The Payback Assignment

by Camacho, Austin S.

  A piercing white light stabbed into their eyes. Morgan reflexes spun his head toward the door and sent his right hand flashing under his windbreaker. He froze as his eyes locked onto the newcomer through the blue dots dancing before them. Paul was just inside the door, his left hand on the light switch, his right hand halfway to the holster on his belt at his left side.

  -32-

  Morgan eyes met Paul’s, and both men froze. Then, to Felicity’s surprise, both men slowly lowered their hands.

  “I should have known it would be you,” Morgan said.

  “No one else thought anybody could get in here,” Paul replied. “Me? I like to check everywhere.”

  Felicity did not really understand what was happening, but the moment felt too delicate to disturb without dire consequences. There was a long moment of silence. She was the only thing moving in the stillness. She stepped lightly toward the bar on Paul’s right, feeling ignored. They were busted. Why wasn’t this fellow sending up an alarm? And since he was being so quiet, why didn’t Morgan shoot him or something?

  “You can still walk away from this,” Morgan said grimly. His mouth turned down at the futility of the situation.

  “You know better than that,” Paul said, his face equally stern. “I work for Seagrave. And I don’t welch on a contract.”

  “You’re good,” Morgan said, pain showing on his face. “Very good. But you can’t win.”

  “That may be, but I can’t just let you...”

  It happened with such unexpected quickness that Felicity had to replay the action in her mind to sort out what she had seen. Paul pronounced the word “let” with no emphasis, but as he said it his hand had snapped toward his holster. Morgan had dived left, landing hard on the conference table. His automatic appeared as if by sleight of hand in his right fist. The two gun blasts would have sounded simultaneous to a casual observer, but she could tell that Morgan fired earlier, by perhaps a tenth of a second. A bullet tinkled through the drape-covered window behind him. Paul’s pistol dropped from nerveless fingers as he spun away to his left.

  Before Paul even hit the carpeted floor, Morgan was moving toward him. Felicity bolted for the door. The caper was blown for good and all now. Those shots would surely bring curious guards, like sharks to a coral cut. She poked her head out the door, glancing quickly down the hall.

  “Oh shite!” She grimaced as she saw a pistol round the hall corner, dragging a muscular man behind it.

  Paul, clutching his left biceps, was staring up at Morgan. Bright red liquid seeped between his fingers.

  “Thanks,” Paul hissed through clenched teeth.

  “For what?” Morgan asked, pulling a handkerchief from an inside jacket pocket.

  Paul glanced at his arm. “It’s not spurting out of my heart.”

  “My aim was off.”

  “Bullshit.” Paul managed a pained smile.

  “Move!” Felicity shouted, shoving Morgan’s shoulder. “There’s a bleeding army coming up the hall.” With that, she took two long steps and dived gracefully into open air, arcing down behind the bar. On the floor, Felicity watched around the edge of the bar as Morgan scrambled to the back of the room. She heard the door slam open, and held her breath as two bullets scarred the conference table’s maple top. She saw Morgan slam his body to the left and down into the elevator just before she ducked behind the bar.

  The mass of gunfire made her cover her ears with her hands. Her head was ringing and somehow it made her mouth dry. Was this what it was like in combat, she wondered. It was all handgun fire but it was so dense that it sounded like machine guns to her. She was safe for the moment but she worried for Morgan, the intended target of all that shooting. That elevator looked uncomfortably small and soon the guards would work up the courage to move in for the kill.

  One story above, Adrian Seagrave’s eyes fluttered half open. The room felt like it was vibrating, as if some sort of construction was going on. He was having trouble waking up, but he had to investigate the noise.

  Forcing himself to his feet, he staggered out of the bedroom and managed to reach his study. Yes, the noise was coming from below. His private elevator shaft was conducting it upward. It sounded like gunfire, but more than he had ever imagined. He leaned against the elevator casing, hesitating. He had to go downstairs and find out what was going on.

