by Gabriel Hunt
Gabriel sprang toward them, but something grabbed him from behind. Hands wrapped around his throat and he heard Julian’s voice hissing in his ear. Gabriel tried to swing his gun around, but Julian batted it away. The gun slipped from Gabriel’s fingers and flew across the floor. Then Julian’s hands tightened around his throat again.
A massive explosion rocked the room. The other two cylinders, Gabriel thought—the heat of the fire must have set them off. The blast knocked Julian off his feet and Gabriel was able to pull himself free from the other man’s grip as they fell. Flames leapt across the wall and licked at the ceiling. More smoke poured into the room. He heard Grissom coughing again somewhere off to his side. Gabriel rolled away from Julian. His hand touched something hard. He grabbed it—Grissom’s triple-bladed dagger.
Gabriel stood, the smoke stinging his eyes. The gas in the air made him dizzy. He stumbled forward, hitting the sliding glass door that led out to the terrace. Closed. Gabriel reached for the handle to open it when he saw Julian lurching out of the smoke toward him, his hands extended before him. He’d found another gun somewhere and had it pointed at Gabriel’s face. Gabriel ducked, stepped toward him, and drove the dagger in his fist upward. He felt it sink into Julian’s gut. Julian collapsed on top of him, the gun falling from his hands. His face was just inches away and Gabriel saw the fury drain from his expression. In its place, shock. Fear. Pain. His mouth opened, and he drooped forward. Gabriel let Julian’s body slide to the floor.
Another figure came running toward him through the smoke. Gabriel groped along the floor for the gun Julian had dropped until he saw Joyce break through the wall of black haze.
“We have to get out of here,” Gabriel said as she reached him. A bullet whizzed past them, cracking the glass of the terrace door.
“Where’s Daniel?” Joyce asked.
“I don’t know,” Gabriel said, “but I think he’s shown he can take care of himself.”
“Daniel!” she yelled.
“After what he did?” Gabriel said. “You still—”
“Daniel!”
A short figure rose up slowly from the floor nearby and Gabriel realized Daniel Wingard had been cowering behind the couch.
“Joyce,” Daniel said, coughing, “thank god you’re all right.”
Gabriel shouted in Joyce’s ear, “Give me one good reason we shouldn’t leave him here with his friends.”
“I can’t do that,” Joyce replied. “I can’t just leave him. Whatever he’s done.”
“Then he’s your responsibility, not mine.” Without waiting for an answer, he plowed through the smoke toward the door of the suite. Flames roared along the wall near the door, bathing them in heat. Gabriel put one arm up, covering his nose and mouth. He touched the doorknob. The metal was hot from the flames, but not too hot to touch. He turned it and pulled the door open. Smoke billowed out over his head as he thrust his head into the penthouse hallway, gulping air. The fire alarm was sounding even louder out here, wave after wave of shrill electronic pulses. Gabriel looked left and right, trying to spot the fire stairs. The prospect of climbing down thirty floors didn’t thrill him, but it was better than staying here.
He spotted the stairwell door at the far end of the hall. As he set one foot out of the suite in that direction, though, the door burst open—and men began pouring out, running toward him with guns drawn.
Chapter 17
Gabriel slammed the door shut and quickly fastened the deadbolt lock. It wouldn’t hold them out for long, but hopefully long enough to find another way out of here. He led them back across the burning, smoke-filled hotel room toward the terrace. Behind them, fists pounded on the door, barely audible above the blasting alarm. Gabriel slid the glass door open and shepherded Joyce and Daniel onto the terrace.
Joyce looked around. “Now what?”
Gabriel walked to the edge, skirting the table and chairs, and looked down. A crowd had gathered on the street below, pointing up at the smoke billowing out of their room. From where he stood, a column of terraces extended thirty stories down. As he’d noted earlier, it would be possible to climb from one to the next—for him, at least; maybe even for Joyce—but getting back inside the hotel would be a challenge. There was no guarantee anyone would let them into their room, and the glass of the terrace door had barely spiderwebbed even from multiple gunshot strikes—it wouldn’t break easily, not with just a couple of light lounge chairs to swing at it. And if they couldn’t get in, they would be sitting ducks, easy pickings for any of Grissom’s men who followed them down.
