Sussie rushed to her. “Madeleine!”
Madeleine knew right away that her ankle was broken, and overwhelming powerlessness cascaded through her, but she reminded herself that help was on the way. “How long until the police get here?” she asked.
Sussie looked up at the battery-powered digital clock on the wall and replied, “They should be here any minute.”
Along one side of the panic room, four vaulted screens showed the devastation outside their small, isolated world. Lifeless bodies were strewn about as if a giant had stormed through and left destruction behind. Thick clouds drifted past, giving the dark figures outside a surreal appearance. A man with a dark visor walked up to the thick door of the panic room and put his hand against it.
Madeleine swallowed; the thug on the monitor was less than two feet away from her body. This creature from hell that had torn her world apart. This had been her responsibility; Novus was her place, and this was her fault. Sebastian had pointed out the security flaws in their building many times, but Madeleine had kept postponing the needed investment.
Sebastian sat in the corner, staring silently at her. She ignored him. This was not the time to point fingers. Right now, it was about getting through this misery with anyone who had survived.
The man on the screen pulled up his visor, and his dark eyes peered straight at her, sparkling in the flashing lights. He pulled his finger across his throat with a sinister smirk. In the distance, Madeleine heard the faint sound of sirens and smiled, exposing bloody teeth.
*
The first thing the guard saw as he swung around the corner was the thin line of smoke drifting from the building. He narrowed his eyes. Was it on fire? It didn’t appear to be—the smoke wasn’t thick enough. He drove closer in his white Securitas car, then froze when he saw the two dark Jeeps parked in front of the thick, cracked metal door. He reached for his radio, but at the same time, a dark figure stepped out from behind one of the Jeeps and lifted something out in front of him. Too late, the security guard realized what that thing was, and the last thing he saw in his life was his windshield shattering as high-speed ammunition penetrated it.
The figure studied his work for a couple of seconds, then resumed his position behind the car. He spoke into his radio. “Central, we have a visitor. Looks like a security car. The threat has been neutralized.”
The voice that answered through the radio’s speaker carried a distinct Chinese accent. “Roger that. We’re almost finished here, thirty seconds.”
“Roger.”
The dark figure nodded to his companion, who was hidden behind the adjacent car.
“It’s time.”
They got into the Jeeps and drove them into position in front of the building’s exit doors. But just as they did, a blue-and-red flashing light approached. The figure froze. A police car rounded the same corner as the guard car had done five minutes earlier, but this time, the car stopped further away. The dark figure stared at the stationary, flashing police car. It was scarcely thirty meters from the Jeeps. A woman’s authoritative voice echoed from the police car’s loudspeaker.
“Get out of the vehicles and raise your hands above your heads!”
It had started to snow again. The figure hesitated, then opened the door and stepped out, careful to hold his hands high enough that they were visible.
“Don’t shoot!” he called back. “I’m unarmed.” The passenger door of the police car opened, and a male police officer pointed his weapon at the dark figure. The voice of the cop who was still in the car thundered again.
“Get on your knees! Put your hands on your head!” To the other Jeep, the officer shouted through the loudspeaker, “You too—out of the vehicle!”
The dark figure did as he was told, kneeling on the coarse asphalt and interlacing his fingers behind the crown of his head. The officer ducking behind the passenger door stood and moved carefully toward him. But he hadn’t gone a few steps when the second man stepped out of the other Jeep, aimed, and opened fire. The police officer threw himself back behind the door, but two of the shots sunk themselves into his legs.
The kneeling man scrambled onto his feet and rushed back to his Jeep.
“Now!” he cried into his radio. “The police are here!”
The Asian accent replied, “We’re coming.”
The female officer stepped out of the driver’s side of the police car and aimed her sidearm in the direction of the men.
“Drop your weapons!”
A split-second later, six armed men came streaming through the distorted metal door and opened fire on the police. High-velocity rounds hit the police car with a thunderous rumble, easily tearing it to pieces.
*
Snow shot into the air like rockets as Hugo revved the engine and skidded across the road. The car hit a snowdrift, and he felt the car slide toward the sidewalk. He jerked the steering wheel and the car straightened, narrowly missing a head-on collision with a pickup truck. The truck’s driver laid on the horn, still honking long after he passed.
His destination wasn’t far away now, but Hugo still pressed his foot even harder against the accelerator. The French Peugeot bellowed like a living, growling animal and hurled itself forward. Hugo dialed the emergency number again.
“SOS Alarm, what’s your emergency?”
“Yes, I called earlier—I’m on my way to my brother’s office. Have you sent help?”
“What?”
Hugo groaned. He knew he shouldn’t have hung up when he’d called earlier.
“Listen, I called five minutes ago. My brother works at Novus, down in the industrial harbor in Malmö. I was talking to him on the phone when the place was attacked. Have you sent help?”
The woman hesitated. “Hold, please.”
Another truck appeared from nowhere, and Hugo yanked the steering wheel for king and country. The woman came back.
“A patrol car was nearby and was sent to check it out. They should already be there.”
“Only a patrol car? You need to send more!”