  He reached toward the button, but hesitated and moved to lean both hands against the doors. He would rest for just a minute, and then summon his elevator car.

  Felicity peeked over the edge of the bar, eyes bulging. She counted eleven men concentrating their gunfire on the elevator area. Revolver and automatic fire combined to create a deafening roar, reminding her of standing next to a waterfall. The air was thick with the stench of gunpowder smoke. She had heard gunpowder referred to as smokeless powder, but could hardly credit that name now. The acrid cloud was so dense she could taste it. The room literally shook with the blasts. The muzzle flashes reminded her of what Morgan had told her about the two hand grenades hanging on her belt.

  She hefted one of the small black spheres. A “flash-bang” is what she remembered Morgan calling it. Some kind of stun grenade he said the British Special Air Service had first used to combat terrorists. They were designed to protect innocents in a hostage situation, and now this one might save Morgan.

  Something, it looked to her like a bread tie, held the pin in. She twisted that off, pulled the pin out and flipped the spoon off. With her back to the bar and feet braced against the wall, she tossed the grenade backward, up and over the bar. Remembering what Morgan had told her about these devices, she clamped her hands over her ears and ducked her head.

  Crouching in a corner of the elevator, Morgan heard the clunk of pulleys engaging, and felt the elevator cables go taut. For less than a second he considered whether it would be safer to ride up or roll back out into the room. While looking toward the bar he spotted the small black sphere rising into the air, appearing to hang in space for a second at its apogee. He recognized it immediately and his face broke into a broad grin. “I love that girl,” he whispered to himself as he covered his ears and buried his face in the elevator floor.

  The small black ball arced over the crowd of shooters and dropped in front of them. It had fallen to waist height when the world seemed to explode. Almost no energy was expended in blast or heat. However, the star burst rivaled that of a thousand flashbulbs popping in concert, and even with his hands over his ears, Morgan could not be completely prepared for the concussive bang like a sonic boom that burst windows and shattered glasses on the bar.

  Morgan felt the elevator lurch and rolled out of the little car as it started to rise. His ears were ringing but he was relatively unaffected, facing a room full of blinded and deafened gunmen. They were disoriented and frightened, with pounding heads and dazed wits. About half of them had dropped their guns in shock. He loved it.

  With a running start, Morgan leaped into the midst of his dazzled attackers. The drop kick slapped two men to the floor. A quick spinning back kick, an edge of the hand slash to the neck and a jarring back fist put three more on the carpet. With his left, he thrust stiffened fingers into a guard’s already aching eyes. He snapped a crisp jab into another’s nose, putting him down for the count.

  While all this was going on, Felicity slipped out from behind the bar. Morgan was purposely putting all of the attackers out of the fight without any further gunplay, and did not need any help, but he could see that she did not want to feel useless.

  He saw Felicity seize a makeshift weapon from the bar, probably thinking she could bludgeon a few of the gunmen into submission. She stepped forward, hefting the bottle she and Morgan had been drinking from. He heard the dull thud behind him and turned to give her an encouraging smile. However, after her first swing he could see that the result startled her. As Morgan could have told her, the edge of a Napoleon Brandy bottle is a bit sturdier than the average professional strong-arm man’s head. She must have expected he
r glass club to shatter, like they always do in the movies.

  Morgan watched her dispatch the last four of Seagrave’s hirelings with the same bottle, looking more confident with each swing. With the opposition neutralized, Morgan knelt beside Paul’s unconscious body. He picked up the white handkerchief he had dropped beside Paul and tied it tightly around Paul’s upper arm. Viscous red fluid was making his fingers slippery, but he did not care. In the past few days he had faced Central American soldiers, hired killers, bodyguards and ambushers. He was not about to let the only true professional he had encountered in the lot bleed to death.