But up—up was another matter.
He dragged one of the chairs away from the table and placed it against the side of the building. He could hear Grissom’s men pounding and kicking the door. He had to hurry. Any moment they would switch to using their weapons to blast the lock open.
Even standing on the chair, the roof was too high for him to reach. However, there was a thick cement ledge, maybe ten inches high, running along the wall just below the roof. He reached for it, his fingers brushing the Turkish designs carved into the cement. The banging on the door stopped. He could picture them aiming their guns at the lock. He stepped up onto the back of the chair, got a firm hold on the ledge and pulled himself up. From there he hoisted himself onto the gravel and tarpaper surface of the roof. He bent down to help Joyce up, then left her to help Daniel while he took off the backpack, unzipped it, and pulled out his Colt. He put the backpack back on his shoulders as the sound of gunshots and splintering wood came from under them.
Daniel threw one fat, stubby leg onto the roof and hauled himself up, then lay on his back, huffing the fresh air and trying to catch his breath. Below, Gabriel heard the terrace door sliding open. Glancing over the roof’s edge, Gabriel saw Grissom’s men burst onto the balcony. Two of them raised guns his way.
“Move!” Gabriel shouted, ducking back from the edge as gunfire sped his way. Joyce helped Daniel to his feet, and the three of them ran across the roof, the gravel crunching under their heels. The hotel covered the better part of a city block and in the light of the setting sun, the roof seemed to extend forever. Halfway across, he ducked around a metal shed to find the roof access doorway, but it was locked from the inside. He rattled the knob once and kept moving. Behind them, Grissom’s men were still climbing up from the terrace below. Ahead, an obstacle course of turbine roof ventilators stretched for yards like a sea of low, gray onion domes. He started weaving around them as bullets began flying their way. Fortunately, climbing up to the roof had slowed Grissom’s men, so there was room enough between them to make aiming hard. But the sprint had taken its toll: Daniel was already out of breath and lagging behind, and Joyce was hanging back to help him. “Come on,” Gabriel said. “They’ll catch up if—”
The roof access door slammed open. Half a dozen men ran out onto the roof in pursuit. Gunshots cracked. Bullets ricocheted off the ventilators, dug into the gravel at their feet. Gabriel stopped, raising his Colt, but he couldn’t get a clear shot with Joyce and Daniel in the way. He let them rush by, then fired. One of the gunmen spun and fell. The others kept coming, filling the air with bullets. Gabriel ran, keeping his head down. A bullet ricocheted off a ventilator by his feet.
The field of ventilators ended and, a moment later, he saw the edge of the roof approaching. Joyce reached it first, skidding to a halt. She looked down, turned back to Gabriel.
Gabriel stopped at the edge, his heart pounding. He looked over and saw the white cement roof of the apartment building that abutted the hotel. The drop looked to be about fifteen feet. He could hear the shouts of the gunmen drawing closer. Their only chance was to keep moving.
“You’re going to have to hang down and drop. I’ll hold them off as long as I can. Go!” Joyce climbed over the edge, holding onto the concrete rim with a white-knuckled grip. Out of the corner of his eye, Gabriel saw Daniel doing the same. Gabriel covered them, picking his shots carefully. He only had so many bullets, so he had to make each shot
count. “Are you down?” he shouted. Joyce’s voice came from a distance: “Yes.”
Gabriel swung around and without pausing to look, jumped off the roof. He braced himself for a hard landing and rolled as his feet hit the surface below. The impact was jarring and one of his palms got badly scraped, but he lurched back to his feet and kept running, sprinting after Joyce and Daniel. They were climbing over a low brick wall separating this building from the next. Behind him, Grissom’s men reached the edge of the hotel’s roof and opened fire. Bullets chipped the cement all around him. He kept sprinting, pausing only once to toss a gunshot back their way.