“Listen, sir, I don’t know who you think you are, but it’s standard procedure to send a patrol car first before we send the cavalry.”
Hugo lost what was left of his patience when he saw the faint red-and-blue flashing lights two streets away. A thin pillar of smoke rose into the sky along the side of the building.
“Do it now! Send everything you have!”
The woman hesitated, then stammered, “Okay, I understand. I’ll . . . I’ll send out another couple of patrols.”
He took a deep breath before ending the call. “Thanks.” He tossed the cell phone down onto the passenger seat and exhaled. The snowstorm had increased in strength, and thick, greasy snowflakes swirled in front of his windshield as he turned toward the Novus headquarters parking lot.
Novus wasn’t a well-known name in the security world, but they had in a relatively short time managed to establish themselves as a serious player in the industry. The company had been founded and was managed by Madeleine Singh, and she had created a security consulting firm that served companies and well-funded individuals. Total discretion for the customer—that was Novus’ motto.
Hugo glanced around the corner. Two police officers were squatting behind a police car, and four black-clad, hulking men stood in a crescent-moon formation. Without warning, the men fired their automatic weapons at the police car, which was reduced in seconds to a twisted metal lump.
The men stopped shooting for a moment when they saw a silver vehicle come sliding around the police car, but to their surprise, it neither stopped nor escaped the scene; instead, it increased speed in the men’s direction. One of them shouted a warning, but it was too late.
The silver sedan skidded around the cop car so tightly that the rear bumper scraped the front of it, but then the car continued forward, sliding sideways, its tires screaming, and cut down two of the men.
“Shoot! Shoot him!” Xi yelled.
The remaining dark men o
pened fire on their new targets, but the silver car’s driver knew what he was doing. He skidded hard against a snowdrift, causing the snow to fly. Xi and another goon barely had time to throw themselves back and take cover. Xi hurried to his feet just as the car’s tires got stuck in the snowdrift, and he gave a joyful cry.
“Now, men! He’s stuck! Shoot him!” Xi and the others who remained started shooting again, and the normally quiet parking lot of Novus’ offices was once more transformed into a hurricane of flashing lights, screaming men, and blazing automatic weapons. Xi watched as the silver sedan turned into scrap metal in front of his eyes. He signaled for the shooting to stop, and motioned for one of the men to check on whether the driver was dead.
The man stepped forward, ripped open the door, and gave a surprised howl.
“There’s no one here!”
Xi gritted his teeth. Somehow, the driver must have gotten out when the vehicle circled past the police car. That was the only possibility. How had he not seen it?
His thoughts were interrupted by gunshots. The goon who had opened the car door to check on the driver stumbled back and fell to the ground hard.
*
Hugo had no real plan as he turned the corner and caught sight of the police car. Despite his speed, he made brief eye contact with one of the cops kneeling behind the car. A fraction of a second later, he yanked hard on the steering wheel and slid past both squatting policemen, using his vehicle as a weapon against the dark figures who stood lined up in a semicircle.
He managed to smash into two of them, sending them flying. When Hugo saw the wall of a snowdrift on his right, he acted on sheer instinct. He threw open the door and curled himself into a ball, rolling out and thumping into the thick, soft snow. Muffled shouting reached his ears a couple of seconds later, and a jolt of satisfaction passed through him as he realized his improvised plan had succeeded. He crawled backward away from the car and the approaching men. The cold air and the snow made the hair on his skin stand on end, but he didn’t even notice it.
Hugo watched as one of them approached the car and flung the door open.
“There’s no one here!”
Hugo raised his weapon and aimed. He squeezed the trigger, the gun coughed, and his target topped backward. The rest of the goons shouted and opened fire in any and every direction, without any clue as to where the threat was coming from. Hugo flattened himself on the ground and could only hope that more police officers were on the way.
A faraway voice yelled, “There are more of them. We have to move!”
Hugo peeked out over the snowdrift and saw one of the dark figures skulking toward the police car. The man raised his weapon.
“Whoever you are, come out now—or we’ll shoot these cops!”
Hugo knew the guy wasn’t lying; he could see it in his eyes. He pursed his lips. These assholes had him after all. He rolled over and stood to his feet.
“Hey!” he called out. “I’m here!”
Xi raised his visor. The heavy snowfall mostly obscured his face, but the long scar running from his forehead, around his eye, and down his cheek was still clear. He pointed to the fallen men.
“Most impressive.”
“Thanks.”
“Are you a cop?”
“No.”
“Military?”
“Ex.”
Xi shrugged. One of his men came up beside him and whispered close to his ear, motioning toward the fallen men.
“We have to go,” Xi said to Hugo. “Again, very impressive. But . . . you will pay for that.”
Hugo heard the faint sound of sirens growing louder. There was more than one—more than a few. People must have heard the shooting and called the police. Xi and his men climbed quickly into their two waiting Jeeps, and as they burned rubber out of the parking lot, Hugo saw a small, dark object sailing toward them through the heavy snowfall.
“Grenade!”
The two cops, who had only just gotten up on their unsteady feet, now threw themselves down again. The ground shook as the explosion thundered and shattered their world.
