by Matt Rogers
He tried to bring his Glock up between them, but the man’s weight on top pinned him in an awkward position.
He threw a slicing vertical elbow into the bridge of the guy’s nose, breaking it. The sicario grunted, a tight-lipped animalistic noise, but he didn’t cry out in pain, and he didn’t budge. He got both his hands on Slater’s wrist and smashed it against the ground with the strength of adrenaline.
The Glock went off, the gunshot deafening, but it was out of Slater’s grip before the bullet had left the chamber. It bounced once, coming down out of reach.
Slater switched to desperation mode. The sicario was strong, and capable, and more than aware that he was fighting for his life.
The only thing was, Slater had all three of those attributes in spades, too.
And he knew how to use them a little better.
Instead of wasting time throwing strikes from his back against the pull of gravity, he contorted sideways and reached for the sicario’s ankle. He got a tight grip on it, and the man wrenched his leg forward to try and escape the grip.
Slater had been counting on that.
He rolled with the momentum, pushing the guy’s leg in the direction he’d tried to escape from. The result was the sicario pitching forward, having to tumble over one shoulder to avoid ploughing face-first into the carpet, and when he righted himself Slater had reversed position entirely, winding up with one knee on the guy’s chest.
And he didn’t need to waste time wrestling for control of a weapon.
He just lined up the perfect target and cocked his left elbow and dropped it on the sicario’s forehead, putting all his bodyweight and some extra adrenaline behind it. There was no need for a prolonged exchange of fists. Truth was, in real life, whoever landed the first significant blow usually won the fight. In Slater’s case, it happened almost one hundred percent of the time. His elbow bounced off the guy’s skull and ricocheted his head off the ground and knocked him unconscious with one brutal crack.
Slater stood up, walked over to his Glock, picked it up, came back, and put one round through the centre of the sicario’s head.
Right where he’d delivered the elbow.
He checked himself for injuries as the adrenaline wore off, but he was unhurt. Bruised, banged-up, sore, but nothing that would impede his movement for the next couple of hours.
He crossed to the first sicario’s body and picked up the weapon the guy hadn’t had the chance to fire. It was a Colt M1911, identical to the handgun Rico had wielded at Palantir. A fine gun, with .45 ACP rounds more than capable of tearing through flesh and bone.
He didn’t need two handguns.
He went straight back to the door labelled “505” and knocked three times.
It took a long time for the sound of movement to materialise behind it.
‘It’s me,’ Slater said, keeping his voice low.
Alexis opened the door, her face ghost-white, a vein in her neck showing how fast her heart was pounding.
She said, ‘I thought you were—’
He handed the Colt over by the grip. ‘Take this. If anyone comes through this door with bad intentions, use it. The taser won’t cut it.’
‘Don’t you need—?’
‘I’ve got one.’
‘Are you—?’
‘I’m fine.’
She reached out and threw her arms around him, burying her head against his chest. He took a giant step over the threshold, backing her into the entranceway of her apartment, separating her from a line of sight with the two bodies outside.
Then he stepped away. ‘I still want that date.’
‘You’ve got it.’
He tried to smile, but couldn’t. The ice-cold clarity that he’d just narrowly avoided death was still fresh on his mind. He nodded once, and waited for her to close the door.
Then he turned toward the two bodies down the hall.
He set to work moving them into the stairwell, out of sight.
He didn’t want her to see what he’d done.
What he was, under it all.
52
With the dead sicarios wedged into a dark alcove in the stairwell, Slater descended.
He didn’t bother illuminating the way. There was a weak emergency light at the top of the stairwell, supposedly running on a small backup generator. Its glow barely permeated the giant concrete space, but he could make out the outlines of steps ahead, and that was all he really needed. Besides, using his phone as a flashlight would only reveal his location as a beacon if there were more enemies lying in wait.
Nothing would surprise him at this point.
He pulled out his phone and tapped Violetta’s contact name. The satellite technology connected to her own customised device, and the call went through immediately, the dial tone slightly different to the default shrilling.
She picked up after three rings. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about me.’
‘I am.’
‘Have you spoken to King?’
‘Briefly. Sounds like he’s in the middle of something.’
‘I got the same impression. Did he tell you anything?’
‘No. He’s keeping things close to his chest. Which is inconvenient. He was barely on the line for thirty seconds. Are you with him?’
‘No. But I’m about to be.’
‘You need to pass on critical information.’
‘And what might that be?’
He kept the phone pressed to his ear with one hand and used the Glock in the other to sweep the space ahead as he reached the bottom of the stairwell. Uncanny déjà vu swept through him as he reminisced on the exact same sequence playing out in his own building on the Upper East Side hours earlier.
Would the next few seconds be the same, too?
Only one way to find out.
He didn’t wait for a response from her end — he simply stepped out of the stairwell, kept his centre mass low and his movements quiet and smooth, and scanned every inch of the lobby that he could see. It was untouched, dormant. There was no one lying in wait.