  While his fingers moved on their own, his mind was whirring like a high-speed computer, as he tried to calculate the time remaining for escape, Paul’s survival odds, and what his next move should be. Backtracking to kill Seagrave might not leave them a sufficient getaway margin, but leaving him alive could turn out to be a fatal mistake.

  All of that mental activity combined with an effort to monitor Paul’s condition, track Felicity’s position and observe the status of the dazed protectors to create a form of sensory overload. Together, it all made it impossible for Morgan to pay sufficient attention to his little inner voice. Too much was happening at once. Morgan’s concentration was shaken by a single shouted word.

  “You!”

  Morgan looked up and to his right to see Adrian Seagrave, in yellow silk pajamas, looking aghast at the carnage in his main conference room. Time seemed to grind into slow motion. Morgan glanced at Felicity, a flash of anger quickly fading as he remembered the pre-operational briefing she had given him. The sleep mist Felicity had sprayed upstairs was a mild sedative, but clearly not sufficient to block out the mass of gunfire that had flown through that room moments ago. Even if it had, the concussion grenade shook the entire building. But Seagrave must have rung for the elevator before that, which was why it began to rise while Morgan was in it. Now the man Morgan had gone there to kill staggered dazedly out of the elevator, looking like he had wandered into a nightmare.

  Within the same second, Seagrave shouted his one word, Felicity gasped, and Morgan felt a massive hairy paw clamp onto his shoulder.

  Monk, in a tee shirt and slacks, lifted Morgan into the air with one huge hand. The brute flipped Morgan casually, using no judo skill or leverage at all, and sent Morgan sailing across the room. He rolled with the fall as well as he could, but slammed hard into the wall. Through his haze, he could hear Seagrave shouting, “Kill him” again and again in a high, hysterical voice.

  Blue spots bounced in front of Morgan’s eyes as he grasped clumsily for his pistol. He managed to draw his weapon and get the safety off before Monk’s grip on his wrist made his hand go numb, and the automatic dropped into the carpet. The other ape paw wrapped around Morgan’s neck. He felt himself lifted from the floor, dangling as helplessly as a child.

  If Monk had not managed a sneak attack, Morgan would have given himself pretty good odds against him. Now it looked as though this monster would literally tear him apart before he had a chance to fight back. Those arms were like twin oak beams. Morgan snap kicked into Monk’s unprotected ribs with no apparent affect. Monk had a gut like granite.

  Felicity moved in close and raised her brandy bottle like a baseball player waiting for a fastball to come across home plate. She smashed her bottle over Monk’s head and this time it did shatter like the spun sugar bottles on a movie set. Monk shook his head, his hair spraying droplets of liquor, and turned toward her with a crooked grin. She looked around frantically, and the light of an idea came on in her eyes. She flashed a palm at Morgan, signaling him to hold on, and darted across the room.

  Morgan wondered if she was looking for another weapon. He was not sure what Felicity had in mind, but he knew he had better coordinate his actions with hers. While she grabbed another bottle of brandy and ran to snatch something from the desk across the room, he dropped his free hand to his belt.

  Monk was slowly pulling Morgan’s head to one side, his right arm to the other, grinning like a child in anticipation of the cracking sound he loved. Morgan was strong and would resist to the last, but judging from Monk’s face, that was a good thing, as if it would make the bone snap better when it came.

  Felicity could see Seagrave at the other end of the room, behind Monk. His eyes showed white all around, his face alight with madness. She now realized how wrong she had been before. This was no simple ambitious businessman. This madman was truly evil.

  Felicity jogged to the side, to get behind Monk. She jumped up and swung with all her strength. A full bottle of cognac shattered over Monk’s head. The pungent odor bit into her nostrils and appeared to work like smelling salts on Morgan. The liquor ran like sweat into Monk’s eyes. As if on cue, Morgan yanked off his belt buckle and plunged the three-inch double-edged push dagger into Monk’s outstretched forearm. With a startled roar, the giant dropped Morgan to the floor but Morgan immediately sprang back up, smashing the first two knuckles of his right fist into Monk’s throat, then slapping hard onto the giant’s ears with both palms.

