Primary Target: Six Assassins: Book 1

by Heskett, Jim

  He'd set his watch on the desk next to him, and he checked it every couple of minutes. A maximum of fifteen minutes from now, he would pack up and leave. No longer. It wasn't worth the extended exposure.

  In truth, he had until the end of the day tomorrow to kill Ember until he forfeited his turn. But he wanted it today. He had his target in the open, inviting him to kill her. He would never get this chance again.

  Xavier wondered, if he did fail, what the others in the Westminster Branch would think of him. Would they toss him out? Would they let it go? Would they have him killed in some sort of accident?

  None of that mattered. He wasn’t going to fail. He would eliminate Ember and then stroll into his Branch Post Office with his head held high.

  Xavier blinked a few times to refocus. When he did, he caught sight of Ember’s young recruit Gabe. The boy was moving north along the main mall, and he focused his eyes at someone. Ember. She was on a path coming from the south. Pointed in his direction. They turned toward each other, strolling as if they were two strangers enjoying the crisp air.

  “There we go,” he said, whispering into the empty office room. “Show me a clue about what you’re going to do.”

  Now, he glanced at his watch, and the time meant something. Because, if they had spotted his position, Gabe would disappear from sight. Xavier had calculated it would take the young recruit approximately four minutes to reach him up here in the office building.

  If that happened, that’s how long Xavier would have to kill Ember and exfiltrate from the building. Or, ambush Gabe when he arrived, and find a way to hold him hostage. Ember would get a direct bullet, or a bullet when she surrendered herself in exchange for her recruit. Either one was fine with Xavier.

  He had all the power. He had the leverage. He knew what they didn’t know.

  Xavier had studied both of their faces as they approached each other. Neither had been wearing earpieces or phone headsets, as far as he could see. That meant if they were going to exchange information, they would do it in a whisper as they passed each other.

  But, something peculiar happened. They didn’t talk. Each gave the other a little shake of the head, and then they went their separate ways. They continued on past each other.

  Interesting. They didn’t know where he was. Despite all their planning, they were flying blind out here.

  That meant Xavier could almost ignore Gabe. Not completely. But, he didn’t have to worry about the kid making a dash out of sight any time soon. Xavier could focus his energies on lining up a clear shot to Ember, and less about the kid. He still expected her to act as a distraction.

  If they did manage to find him now, they would execute their plan, as Xavier had overheard in Ember’s bugged car. Ember would draw his attention while Gabe circled around.

  And, after they passed each other, Gabe proceeded into a smoothie bar next to the athletic shoe place. Ember continued on toward the parking garage. Xavier hadn't expected that.

  She disappeared into the parking garage.

  A minute later, Gabe emerged with a smoothie in his hand. He sat down at a patio table and sipped his smoothie. Jacket zipped close, sunglasses covering his eyes. The young man checked his phone, crossed his legs, and settled into his chair.

  What the hell was he doing?

  Ember reappeared. She was on the third floor of the concrete parking garage. With its open design, Xavier could see into each floor via the sides. And he saw Ember, backing up, her hands at her waist, but flexed. She looked alert and alarmed.

  Because she was facing off against three men. The same three men Xavier had paid to beat Ember up a couple of days ago.

  But, Xavier hadn’t asked them to come here today.

  What were they doing? Had she planned this to make him take his eyes off Gabe?

  Xavier felt his pulse rise. “Steady,” he said to himself as he blinked away dryness in his eyes. “This chaos is probably by her design. They know you’re watching, so don’t let them rattle you.”

  He studied the young man. Still seated, still with sunglasses pointed off into the distance, sipping a smoothie. He checked his phone a couple more times. The fact that he did it twice in about thirty seconds gave Xavier pause.

  Back to Ember. As the three men in the parking garage circled her, she kept turning, waiting for one of them to come at her. Definitely the same three men. Why were they here?