Then he looked through the huge glass panes and saw something strange.
Empty vehicles still covered the road, obscuring his view of the opposite sidewalk. But amidst the cars there was movement. Coming from multiple places at once. Slater flitted his focus between them, and he thought he made out silhouettes, but they were moving fast and low.
Toward the intersection.
Toward the bank building.
Slater’s stomach twisted. ‘Your critical information wouldn’t pertain to reinforcements you called in, would it?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Have you met them?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘How much did you tell them?’
‘I liaised with a Detective First Grade in the NYPD. I heard he was a hard charger. He was our best bet to rally up a bunch of cops in this kind of emergency.’
‘How much of a hard charger?’
Silence.
Slater said, ‘Violetta, what did you tell him to do?’
She said, ‘I’ll call you back.’
‘It’s too late. You won’t get hold of him now. What did you tell him?’
‘To form a perimeter.’
‘Did you stress the gravity of the situation?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you told a hard-charging no-nonsense detective who’s known for street prowess to get together a whole bunch of his colleagues and then hold back at the edge of something incredibly important?’
‘I said I had my own specialists handling it.’
‘So you undermined him, too.’
‘Shit.’
‘Yeah, shit.’
‘What’s he doing?’
‘If I’m seeing things correctly,’ Slater said, ‘he’s taking matters into his own hands.’
‘Pull them back.’
‘If I step out there, it’ll kick off regardless. They’re too close. There’s no way to—’
&nb
sp; ‘Slater, pull them back.’
‘What part of “I can’t” don’t you understand?’
‘Where are you?’
‘In a lobby.’
‘Where are they?’
‘Fifty feet from the kill zone.’
‘Can’t you—?’
‘You think they’d listen to me?’ he said. ‘They’d probably shoot me before they obeyed me. There’s nothing to identify me as an operative. And there’s a sniper somewhere out there with a .50 cal trained on the lobby I’m standing in. I’m a sitting duck if I step outside. They saw me go in.’
‘Shit,’ she repeated. ‘Why is Riordan doing this?’
‘I assume that’s Detective First Grade Riordan, then?’
‘Yes.’
‘Because he doesn’t want to sit back and play the supporting role. Not when there’s the opportunity to be a hero.’
‘That’s not what I instructed.’
‘That’s life.’
‘Use it,’ she said suddenly.
‘What?’
‘If they’re walking into a slaughter, use it to get inside the building. As a smokescreen.’
‘Is that what you intended this whole time?’
‘Christ, no. But if it works…’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Slater said. ‘But it’s a tactical nightmare.’
‘Just do what you can. That’s all I’ve ever asked of you.’
‘What about King?’
‘Do you know where he is?’
‘A couple of hundred feet in the other direction. Do I use the distraction to get back to his position, or to get inside the building on my own?’
Silence.
A long silence.
She said, ‘It’s your call.’
‘I might not get another shot at a breach.’
‘Then do what you spent most of your career doing. Go solo. King will find a way inside.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘I’m not certain of anything,’ she said. ‘At least there’s someone in that building to fight. I’m not even going to start thinking about how little sense that makes.’
‘They’re defending something. That’s for sure.’
‘Then there’s hope.’
‘Why are they here? Why aren’t they holed up somewhere remote? Literally anywhere other than the city they’ve blacked out?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I think this has something to do with us,’ Slater said.
‘What?’
‘You heard me.’
‘You can’t be serious.’
‘It’s just a hunch.’
‘You think a lot of yourself.’
‘I think there’s a reason we’re here in the heart of it.’
She didn’t respond.
He said, ‘I think there are answers in that building.’
‘I hope so.’
Outside, the silhouettes trickled closer to the looming bank building. They stood up a little taller. Slater thought he could make out guns in their hands. Tactically, they were doing everything to the letter. There were no flaws in the approach.
Aside from the fact they had no idea what they were up against.
He could almost feel the whole building tensing, the eight-storey slab of granite bristling with anticipation. A silence unfolded, so full and complete that he knew it could only spell one thing.
He said, ‘Violetta, I’ve got to go.’
A moment later, the first .50 cal round seared through the night, and then a cascade of bullets lit up Second Avenue like hellfire.
53
In the lobby, Slater ran straight for the closest armour-clad corpse as the night came alive with muzzle flashes.
He rolled the man over, exposing the M4A1 carbine rifle trapped underneath, snatched the weapon up and checked it had a fresh, full magazine.
Then he ran toward what was left of the revolving door.
Now he had a better look at the carnage. He made use of the constant muzzle flashes and saw NYPD in uniform scattered throughout the street, taking cover behind vehicles and returning fire at the bank building. Six or seven of the building’s windows were alive, barrels pulsating like strobe lights within. The skirmish was too widespread and too chaotic to keep track of. Slater would have no idea who was winning until most of the gunfire settled, leaving a bloody, miserable aftermath.
