by Joshua Hood
“You do anything but breathe and I’ll burn you down. You hear me?”
“Yeah, I hear you.”
“Good, now, on your knees.”
“I’m not—”
“Wrong answer,” he said, clipping the man hard across the back of the neck, the blow sending him and the MP7 in his hand clattering to the ground.
But before he had a chance to press the advantage, his attacker spun and tried to sweep Hayes’s leg.
He stepped back to avoid the sweep, and then his attacker was on his feet, firing a meaty hook toward the side of his head.
Hayes sidestepped the blow and brought the pistol up to fire, but before he could pull the trigger, the man hit him with a wicked backfist to the side of the head that sent the Beretta spinning from his hand.
During Hayes’s career he’d been hit by every size of man on planet earth. From skinny brawlers to barrel-chested heavyweights, he’d been rocked by them all. But the crash of the man’s fist against the side of his face left him feeling like he’d just been hit by a train.
The blow starred his vision and he stepped back, desperate for space to recover, but his attacker offered no quarter.
“Let’s see what you’ve got, old man.”
He came in hard and fast and hit him with a sweeping right to the gut that blasted the breath from his lungs. Hayes doubled over, somehow managing to get his arm up and block the man’s knee before it crushed his face.
“Shit, I thought this was going to be a fight,” the man taunted, before firing a lightning jab that smashed Hayes in the nose and sent a tidal wave of blood flooding into his mouth.
Who the hell is this guy?
Hayes feigned a right cross that sent the man bouncing directly into the chopping leg kick that smashed into the outside of his attacker’s thigh.
It was a solid blow, one that would have broken the leg of a smaller man, but the man brushed it off with a smile and countered with a head kick of his own.
Hayes managed to get his arm up and brace for impact before the man’s shin slammed into his biceps, the force shoving him off balance and turning his arm instantly numb. Seeing that he was hurt, his attacker tried to end the fight with a flurry of punches, but Hayes was done fighting fair.
Ducking beneath the first punch, he reached down, scooped up a handful of dirt, and flung it in the man’s eyes. His attacker cursed, and while he was trying to clear the grit from his eyes, Hayes drove his knee into the man’s groin, followed by snapping a forearm to the face that sent his attacker staggering backward.
The man let out an angry war cry and sent a looping hand slicing through the air, but Hayes threw himself under it, ducked into a roll, and came up with the Beretta.
“Playtime’s over, junior,” he said, double-tapping the man in the chest.
45
HOTEL CLARO, LUANDA
By the time Hayes got back to the hotel it was midnight and he barely had the strength to make it upstairs. After the beating he’d taken earlier he was already well past the point where a normal man would have given in to the pain. Part of him wanted to lie down and die, but quitting wasn’t an option.
Not because he didn’t want to, but because he didn’t know how.
He walked into his room, fingers leaving a streak of crimson on the handle, and dumped the bag of guns on the bed before limping into the bathroom and turning on the shower. He stripped out of his clothes and stepped beneath the ice-cold water.
After the shower, he toweled off, used the second box of bandages on his face and the iodine on his busted knuckles, and then shuffled back into the bedroom. Barely enough gas in the tanks to strip the sheets from the bed and make a pallet on the floor.
Finally, he grabbed the baby monitor connected to the camera he’d set in the hall, made sure it was working, and after setting it on the floor beside him, laid his head on the pillow.
Then he was out.
Hayes lay on the floor, one second dead to the world and in the next instant wide awake, rolling free of the pallet, the suppressed Knight’s Armament PDW cradled in his hand, senses straining for the sound that had woken him up.
Then he saw it, the flash of the phone vibrating on the floor next to his pallet.
“Charli?” he asked, answering the phone. “What’s going—”
“You’re burned.”
Burned? What the hell? No one even knows that I’m here.
The rush of adrenaline that came with the words cut through his fogged mind like the early morning sun, and he instinctively moved to the window.
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the hit team that just broke into my bar,” Charli said.
Oh, no.
“Are you . . . ?”
“I’m fine,” she said, “they came in after I’d locked up and gone home. Wouldn’t have known what was going down if my security camera hadn’t been linked to my phone.”
“Still the luckiest girl I’ve ever met,” he said.
“Yeah, and you’re still a shit magnet.”
“Seems that no good deed goes unpunished these days,” he said.
“You’ll never balance the scale. You know that, right?” Charli asked.
“Thanks for the heads-up,” Hayes said, ending the call.
He got dressed in the dark and was putting on his shoes when he saw a van pull to a stop outside the hotel, the cargo door sliding open and men with guns climbing out onto the street. Hayes took in the proceedings with the detached eye of a predator—the questions rapid-firing through his brain. There was no doubt about the men’s intent: They were there for him.
But how did they find me?
He’d done everything right, dumped his phone, spent an hour running countersurveillance, making sure no one was following him before coming back to the hotel.
He dismissed the question as irrelevant. The why and the how would come later; right now, the only thing that mattered was what he did in the next few minutes.
