The Hunter

by WOOD TOM

  Victor approached the turning where the elevator was located. He heard the chime as it reached the floor. That was all he needed, another guest or hotel employee nearby to give him more problems. He slowed, wanting the person to leave the elevator in front of him instead of behind. He heard the doors open.

  The man who stepped out was in his early forties, tall, fair skinned, with Slavic features, carrying a suitcase. He could have been considered handsome but for the recent wound stitched shut on the right side of his face.

  That face Victor had seen before a week ago in St Petersburg through the scope of a sniper rifle.

  Victor didn’t slow his pace or react in any way. He hoped he was somehow mistaken, even though he knew he wasn’t. The SVR were here. The first thought that entered his mind was that they’d tracked him down, but that made no sense. The organization had a fraction of the resources and technology of the CIA, and outside the old Soviet bloc its influence was limited. Unless they had been shadowing him since Russia, it was beyond their capabilities. And if they had followed him here he wouldn’t have just encountered one of their number by chance.

  The Russian turned his head and looked Victor’s way. Just a casual glance, and for a few seconds it seemed as if he’d failed to recognize him. He turned his head away and took another step from the elevator. Then his head involuntarily snapped back to look in Victor’s direction, whole body stiffening, expression changing as he identified the man walking toward him.

  They were no more than three yards apart when Colonel Gennady Aniskovach thrust a hand inside his jacket. Victor sprinted forward, closing the distance fast. Aniskovach drew his handgun, but Victor was within his reach before he could fully extend his arm.

  Victor grabbed the Russian’s wrist and twisted sharply. At the same time he threw his free fist at Aniskovach’s face. The punch connected on the nose, breaking it instantly and sending a spray of blood from the nostrils. Aniskovach grunted with pain, and the gun dropped from his hand. His eyes filled with water. Victor kicked the gun into the elevator and flung the dazed Russian in too.

  Inside, Victor grabbed Aniskovach by his shirt and slammed him against the mirrored wall. Blood flowed from his nose, dripped rapidly from his chin. Water spilled from his eyes. Victor frisked him, finding a spare mag and pocketing it.

  ‘How did you find me?’ he demanded in Russian.

  It took a second for Aniskovach to speak. ‘I … didn’t.’

  Victor took a hand from the Russian’s clothes and grabbed his throat, Victor’s fingers on one side of his oesophagus, thumb the other. He started to squeeze, hard, cutting off the air intake. Aniskovach choked.

  Victor gave him ten seconds without oxygen before releasing the pressure enough for him to talk. He coughed for a moment. ‘I’ve only just got here …’

  He started coughing again. Victor understood – they weren’t here for him. The flash drive. The SVR had found out what it contained and had come to collect whatever was on that sunken ship. That meant they had taken it from Norimov. The elevator doors closed and it started to ascend.

  Victor tightened his grip on Aniskovach’s neck. ‘Did you kill him?’

  The Russian looked confused. ‘Who?’

  With his free hand Victor pressed his fingers into Aniskovach’s wounded cheek. He screamed and Victor squeezed harder on his throat. The Russian gasped and spluttered, his face reddening until Victor eased his grip enough for him to talk.

  ‘You know who.’

  Aniskovach spat phlegm and blood from his mouth. ‘Norimov?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We didn’t kill him.’ The Russian took a series of deep breaths and raised his head. ‘He was working for us.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Norimov … sold you to us.’ Aniskovach took great delight in the effect his words had. His face twisted into a smile, thin lips shining with blood. He spoke between coughs. ‘And he did so … for much less than … I would have paid.’

  Victor’s grip unintentionally weakened. For a moment he couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything. Norimov, the only person he would even come close to considering a friend, had betrayed him. For nothing more than money. He felt hollow.

  The elevator doors opened on the fifth floor and the noise brought Victor crashing back to the world. He glanced over his shoulder, ready to incapacitate whoever was waiting. A man stood outside the elevator. He had a lean, muscular physique, dark hair, and blue eyes, dressed casually.