“Gabriel!” It was Joyce shouting to him from the next building over. She had reached the roof access shed for this building and had her hand on the knob. “This one’s unlocked!”
He raced toward her as she pulled the door open. She stepped back with a startled expression on her face. An instant later, two burly men barreled out of the shed carrying axes in their hands.
Gabriel lowered his gun and hid it behind his back as they turned to face him.
“Miss,” one of the men said, “we’ll need you to stay back. You, too, sir.”
More men were emerging from the shed. They all wore the heavy rubberized uniform of the Turkish municipal fire brigade. One pointed in the direction of the Peninsula and they all began heading that way.
“Please make your way down to the ground floor, sir,” one of them said to Gabriel as he passed. “The fire is spreading. It isn’t safe for you up here.”
“No, it’s not,” Gabriel said. “Though I have to say, I feel a lot safer now that you’re here.” He glanced back. Grissom’s men had faded—they were nowhere to be seen.
Chapter 18
The cargo van rattled down a dark Turkish side street, carrying Edgar Grissom away from the Peninsula Hotel. He sat on the bare, corrugated metal floor in back while two of his men occupied the front seats. He coughed what he hoped was the last of the smoke out of his lungs and into his handkerchief. Any irritant only worsened his condition further. Back in the hotel room, he’d been immobilized for minutes, unable to do anything but cough and try to suck air into his lungs, air that wasn’t there. He’d been lucky that in the confusion he’d been able to drag himself to the door and out into the hallway. Another minute in that smoke…
Grissom looked at the specks of blood in his handkerchief, then folded it, stuffed it in his pocket, and finally allowed himself to look at the horror laid out across the van’s floor before him. Julian’s body still reeked of smoke. Portions of his clothing were charred. Ash dusted his pallid skin.
His dead skin.
The ivory handle of the dagger still protruded from just below Julian’s solar plexus. Grissom’s own weapon, modeled to his exact specifications after an ancient Chinese sacrificial dagger. They’d killed their own children, sacrificed them to the river gods, with daggers just like this one.
Julian.
He’d lost his wife to a disease that had cruelly taken her away from him little by little. And now he’d lost his son, his only child, the last of his family.
Lost him to Gabriel Hunt.
What Grissom felt wasn’t sadness. There was no mourning or regret. There was only a vast, cold emptiness inside him, surrounding a bright coal of burning heat. This was the vengeance he was preparing for Gabriel Hunt. He would nurse it, stoke it, keep the embers burning until the proper moment came—and then it would erupt into a proper conflagration. Erupt and sweep Hunt from the face of the earth.
The man in the passenger seat turned around. Grissom recognized his face: Wellington, an American mercenary he’d hired back in Southeast Asia. Wellington said something, indicating the walkie-talkie in his hand, but Grissom wasn’t listening. He was watching his son’s head roll limply on his neck with every turn the van took.
“Forgive me,” Grissom whispered to the corpse. “Forgive me.” He pulled the dagger from Julian’s torso, the three blades sliding out smeared with blood. The weapon that had taken his son’s life would take Hunt’s. He would make certain of that.
“Sir?” Wellington said.
Grissom stroked his son’s blond hair. “There,” he murmured. “That’s better, isn’t it?”
“Sir,” Wellington repeated, louder.
Grissom looked up, his hand tightening around the dagger. “What?”
Wellington indicated the walkie-talkie again. “The strike team’s reporting they’ve lost the targets.”
Grissom stood, hunched over beneath the van’s low ceiling, and strode to the front. “What?”
“They lost them on the rooftops, sir.”
Grissom’s lips pulled back from his teeth. He lashed out with the dagger, slitting Wellington’s throat with one fluid motion. Blood streaked across half the windshield. The man in the driver’s seat flinched but kept his eyes on the road. He didn’t dare say anything.
Grissom snatched the walkie-talkie out of the dead man’s hand. “Find them!” he roared into it. “Kill the others, but bring me Gabriel Hunt alive!”