That his attackers had lost the element of surprise gave him the advantage, but, turning away from the window and taking stock of his gear, Hayes knew that whatever edge he had was time sensitive.
Holding the baby monitor, Hayes moved to the door, eyes locked on the screen. He’d been here before: alone and outgunned, heart hammering in his chest like a runaway jackhammer, every sound—every creak of a guest shifting in their bed or knock of the aged pipes—amplified a thousand percent.
He worked on his breathing, took a deep breath through his nose and held it in his lungs for a five count before exhaling. It was a simple exercise, one designed to reset the body’s natural fight-or-flight reaction, and his pulse had almost returned to normal when he saw the first man step out of the stairwell.
Here they come.
46
HOTEL CLARO, LUANDA
Hayes set the monitor on the floor, the Knight’s Armament in his hand feeling like an extension of his body, watching the six-man kill team slip down the hall, the emerald halos pooling from their night-vision goggles giving them the appearance of green-eyed ghouls.
Two doors short of Hayes’s room, the point man raised a fist into the air and the stack stopped on a dime. The man tapped the flat of his hand to the top of his helmet and then he was moving, two shooters tucked into his hip pocket while the rest of the team stayed put.
He carried the cell past the door, dropping the number three man on the knob side and carrying the number two man across the threshold. Once on the other side of the door, the point man covered the hall, while the number two man turned to face his mate on the other side of the door.
When he was set, he lifted his rifle to high ready—the signal that the number three man had the door.
Inside the room, Hayes watched the breacher reach for the knob, ready to rock and roll—yank open t
he door and engage the second the charge laid him flat. But before he had, a low pssst cut through the silence and the breacher froze. The fingers of his bare hand hovering inches from the knob.
Hayes followed the sound to its source and had just turned his head to the left when a seventh man stepped into view. The greenish-yellow glow emanating from the device strapped to the man’s wrist provided the answer to how the kill team had found him.
The moment he saw the light, Hayes turned away from the door and rushed to his bag. He ripped the front zipper open and retrieved Zoe’s insulin case. Everything suddenly made sense. Mallory canceling the meeting—the kill team finding it at the hotel.
You stupid, gullible asshole.
He carried the case to the mini-fridge and tossed it inside, but when he moved back to the door and pressed his eye to the peephole, he realized it was too late.
Out in the hall, the man was still studying the device on his wrist, but it was obvious from the way he kept turning his body from left to right that the fridge’s lead lining had blocked the signal.
Hayes knew it didn’t matter—they knew he was there, and it was only a matter of time before they found him.
You can run, the voice suggested.
Hayes considered it, but realized if the fall didn’t kill him, whatever security element the assault team had downstairs would.
No, he was going to have to fight.
Having already retrieved his makeshift flashbangs from the spot beneath the floorboards, he retrieved one from the pack Charli had given him and studied the fuse as he moved to the door.
The majority of off-the-shelf flashbangs used a time-delay fuse that gave the user four to five seconds between the time he pulled the ring and detonation. Hayes, on the other hand, had been forced to make his own fuse, and considering how much magnesium he’d stuffed into the makeshift munition, he hoped that he’d gotten the calculations correct.
Only one way to find out.
He slung the rifle across his chest, grabbed the doorknob, and twisted it open—wincing inwardly at the creak of the spring. Damn, Marta, you ever heard of oil?
With the door prepped, Hayes hooked the ring over his thumb and took a deep breath, clearing his mind of everything but the actions he’d planned to take on contact, knowing that all it was going to take was one stray bullet—one misstep on his part and it was game over.
“Here goes nothing,” he said.
In an instant everything slowed, and Hayes was aware of every detail: The tug of the pin ripping free. The door yawning wide, revealing the assaulter in the hall, his eyes locked to his wrist. Followed by the muted bang of the knob slamming into the wall. The assaulter’s head jerking at the sound, eyes wide when he saw Hayes standing there, a smoking IED in his left hand, rifle coming up in his right.
“Oh, shit.”
“You got that right,” he said, firing a three-round burst into the center of the man’s chest plate.
The impact of the rounds sent his target stumbling backward, and before he’d hit the opposing wall Hayes had hooked the flashbang at the stack of assaulters and ducked back into the room.
The bang detonated with the roar of a howitzer, the explosion shaking the walls, sending plaster falling from the ceiling.
When Hayes stepped back out into the hall, he found the carpet on fire and the assault team stumbling blindly through the dense cloud of white smoke. He was about to open fire on the men when the assaulter he’d shot before tossing the bang pushed off the wall and tried to swing his rifle onto target.
Hayes hit him with a buttstock to the side of the helmet and a thrust-kick to the chest, but neither blow put the man down, and before he had a chance to fire a shot, his teammates had recovered from the blast.
“Kill him,” one of the men yelled, spraying a burst down the hall.
Get to cover.
Hayes ducked beneath the bullets, drove his shoulder into his attacker’s gut, and looped his nonfiring hand around the back of the man’s legs. Without breaking stride, he lifted the man off his feet and drove him through the door on the other side of the hall.
