She examined the hinges. She wondered whether she might be able to tap the hinge rods out of them, then pull the door free of the jamb. But the hinges were partially recessed, and the long hinge rod was itself held in place by a small screw. The screw head faced the wrong way. To get the screw out, the door had to be open already.
Trapped. Non-negotiably and completely.
Forty-eight minutes. Whatever the goons had in mind, they were well on their way to making it a reality. She had killed a few of their own. They were probably more than a little pissed off about it. She was probably on their list anyway. Now was probably as good a time as any for them to take her out, Sam reasoned. They were probably more than a little eager to scratch her off their list.
And she had undoubtedly upset whatever uneasy detente had existed between the gang and the local law enforcement. She didn’t expect a robust response from the locals. Maybe not even the Boston FBI field office.
No way she was going to wait around for the Russians to serve her sentence, like a death row prisoner. She needed a plan.
Two chairs and a table. Not much to work with. But it was better than nothing at all. She wasn’t tied up, wasn’t bound and gagged, wasn’t suffering from a debilitating injury, and wasn’t staring down the barrel of a gun.
Yet.
Sam picked up a chair, climbed atop the table, and stood upright. She inverted the chair over her head, so that the legs pointed up, toward the ceiling. She pressed her hands upward, accelerating the chair legs into the plaster overhead. She pounded once, twice, three times.
She listened. No movement, no noise.
She pounded harder. Flakes of plaster fell to the floor, shattering into small pieces.
She listened again. Again nothing.
She pounded again, then listened hard.
Movement. Heavy footfalls, moving rapidly, then a rhythmic, metallic staccato. Someone was running down the steps on the outside of the building. Sam felt the vibrations through the room. She pounded a few more times against the ceiling for good measure, just to make sure they didn’t lose energy or interest. Just to make the point.
More footsteps upstairs. Heavy. Men wearing boots.
Sam climbed down from the table. Adrenaline crashed in her stomach. It was not the manufactured, vestigial, misplaced fear that modern humans felt in situations of contrived importance. It was the real thing, appropriate to a real life-or-death situation. Fight or flee. Do or die.
Sam took a position adjacent to the west door, the one she had entered nearly an hour before. It was a gamble. She didn’t know if they would come in through that door, or the one on the opposite side of the room. But she couldn’t be in both places at once. Either she would have the benefit of surprise, or she wouldn’t. Fifty-fifty.
She bent her legs in a low crouch. She lifted the chair and held it by the seat, close to her chest. The legs pointed forward, out away from her body. Like a lion tamer. If you wanted to hurt somebody with a chair, you didn’t do it by swinging it around, like in the movies. You concentrated all of your force, all of your body weight, all of your muscular strength, driving through one chair leg, one small point, less than an inch in diameter. Force divided by area. Basic physics. Lethal.
Sam waited, tense, heart thudding in her chest. She forced herself to inhale and exhale, to breathe calmly. No use getting fatigued before the fight even started.
She closed her eyes, listened for footsteps.
She felt vibrations in the floor. She couldn’t tell where they were coming from, and she couldn’t tell which door the men would likely burst through. She moved her head from side to side, hoping to triangulate the source of the sound. But it was diffuse, spread out through the building structure, nondescript and non-directional.
Would she get lucky?
Or would she get hurt?
The door rattled.
The wrong door.
Sam sprinted across the room, dodging the table and holding the chair out in front of her as she ran, arriving just as the door swung open.
She was on the wrong side of the opening. The door swung into her.
But she made it work. She crouched, forearms flexing as she gripped the chair, tensing her arms, coiling her legs, storing up her fury, waiting for the moment.
The tall guy rounded the corner. Same thug from before.
She aimed above the distinctive cheekbones, and a little aft, centering her focus on the slight depression that marked the goon’s temple, a soft, vulnerable spot in an otherwise impenetrable skull.
Sam howled. She drove the chair legs forward with all of her strength, all the leverage she could muster, all the skill and accuracy she had available.