  Xavier couldn’t get a clean shot. He checked his watch and grumbled. “What the hell is happening here?”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  EMBER

  Ember hunted for a space where she would be invisible to Xavier while she made her phone call. She had hoped the parking garage would give her a secluded space. But, it also messed with her cell reception, so she was walking around, holding the phone out, searching for more than one bar.

  Her breath hitched in her throat when the three men appeared in the parking garage. Normally, with the acoustics of the concrete, she should have heard them coming from far away. But, there was a three-piece bluegrass band playing outdoors on the mall today, and their echoing music warbled and distorted everything else she could hear.

  She didn’t know they were there until she caught one of them out of the corner of her eye. The same one who had clocked her with a baseball bat in the parking lot three days ago. She slipped her phone into her pocket and squared up against him.

  Today, he was carrying a knife. The second was unarmed, and the third held only a pair of brass knuckles. Comparatively, she worried most about the one with the knife, so she kept her eyes on him as they circled her. They stayed at a ten-foot radius, not close enough to strike.

  "If Xavier sent you," she said, "it's too late. I'm going to find him, and I'm going to kill him. There's nothing you can do to stop me. All you can do is slow me down. And, I promise you, I am not letting the three of you leave with functioning limbs this time. Who wants to be the first to lose a hand?”

  A quick glance at her watch told her she had less than ten minutes left before the deadline. If Xavier packed up and left, this was all for nothing.

  Knife Man shook his head. "I don't care about Xavier."

  “You don’t get to do what you did,” said the unarmed one, the big bruiser from the parking lot. She could see the cuts from the broken glass all over his face and neck. “Nobody treats us like that.”

  "You killed our friend Niles," Knife Man said, "and you need to be taught a lesson."

  “What lesson do you think you’re going to teach me?”

  “Some respect, for one,” he said.

  “Like I told you before, Niles was about to steal my contract. Not only that, he was going to wake up a whole campground full of civilians, too. I was defending my life and keeping our Club secret.”

  All three of them shook their heads. She knew there was no way she would change their minds because they had already chosen to believe a certain version of the facts. The only way out of this situation involved blood.

  She focused on Knife Man and decided to make one final appeal to reason. "You going to kill me right here, in this parking lot? There's no one else here now, but you see how many cars are nearby? Anyone could walk off that elevator or come up the stairs at any moment. Is it really worth it to expose our members and have a shootout with the police, just to get even with me?

  Knife Man grinned. He opened his mouth to answer. But, instead, he lunged forward with the knife. He split the distance between them in an instant.

  Ember pivoted just before he could strike, shifting to her right. As the arm with the knife punched out at her, she grabbed hold of the man’s wrist and gave it a twist to pull him off balance. He took a few stumbling steps to his right, now leaning to one side, poised to fall. That had bought her a couple seconds.

  Then, she drove him straight at the unarmed man, the closest one. She whipped out her blade and held it high. The knife plunged into his chest. Too high for a hit to the heart, but she could feel the blade scrape agains
t his collarbone. She tried to pluck the blade free before he staggered back but missed. A jet of blood came from the man's wound.

  She was now unarmed.

  Knife Man regained his balance and headed for her.

  She completed the move by giving the Knife Man a shove. He toppled into the stabbed one. That man now sank to the ground, wincing and clutching at his upper chest. She heard a crack when he hit. The wound wouldn’t be enough to kill him, but she could probably count him out of the rest of the fight with a broken collarbone.

  As she tried to turn around, something smacked her in the back of the head. She jerked her head to see the brass knuckles retracting. Vision instantly blurry, the back of her head pounding. Adrenaline would carry her through. It had to.

  Ember planted her feet and jumped a step back. She bumped into a Volkswagen. Fortunately, the alarm didn’t go off. She had to shake her head to clear the milky blurriness from her eyes.

