathroom, and turned on the shower.

  Raven did not rush to follow her fleeing enemy. She might now outgun him, but she was under no illusion just how dangerous he could be. She was cut, hurt and bleeding. Everywhere hurt. Chasing after him in the dark was no fun. Instead, she edged to the balcony door and peered outside when she too heard a vehicle braking hard, taking a mental snapshot of the exterior, seeing the gunmen exit their vehicle and approach the building.

  She knew a SAD team when she saw one, because she had once been part of one. Good-humoured guys every one, but lethal.

  It didn’t matter if they were here for her or him, because both of them were assassins with shoot-to-kill orders on their heads.

  She hurried through the penthouse, heaving open a window on the building’s north side. She leaned backwards through it, took hold of the top of the frame, and hauled herself out and up on to the sill. She balanced carefully and slid the window back down. The roof above was surrounded by an overhang of stone she could just stretch her fingers to. She stretched further, inching them along until she had her fingers flat on the overhang up to the second knuckle. Not an ideal grip, given her weakened state, but it would have to do.

  She exhaled and lifted, pulling herself straight up until her jaw was higher than the roof. She hooked an elbow on to it, and then swung up a leg. A moment later, she was crouched on the roof and considering her next move.

  After catching her breath, she edged her way across the roof, until she was overlooking the scaffolding.

  She lowered herself off the roof and dropped the remaining distance as shots of a gunfight raged from inside the building.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  With weapons locked and loaded, the SAD operators entered the apartment building through both exterior doors at the same time, fast and assured, as two fire-teams of three. They were well-briefed on their target, but not on the location, so they had to take their time moving through the ground floor. They knew what they were doing, though. They knew how to clear a building. They were all former military who had seen combat, who had swept rooms for insurgents whilst looking out for booby traps and IEDs. Thermal-imaging goggles painted the interior in shades of grey: the cool floor tiles were dark, the warmer walls lighter. They saw each other’s exposed skin – faces, necks, wrists – as pure white, with their clothes as pale grey. Their guns were black, except where they held them, warming the metal to pale handprints that faded back to darkness.

  They converged at the bottom of the stairwell, ignoring the elevator, which they would have done even had it been active.

  They communicated with hand gestures. The action was taking place high above them, in the penthouse, which they ascended towards. They didn’t like leaving floors uncleared behind them, but they had to hurry.

  The six kept close as they made their way up the stairs, covering different angles, anticipating an attack. This was their most vulnerable moment, and they expected the target would exploit that, given the chance.

  As a result, they moved fast, not wanting to extend that vulnerability any longer than they needed. There was no further sound of gunfire from above. They reached the eighth floor without incident. The penthouse waited. It seemed the target had wasted the best opportunity he would ever get.

  Victor, lying with his front on the cool floorboards, whipped the dust sheet soaked in cold water back from where it lay on top of him, and opened fire.

  Two shots at each man. Double taps to their heads. They went down, one by one; too surprised to know what was happening; too slow to react to the unknown. Four seconds. Five corpses.

  He had waited until he heard no more footsteps on the stairs before throwing the sheet back. He hadn’t been able to see through it any more than their thermal imaging had been able to differentiate between the cold sheet and the cool floor.

  He was on his feet and approaching the stairs a moment later.

  Had the sixth team member hung back?

  Yes, because a sub-machine gun opened up from the floor below. Rounds puckered the banister and punched holes in the walls and ceiling.

  He returned fire, shooting blind, emptying his pistol as he ran along the landing and passed the top of the stairs, tossing it aside as it clicked empty, and sliding across the floor to where the five corpses lay.

  Scooping up one of the dropped weapons – a bullpup Steyr SMG – he scrambled to his feet and dashed back the way he had come as footsteps pounded the stairs.

  He led with the Steyr, squeezing the trigger before he had fully rounded the wall or acquired a target.

  The final guy – who was in fact a woman – caught the spray of automatic fire in the chest as she rushed up the stairwell.

  The body armour saved her from the small-calibre rounds, but she tumbled over backwards down the stairs, striking the floor with the rear of her skull with all the energy of the fall and she slackened at the foot of the stairwell.

  She didn’t move again.

  Victor waited, in case Raven was near. When he was sure she wasn’t going to show up, he checked the corpses. They had just the essentials: guns, ammo, comms.

  He reloaded the Steyr, stashed as many spare mags as his waistband could handle, and took an armoured vest and thermal-imaging goggles from one of the bodies. Taking the equipment burned time he didn’t have, but he had an idea.

  The woman stirred. A quiet moan escaped her lips. Not dead, but not conscious either. No threat now, but she could wake at any time.

  Victor pressed
his left palm over the woman’s lips and nostrils while he kept watch for Raven.

  Victor reached the penthouse, having seen no sign of Raven, and realised that like him she had spotted the arrival of the team and fled. That reduced the immediate threat, but a second SUV had arrived outside. He should already be trying to escape, but he couldn’t waste this opportunity. He might never get another one.

  In the bathroom he heaved the dead Estonian from the bathtub and dressed it in the body armour and goggles he had taken from downstairs. The corpse was no longer stiff from rigor, and though awkward to manoeuvre, this didn’t have to be perfect. Victor kept hold of the Steyr for now, but he wasn’t going to take it with him.

  In the kitchen, Victor worked the stove, twisting each of the four knobs to their maximum setting. Gas hissed. He found no clicker in the drawers, but remembered the pack of French cigarettes and lighter that had been on the dining table. They had scattered during the fight with Raven. He found them at opposite ends of the room, the pack of cigarettes by the door and a lighter beneath a window. He picked the latter up from amongst the shards of broken glass and brought it to the cigarettes.

  He opened the pack and lit the cigarettes inside.

  The second SAD team to arrive entered the building fast, two-by-two cover formation, clearing the hallways and stairwell and checking doors as they hurried through the building.

  Bradley led, knowing they had people down, and eager to get to them and exact revenge. The enemy was still present, still dangerous, so they had to be thorough. They were fast but they didn’t rush.

  He was not surprised to find the corpses, and after checking for signs of life and finding none, there was only one course of action. He signalled for his men to advance upstairs.