Out of Range: A Novel

by Hank Steinberg

  The bald man advanced, firing steadily. His barrage quickly smashed a hole in the far side of the brick. Charlie knew that if he didn’t do something soon, one of those bullets would crack all the way through and put a hole in his head.

  The young woman was huddled against the wall in an almost fetal crouch, hands covering her ears as she whimpered and prayed, trying to take up as little space as possible. Then the housekeeper appeared, poking her head nervously out of another room.

  “Get back!” Charlie screamed.

  Three more rounds smacked into the column, sending a spray of glass chips in his face.

  Charlie stuck the gun out and fired several shots, intentionally aiming for the ceiling so as not to hit the young woman. It was enough to send the bald man lunging for cover.

  For a moment, there was something like silence. A brief stalemate.

  But Charlie knew reinforcements were bound to be on the way. As soon as they got here, they’d surround him, cut him off, and he’d be dead meat.

  He eyed the abandoned laundry cart left by the housekeeper. It was only eight or ten feet away. Charlie poked his gun out again and fired, hoping to draw a fusillade of bullets in return.

  The plan worked. Maybe a little too well. Shards of glass flew off the column, cutting Charlie’s arms and face. He closed his eyes, thinking it might be better if he didn’t go blind.

  And then there was something like silence. Silence and gasping sobs. Underneath those sobs, Charlie heard a clink—the sound of a magazine dropping to the floor. The bald man was reloading.

  This was Charlie’s only chance.

  He dove across the hallway, grabbed the cart’s cracked plastic handle and charged toward his foe, using the cart for cover.

  The bald man got off two shots and dodged to his left—to avoid being run down.

  Charlie redirected the cart, giving himself a clear shot.

  For a frozen moment he saw the gleaming bald head just behind his sights. He fired once and the man staggered against the wall, a round hole in his cheek. As his adversary lifted his gun to retaliate, Charlie squeezed the trigger again.

  The lumpy figure slid down the wall and hit the floor with a heavy thud.

  “Why is this happening?” the traumatized woman stammered.

  Charlie scrambled over to her and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Go back to your room. Lock the door and don’t come out.”

  As she scurried away, averting her eyes from the dead man on the floor, Charlie ducked into the room where the housekeeper had disappeared. He found her speaking rapidly into the phone.

  “Hang up!” he said. When she hesitated, he raised his gun to her. “Hang up.”

  She dropped the phone.

  “I need you to take me to the fifth floor,” he said, “to the room just above the presidential suite.”

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  Two minutes later, Charlie was walking onto the balcony of room 504 on the top floor of the hotel. The small patio was flanked by two pillars that rose from the larger balcony of the presidential suite below. The scalloped design of the pillars created a ladderlike projection that made it suitable for climbing. If he managed to scale down it, he could come straight into the suite and catch Julie’s guards by surprise.

  That was the plan anyway.

  Charlie holstered his gun and began descending the pillar. The concrete was slippery in the driving rain and sharp gusts of wind clawed at him. Hearing a cry below, he couldn’t help glancing down to see if he had been spotted. As it turned out, it was just the call of someone in the Square hailing a friend. But looking down, he felt his head spin and for a moment he froze.

  He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and tried to think of Julie’s face. After a few seconds, he opened his eyes and began shimmying slowly down the pillar, putting his foot on top of the railing. A few more feet and he would be there. But as he lowered himself, he felt his holster snag on one of the scalloped protrusions from the pillar, tugging and twisting him.

  He felt something dislodge from his hip and looked over the edge just in time to see his pistol wheeling toward the ground below and smashing on the flagstones.

  He’d lost his gun.

  Julie sat on the couch by the piano, her breath rapid and her hands trembling as she listened for a radio update about the gunfire. The rain was pounding hard outside and a bank of televisions on the other side of the suite played international news and finance shows, making it hard to hear the chaotic reports coming over Quinn’s radio. She could tell that Byko’s guards were still off balance, still searching for the men who’d attacked them from the roof.

