by Michael Todd
The meat shield had lost his usefulness. Well, most of it, anyway. Savage had only one more shot before the bottle disintegrated. It already looked ragged from the two shots he had already fired. It wouldn’t survive a third. A tactic spilled into his mind, and before it had even crystallized, he pushed into motion.
He shoved the dead man toward his partner and ducked, keeping both hands on his pistol. This was it—the deciding moment—and he couldn’t afford another miss.
As the assailant tried to dodge his falling comrade, Savage raised his weapon and pulled the trigger. Another, louder pop reverberated in the small area as the bottle was shredded by a third bullet. Thankfully, he wouldn’t need a fourth. The man’s knee exploded in white and red and his face contorted suddenly. His leg collapsed and he fell with a shriek of pain. Savage lurched closer to grab the hand with the gun and wrestle the weapon loose.
The assassin held on and he had to deliver a hard jab to the man’s nose before he finally released the pistol. Both of the wounded man’s hands now clutched his leg and he shook his head as if in an attempt to grasp what had happened. He paled even further when the aluminum suppressor pressed against his temple.
“I think you and me should have a little chat, don’t you?” Savage snarled and added sufficient pressure to his grip on the weapon to keep the man on the floor.
“I’m not telling you shit,” his adversary snarled and spat at his feet.
“Let’s not make promises that we’ll regret, asswipe,” he retorted. A small grin settled on his lips as the gun moved away from the man’s temple and jammed against his good knee. “Did you play sports? You look like you were a high-school quarterback—you have that strong jaw structure some people might consider attractive. That means all the girls liked you and all the boys wanted to be like you, which means they always gave you the ball to toss around. Yeah, I’d say you were a quarterback, wouldn’t you say?”
The man shook his head and made no response.
“Yeah, you look like you played QB,” he continued with a nod. “An injury made sure that no college would touch you, though, so you signed up to serve your country. If there’s anything the chicks like more than a man in a gridiron helmet, it’s a man in uniform. But my man, if you think people won’t hire you after a torn ACL took you out for the season, wait until you see the kind of money they offer a guy who needs to walk around with a cane.”
His captive looked firmly at him. There was a suggestion of terror in his eyes as he imagined what his life would be like with both his knees gone, but it wasn’t enough to make him talk. Savage gritted his teeth and shook his head.
“Sorry, pal,” he muttered, raised the pistol to the man’s forehead, and pulled the trigger.
“What?” Anja asked. She’d been silent for a while, obviously leaving him to get on with what he had to do. “I thought you would make him talk. Why did you kill him?”
“Firstly, we don’t have the time to make someone talk,” Savage said in a low voice. “Secondly, torture doesn’t work. The fear of pain is the only thing that will render reliable information. Once you enter the pain itself, you have to reach the person’s pain threshold to make them talk. At that point, any information you acquire is suspect because the person might simply spew what his interrogators want to hear only to make it all stop.”
She didn’t respond, and he didn’t need her to. He searched the dead man and located a small radio connection wired to the man’s arm and ear. Quickly, he tugged it clear, tucked his own pistol into his pocket, and kept the .45 Colt in his hand as he attached the radio system to himself.
“We’ve secured the girl in the van,” another man’s voice said through the connection. “Have you handled the guy inside? Don’t waste time in trying to move him out. You can leave him in the stall and they’ll only figure out that he’s dead in the morning.”
“Well, that’s not nice,” Savage grumbled and moved clear of the man. He dropped beside the first assassin and tugged the garotte from his lifeless fingers. You never knew when you needed to dispose of someone quickly, and if worse came to worst, a garrote worked far better than a tie. He retrieved the man’s weapon as well. On some level, he felt rather like a scavenger, but at this point in his life, it was kill or be killed. He knew which of the two he’d prefer.
“Tell me something, Anja,” he said as he finished looting the two men’s corpses. “Jessica said that the rest of the scientists involved in that facility all got their pink slips. How many of them are still alive?”
Her keyboard tapped rapidly as she ran searches. He assumed that she at least had the names of the people she was looking for, considering that she had been able to capture all the digital information from the facility.
“Shit,” the hacker said softly. “Seven researchers were fired and given hefty severance packages. All have been found dead in their homes. Accidents all around, apparently, except for one that was an overdose suicide. How did you know?”
“Because they plan to do the same thing to our friend Dr. Coleman,” he replied and stepped out of the bathroom.
Chapter Twenty
Savage made sure to lock the bathroom door as he made his way out and shoved the key into his pocket to dispose of somewhere else. The longer he could keep the two dead men in there a secret, the better. He didn’t really have the time to deal with police on top of the people who had apparently kidnapped the doctor.
“Anja, did you see anything happen?” he asked as he entered the bar. The loud music still pounded, and despite the fact that he couldn’t have been gone for longer than five minutes, the place looked far rowdier than when he’d left it.
“I’m sorry. I was trying to keep your ass alive and didn’t think to check on the doctor,” she protested over the comm.
