Reaching through the hole in the wall and grabbing the leather bag, he removed and opened it, took out the pistol, and freed it from the baggie. As he returned to the third floor, he removed the magazine, which was empty, and inserted one of the Wilson Combat mags that Cahill had given him.
Chambering a round and engaging the safety, he searched for a loose-enough floorboard, finding one and prying it free with his knife, then placing the weapon in the dark crevice and laying the board back in place, being careful not to fully seat it.
He was facing the same row of windows overlooking the courtyard that he’d faced during his meeting with Carrington.
It was here that he would make his stand.
Moving into the dark corner to his right, he switched from the semidepleted mag to the full one, then unslung the carbine and leaned it against the wall. He removed the battle belt from the duffel and placed it on the floor next to the weapon before walking to the dark corner to the left.
There he drove the tip of his knife into the floorboard, leaving it standing grip-up and ready for him to grab.
A weapon of last resort.
Removing the blanket from the duffel and tossing the bag aside, he returned to his last-stand position by the center of the five large windows.
He performed a brass check on the M45A1 before returning it to its holster.
The SureFire light Cahill had also provided was in Tom’s left pocket. He removed it, checked that it was in working order, and tucked it into his waistband right behind his belt buckle.
He unfolded the wool blanket, wrapped it around his shoulders, and waited.
Twenty minutes later Tom heard the sound of the door below opening, followed by footsteps that stopped abruptly. He knew this meant that the Colonel’s advance security team had encountered the two dead men.
The hesitation didn’t last for long, though, and Tom dropped the blanket from his shoulders as he listened to the men make their way upward, floor by floor.
It was when those men were on the floor below that Tom heard another noise, this one from the wing on the other side of the courtyard.
He looked toward the broken window across the way, and for a second he thought he saw someone move into a dark shadow.
Tom watched that same space for more movement but saw nothing.
He was forced to look away when the Colonel’s three-man team entered and fanned out.
Converging on him, they stopped just a few feet away, their suppressed M4 carbines trained on him.
Tom raised his hands.
The center man stepped forward, reached for Tom’s waist, and pulled his sidearm from its holster. The man passed the weapon to one of his partners before cautiously patting Tom down from ankles to collar.
In his search for a backup weapon, the man missed the SureFire light hidden behind Tom’s belt buckle.
Rejoining his men, the center man clicked a walkie-talkie attached to the shoulder strap of his carrier vest and said, “Secure in here. Proceed.”
A reply came through: “Roger that.”
A moment passed before Tom heard the ground-floor door open again.
He listened to the footsteps on the stairs, but even as they drew closer, he was unable to determine exactly how many people were advancing.
All he knew was that it was a group.
But that changed when he suddenly heard footsteps shuffling beneath him, and voices, too, echoing in the empty space below.
A part of the group had peeled off and was moving through the second floor.
The footsteps that continued on the stairs were now easily discernible as belonging to two people.
Heavy, moving steadily upward.
Tom waited, looking past the three men before him to the door at the far end of the room.
It wasn’t long before the two men reached the doorway.
PART FIVE
Fifty-Two
The Colonel entered the dark room, followed by another man.
It wasn’t until these two men were halfway across the dark room that Tom recognized the second man as Karl.
His presence made Tom wonder where Esa Hirsh was.
The leader of the three-man advance team waited till the Colonel had reached them, then handed over Tom’s sidearm. Holding it with gloved hands, the Colonel studied it for a moment before returning it to the leader.
“The men downstairs weren’t killed with a .45,” the Colonel said. “Their entry wounds are too small. Tom has a primary weapon here somewhere. A carbine or rifle in 5.56. Find it.”
The men fanned out, leaving Tom and the Colonel standing face-to-face. Tom’s back was to the broken window; the Colonel and Karl faced it.
Karl remained a few feet behind and to the right of the Colonel—the traditional position of a bodyguard.
There wasn’t anywhere else in the empty room for the Colonel’s men to search, so they went straight into the darkened corners, starting with the nearest ones first.
They returned almost immediately, the leader holding the HK416, and his partner the battle belt. The third man emerged from the opposite corner with Tom’s pocketknife.
The Colonel visually inspected the carbine. He looked at Tom. “Raveis provided you with this?” He seemed genuinely surprised, even a little perplexed.
Tom didn’t reply.
“Did he warn you that I had a scout team here?”
Again, Tom gave him nothing.
“A trickster to the end, that one,” the Colonel said.
Tom wasn’t certain what that meant, but he also didn’t care. “Where’s Hammerton?” he demanded.
The Colonel nodded to the leader, who gestured to his team. The three men backed away, positioning themselves in a half circle roughly twenty feet from Tom and the Colonel, their weapons ready, their eyes fixed on Tom.
“This isn’t going to go the way you thought it would go,” the Colonel said. “You know, I never took you for a gambling man. Just the opposite, in fact. But here you are. Like the man said, ‘Desperate times call for desperate measures.’”
“Where is Hammerton?” Tom repeated.