Her strike found its mark. Sam felt a wet crunch, felt the foot of the chair leg meet biological resistance, then punch through, then slow to a stop deep inside the man’s brain.
He fell forward, onto his face, another sick, wet crunch announcing the end of his fall.
One down.
The chair leg was stuck inside his skull. Sam wedged her foot on the dead man’s neck and pulled, jerking the chair from side to side, trying to pull it free, feeling rather than seeing the onrush from the next guy through the door.
She got the chair free just in time to duck beneath a wicked left cross. Number Two’s meaty fist grazed the hair on the top of Sam’s head. Close call. She ended up in a defensive crouch, in no position to take a shot at the man’s face or head.
So she aimed for the next best place. She let loose another banshee howl, driving the chair forward with all of the considerable power her athletic body could deliver.
Again her attack found the mark: Number Two’s nuts. She felt something give, something soft and fleshy. He screamed in instant agony. He doubled over. Right into Sam’s knee. She drove it upward, accelerating through the man’s face, trying to touch her shoulder with her thigh, delivering all the force and fury in her power.
And it was quite a lot of force and fury. The man’s nose exploded. Blood splattered, and shards of bone and cartilage launched into his brain. It was probably over for him, but Sam was taking no chances. She cocked her elbow, drew it down from shoulder height like a scythe, her eyes focused just below the man’s brain stem.
The blow connected. She felt something give catastrophically in the man’s neck. He fell to the floor, face shattering against the hard surface, arms awkward and akimbo. Definitely dead.
Two down.
And the count was going to stay at two. Because the next guy had a gun, pointed at her. A black-barreled FNX, Sam saw. Chambered in 9mm, or maybe .40 caliber. A very nice weapon. Nice enough to get the job done, without a doubt.
Number Three stood too close to Sam to miss, but too far away to be vulnerable.
Checkmate.
Sam stood up, raised her arms above her head, a defeated look settling over her face. She could try something, but she would be dead almost before the thoughts reached her muscles. He was maybe eight feet away. Only a complete baboon would miss from that distance. She could see the safety lever was off, and she could see the round indicator sticking out just a hair on the right side of the weapon. There was a bullet in the chamber, loaded and ready to fire.
The man motioned for Sam to turn around. She complied. “Hands on table,” he said in a thick Russian accent, stereotypically deleting articles of speech essential in English but with no direct Russian parallel.
Sam leaned against the table. She took care to keep her weight balanced on the balls of her feet. Her mind weighed options. She was breathing heavily, but she prepared her body for action. She formulated a plan.
Which Number Three thwarted immediately. “Each foot, three steps back,” he said.
There was a reason cops used this technique while apprehending suspects. It was nearly impossible to move quickly or athletically with your weight forward on your hands. That made it extremely tough to cause trouble, which was exactly what was on Sam’s mind.
She stalled. “I
don’t understand.”
“Each foot! Three steps back!” The universal cross-lingual technique. If at first you’re not understood, yell louder.
Sam debated whether to stall again. She glanced at the gun. It was still trained on her skull, still eight feet away. Still close enough that he probably wouldn’t miss. Still far enough away that she could do nothing about it.
She complied, but minimally. She took three small steps backward, away from the table. Sam glanced again at the big Russian. He looked just as goon-like as his counterparts. He had a low forehead, angled eyes, a thick protrusion of bone above his eyebrows, the overall effect reminiscent of some kind of pre-human. He probably wasn’t the bookkeeper, or the strategic mastermind. But he was probably perfectly adept at breaking kneecaps.
Sam saw him reach into his pocket. He pulled out zip-ties. Easier and more secure than handcuffs. Not a good sign.
“Each foot. One more step back,” the man said. The words were thick and guttural, as if they had escaped from some route other than his mouth.
Sam inched her feet further back, feeling her weight move further forward onto her hands, making any kind of resistance or sudden movement beyond problematic.
But not impossible.