  Monk rocked back with his mouth gaping, but he was not finished yet. He turned toward Felicity, his eyes reflecting the madness she’d seen on Seagrave’s face. Monk, however, was clearly overcome by rage and in her mind was no longer human at all, but a crazed animal lurching toward her. That made her next action easier. She pushed her left hand forward, flipping the striker on the cigarette lighter she had swept up from the desk.

  “Let’s see how tough a bugger you are when we’ve turned you into an ape-man flambé,” she said. Monk’s brandy soaked tee shirt burst into a corona of flames that rushed up his back and swept around his head.

  Still groggy, Morgan missed most of Felicity’s comment, but his eyes were riveted to Monk’s waving arms. Still dazed, Morgan crawled out of the way as Monk turned and staggered toward the only loud, continuous sound in the room, Seagrave’s hysterical screams.

  Adrian Seagrave was shouting for Monk to stop, but the maddened, blinded behemoth lumbered on. Seagrave backed away as far as he could. He hardly seemed to realize the he had run out of room. His feet continued to move, pressing him backward, crunching on the window glass shattered earlier by the concussion grenade. Frozen with terror, the businessman’s fingers dug into the crushed velvet of the heavy drapes behind him. While Morgan and Felicity stared, Monk’s huge frame wrapped itself like a flaming shroud around Seagrave’s body.

  Morgan saw Felicity turn away, nausea showing on her face. The smell, he guessed. Human hair and flesh did burn with a distinctive stench. He also saw that a few of the building security guards had regained consciousness. Their eyes were locked on the scene in front of the window.

  Morgan clenched his teeth, anticipating the end. Seagrave’s pudgy hands poked out pathetically on either side of Monk’s flaming frame as their combined mass tilted away. Wind whipped in through the already shattered window, fanning Monk’s body into a giant pyre as it leaned outward. Morgan watched the two bodies, now fused together as one, pivot down and out of sight as if in slow motion, leaving a gaping hole where a wall-sized window had so recently been. A fierce flame lined that black hole, fanned by the suddenly noticeable breeze.

  Morgan turned to see a small stampede headed toward the door, and it came as no surprise to him. The man who signed their paychecks was out the window. The group of hired guards, now all awake, could see the handwriting as well as the fire on the wall. Morgan was having similar thoughts. He scooped up his pistol on the run and moved to follow the pack out of the room. Felicity’s hand on his arm stopped him.

  “Wait,” she said. “We can’t go. Seagrave’s wife is upstairs.”

  -33-

  Morgan stared past Felicity, who was backlit by a wall of flame. This was no time for conversation, but the strain on her face demanded a response.

  “Red, you’ve got to be kidding. Seagrave didn’t sleep through that firefight and neither could anyone else. She probably took a back way out of here long ago
.”

  “I gave her a shot,” Felicity whined. He had not heard her whine before. “She couldn’t wake up.”

  “Fortunes of war, Red,” he said grimly.

  “No, damn it. I gave her a shot! If we leave her there, I will have murdered the girl.”

  Morgan stared into those pleading, deep green eyes, just for a moment. He did not debate further. He knew he would lose and time was depressingly short. He shook his head and ran back to the elevator.

  The tiny elevator car was stifling, but the ride was short. The smell of smoke was already seeping into the luxury flat. He found the bedroom easily enough, and could see its only occupant was still sleeping, a deep drugged sleep thanks to Felicity. When he hefted Mrs. Seagrave’s satin-draped form, his left shoulder screamed into his brain. He had all but forgotten the sprain. It hurt like a fishhook was jammed into the joint, but he did not drop his burden. With steely concentration he rolled the pain into a little ball and tucked it away in a corner of his mind, completely blocked off. Then he slowly returned to the elevator. The woman in his arms moaned as if in the throes of a nightmare. If she only knew, he thought.