  It must be MI6. Or the CIA. Or American Special Forces. They’d located Byko somehow and they were coming for him. Finally. She only hoped that if they came in here guns blazing, they’d take some care not to kill her in the cross fire. She looked around the room, searching for a place to dive for cover if and when they came crashing through the door.

  Quinn signed off on the radio and sat down about ten feet away, pistol in his lap, arrogantly paring an apple with a small curved knife. The knife looked wickedly sharp and he seemed to delight in the thinness of the slices he was making.

  “So they’re coming,” she said.

  He looked at her with amusement.

  “What’s so funny?” she demanded.

  Suddenly, there was a crackle on Quinn’s radio and a Russian voice.

  “Eto tuzh,” the voice said. “On odnoy.”

  Her heart skipped a beat. Had she heard that correctly?

  “It’s the husband. And he’s alone.” That was how she translated it.

  The husband? Charlie?

  Her heart was racing. But Byko had said . . . had he lied to her? Just to torment her? Why hadn’t she thought of that before? Why had she assumed he was telling her the truth?

  Another crackle from the radio. “Markov’s shot. Nanzer’s dead.”

  And Charlie had killed them? She knew that Charlie had grown up around guns, that his father was a hunter, his uncle a cop, that he had an aggressive, competitive side. But this? Gunning down trained mercenaries? For a moment, she dismissed the idea, certain that she had misheard them. But if she had heard correctly, who else could they have meant when they said, “the husband”?

  She watched Quinn closely, trying to read him. “No,” he said in Russian. “Byko doesn’t need to know about any of this.”

  He put down his walkie-talkie and looked at her. “He really does have a soft spot. For both of you.”

  She looked at him impassively, seeing him perhaps for the first time as a fellow human being. “How can you do this? How can you be a part of this?”

  He smiled thinly. “I wonder if Charlie really thinks he’s going to be able to get past all of my guards. I have to confess, it would offer me a certain amount of closure if he did find his way here. I regretted not finishing him off in Los Angeles and now here he is causing all kinds of trouble.”

  Quinn pared off a slice of apple and crunched it in his mouth.

  Suddenly, Julie saw motion behind Quinn. Something outside, something moving on the other side of the French doors. Not something. Someone.

  A rain-drenched man in a baseball cap.

  Standing there in the downpour, Charlie could scarcely believe it. There was Julie. No more than twenty yards away, the only thing standing between them . . . John Quinn.

  His eyes found their way to hers and in that brief instant something electric passed between them. Something primitive and essential. An agreement that they would survive this. An agreement that somehow, some way, they would find a way out of this.

  A radio crackled and Quinn picked it up.

  “There’s someone on the balcony,” the voice said.

  Charlie flattened himself against the wall just to the right of the French doors. It was a blind spot where Quinn couldn’t see him.

  “What are you talking about?” Quinn barked into the radio. He was holding the knife and the apple and
the radio, looking like he needed a third hand.

  “We’re at the front door. We saw a gun fall from up near the—I think there’s somebody up there.”

  “Up where?” Quinn shouted as he moved toward the balcony.

  Julie had to do something to distract him.

  But Quinn was a quick man. And the instant he saw Julie bolting away, he grabbed her ponytail and yanked her ferociously to the floor.

  As Charlie smashed through the door, the world seemed to slow down. He was a good five strides from Quinn and he threw himself across the room as hard as he’d ever run, aiming his right shoulder at a spot in the middle of the man’s back.

  Quinn, hearing the sound of the door shattering, whirled to meet him, a gun appearing—seemingly from out of nowhere—in his hand.

  SLAM!

  They smashed into the piano with a thunder of jangling bass notes then slammed to the floor, Quinn’s gun slipping from his grasp and disappearing under a cabinet.

  Finding himself on top of Quinn, Charlie pounded him in the side of the head.