  She planted her hands on the trunk and pushed off, then raced a few steps toward the other row of cars to take stock of the situation. Broken Collarbone Man showed no signs of getting up. He was on the floor, grimacing and holding both hands over his wound. The guy with the knife pushed himself up to his unsteady feet after retrieving his knife from the ground. And, Brass Knuckles Man was unharmed and racing straight toward her.

  “Guys,” she said, panting, her head still buzzing from the last punch, “I don’t have time for this.”

  Brass Knuckles Man reached her and reared back to swing. This exposed the left side of his body, and she lifted her leg to take advantage.

  Before she could, she noticed a fourth man standing nearby. Seriously? She thought. How many are there?

  But when she noticed who it was, she did a double-take.

  Charlie?

  He stepped forward just as Brass Knuckles Man began his downswing. Charlie’s hands worked quickly, smacking and hitting with hard, open palms. He jabbed a few times into the man’s side, hitting him and bringing him to the ground.

  Ember was taken aback. “What are you doing? Charlie, why are you here?”

  The older man was breathing steadily but didn't seem out of breath. He turned a quick circle, waiting for the other two men to attack, standing next to Ember.

  “I heard they were coming,” he said. “Interrupting your week, making it easier for Xavier to kill you.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not against the rules, apparently.”

  “That’s just it — it used to be. Back in the day, these sorts of things were kept to two assassins. An even fight."

  “Thanks, Charlie,” she said, eyeing the thugs as they all caught their breath. She’d never seen Charlie fight, but she knew he had the most important characteristic needed in their line of work: experience. So far, that experience seemed to be paying off.

  “I can’t get involved with you and Xavier, but I can at least make sure these idiots don’t do his job for him.”

  She nodded just as two of the men rushed her. She dodged the first, then swung an uppercut that caught the second man just below the chin. He grunted in pain but kept moving. He swung a fist in retaliation, but Charlie was there to catch it. He opened his own fist and guided the man's hand up and out of harm's way, then landed two quick jabs with his left hand into the man's gut.

  Ember focused on the man who had dodged her — the guy with the knife. He had it held in his right hand in a modified saber grip. It told her two things: this man knew what he was doing, and he had probably practiced close-quarters knife combat before. It also told her that he was no longer interested in slowing her down — he wanted to do her serious harm.

  She took in a breath, held it, and attacked. She had no knife, and she figured he'd be better prepared with one anyway, so she needed to bring the knife to him, to make him use it in a way that he wasn't as comfortable with. She ducked forward and up, aiming at his knife hand with her fists. She hit it, knocking his arm backward long enough to follow up with a hard, solid headbutt to the man's nose.

  It exploded in a rain of blood, but he was still on his feet. He swung once, wide, and she sidestepped it easily. She took a half-second to see what the guy with brass knuckles was doing. He was standing by, hands on his knees. No doubt catching his breath while his teammates fought.

  Charlie's own battle with his assassin was still moving along, but it seemed Charlie wasn't even breaking a sweat. It was incredible to watch — the man was probably twice the thug's age, and he was making quick work of taking him down. They grappled for a moment; then the younger man threw Charlie off of him.

  Charlie stumbled backward once, stepping into the invisible circle that marked Ember's own fighting space. She stepped to the side, watching her attacker and his knife, and then —

  No.

  The man swung out with his knife hand, behind his back. Up and out, with a reverse grip. The blade came up and caught Charlie just below his ribcage, near his spine.

  Charlie let out a quiet gasp, and then the aging assassin fell to the ground. Blood was already flowing from his mouth, the injury having caught him in the spleen or near it. He looked up at Ember, his face registering shock and panic.

  Ember screamed in rage, then let out her breath as she lunged forward toward the man.

  She gave the thug a swift kick to his crotch. His face fell, and he staggered back a step. Ember kept moving, pummeling him with punches, landing them on his head, chest, and his gut. His knife fell and clattered away. Ember reared back and threw a punch so hard she thought it would take his head off. She was shorter than he was, and the punch landed right on his Adam’s apple. He tripped and slammed down on his butt, and then immediately vomited down the front of his shirt. He slumped back against a truck tire, making the car wiggle in place.