  Reed.

  CHAPTER 73

  17:22 EAT

  The two killers stared at each other for a single long moment. Reed held the advantage, his enemy was half-turned away, hands gripping another man, pinning him against the back of the elevator. But Reed didn’t move.

  Reed was rarely surprised, but he was as good as paralysed. Tesseract was dead. He had died in a hotel room in Nicosia, blown into atoms by an expertly placed bomb. Tesseract was dead, yet he was standing no more than four feet away. Reed stared forward blankly, his expression one of disbelief as his brain tried to rationalize what was obvious. He had failed.

  Reed reacted second, only beginning to draw the Glock as Tesseract was already wrenching the other man away from the wall.

  Victor swung Aniskovach one hundred and eighty degrees and threw him out of the elevator just as Reed extended his arm and fired; the man took the bullet meant for Tesseract in the chest, momentarily contorting before crashing into Reed. Both men were sent flailing.

  Reed hit the floor first, on his back, Aniskovach’s body landing on top of him an instant later. He didn’t have time to brace himself, and the impact momentarily stunned his body but reignited his mind.

  He couldn’t see Tesseract, and there wasn’t time to get out from under the dead weight, so Reed angled the Glock and fired blind.

  Victor hit the button for the lobby and threw himself to the side of the elevator, back pressed flat against the panelled wood a split second before bullets struck the back wall. The mirror smashed, and Victor shielded his face with his arm against the explosions of glass. Jagged pieces rained down onto the floor. The doors closed.

  A triangle of indentations appeared in the metal on Victor’s side. The elevator descended and the firing ceased. Avoiding the broken glass, Victor grabbed the Russian’s gun from the far corner. A 9 mm Browning. He ejected and checked the magazine, slammed it back in, worked the slide, and thumbed off the safety. Ready.

  In seconds the elevator reached the ground floor and the doors opened. Before Victor stepped out into the lobby he used his knuckle to hit the buttons for the second, third, and fourth floors, and quickly stepped out before the doors closed behind him. There was no one nearby.

  He had the Browning tucked into the front of his waistband with his shirt hanging loose to cover it. His right hand hovered by the grip as he walked cautiously forward. His gaze was fixed to the stairwell entrance, figuring the assassin would race down after him. It would take him considerably longer than Victor to reach the lobby, but still not long.

  The assassin would know that too, and he would also calculate that Victor knew it. Taking the stairs would be the fastest way down, but in doing so the assassin would have to take the risk that Victor was waiting for him. There were other safer ways to the ground floor that would take longer. If their roles were reversed, Victor wasn’t sure what he would do.

  He had no time to think about it further since he saw a group of men exit the hotel bar. They were all white, skins sunburned or shiny and starting to tan. The men were dressed as civilians but had the unmistakable bearing of military types. Victor knew they were Russians even before he heard them speak.

  A couple of them glanced his way, but the others didn’t pay Victor any attention. Some carried rucksacks and looked weary from travel, while the rest seemed fresher. They’d obviously travelled separately in two groups to avoid suspicion. It made sense. It was the largest hotel in town and close to the port. Tourists were commonplace here, making it t
he ideal location to remain anonymous.

  Any desire Victor had to wait and ambush the assassin disappeared now that there were seven, most likely armed, Russian soldiers in the lobby. The new arrivals started walking towards the elevator. Victor headed straight for the exit at a measured pace, just a guest hurrying on his way into town. A few of the Russians looked his way but nothing more. The ones without rucksacks congregated in the centre of the lobby.

  As Victor passed the first group he hoped none of the seven had been involved in the St Petersburg’s incident. They would have seen that photo Norimov mentioned. If they had and Victor was recognized, he wouldn’t have much chance of escaping. He approached the middle of the lobby, veering to the right to avoid the Russians, estimating there had been enough time for the assassin to reach the bottom of the stairs. But the door remained closed.

