The Payback Assignment (Stark and O'Brien Thriller Series)

by Austin S. Camacho

  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 her 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.

  At the bottom of the shaft, the elevator door slid open and the heat burst in. That end of the room was what firefighters would call fully involved in the blaze. Was this building too old to have a sprinkler system? Or did Seagrave pay someone off to get around fire safety code violations? Well, it hardly mattered now. Felicity stood by the open door, waving him on. The woman in his arms groggily mumbled, “What’s going on?” He shifted her up onto his right shoulder and started across the floor in a crouch. The woman’s perspiration dripped onto his back, blending with his own. He focused his attention on Felicity’s face and the desperation he saw there.

  Morgan had just stepped into the relative cool of the hallway when he heard a moan. It was not from Mrs. Seagrave. It was a deeper voice, and it came from behind him. Turning, his eyes were at first seared by the brightness of the flames. Heat washed over his face making it harder to breathe. Squinting, he sighted in on a figure on hands and knees, following a long shadow across the floor, but much too slowly.

  Paul. Shit. Can’t just leave him, Morgan thought.

  Before he could put his thoughts into words, Felicity brushed past him. While he looked on, his mouth agape, she took the arm of the man who had kidnapped her and helped him regain his feet. After pulling Paul’s left arm across her shoulders, Felicity shuffled toward the door. Morgan could see the pallor of blood loss and the extra creases of pain on Paul’s face, but there was no time for additional first aid now.

  “I can make it,” Paul said in answer to Morgan’s unvoiced question. He tried a smile of thanks.

  Felicity passed Morgan in the hall and banged the call button. A long, tense minute passed before the private elevator door opened. The quartet hurried aboard for the short ride down three flights. When the doors opened again, the air was clearer, allowing everyone a deep breath.

  “Okay, gang, let’s go.” With that, Morgan spun his load and headed down the hall. “Elevators are suicide in a burning building, I’m afraid. We had no choice before, since Seagrave had the stairs closed off from here up. But from here down we’ve got to take the safer choice.” He pulled the steel door open and started downstairs.

  “Wait!” Felicity shouted. “There’s a wire. Six steps down.” In the dark
ness Morgan managed to pick out the trip wire and carefully stepped over it. Felicity continued talking as they moved steadily down the stairs.

  “It’s an old habit,” she said as they moved through the smoky gloom. “Whenever I go up stairs on a caper I leave a wire. If I have to exit quickly, anyone following me gets slowed down some.”

  Morgan’s breathing got deeper after each flight of stairs, but the smoke also got thinner and the oven like warmth felt farther and farther away. He could feel Seagrave’s wife beginning to fidget, fighting the drug still coursing through her veins. Paul, on the other hand, was less able to support himself, despite heroic effort. It was increasingly obvious that his weight was almost too much for Felicity to handle. Morgan wanted to help her, but he knew time was escaping them. He didn’t know what businesses occupied most of the building, but Seagrave’s business floors were warehouses filled with shipping materials, enough cardboard and paper to fuel a blast furnace. Beyond the stairwell he could hear the roar of the fire climbing down the building. If it ever got ahead of them, the stairwell itself could become a swirling blast furnace if any of the lower doors had been left open.

  Morgan’s thighs were burning as he proceeded downward, and his eyes burned with the sweat he didn’t have time to wipe away. On the nineteenth floor landing Mrs. Seagrave’s legs jerked in an awkward spasm. Thrown off balance, Morgan slumped against a wall. His eyes wandered up the stairs, focusing on the line of red spots Paul was leaving behind. Felicity’s face was ashen and streaked with gray tracks left by her perspiration. Her hair hung in a clump, tangled under Paul’s arm, and her eyes were vacant with concentration. Paul’s face was ominously blank.

  Morgan would not have left Paul behind, out of respect. He was still surprised that Felicity, unasked, had tried to rescue him. She had not dropped him yet, but it was obvious that she could not continue for long. He feared they would have to abandon someone, unless providence intervened.