“He’s right below us. They’re getting things ready.” He paused. “A Paine quote comes to mind right now: ‘These are the times that try men’s souls.’”
“I have more than just the video of you meeting the Benefactor,” Tom said. “I have it all. The documents, the audio and video files, everything.”
“Of course you do. How else were we to get you here?”
Tom heard the street door open and close again, followed by more footsteps.
“To be completely honest, Tom, I didn’t think this would work,” the Colonel said. “I thought you would see right through the ploy. But Raveis believed otherwise. He knew you’d take the bait. He knew he could get you here, and that you’d come alone.”
Another armed man entered the room, carrying a tablet. He walked to Karl and handed the device to him, then took position with the other men in the half-circle perimeter.
Karl was looking down at the device, navigating its display with his index finger.
“How are we doing?” the Colonel said.
“Almost ready,” Karl answered.
The Colonel looked at Tom. “It’s beginning to dawn on you, isn’t it? You’re beginning to piece it together. You really think Raveis would hand over information that would implicate him? I have never met a man with a stronger survival instinct than Sam Raveis. Whatever it takes to stay alive, he’ll do it. Those same instincts are what made him a valuable business partner—well, until recently. Until our misunderstanding.”
“What misunderstanding?”
“Carrington’s reaching out to you—we knew Smith was behind that. But Raveis is the kind of man who sees opportunity in a crisis. He thought he saw a chance to get rid of me. Ambition, after all, is just survival dressed up. And Raveis is very ambitious. He put his thumb on the scale when the attack on you was planned. He wanted you to live, knew if you did that ther
e was the chance you would come after me. With me gone, the organization would be his to run. It was a brilliant play on his part, I have to admit. And when the second attack on you failed, I knew I had to get to you somehow. I knew that if I could turn you against him, I’d have a motivated killer hunting him. After all, he had betrayed your father, the videos proved that, and he had betrayed you.”
He paused before continuing. “Replacing the sixth video Smith had provided with the video of your father’s death would do the trick, or so I thought. But you didn’t take the bait—any of it, Raveis’s or mine, for that matter—so we called a truce and struck up a last-minute deal. Just like Raveis had sent your father to meet the Algerian, he would send you to meet with me here. The evidence he showed you is real, but what Raveis kept from you, Tom, is that I have an identical collection myself. Everything Raveis has I also possess, including Stella’s . . . self-portrait, let’s call it. Mutually assured destruction was what kept the Cold War from becoming World War III, and these duplicate collections are what will keep Raveis from betraying me and me from betraying him, even now that our partnership has been dissolved.”
“Why did he send me here? Why didn’t he just kill me at the hotel?”
“You’ll understand in a few minutes.”
Tom glanced at the four bodyguards, then at Karl, who was still watching the tablet. Finally he looked back at the Colonel.
The loose floorboard was to Tom’s left, three strides away. He located it in his peripheral vision, made certain to keep it there.
“Just so you know, Tom, I’m sorry it turned out this way. I was genuinely fond of you. Maybe there was even a part of me that hoped it wouldn’t come to this, that you would actually kill the Benefactor when the time came, Smith would succumb to his cancer and take his secret with him, and there’d be no reason that you and Stella couldn’t go on your merry way. After all that had been taken from you, I’d hoped we wouldn’t have to take more. I had once said that I looked forward to a day when you could meet my family and sit down for a meal with us. Nothing would have made me happier.”
“They’re ready,” Karl said.
The Colonel nodded. “Show him.”
Karl stepped forward and turned the tablet so it was facing Tom.
On the display was a video feed showing Hammerton.
It took Tom a moment to understand what precisely he was seeing.
The first thing he noted was that Hammerton was standing on a stool.
His face was bruised, and that angered Tom, but the anger gave way to fear when Tom realized that something was around Hammerton’s neck.
It looked to be razor-thin wire.
Surrounding Hammerton were several armed men, but Tom also glimpsed Esa Hirsh.
“You have one last purpose to serve, Tom,” the Colonel said. “We need your help bringing in the others. Cahill, Stella, Slattery, Grunn, everyone. If you refuse, Hammerton dies a slow and agonizing death. If you cooperate, he dies quickly, as will you, as will everyone. That’s the best I can offer, but it’s a simple choice for you. Actually, there really is no choice, is there? I know you well enough to know you aren’t going to let the man who saved your life, and Stella’s life, suffer needlessly. And suffer he will, Tom. I understand there are ways to prolong the agony. Ways to revive Hammerton after he loses consciousness and start the process all over again. I think you know me well enough to know that I will do whatever it takes to protect my business—the business of protecting our country from all enemies, including those within. Even if what it takes is brutalizing a man I admire and respect. I faced the same choice with your father, and you know I did what I needed to do then.”
“I have no way of reaching any of them,” Tom said.
“I suspect there are phone numbers in that memory of yours.”
“None that is current. All burner phones have been ditched.”