“I don’t care what you were doing before.” He deliberately kept his tone as calm and collected as he could. She did need to focus but it wouldn’t help if he antagonized her. Despite the fact that he felt some responsibility for the danger Dr. Coleman was in at the moment, he also knew that she was the best opportunity for them to discover what Carlson was up to.
“The cameras in the building have terrible angles,” Anja said. “They mostly cover the entrances and exits, with nothing shown inside except for the hallway to the bathrooms, so I can’t make out when—” She paused, and he pushed through the drunken groups of people that were clearly celebrating something. He couldn’t figure out what and didn’t care enough to investigate.
“When what, Anja?” he asked and surveyed the area with careful focus. The men on the radio he’d stolen seemed impatient and now debated whether they should send someone in to see if their team needed help, or if they should merely leave with their prize. There seemed to be some argument as to whether Savage was even a target.
“They took her out the back,” the hacker said and sounded calmer. The girl had a talent for gathering herself quickly in hot situations, and he had to admire that about her. “I can’t see very well, but it looks like they have a panel van out there. Three guys were with her, and I would put money on there being a fourth out there to drive. Be careful, Savage.”
It was the first time that she used his fake name without sounding like she made fun of him. He would have to bring up the fact that it was a sign of maturity on her part, but there were more important things to worry about right then. Important things like rescuing the good doctor. It didn’t sound like they actually wanted to kill her on location, but he doubted that they would be too picky when he descended on them like a wave. A big, angry, annoyed wave with two suppressed pistols he had looted from their dead comrades.
He spun and moved to the back entrance. The weapons nestled in his coat pocket and he drew one as he stepped outside. It was dark already, and the alley he entered made it even darker. Two buildings, one of which was the bar that he’d just exited from, closed in around him and provided barely enough room for vehicles to move in either for delivery or to empty the containers of
garbage that could be found along the side of it.
Thankfully, no additional vehicles or trash trucks were in the vicinity. A hasty glance in either direction confirmed only a small panel van with closed doors flanked by a couple of men. Both guards turned to look at him, but in the darkness, they weren’t able to make out who it was. He needed to get in closer. In an attempt to avoid suspicion, he held the stolen weapon so it would be visible, and he hoped it would be enough to make them hesitate, thinking he was one of them, rather than fire at him. It was his only chance—and Jessica’s only chance, as well.
“Hey, did you take care of him?” one of the two asked and tilted his head with suspicion as he stepped forward. The guard squinted as Savage’s face was outlined by the light coming from inside. It wasn’t something he’d planned but damned if he would waste this kind of opportunity.
The man’s mouth dropped open and his hand had already moved to a weapon inside his jacket when Savage raised his pistol. The suppressor caught most of the sound and made the subsonic rounds that the team used in their clips sound much like a car door closing. The heavy .45 kicked back into his hand. The suppressor weighed the barrel of the pistol down so the kick had minimal impact on the bullet’s trajectory. The target fell back a step and clutched his throat as a hole appeared. A stream of red squeezed between his fingers.
He fired again without a pause, the pistol gripped smoothly in both hands and settled closer to his chest as he delivered another slug to his target to eliminate him.
“What the fuck?” the second guard shouted and sprinted to the other side of the van. While Savage couldn’t see anything inside, he could safely guess that the remaining men—most likely two out of Anja’s count of four—guarded the doctor. He didn’t mind. That would give him time to dispose of this last dumbass on the outside, so he had no problem waiting for them to come out. One idiot at a time made good odds.
He dropped prostrate as the man circled the vehicle. Imprudently, the kidnapper had chosen to move slowly and carefully instead of making himself a fast-moving target. Savage now lay on his side and aimed the pistol at the legs that were visible from his prone position. He pulled the trigger and the weapon kicked a split second before the man’s right shin exploded and he fell with a cry of pain. By the way the blood spurted, it was obvious, even in the shadowed lighting, that the slug had hit an artery. The wounded man cursed and tried to staunch the blood that flowed fast and hard. He would be unconscious from blood loss in fifteen seconds or so, and dead in less than a minute.
Savage didn’t have the time to wait, though. His target seemed torn between his wound and the need to return fire, and his indecision cost him dearly. His gun slipped from his hand and he sagged, then toppled. A low moan confirmed that he was still alive, so the operative pulled the trigger again. A spray of blood and brains erupted from the other side of his head and the body twitched one final time.
He dragged in a deep breath.
“What’s going on out there?” someone asked over the radio. “Come on. Someone needs to talk to me. And no, this isn’t fucking funny, you dumbasses.”
With his mind refocused, Savage pushed from the ground and removed the magazine from the pistol. He had two rounds left. That was why he didn’t like these Colt guns. No matter how much the world had advanced, they still produced these admittedly sturdy but outdated weapons with only seven rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. The assassin had fired once in the bathroom, and his subsequent shots left him with only two more.
Not enough, he thought and shook his head, tucked the weapon in his pocket, and removed the full one. That still had eight rounds ready to go, and while he would have preferred to have more at this point, he’d have to work with what he had.
