Hollow Point

by Robert Swartwood

  “Let me see your phone.”

  Tweedledee says, “Why?”

  “Let me see the fucking phone right now.”

  Louis’s focus is on Tweedledee, and Tweedledee’s focus is on Louis, which means the only person’s focus still on me at the moment is Tweedledum.

  Which is why I decide to kill him first.

  As Tweedledee steps forward to hand his phone to Louis, I pull back the bolt to load the only round into the chamber.

  Tweedledum shouts, “What the fuck are you doing?”

  I smile at him, all nice and sweet.

  “You missed your chance to kiss the bullet for good luck. Now it’s pissed.”

  I swing the Valkyrie around, so it’s aimed at his chest.

  And pull the trigger.

  Forty-Three

  Due to the caliber and the close proximity, it’s like Tweedledum’s hit by a rocket—he flies back against the wall, instantly dead, his pistol falling from his hand.

  I turn toward Louis and swing the Valkyrie at his face, and the suppressor clips his cheek as he tries to duck, the fob falling from his hand.

  I pivot toward Tweedledee, jumping on the bed and springing at him as he raises his Beretta. He manages to fire off a round, which zings above my head, as I tackle him to the floor. The back of his head smacks against the wall, and his eyes cross momentarily. The gun is still in his hand, and I grab for it when lightning strikes and I jump back and hit the floor, shaking with all the electricity coursing my body.

  I’m half-aware of Louis standing over me, the fob in his hand. Half aware that he has his cell phone to his ear, shouting, “I need you two up here, now!”

  My focus right now is on Tweedledum, lying dead close by, and the Beretta that fell from his hand—the Beretta I’m right now trying to move toward, on my back, pushing myself across the carpet like a snail.

  Louis’s face looms over me, his eyes aflame with anger. He keeps his finger on the fob, pressed as hard as it will go, and he probably intends on holding the fob like that until the two other freelancers arrive.

  “Stupid bitch. Stupid, stupid bitch.”

  He spits the words at me, then pauses long enough to glance over at Tweedledee.

  “Get the fuck up.”

  Tweedledee moans in response.

  Louis grunts another curse—“Fuck it”—and starts to lean down to grab Tweedledee’s gun.

  That’s when, with the lightning still streaking through my body as I continue to crawl on the carpet, I stretch and lunge and feel the Beretta, just the grip with the tips of my fingers, so close but so far away.

  Louis, realizing my intention, scrambles to grab Tweedledee’s gun first—but by then I’ve managed to take possession of Tweedledum’s Beretta, and I have the sight aimed at Louis, right at the spot between his eyes.

  I pull the trigger.

  His head snaps back. His body falls to the carpet. His finger releases the fob, and that constant lightning bolt racing through me fades away.

  I start to stand when the door is kicked open. A Hispanic man rushes into the room, a suppressed pistol in hand. He instantly scans the room and searches out the most prominent threat. Takes him half a second to realize the threat is me.

  He fires at me as I dive across the bed, firing back at him. One of my bullets clips him in the shoulder, but he barely reacts, his feet planted firmly on the floor, tracking me with his pistol. He shoots again as I fall to the floor between the beds. Flat on the carpet now, I aim at the man’s feet beneath the bed.

  Getting clipped in the shoulder may not have done much, but shattering his ankle is another story.

  The man grunts in pain, tries to retreat into the hallway, but loses balance and falls to his knee. Before he can stand back up, I’ve already jumped to my feet and placed two bullets in his head.

  I approach him slowly, this man I’ve never seen before, this man who I somehow know is a professional, the kind that works alone, not like the freelancers in this hotel room. Speaking of which …

  Tweedledee’s still alive. The wall he’s leaning against is wet with blood. He probably hit his head in the right spot that there’s already brain damage and he’ll eventually bleed out. It’d be cruel to keep him alive, and I don’t consider myself a cruel person.

  One bullet puts him out of his misery.

  Taking a deep breath, I survey the room and make sure Louis and the two freelancers and the hitter are all down for good. Have to figure somebody on this floor has already called the front desk or even 911 directly, so time’s wasting.

  I grab Tweedledee’s phone off the floor, shove it in my pocket. I search Louis for the key to the collar; put that in my pocket, too, along with the fob.

  Tweedledum’s Beretta is almost empty. I toss it aside as I bend to pick up Tweedledee’s pistol and check the magazine. Fully loaded.

  I peek out into the hallway. Someone has their door open down near the elevator. Nobody to be concerned about, just a random hotel guest, doing that stupid thing people do when they hear gunfire and so they want to poke their heads out like nobody will shoot at them too.

  The elevator door opens. One of the freelancers steps out. He already has his gun in hand. He spots me down at the end of the hallway. The hotel guest’s head disappears as he slams the door shut. The freelancer moves forward without even giving the guest a second’s thought.

  The door to the stairs is off to my right. Only a couple yards away.

  I step out into the hallway and begin walking backward toward the stairwell door, firing at the freelancer.

  The freelancer returns fire, and the wall by my head spits plaster.