Inside the room, Hayes dumped him headfirst onto the floor, the impact knocking the man unconscious.
“Don’t go anywhere,” he said, yanking a fragmentation grenade from the man’s belt.
Hayes let the spoon fly and moved to the door, counting in his head while he cooked off the grenade.
“You assholes picked the wrong hotel,” he shouted, leaning out and underhanding the frag down the hall.
“Grenade!” one of the assaulters shouted—and then he was gone. Lost in the thunderous explosion.
Hayes stepped out of the room, the dust kicked up by the explosions scalding the back of his throat. He scanned the hall, taking in the damage to the walls, the blown-in doors, and the blood pooling from the crumpled figures lying on the floor.
Man, ol’ Marta is going to be pissed in the morning.
He was about to head back to the room when a muffled groan signaled that one of his attackers had survived.
Looks like we’ve got a live one.
Hayes pulled a Streamlight Micro from his pocket before toeing the assaulter onto his back. With a click of the pressure pad, he activated the flashlight and shined it into the man’s face.
“Wikus,” he hissed.
“D-don’t kill me . . .” he begged.
“Oh, I’m not going to kill you,” Hayes said, returning the light to his pocket and lifting Wikus from the ground. “Not when we’ve got so much catching up to do.”
47
MAYOTTE
Gone? What the hell do you mean she’s gone?” Cabot demanded.
“Sir, we . . . I mean . . .” Mallory stuttered. “I don’t know.”
“Well, what the fuck do you know?”
“Sir, if I may,” Beck said, nodding at the phone. “Ms. Mallory,” the big German began, “tell us what happened.”
“We . . . the team followed the tracker to the hotel in Angola. They had a lock. They never got positive ID on Zoe, but the man . . . Adam Hayes . . . he was there.”
“And?”
“The team went in and he”—Beck hooked a thumb at the closed door—“was the only one who came out.”
Six men. Six of my best men go in and only one comes out. How? How does something like that happen?
Cabot was no stranger to violence—to violent men. He’d seen enough of them during his time at the DGSE, shark-eyed men who could kill you with something as innocuous as a pencil. But that was their job, their raison d’être—reason for being—but this Hayes, he was just a smuggler. A pilot.
No, something about this isn’t right. Something is not adding up. But what?
Cabot knew there was only one way to find out.
“Bring him in,” he said.
The German nodded, slipped across the room, and opened the door.
“You, inside,” he said, leaning out.
Cabot finished his drink and, leaving the empty lowball at the window, returned to his desk. He took a seat, but instead of looking at the man, he turned his attention to the monitor on his desk and studied the personnel file on the screen.
While Cabot had ultimate say when it came to the hiring and firing of DarkCloud personnel, he didn’t meddle with Beck’s security teams. The towering German had free rein when it came to hiring specialists: the shooters and spies who handled aspects outside of the company’s normal purview.
Unlike the techs, programmers, and managers whom Cabot saw on a day-to-day basis, his dealings with these men were limited to signing their paychecks and reading their personnel files.
Before the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, these men were harder to find, but two decades of war had created a seemingly bottomless talent pool, a lethal flesh market where with the right introd
uctions and a fat enough wallet you could find men willing and able to kill your boss, guard your yacht, or even invade a foreign country.
Cabot scanned the file, getting a snapshot of the man in front of him. Tyler King, another fucking American from some no-name town in Texas. According to the file, he’d done ten years with the Navy SEALs before going to work for the CIA’s Special Operations Group. The entry and exit stamps that adorned the photocopied pages of his passport read like the U.S. Consulate’s no travel list: Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Indonesia, and Afghanistan—he had them all.
Cabot leaned back in his chair and studied the man standing in front of his desk.
Tyler King was of medium height with wide shoulders, powerful hands, and close-cropped blond hair. Of his facial features the only thing Cabot could be sure of was that he had blue eyes; everything else was a one giant bruise.
“Your résumé reads like a Gray Man novel,” he said, “which is why I’m having a hard time understanding how you couldn’t kill one man.”
“I don’t know who that man was, but—”
Cabot cut him off with a wave of his hand and turned his attention back to the screen. “It says here that you have a wife and two daughters back in Texas. Is that true?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Cabot,” Tyler said, the confusion on his face evident.
“Normally they would already be dead, but as a father with a daughter of my own, I’ve decided to give you the chance to redeem yourself,” Cabot said, opening the desk drawer and pulling out a snub-nosed .38.
“What do you mean?” Tyler asked.
“Simple,” Cabot said, placing the revolver on the desk. “Take this pistol, put it in your mouth, and pull the trigger. Do that and your family lives.”
“And if I say no?”
“If you say no, I will send Beck to your house and he will bring your family back here and I will kill them in front of you.”
Tyler looked at him, face hard as he studied Cabot’s eyes. “You’d do that? K-kill my little girls?”
“And I wouldn’t lose a wink of sleep.”