Savage gripped the handle of the door. He knew they would expect someone hostile to pull it open. The moment he tugged at the handle, he’d face a hail of bullets and there was no way he could survive that. He needed a better plan than a direct attack. They had made all the other deaths seem accidental or self-inflicted, so it was unlikely that they would actually shoot Jessica. He thought for a moment and decided he would have all kinds of warning if they tried to get away.
Impulsively, he dropped to his knees with the idea that he could crawl under the van itself and take his shots from there. He discarded the rough plan as quickly as it had formed. Unlike them, he couldn’t afford to shoot wildly into the van for fear that he’d wound or kill the woman he was trying to save. He paused once again.
“What are you doing? What are you waiting for?” Anja asked. She could see him from the camera that had an angle on the van. It wasn’t ideal, but she still had an idea of what was happening.
He couldn’t reply as he didn’t want to reveal anything to the men inside. Instead, he wanted them nervous and trigger-happy. Ignorance left them without any smart moves.
“Savage, the longer you wait, the higher the chance will be that they’ll kill Dr. Coleman,” the hacker said firmly. “You can’t let them do that.”
She was right, and he was well aware of that, but he still needed to think and hopefully, give them time to make the wrong move.
He shook his head and let her see him do that as he leaned closer to the van. They no longer spoke into the radio, and he wanted to see if he could hear what they were saying. It was hard to hear anything over the rhythm his heart hammered in his chest, but he thought that he identified the scrape of boots over the bottom of the van’s bed. He remembered his training on angles and eased back until he had his shoulder pressed against the corner of the van. His breathing settled as he listened for movement once again.
The handle of the back door clicked, gripped from the inside, and he knelt hastily as the door unbolted and swung open. He managed to duck under it and gritted his teeth as he flattened himself on the cold ground. The play had delivered him another gamble. If he didn’t get a shot off in the first second, he was a dead man.
Thankfully, he had a shot.
His target hadn’t even seen him when Savage squeezed the trigger. The bullet thwacked in under his jaw to spray blood and brains across the roof of the vehicle. The man toppled forward as the operative pushed upward. It was a mistake he quickly regretted as the second man sat far back with Jessica held in front of him and aimed his weapon at the door. Savage barely had time to duck before three shots rocketed past him. A sting on his right cheek confirmed a flesh wound, and as he hit the pavement, a droplet of blood fell onto his hand. He gritted his teeth. He wouldn’t have the luxury of even a single shot at the man because he couldn’t afford to hit Coleman.
An idea burgeoned and he took a deep breath, calmed himself, and resisted the urge to simply barrel in there with guns blazing. Instead, he gripped the dead man’s forearm and eased the hand up until it crested the edge of the vehicle’s floor. The man fired immediately, and the hand jolted as bullets punctured it at least twice. Savage counted the shots.
One, two, three, four, five—all fired in quick succession with the carelessness of a man who didn’t actually know what he was doing. That knowledge was comforting.
And God bless John Browning, he thought, as he hauled himself into the van’s bed. The kidnapper pulled the trigger again. Savage blinked and wondered for a second if he was wrong. He was beyond relieved when the gun clicked empty. The man fumbled around the alarmingly limp Coleman, obviously in an effort to find a magazine to replace the empty one. Stupidly, he hadn’t bothered to eject it either.
Savage almost felt bad that he had to eliminate someone this bad at his job. Almost, but not quite, because inept or not, he was still party to kidnapping and a planned murder.
He stepped in closer and hammered the pistol grip into the man’s face to open a cut on his cheekbone. The blow distracted his target and he dragged him clear of the doctor before he aimed and squeezed the trigger a couple of times. Two holes blossomed red in his head as he fell without so much as a gasp.
With the kidnappers all eliminated, he
needed to make sure that Coleman was still alive.
He fell on his knees beside her and frowned. Her eyes were shut, and she hadn’t reacted at all to the commotion. He feared the worst for a second and fumbled for a pulse on her neck. It took a moment, but he exhaled with relief. There it was, slow but strong. She was sleeping.
Who the hell fell asleep during a kidnapping?
“Jer?” Anja asked in his headset. “Jer, are you there? I swear, if someone doesn’t start talking right fucking now—”
“I’m here, don’t worry,” Savage said. “All the kidnappers are down, and Dr. Coleman is passed out. I can’t see any—oh, shit.” The reason for his curse was a small vial of medication beside the sleeping woman. It was still half full, but a used syringe laid on the ground nearby.
“Anja, I found what looks like medication and a syringe.” He paused and peered closer to see the label. “Ketamine.”
“Was our girl injected with it?”
“It looks like it.” He eased into a seated position beside Coleman and patted her cheek gently. After a few taps, her eyes opened. There wasn’t much in the way of pupillary response, but she recognized him.
“Who’s Anja?” she asked and her voice slurred.
“Nobody you need to be concerned about, honey,” he said with a smile and pressed his finger to her neck again. Her pulse had picked up, but not by much.
The drug made sense if you wanted to calm someone down for long enough to get them out of a crowded location and transport them somewhere. It also meant they could be controlled until they were killed in a way that would look like some sort of accident, so it would work. He’d never actually used it himself before—or even had it used on him—but then again, there was a lot involved in this sordid business that he didn’t know much about.