And the Russian was giving her a break. He should have shot her. He should have ended it, right then and there. Sam didn’t know why he hadn’t already pulled the trigger. Two of his comrades lay dead or dying, blood and brains oozing onto the floor. Number Three had watched them die, watched her kill them with nothing but a chair and an elbow.
Obviously, they had orders. Bring her alive. They had plans to exploit her in some way. Maybe they planned to make an example of her.
Or maybe they just wanted to ensure they gave her the most painful death possible.
Number Three drew closer, moving slowly and warily, gun trained on her head. Which was a mistake. Center of mass, always. Even the best shooters missed in the heat of the moment. You wanted to aim for the biggest target possible. And shoot twice. Odds were good that one of the bullets would hit something important, like heart or lung. Maybe both.
The man drew closer. Sam tensed her muscles. She slowly, imperceptibly leaned her weight further forward onto her hands.
Always do what they don’t expect, Sam coached herself silently. Breathe. Relax.
The man with the prehistoric face drew closer, approaching cautiously from Sam’s side. Four feet. Three feet. Pistol in his right hand. Left hand reaching out, as if to grab her wrist.
Two feet.
He leaned forward, reaching to grab her arm and subdue her.
Now.
Sam leaned further forward, pressing her hands into the tabletop. Her knee shot upward and forward with lightning speed, catching the Russian in the side. She heard the breath leave him in a loud grunt. She swore she felt one or two of his ribs break. She drove her knee upward and forward, aiming for maximum damage, hoping to send him sprawling over the table.
He didn’t sprawl. His big, muscular body took the blow. He swallowed the pain. He was still in the game.
Sam sensed the blow before he threw it. He swung right-handed. The same hand that held the gun. If it landed, the steel and rosewood gun butt would surely fracture her skull.
Sam dropped and whipped around, moving with desperate abandon, throwing her right leg in a vicious kick toward his knee.
He moved.
She missed.
But so did he. The gun sailed in front of her face, close enough for her to smell the steel and oil and sweat.
She twisted again, coiling her other leg, readying for an attack.
She should have been readying a defense. She never saw the left cross. It landed with a bolt of lightning on the side of her head.
Lights out.
Her body hit the floor in a heap.
31
There was a deafening explosion. It rang through the hollow room, loud, vicious, angry. But it barely penetrated the edges of Sam’s consciousness. She swam in a murky neverland, vaguely aware, yet not comprehending at all.
There was another sound. A slap. Then another one, and another. More smacks. This too had difficulty penetrating Sam’s mind.
Something else, too. A stinging sensation, on her cheek.
And a voice. Calling her name.
She inhaled, fighting to stay under, to stay asleep.
Cordite burned her nostrils, the unmistakable smell of gunplay. The smoke in the air penetrated the fog in her mind. She opened her eyes.
Her head hurt, both outside and in. She felt faintly nauseous, like the time she’d fallen from a tree, and the time she’d been knocked out during martial arts training. Clearly a concussion.
There was a face in front of her. Familiar, friendly, but urgent. “We have to go,” Dan Gable said.
She felt herself being hoisted up. Dan’s thick, athletic arms lifted her bodily from the floor. She stood, shaky and groggy on rubbery legs. “Sam, come on,” Dan urged, starting for the door. “We have to get the hell out of here.”
Sam looked around. There were two dead guys on the floor, faces smashed into the hard surface. A third dead guy lay behind her, a gaping hole in his side. That must have accounted for the deafening explosion and the smell of gunpowder. “How did you find me?”
“You sent me the address, remember?”
“I guess I did.”
“I guess he hit you pretty hard,” Dan said.
“I guess he did.” Sam felt her head. A bruise was already forming. Her temple barked with an angry pain. The residual fog pervaded her thoughts, lifting slowly.
“Follow me,” Dan said.
“Wait,” Sam said. “We need pictures to ID these guys. Fingerprints, too.”