  A second later I reach the door and push into it with my back, and that’s when I hear the frantic footsteps coming up and turn to see the second freelancer a half flight down. When he sees me, he raises his gun.

  I step into the stairwell, let the door fall shut, and fire down at the freelancer. He has no cover and goes down in a second, the single gunshot echoing against the brick walls.

  I don’t move for a beat, trying to recalibrate, to catch my breath, knowing that right now there’s the freelancer out in the hallway but also knowing there might be others.

  Who sent the pro?

  Five seconds pass. Ten seconds.

  I keep the Beretta trained on the door, waiting for it to burst open. By now the freelancer has probably checked the hotel room, found all the dead bodies, and figured that his buddy is dead, too. Otherwise, his buddy would have called out to him. The freelancer might be standing on the other side of the door, debating what to do next.

  After another five seconds, I decide I can’t wait any longer. I start down the steps. Taking them at an angle, so my gun is aimed at the door. Stepping over the dead freelancer and continuing down.

  Keeping the gun in hand, I dig the key from my pocket and I use my finger to feel for the tiny latch on the collar. Once I find it, I tear the collar from my neck but don’t fling it aside. Instead, I stuff it in my back pocket, along with the key, and then pull out Tweedledee’s phone.

  I punch in Atticus’s number and wait for the automated voice saying it’s Scout Dry Cleaning.

  “It’s me. Call me back on this number.”

  Atticus calls back thirty seconds later, as I’m heading down to the second floor. By then an alarm has sounded, not the fire alarm but an emergency siren. The door on the second level opens. It’s a man and woman and three kids, the kids shouting and their parents telling them to stay quiet.

  I slip the Beretta in the waistband of my jeans. My T-shirt’s not that baggy, and I hope nobody in their panic notices the slight bulge.

  Atticus says, “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. What about my family?”

  “They’re safe. Where are you?”

  More people have filed into the stairwell. A few families but mostly business people wearing business clothes.

  “We’re evacuating the hotel right now.”

  Someone b
ehind me says, “I heard there was a shooting.”

  Another person says, “I thought it was a fire.”

  One of the kids ahead of us, a little girl, starts screaming, “Are we going to die?”

  In my ear, Atticus’s calm voice says, “Have you eliminated all of your captors?”

  Captors. That’s one way of putting it.

  “Almost.”

  “What does almost mean?”

  “It means almost.”

  The alarm keeps going, echoing in the stairwell just like that single gunshot. We reach the first floor and pile into the lobby. The staff directs everybody to go outside. Police cars have already arrived, officers jumping out of the cars with their guns in hand.

  Atticus says, “Holly?”

  “Hold on.”

  The morning air feels good on my skin as we file outside. I scan the sidewalk and the street, searching for the freelancer. If he’s made it out, I figure he’ll try to disappear. That would be the smart thing to do.

  Turns out the guy isn’t smart.

  He’s standing across the street, on the fringe of a crowd that’s started to grow, watching everybody exit the hotel.

  I hurry over to one of the cops sliding a Kevlar vest over his head.

  “Officer? That guy over there—the one across the street—I saw him inside with a gun!”

  The freelancer seems surprised that I’m blatantly pointing him out.

  The cop, already on high alert, snaps his focus to the crowd across the street.

  “Who? Where?”

  I point.

  “There!”

  The freelancer turns away and starts walking down the block, which is the last thing you want to do when somebody’s pointing a police officer in your direction.

  The cop doesn’t say anything else to me. He starts running, shouting at another cop nearby, who also starts running. The freelancer, realizing he’s been made, starts running, too.

  I drift away from the crowd as more police cars arrive. A fire truck is headed down the street, blaring its horn. I head in the direction the two cops went. They’ve disappeared around a corner. I hear shouts, then gunfire. I pick up my pace, worried that the freelancer has taken out the cops, but when I turn the corner, prepared to grab the Beretta, both officers are still standing and the freelancer is on the ground. Dead.

  I say into the phone, “Okay, I think that’s all of them.”

  Atticus releases a breath, like he’s been holding it this entire time.

  “Where are you now?”

  I check the street sign and tell him.

  Atticus says, “I can make a call and have somebody pick you up in five minutes.”

  I keep walking down the street as two more police cars zoom past headed in the opposite direction.

  “Not yet. This isn’t quite over.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was brought here to assassinate President Cortez.”

  Atticus releases another breath.

  “Yes, I suspected it was him.”

  “He’s supposed to arrive at a hotel a couple blocks away any minute now.”

  Hurrying down the sidewalk, I spot two crowds outside the hotel, one close to the entrance and one across the street. The one across the street has signboards and are chanting.

  Protestors.

  Atticus says, “I can make another call. Make sure he’s alerted.”

  I pause.

  “How many friends in high places do you have?”

  “It depends. What are you thinking?”

  I tell him. He’s quiet for a moment, then sighs again.

  “I’m not sure the plan is realistic.”

  “He has people inside his cabinet who are working against him. It’s the only way Hayward and his people knew about the change in schedule.”

  “There are other ways they could have learned about the change in schedule.”