  The assassin clearly had something else in mind.

  *

  Reed made his way down the stairwell, taking deep, quick breaths as anger threatened to explode through his calm exterior. Tesseract was alive. Reed had failed to kill him. He had survived the bomb. No, Tesseract had found the trap and set it off to fool Reed into thinking he had been successful. The Englishman’s teeth ground together. He remembered thinking of Tesseract as an amateur, but if Tesseract was an amateur, what did that make Reed?

  Reed could not remember the last time he had lost his temper, but now he felt the purest rage. Tesseract had beaten him, made a fool of him. Reed needed vindication.

  He knew he would never beat the elevator to the lobby, and, if he took the stairs to the ground floor, Tesseract would be waiting to ambush him. Reed had no intentions of rushing into a trap.

  He reached the third floor and entered the corridor. He quickly moved towards a window at the opposite end that he knew would give him a perfect vantage point. It overlooked the street outside the front of the hotel, and from that position Reed could wait for Tesseract to emerge from the main entrance and place two hollow points into the back of his skull.

  Reed ejected the half-empty magazine from the Glock, the muscles in his jaw flexing periodically beneath the skin. He had never experienced emotion towards a target before, but now it overwhelmed him. Reed turned his head, hearing a door opening behind him, and saw the target he was in Tanzania to kill enter the corridor from his room. He was heading for the elevator when he looked Reed’s way and spotted the gun in Reed’s hand.

  Sykes backed off, wide eyed, open-mouthed, retreating inside his room.

  Reed placed the ejected mag in a pocket, reloaded a full one. He opened the window and stood with the Glock out before him, aiming at where he expected Tesseract to appear.

  In his peripheral vision he saw one of the target’s hulking hirelings emerge from same room where the target had just fled to. He moved well, fast, a pistol clutched in both hands, held down, and to the side, the safety grip people are trained to use to stop them shooting someone by mistake. The downside was that it took an extra split second to acquire a target.

  Without moving his head Reed shot the guy twice in the chest. The impact sent him tumbling backwards, deflecting off the wall before hitting the floor as a dead man.

  Reed re-established his aim on the street outside and waited patiently. It would have taken seconds to kick the target’s door open and fulfil the contract, but that would give Tesseract enough time to escape. Reed did not care about the job he was in Tanga to complete. He cared only about the man he had failed to kill. The man who had beaten him. He cared only about winning.

  He cared only about killing Tesseract.

  Two floors above, Aniskovach regained consciousness and pulled himself to his feet. Each breath was agony. He pressed his left hand against a wall for support while his right found the bullet embedded in his armoured vest. He checked underneath for blood, but the bullet hadn’t gone through the other side.

  The SVR colonel had always been a cautious man, but after coming close to death in St Petersburg Aniskovach had adopted a safety-first approach to operations. Despite the pain, it felt good to be alive. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been out for but hoped there was still time. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone.

  The ringtone echoed throughout the lobby. It was some novelty tune that, if circumstances were not so perilous, would have made Victor frown. He saw one of the Russians reach into a pocket of his jacket to answer. Victor walked past, feeling the urge to increase his pace. The exit was directly ahead. He was so close.

  The Russian answered the phone and a second later looked Victor’s way. Victor saw the reflection of the man’s face in the glass windows before him.

  It took the Russian another second before drawing the breath into his lungs to shout, but Victor was already running. Two seconds to cover the distance to the main entrance, another to get through the door. Three more to reach cover outside. Six seconds. Too long if any of the Russians had a gun within quick reach. He would be dead with bullets in his back long before he reached safety. The bar was less than half the distance. He sprinted towards it.

  The other Russians were slow to react to the unexpected commotion, and he reached and was through the bar entrance before he heard movement behind him – more shouting, the sound of bags opening, the metallic reverberation of weapons being drawn.

  Victor dodged round the tables and chairs, making his way to the far end of the long room. He heard a Russian chasing after him, not as agile as he – knocking into tables, spilling drinks – but still fast.