  She spun around and grabbed his dropped knife.

  The unarmed man who had been fighting Charlie was now coming at her, but he had retrieved a knife from somewhere on his person. Ember readied her own blade. The Knife Man’s eyes darted down toward it, which gave her all the time she needed. Ember jumped forward and to her left, placing her at the man’s side. Then, she slashed the blade along his arm. It tore right through the man’s jacket and sent a dozen droplets of blood into the air.

  He cried out and took a step back. Dazed, attention solely on the gash along his arm. Brass Knuckles Man was still on the ground, hands covering his newly tenderized private bits. Broken Collarbone Man was still down, but not necessarily out.

  Ember waited, panting. These men were between her and the only viable exit back to the mall. Even if she could beat them, it was probably too late. She still didn’t know where Xavier was. The clock had ticked down too far.

  Ember had to accept she was a breath away from failure.

  And Charlie was dead, his blood still pooling out around him onto the parking lot ground.

  The guy with the knife bared his teeth and raised his blade as he came at her again.

  The fight wasn’t over yet.

  Chapter Forty

  ISABEL

  Agent Isabel Yang lowered her sunglasses and pulled her jacket closer. She had last seen Allison Campbell—or, Ember, the undercover name she insisted on being called—a minute before at the 29th Street Mall. Ember had not seen Isabel, though. She had been too wrapped up in whatever game she was playing out here.

  Ember had a strange, covert pass-by with a young man whom she seemed to know, then she had carried on past as if the meeting hadn't even happened. A standard tradecraft move, usually for two agents to brush their shoulders together and hand off a note or flash drive. In the movies, they always used "dead drop" hiding spots or some garbage. In real life, you wanted to make sure your counterpart got the thing. You wanted to feel it pass from your hand to theirs.

  But, nothing exchanged hands, only a tiny shake of the head from both of them. So, they were hunting someone. And, they had not found that person. Isabel didn’t know what was going on, exactly, but today was a big day. Clearly. Since
showing up at her condo, Ember had avoided Isabel. She hadn’t been taking her phone calls. She’d acted harried and frantic. Isabel’s intuition told her she was in some kind of trouble with the Club.

  Maybe Agent Allison Campbell didn't realize the other kind of trouble she was in with certain people back in Washington. Maybe she didn't understand how deep she had fallen while undercover. Isabel had seen it before. The worst case she'd known of was a male agent who had gone deep under with skinheads in Alabama. He'd started to miss check-ins. He became surly to his handler. Six months in, he'd presented as an entirely different person when he'd come back to DC for a series of briefings. He was late for meetings. He ignored the dress code. He sneered at non-white colleagues in the halls when he thought they weren't looking.

  That case had ended with the agent getting pulled—against his will—and sent to a long-term “spa” sort of place for rehabilitation. They did that every now and then, with agents who had a difficult time dealing with entry and exit from serious cover positions. She had been saddened, but she knew it was sometimes par for the course. He wasn’t the only one she’d seen it happen to while she’d been active. Usually, it was drugs. Agents lost themselves to coke or heroin, quickly giving up control to the substance. They went on assignment chipper and full of patriotic verve, then came back red-eyed and rail-thin.

  Isabel had seen it all. And that’s probably why she had been chosen to be Ember’s new handler after the death of her previous one. Isabel wanted to reign it back in. In her few short years of service to her country, she had strived to earn a reputation for taking no shit from anyone. And, she didn’t intend to ruin it with a lost undercover agent who felt she was now above the law.

  The case against organized crime in Denver was too important. This Assassins Club was a vast criminal conspiracy stretching back decades. And, some of the most clever and devious criminals on the planet had managed to keep it secret for as long as it had been around. Not a total secret, but secret enough that no one had been able to bring a case against it for the last fifty-plus years.