Gabriel reached the bottom of the stairwell and stepped out onto the sidewalk. Sirens shrieked from the other side of the block, where dark smoke roiled into the sky from the fire. Flames now consumed the upper portions of two buildings and it looked like a third might go at any moment.
Joyce emerged from the stairwell next to him. Daniel came last. He was out of breath, limping from the drop to the roof, and his face was red and sweaty from exertion. The three of them hurried down the street, trying to stay out of the light from the streetlamps.
“What do you think, how long till they come after us again?” Joyce asked.
“Not long,” he said. “Grissom won’t give up.” Not with his son dead, Gabriel said to himself. “We have to get away from here. As far away as possible, as quickly as possible.”
Joyce put her arm around Daniel’s shoulders, helping him limp along the sidewalk. “We won’t get far like this,” she said. “His leg is getting worse.”
“I’m sorry,” Daniel said, sweat glistening on his forehead, grimacing with every step. “I’m slowing you down. You should just leave me and go.”
“That’s right, we should,” Gabriel said. “But your niece inexplicably still wants to help you, so we won’t.”
“I really am sorry, Gabriel—”
“Save it,” Gabriel said. “We can talk about what you did later. If there is a later.”
If they wanted to get away fast, they needed transportation. Cars were parked along the curb, but with the crowd around them and firemen and policemen in the street, breaking into one here would be too risky. Gabriel led them away from the hotel and onto a side street. There were no people here, the spectacle of the fire having drawn them all away. But there were cars, and one of them—a black, two-door sports car parked by the mouth of an alley—didn’t have an alarm light glowing on the dashboard. Perfect. Looking up the street to make sure no one was watching, he smashed the driver’s side window with the butt of his Colt.
He opened the door and tossed the backpack onto the rear seat. After brushing the shattered glass off the driver’s seat, he got in and ducked under the dashboard. He had the wires exposed a moment later, and the engine purring a few seconds after that. Joyce got into the backseat and let Daniel take the front, his injured leg requiring the extra space. Gabriel backed the car out of its parking spot and took off down the street.
He kept to side streets, passing dark apartment buildings and garages until they finally found their way onto the open road that led up into the hills. The apartment buildings turned into low one-and two-story houses, and eventually the houses thinned away until there was nothing but dark forest on either side. The headlights picked up signs marking the distance to Burdur and Isparta in kilometers.
“Where are we heading?” Joyce asked.
“Not sure yet,” Gabriel said. “I need to think.”
“My students!” Daniel exclaimed suddenly. “They’ll hear about the
fire. Some of them know I was staying there. I have to let them know I’m all right.” He fished his cell phone out of his pocket and opened it, the blue key lights illuminating the interior of the car.
Gabriel snatched the phone from Daniel’s hand and tossed it out the broken window. “You’re not calling anyone.”
“Gabriel!” Joyce exclaimed from the backseat.
Ignoring her, he turned to Daniel. “You don’t go anywhere near a phone, a computer, a pair of tom-toms, anything. If I even see you with a tin can and a piece of string in your hand, I’ll shoot you. Do you understand me?”
Daniel nodded, staring out the windshield.
“Gabriel,” Joyce said, “that was our only phone.”
“We’re better off without it,” Gabriel said. “Grissom knows Daniel’s number. He could have used the phone to trace our location.”
“All right, so we have no phone,” Joyce said. “We have a stolen car, a gun with how many bullets left? Two? Three? And three exhausted people, one of whom can barely walk—and no, we’re not leaving him behind. So: What’s your plan?”
“We need a place to regroup. Rest a little, tape up that leg—” Gabriel nodded toward Daniel “—and figure out where the third Eye is hidden. No way am I letting Grissom get to it first.”
“You know any place around here where we could do all that?”
“One,” Gabriel said. “But if she turns us away, I don’t know what we’re going to do.”
“She?”
“A woman I used to know in Anamur.”
Joyce was silent for a bit. Then she said, “You used to know her…how?”
“Do you really want me to answer that?”
“No,” Joyce said. “I guess I don’t.”
“Let’s just hope she’ll let bygones be bygones.”