  Victor pushed open a service door at the far end of the bar and ran down the corridor on the other side. He headed for the kitchen, charging into the swing door, knocking it aside.

  The kitchen was even busier than before, full of noise, steam, heat. The narrow walkways between work surfaces were blocked with people.

  Victor backtracked, knowing he wouldn’t be able to force his way through before the Russians caught up and filled the kitchen with lead. Either that or he would give them the time to head him off.

  He emerged back into the corridor to see the pursuing Russian sprinting toward him. Victor’s sudden appearance surprised him, and for a split second he hesitated. Victor didn’t.

  He dashed forward, timing his attack so that the heel of his shoe connected with the running man’s stomach at the apex of the kick’s force.

  The Russian gasped, doubled over. Victor grabbed him by the shoulders and sent his head crashing into the closest wall. There was a dull crack of plaster, and the Russian’s head bounced backward. He stumbled, arms flailing.

  Victor leaped at him while he was dazed, driving his elbow into the Russian’s face, and the man collapsed silently.

  He heard a noise, wasn’t sure where it originated, but drew the Browning and fired two shots at the door leading to the bar. Victor didn’t wait to see if he’d been right and started for an adjoining corridor.

  Automatic fire tore through the bar door. Victor was already jumping out of the trajectory as bullets struck the walls and floor, blowing wood, plaster, and dust into the air.

  He scrambled back to his feet, and a second later he was racing up the same stairwell he’d ascended earlier. Going up when he needed to get out was a bad idea, but his first two avenues of escape had been cut off and he needed another.

  He moved fast but cautiously, gun held out straight before him, always in sync with where he looked. The Russians were below him, and the assassin above.

  Trapped.

  Sykes stood in the centre of his hotel room completely still, gaze locked on the door, the SIG clutched tightly in one sweaty hand. The sound of gunshots echoed around the room. He’d never been more afraid in his life.

  One minute he’d been on his way to the bar to get a drink and the next he was staring at a seriously mean-looking guy with a gun. Wiechman, like an idiot, had charged out, gun in hand, to see what was happening. Then there had been the sound of silenced shots and the definite thump of a heavy man-sized object hitting the deck.


  After that, there had been no more noise for what seemed liked minutes. Sykes wasn’t sure how long. He stood staring at the door, waiting for the guy with the gun to come and kill him.

  Something crazy was going on, and Sykes was caught right in the middle.

  A horrible realization started to take shape in Sykes’s mind. The man with the gun had recognized him.

  No, it couldn’t be.

  Dalweg burst into the room, and in his panic Sykes almost shot him. Dalweg’s face was twisted with anger.

  ‘Jack’s dead,’ he spat. ‘What the fuck is going down in this place?’

  Sykes was about to say he didn’t know, but then more shooting started.

  Reed heard the commotion in the lobby seconds after the moment when he judged Tesseract should have reached the street outside. He lowered his arm, turned, and headed away from the window and down the corridor. The sound of unsuppressed automatic fire echoed from below. A submachine gun by the high cyclic rate. Bizon probably.

  The Englishman did a quick evaluation of the circumstances. The man Tesseract had been assaulting in the elevator clearly had friends, and those friends were armed and now after Tesseract. Reed remembered the foreigners in the bar. Russians. Why they were here in Tanzania Reed did not know, and neither did he have any interest in knowing. What did interest him was that they were trying to kill Tesseract and were interfering in his own attempt to do so. If they continued to, which was likely, they would find themselves between Reed’s gun sights. Reed would allow nothing to get between him and his adversary, and he would allow no one but himself to make the kill. Reed was the best. He had to prove that. If someone else killed Tesseract before Reed, his own life would continue on as a mere shadow of its former existence.

  The Russians had prevented Tesseract from leaving through the main entrance. The only logical avenue of escape from the lobby would therefore be the hotel bar. That would lead him to the kitchen and the service stairwell.