  Not bothering to deflect the blows, Quinn wrapped his arms around Charlie, bucked his hips and threw Charlie onto his back. Pressing Charlie to the floor, Quinn methodically hammered away at him, grunting in satisfaction as Charlie tried to cover his face with his arms. When he tired of punching Charlie’s face and arms, he hammered on his ribs. Then, as Charlie dropped his elbows to protect his ribs, Quinn pounded away at Charlie’s head again. Charlie tried to grab Quinn or throw him off, but he simply couldn’t break through the barrage of expert punches.

  As yet another blow sneaked past his guard and clipped him on the temple, Charlie’s vision dimmed. He was still conscious, but this couldn’t go on much longer.

  Julie lay stunned on the floor. In the back of her mind she recalled someone drawing a gun. There had been a loud noise and now there was a lot of grunting and cursing coming from the other side of the room. But her mind felt blank and empty and cold, as though she were a spectator inside an empty, echoing ice rink.

  What was happening here? The noise on the other side of the room seemed disconnected from the cottony emptiness of her mind. She lay on the hard floor and stared at the water stain on the ceiling above her. It was a brown stain, darker at the margins than in the center, and vaguely resembled a cartoon character whose name she couldn’t quite bring to mind.

  Caspar the friendly ghost? No. The Michelin Man? No, not him either. Was it—

  The grunting and cursing grew louder. She felt a burst of irritation at the interruption. Then, as though her unconcern was peeling away, she began to feel anxious. If her mind could only focus. She sat up slowly and looked at the source of the noise.

  Two men. Quinn and Charlie. Quinn sat on Charlie’s chest, smiling as he pummeled him into oblivion.

  And then it all came rushing back. The container, Quinn, the waterboarding, Charlie’s assault on the hotel . . . the fog began to clear. Charlie had come to save her and now he was getting beaten to death for his trouble.

  Summoning all her remaining strength, she pushed herself to her feet. On wobbly legs, she grabbed hold of a table to keep from collapsing. The room was spinning.

  Thud. Thud. Thud. The steady, awful impact of the blows was the only sound.

  Quinn’s back was to her, but what could she do? Pull him off of Charlie? She was too small. And she could barely stand.

  Then she saw the answer. A thin, slightly curved knife sticking out of an apple. She moved to it slowly, grabbed it like an ice pick and staggered toward the two struggling men on the floor. She knew that if Quinn sensed her behind him, he would snap her neck in two. It didn’t matter. Whatever might happen to her, she was not going to let Charlie die here like this.

  Julie managed two more strides and as her legs gave out, she launched herself toward Quinn, bringing her arm down in what seemed like a terribly long, terribly slow arc.

  Peering through the gap between his elbows, Charlie saw a flash of brown hair, then felt a thump.

  Quinn leaned forward and stared intently at Charlie, as though he had something important to say. Then a drop of blood ran slowly down his tongue and fell into the middle of Charlie’s chest. Charlie waited for another hammer fist. But Quinn seemed unable—or unwilling—to move.

  Charlie seized the moment and rolled him over, putting his hands around Quinn’s neck. The mercenary flailed his arms wildly as Charlie squeezed the life out of him. A kind of recognition passed into the killer’s eyes as his mouth moved, trying to say something. But no sound passed from his lips. And then the struggle was over.

  Quinn’s eyes were still open, staring up at Charlie. But Quinn—the essential Quinn, the predatory and unconquerable Quinn—was gone and all that remained was a mild, childlike stare.

  Slowly Charlie forced his cramped hands to relax. Exhausted and emptied, he sat back on the floor and found Julie.

  She was kneeling five feet away, exhausted and woozy, her hand clutching a small curved knife, its blade slick with blood.

  Charlie looked at Quinn again and saw a sheet of blood pooling under his back. He’d been stabbed in the neck.

  Julie had saved Charlie’s life.

  Charlie pulled her to her feet and wrapped his arms around her, a wave of relief and joy running through him.