4
The heavy snow dampened most of the force of the explosion. Hugo pulled himself up and rushed over to the policemen, helping them up again. One of the cops had a long gash on his cheek, and blood trickled in a steady stream down his throat. The other officer seemed to be in shock but was otherwise unscathed. Hugo studied the wound on the first officer’s face.
“It doesn’t look like it’s that deep. If you’re lucky, you’ll only have a hairline scar later. Just enough to show off at the bar.”
The policeman blinked uncertainly at the unexpected comment, then made a strange, chirping sound. At first, Hugo was concerned that the officer was suffering delirium from blood loss or was having a stroke. He understood a moment later that what he was hearing was laughter—or an attempt at it, anyway.
“Whoever you are, thank you,” the officer said. “You got there at just the right time. A few seconds more, and they would have shot us to pieces.”
Hugo shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. Stay here—help is on the way.” The sound of sirens drawing closer confirmed his words, and he nodded his head in their direction.
The policeman shot his hand out and took a surprisingly powerful grip on Hugo’s arm.
“But who are you? Why are you here?”
Hugo shrugged and pointed to a row of broken windows that lined the building above them. “My brother works in there.”
“But you can’t go in. You can’t. You have to wait for help. There may be more in there—”
Hugo shook his head. “No, they’re gone. Stay here and wait for reinforcements. I’m going in.”
The officer continued to protest, but Hugo ignored him. He ran toward the broken door and disappeared up the stairs.
*
Hugo rushed up the staircase and almost stumbled over the dead body lying inside the doorway at the top. He stopped short, surveying his surroundings. It looked like a pack of rabid hyenas had torn through the room, and the smell of gunpowder, blood, and death made his stomach turn. Two women whimpered somewhere, but Hugo couldn’t see them. He stepped over the dead man and nearly slipped in a pool of blood that was steadily growing in diameter.
“Felix! Do you hear me, Felix?”
No answer. There was a movement to his right, and he shifted his gaze in its direction. In an office across the hall, a bloody arm extended from below a desk.
A woman whimpered, “Please help me.”
Hugo rushed over to the woman and pulled away the debris that had fallen against her desk. It had served to hide her during the attack but had also trapped her in a dark, grim sort of cell. After Hugo had freed her from the rubble, he righted an overturned desk chair for her to sit in. Her face was distorted with terror, and her left arm hung limp; Hugo could see it was broken.
“Here, sit down and rest. Help is on the way.”
“Thanks,” she mumbled. She slid her hand over her dusty face and pushed the white hair out from in front of her eyes. A flash of recognition crossed Hugo’s face as he realized he had met this woman before. Yes, they had met a few weeks ago, when he’d come to pick up his brother.
“Jenny? It’s me, Hugo.”
Jenny blinked.
“Oh, sure, now I recognize you. You’re Felix’s brother, right?”
Hugo nodded and scanned the room. “Where is he? Have you seen him?”
She shook her head.“No. It went down so fast. They just came, just, all of a sudden . . . and started shooting. The ceiling fell right where I stood, and that’s when I hid.”
She fell silent and her face became even paler. She was going into shock, Hugo knew. He pulled off his jacket and wrapped it around her. She smiled weakly.
“Thanks.”
Hugo sensed movement behind him and spun around. A woman was rushing toward him at full speed. He raised his hands.
“Stop!”
Madeleine stopped abruptly. “Hugo? What a
re you doing here?”
“Felix called me. I couldn’t tell what was happening because of the gunshots. Where is he?” Hugo again looked around the desolate room. More bodies lay to the right of him, still and silent.
Madeleine pointed to a door further away and said in a small voice, “That’s Felix’s office.”
He was there in seven big steps. He heaved the door open and stepped into a large room dominated by a rich mahogany desk. Hugo froze. Two feet lay motionless next to the desk. Violent nausea began to push its way through Hugo’s stomach.
“No, no . . .” He rushed to his brother and dropped to his knees beside him. Felix wasn’t moving. There were at least two bullet wounds in his midsection, but the amount of blood wasn’t as great as Hugo thought it should have been. Maybe that meant . . .
Felix’s left foot twitched.
“Felix! Oh my God. Hold on, help is on the way!”
*
Hugo pulled off his shirt and pressed it gently against his brother’s stomach to stop the bleeding. He sat beside him, trying desperately to keep him alive until help arrived. They had always had a special connection, perhaps because they were twins, perhaps not. He didn’t think that was all there was to it. It was something else, a bond that could not be broken and which no one could come between.
During their upbringing, their mother had believed that the boys’ connection was almost supernatural. As they grew older, they had impressed plenty of girls with their uncanny ability to know what the other was thinking. More than once, a friend or teacher had told one brother to think of something, and the other would seem to have the thought in his mind—in most cases, it had been accurate.
The memories washed over him as he knelt beside Felix’s bloody body beside him. He cursed at the damn paramedics for taking so long. Finally, he heard voices outside the room and fast steps.
“Help! In here!” Hugo called out. Two police officers charged into the room with weapons drawn.
“Don’t move!”
The Hugo Xavier Series: Book 1-3 Page 2