No matter who came out the victor, there’d be casualties on both sides.
It was a lose-lose.
He knew he wouldn’t get another opportunity to make a break for it, so he raced out the revolving door into the night. The cold wind hit him like a wall, but he pushed through it and made it to the closest vehicle in seconds. He threw himself down behind it, his pulse pounding in his ears, unsure how close he’d come to being hit.
Then shots lashed past him, so it was time to move again.
He bolted.
He gave thanks for all the seemingly unnecessary work he’d put into flexibility and dexterity in training. After years of consistent stretching and explosive plyometric work, his hips were as open as a professional gymnast’s. It allowed him to practically crab-walk through the maze of cars like some demented contortionist, keeping his centre mass behind the chassis of a vehicle at all times.
He weaved between sedans and hatchbacks and box trucks and snuck up behind a man he’d eyed at the outbreak of the firefight. You could hardly place him as NYPD, but Slater could. He recognised the outfit — leather jacket, black boots, jeans. Not your typical cop getup, but everything Slater had heard — rumours and whispers in the intelligence community — indicated that Detective First Grade Jim Riordan was no typical cop. Which helped if you needed someone to seize the moment and do the hard shit that most people didn’t want to do, but in this case it had only led to brazen bullheadedness.
Slater crept up on him, reached around and took the man’s service weapon in an iron grip.
Riordan spun, his deeply lined face contorted in horror at the thought of being ambushed. He bunched his free hand into a fist and swung the hard calloused knuckles straight at Slater’s head.
Any other man or woman standing there, it would have connected clean.
Right in the centre of the face, probably breaking a nose or shattering an orbital. Riordan swung fast and he swung hard, and you couldn’t fluke that sort of power. It took serious practice, if not formal boxing training.
But Slater was Slater, and he had seen the punch coming from a mile away, and he slipped it and wrapped up Riordan’s other arm and then shoved him hard into the door of the sedan he was cowering behind.
Not hard enough to draw attention, especially with war raging around them, but hard enough to send a message.
‘You don’t recognise me,’ Slater said, ‘but I recognise you.’
Riordan writhed against the car like his life depended on it. He had farmer-like strength — an unimpressive frame, but everything that was in it was hard and wiry and corded.
Slater had that kind of strength, too, and he was thirty pounds heavier.
He slammed Riordan into the car again and stared him in the face. ‘Calm down.’
‘Get the fuck off—’
‘I will,’ Slater said. ‘But don’t shoot me. That’s all I’m trying to achieve here.’
‘Who are you?’
‘You spoke to Violetta LaFleur,’ Slater said. ‘I work for her.’
Riordan stopped struggling, and Slater released him and moved back a foot.
The cop said, ‘How am I supposed to believe you? You got ID?’
‘No. I’m not even officially employed. But if I wasn’t who I’m claiming to be, I’d have shot you in the back of the head and you wouldn’t be alive to debate this.’
Riordan twitched.
Slater had reasonable faith that he could get his hands on the man’s Glock 17 before the detective could bring it up to shoot him, but he suspected he wouldn’t need to.
He was right.
Riordan gave up the tough-guy act, too distracted to focus, thrown off by the intensity of the firefight. His eyes were wide as saucers every time Slater caught a glimpse of them. Which wasn’t often. Aside from the intermittent muzzle flashes, the light was sparse and the night was full. The initial pandemonium had trickled down to the occasional exchange of gunshots as all parties sought cover and approached the skirmish a little more tactically.
Slater caught the outlines of bodies out of the corner of his eye, either sprawled against vehicles or lying between them. It was too dark to see the blood, but he knew it was there.
Riordan’s hard-charging nature had got a sizeable number of his men killed in the Bowery, and that realisation was striking home.
His usual no-bullshit demeanour was replaced with something very close to shell shock.
Slater said, ‘You were told to keep a perimeter.’
‘I figured the situation was urgent,’ Riordan muttered.
‘It is. But now it’s even more urgent.’
‘What’s in that building?’
‘I know as much as you do. But they’re defending it like it’s the key to all this.’
‘Who are they?’
‘I have a colleague who might have a lead on that.’
‘Where?’
Slater threw a glance over his shoulder. ‘He told me to meet him back there, but that was before World War Three broke out. He won’t be there anymore.’
‘You two work together?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You some kind of super-soldier?’
Slater looked at him. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘No one throws me around like that.’
‘I had to make sure you didn’t shoot me.’
‘I get it.’ Riordan bowed his head. ‘I fucked up.’
‘Yeah, you did. I’m not going to sugarcoat it.’
‘What do you need from me?’
Slater thought about it. Thought hard, considering the time constraints. Ran through a dozen different options and arrived at a satisfactory conclusion and said, ‘I need to get inside. No matter what.’
‘Your colleague…?’