  “You came!” Julie sobbed. “You came!”

  “I’m right here,” he whispered, never so glad to see her as in this moment.

  “He told me you were dead,” Julie whispered, “that he’d killed you.”

  The sound of her soft tears, the smell of her hair, the familiar feeling of her body pressed against his—it seemed as though it had been a million years since it had been like this between them.

  As his wife cried softly into his neck, Charlie felt as if he never wanted to let go. But there were still at least four of Byko’s guards in the building. Plus the man himself.

  “Where’s Byko?” he asked her.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I think he’s going to the Square.”

  The radio on the table crackled. “Quinn! Quinn, come in. Come in, Quinn.”

  “There’s more,” Charlie said. “We gotta get out of here.”

  He reached under the cabinet and grabbed Quinn’s Makarov.

  “Can you walk?” he asked her.

  She nodded, but as she tried to step forward on her own, her legs buckled.

  Charlie knew—after everything she’d been through—that she simply did not have the energy for what would now be required of them.

  But what was he supposed to do? Carry her? Hide her somewhere and come back for her later?

  He looked around the room as if that might provide him the answer. And then his eyes caught sight of something.

  Quinn’s kit.

  Charlie rushed toward it.

  “What are you doing?” Julie cried.

  He rummaged quickly through the box and found what he was looking for. But when he came toward her with a syringe, she recoiled in panic.

  “No! No no no!”

  “It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s me. It’s Charlie. It’s okay.”

  Once again, the radio crackled. “Quinn, come in, Quinn.”

  “This is adrenaline,” Charlie told her calmly. “It’ll give you what we need to get out of here.”

  She searched his eyes almost like a child.

  “It’s me,” he told her. “Trust me.”

  Chapter Sixty

  As Charlie and Julie sprinted down the fourth-floor hallway, Charlie heard the ding of the elevator.

  “This way!” he insisted and pulled her toward the stairwell.

  Looking over his shoulder as he opened the door, he saw several men exiting the elevator.

  “There!” one shouted.

  Charlie bounded through the door as Julie started to run down the stairs.

  “No,” he said, grabbing her arm. “Up.”

  They surmounted the stairs and Charlie pushed open the roof door, grabbi
ng Julie’s hand. They ran across the roof, through the driving rain, and clambered over onto the parking garage. Within seconds they had pounded through the deep puddles and arrived at the edge that led to the tenement on the other side.

  “We have to get to that building,” Charlie said.

  Julie looked across the alley and hesitated. It was a much easier jump from the hotel to the tenement than it had been from the other direction: there was a gap in the traffic barrier around the parking garage, allowing them to get a running start. And there was a small ledge on the other side extending out toward the hotel, shortening the leap to about four feet. But still, knowing all that she’d been through in the past few days, he still wasn’t sure if that shot of adrenaline would be enough.

  “Can you make it?” Charlie asked.

  They heard shouts behind them. Julie whipped her head around and saw Byko’s men coming.

  “Got no choice,” she said.

  She backed up a few steps, sprinted toward the other building, and leaped over the gap. She hit the ledge, rolled and bounced off the wall. She was about to tumble backward when she regained her balance and climbed through the window into the building.

  Behind him, Charlie heard a loud yell and a fusillade of shots. He hurled himself across the roof then dove through the half-open window on the other side.

  He found himself in a grim hallway that smelled of burned grease, bad plumbing and kerosene. Julie was already on the move. He caught up to her as she pushed open a stairway door and began charging two at a time down the stairs. From Makarov’s radio on his belt, Charlie could hear the guards shouting over the airwaves.

  “They’re in the tenement!” one voice called.

  Then another. “We’re coming over from the roof. We’re in the building behind them now.”

  Another voice. “They’re coming down the stairs.”

  The first voice. “We’ll cut them off from the street!”

  Charlie grabbed Julie as they hit the third floor. “Wait. They know we’re here.”