  “Call it a gut feeling, Atticus. Somebody close to him is dirty. There’s only one way to sniff them out.”

  Atticus doesn’t speak for another moment.

  “I can make a call, but I can’t make any promises. Besides, what makes you think President Cortez will even give you the time of day?”

  As I join the crowd outside the hotel entrance, I think about the night just outside La Miserias, in Fernando Sanchez Morales’s mansion, stepping into the master bedroom to find Morales’s wife and son cowering in the corner while the man known as the Devil stood over them.

  “Trust me, Atticus. He’ll want to hear what I have to say.”

  Forty-Four

  President Eduardo Cortez sat in the back of the armored SUV. He watched the tall buildings slide by outside the window and tried not to yawn.

  He wasn’t successful.

  Imna Rodriguez, his closest aide and confidant, smirked at him.

  “Try not to do that once we get there.”

  “Is that your professional advice?”

  “It’s what I get paid for.”

  Cortez smiled and shifted his focus out his window again. Their entourage consisted of two other armored SUVs—one leading them, one tailing them—as well as a handful of police cars. One of his bodyguards sat in the passenger seat up front, while his other security detail rode in the other vehicles. The middle seat in the SUV had been taken out and flipped around so it faced the rear back seat; Imna sat in this front seat facing him.

  They’d left LAX a half hour ago and would be arriving at the hotel soon. And then, after a brief speech and a photo op with the state’s governor, it would be back to the airport to continue on to Canada.

  “Tell me again why we needed to squeeze this trip in?”

  Imna was ten years his junior though she sometimes treated him like she was his mother. She adjusted her glasses as she frowned at him.

  “It’s good PR.”

  “For the governor, maybe. Not sure the President of the United States appreciates it.”

  Imna shrugged.

  “You win some, you lose some.”

  Cortez yawned again. He couldn’t help it.

  Imna said, “Why are you so tired, anyway?”

  “I haven’t been able to sleep the past couple days.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He was lying, of course. Cortez trusted Imna with practically everything—every little secret—but not the truth about his son … though he sometimes wondered if she knew, deep down inside, like a few of his other aides. Many of them had access to the same intelligence reports he did. While Alejandro was never publicly named as the one targeting cartel families—called El Diablo by the news media and the rest of the nation—many suspected it was his son. Only Cortez knew for sure. He knew that his son had been out there, still alive, hunting down the wives and children of the cartel families, and while he didn’t approve of such means, he certainly hadn’t gone out of his way to stop his son.

  And then it was over. Almost a year ago this week. A skirmish outside a small town an hour south of Culiacán. A cartel head and his men murdered. While the cartel head’s wife and son were unharmed—though he knew two people had intervened at the last second, a woman and man who took his son’s body away. That was all they managed to get from the cartel head’s wife. She had been so frightened she could barely describe them more than that.

  The driver answered his cell phone, listened for a few seconds, then said they would be making a detour.

  Imna asked, “What’s going on?”

  “There’s an ongoing incident a couple blocks away from the hotel. The police want us to steer clear.”

  At the next intersection, the convoy made a right. Soon they were speeding down a side street, and Cortez leaned forward to look out the other window but couldn’t see much except a fire truck headed in the opposite direction on another street, and then the convoy turned at the next intersection.

  The driver said, “Almost there.”

  Imna sighed when she spotted the protestors. T
here looked to be fifty of them, maybe more. Along with a few news vans parked along the street and a few other police cars and a friendlier crowd gathered around the hotel’s entrance.

  Cortez smiled, always one to try to make the best out of a bad situation.

  “Quite the welcoming party.”

  Imna eyed him hesitantly.

  “Maybe we should have skipped this event, after all.”

  He shrugged and smiled again.

  “We’re already here. Canceling now would be rude.”

  “What would be rude is yawning in front of the governor. Try not to do that.”

  “I won’t make any promises.”

  The SUV halted in front of the hotel. The bodyguard stepped out and waited for the security detail to move into position before he opened the back door. Shouts could be heard outside—the friendlier crowd near the hotel as well as boos and chants from the protestors across the street.

  Cortez waited for Imna to exit first, as she always did, but she was now staring down at her cell phone.

  He said, “Ready?”

  She glanced up at him, her fingers tapping at the phone.

  “I have to answer this email. I’ll be right behind you.”

  He nodded and slid out of his seat and stepped outside. Both crowds became even louder, a raucous noise, and he thought it might be funny if he were to yawn right now, in front of everyone, but then he imagined the photos that would stream across the Internet and cable news and how Imna would be furious with him.

  Cortez waved to the people near the entrance as he followed his security detail toward the open doors. He ignored the boos and chants across the street and some of the people on this side calling out his name—a skill he’d perfected over the years, just filter the noise from his mind and focus on the task at hand—and he only paused when a new name managed to push through all the rest, a name he’d been thinking about for the past couple days but one he didn’t expect to hear this morning.

  Somebody was shouting his son’s name.

  Forty-Five

  At first I’m not sure he hears me, what with everybody shouting and the crowd across the street chanting and booing, but then his stride starts to slow, and he turns my way, searching the crowd, until he spots me.