“No time for prints,” Dan said. “This place is like a prairie dog town full of gangsters. But I already took pictures of all of them for the facial recognition software.”
“Any paperwork on them?”
“None. Foot soldiers, probably,” Dan said. He led Sam out the door and down the hallway.
Sam slowly regained her faculties. Her legs still felt shaky and weak, side effects of the mad rush of adrenaline from a few moments before, and also of the neurological trauma she had suffered.
Sam looked around. “This place is a warren,” she said.
“Now you know why it took me so long to get here.”
“Thank you. You saved my ass.”
“You’re welcome. But your ass isn’t saved yet.”
They walked quickly but quietly down the dank, dark, grimy hallway. Dan paused at a closed door. He held his hand up, urging silence, then pointed to the door.
Sam heard voices from within. She nodded. They tiptoed, taking care not to disturb the ancient floorboards, holding their breath, aware that at any moment the door might burst open and emit more assholes.
Sam instinctively felt for her pistol. It wasn’t there. She had surrendered it to the tall knee-capper, who now lay dead in a pool of his own blood. She felt naked. She had no weapon but her feet and elbows, knees and hands. They would be enough for one or two adversaries, but probably not more. She’d much rather have had the option of sending a slug of hot metal to do the dirty work for her. It was much more efficient, particularly given her current state, exhausted and groggy and not altogether at her best.
Sam inched forward, stepping wide, following Dan, nearly past the door, nearly ready to accelerate again and get the hell out of the building.
The floor creaked.
The voices in the room went silent.
Dan shook his head. He raised his pistol and pointed it at the door.
Sam moved aside, flattening herself against the wall on the other side of the opening, preparing her right elbow to deliver a crushing blow to the bridge of someone’s nose.
The door creaked open.
A little bit at first, then more. Sam tensed her arm and shoulder muscles, anchored herself with her legs, got ready to swing her elbow.
Dan trained the weapon at the opening.
The door opened wide. A Russian woman. Stout, stocky, tough. She was dressed in an ankle-length smock. It was dirty and bloody, as if she had just slaughtered an animal.
Sam withheld her elbow. Dan withheld the bullet.
But they shouldn’t have. The woman lunged, teeth bared, right arm tracing an arc, something shiny and silver and long and sharp in her hand. A meat cleaver.
The woman charged through the doorway, swinging wildly, growling like an animal, creating a terrific racket. Sam flattened her hand and swung her arm. The back of her hand connected with the woman’s neck. Sam felt structure and sinew give way, heard the unmistakable pop of important things giving way inside the woman’s neck. The howling turned to a gurgle. The woman fell to the floor with a heavy thud.
An explosion assaulted Sam’s ears. She ducked instinctively. She threw herself back behind the doorjamb for cover.
Light flashed in front of her, and another vicious boom filled the small space. Dan’s gun. He fired again, then once more.
He lunged into the room. “Clear,” he announced a moment later.
Sam peeked through the doorway. Another dead Russian woman, bloody holes in her body from Dan’s .40 caliber hollow-point bullets. There was a shotgun in the woman’s hands. A long twelve-gauge. It would’ve done some serious damage. “Nice work,” Sam said.
Sam looked down. The large woman stirred at Sam’s feet, pudgy hand tightening around the meat cleaver, breath coming in labored gasps through her shattered windpipe.
Sam cocked her right foot and delivered a devastating blow. Her foot landed on the fat Russian lady’s forehead. The woman’s head snapped back. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and her body went limp. Sam grabbed the meat cleaver and followed Dan at a run.
She heard doorways opening up in the hallway behind her. She heard loud Russian voices. She heard palpable anger and alarm.
She heard the unmistakable crunch-crunch of a shotgun shell being racked into the chamber.
She looked over her shoulder. Thirty paces away down the long hall stood another giant of a man. He leveled the gun at her and pulled the trigger.
The Essential Sam Jameson / Peter Kittredge Box Set: SEVEN bestsellers from international sensation Lars Emmerich Page 77