“You’re a clever man, Tom. You spent eight years serving under James Carrington. You know all about codes and ciphers. I made certain he taught you all about them. There’s a way for you to reach Stella at least. All you need to do is bring her in for us, along with the rest of them; otherwise, we’ll need to use her to bring them in, too, and you don’t want that.”
Tom looked at the display before shifting his eyes back to the Colonel.
The loose floorboard remained in his peripheral vision at all times.
“It doesn’t have to go this way,” the Colonel said. “I don’t have to tell Karl here to give the word and start the demonstration. I’m guessing the system you have with Stella is similar to the one you and Carrington had. Every time she had internet access, she checked out the same book on Amazon, skimming its recent reviews, so that tells me I’m right in my thinking. We’ll provide you with a computer and a place to sit to compose your review. I’m curious what it is she will be looking for. A simple progression—the first word of the first sentence, second word of the second, and so on? Or maybe another combination of numbers? Her birthday or yours. Or the date of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, or of the first shot of the Revolutionary War, or something like that?”
Tom remained stoic. He knew he had one advantage—the Colonel needed him alive.
If he lunged for the hiding place, it was likely that the Colonel’s men would swarm him, not immediately open fire.
It took the average person one and a half seconds to cross twenty feet, and in that time maybe Tom could get the plank free and the weapon in his hand, and maybe as they scrambled to control him, he could start to take them out, one by one, then get a clear shot at Karl and kill him before he could give the order.
That would leave Tom and the Colonel, with three rounds to spare.
It was a foolish thought, Tom knew that, but his heart was pounding and his blood was filled with adrenaline and his mind was racing.
He was seconds from blindly bolting for the hidden weapon when his eye caught something that didn’t make sense at first.
There was a dot on Karl’s head, a green pinpoint of light, wavering just slightly, but otherwise holding steadily at the dead center of the man’s forehead.
It was a laser sight, and the instant Tom realized this—the instant his rushing and exhausted mind reached that startling conclusion—he heard the clack of the first suppressed shot being fired behind him.
Not directly behind him but from across the courtyard, from the window through which he had seen someone move.
Fifty-Three
Tom dropped down to a crouch and turned, seeking and finding the source of the green light—a figure kneeling and using the window frame as a brace for his rifle.
A flash of light from the window below that one drew Tom’s attention.
There was a second shooter on the floor beneath the first shooter, and he had fired almost simultaneously into the floor below Tom’s.
Tom saw his chance and spun around, diving from his crouch for the loose floorboard and hitting the rotted planks at the same moment that Karl, head shot, landed in a heap of lifeless limbs just behind the Colonel.
The four armed men reacted fast, training their weapons on the window across the courtyard, but the shooter got off two more shots in rapid succession.
One man went down, then another.
The fact that each torso shot had been fatal despite the plate carriers both men wore meant that the shooter was armed with something heavier than an AR-15–type rifle.
The Colonel dropped to the floor as well, not hit but taking cover.
Tom was on his stomach, pulling up the loose floorboard with his left hand and reaching into the hiding place beneath with his right.
Scrambling to his knees but careful to remain below the window, the Colonel reached for his own sidearm.
But Tom had already rolled onto his back and planted his feet flat on the floor. He was bringing the Colt to bear, raising his head and extending the weapon between his bent knees as he took aim.
Tom fired but knew right away
that he had jerked the trigger instead of pressing it.
That first shot pulled to the left, the round grazing the side of the Colonel’s head and taking a chunk of scalp with it.
The wound had no visible effect on the man. Grasping his weapon, he removed it from its holster, extending his arm—but still a second from taking aim.
There was a moment of cognition between the Colonel and Tom—each man looking stoically at the other’s face.
And there was a microsecond at the end of that moment during which the Colonel’s attention shifted to the weapon in Tom’s hand.
The look in the man’s eyes told Tom that the Colonel was confused by the sudden presence of a weapon.
Or perhaps, in that last instant, the Colonel had recognized it and understood the chain of events that had led to it being here.
Tom allowed the weapon to settle back down by its own weight, finding its target again.
But this time he took his time.
Aim, exhale, pull.
He fired, and the shot struck the triangle between the Colonel’s nose and chin, passing through teeth and bone to his medulla oblongata, destroying it and killing him instantly.
Still on his back, Tom shifted and aimed the Colt at the man farthest from him, taking the same care before pulling the trigger and bringing him down with a head shot.
The last remaining man—nearly standing over Tom—spun and lowered his M4, but Tom was ready for him, firing a round between his eyes, striking him as a rifle round from across the courtyard took off the left side of his head.
Tom scrambled to his feet, holstering the Colt and picking up the HK416.
He paused to complete a brass check, after which he shouldered the carbine and aimed it across the courtyard. But instead of activating the rail-mounted light, he removed the SureFire light from behind his belt buckle with his left hand and, with his arm extended as far out to the side as it could reach, he pressed and released the switch with his thumb, flashing the light once.
If whoever was across the courtyard fired on the light, he would miss Tom.
The Shadow Agent Page 31
