The Payback Assignment (41 page)

           
One story above, Adrian Seagrave’s eyes fluttered half open.
 
The room felt like it was vibrating, as if some sort of construction was going on.
 
He was having trouble waking up, but he had to investigate the noise.

           
Forcing himself to his feet, he staggered out of the bedroom and managed to reach his study.
 
Yes, the noise was coming from below.
 
His private elevator shaft was conducting it upward.
 
It sounded like gunfire, but more than he had ever imagined.
 
He leaned against the elevator casing, hesitating.
 
He had to go downstairs and find out what was going on.

           
He reached toward the button, but hesitated and moved to lean both hands against the doors.
 
He would rest for just a minute, and then summon his elevator car.

           
Felicity peeked over the edge of the bar, eyes bulging.
 
She counted eleven men concentrating their gunfire on the elevator area.
 
Revolver and automatic fire combined to create a deafening roar, reminding her of standing next to a waterfall.
 
The air was thick with the stench of gunpowder smoke.
 
She had heard gunpowder referred to as smokeless powder, but could hardly credit that name now.
 
The acrid cloud was so dense she could taste it.
 
The room literally shook with the blasts.
 
The muzzle flashes reminded her of what Morgan had told her about the two hand grenades hanging on her belt.

           
She hefted one of the small black spheres.
 
A “flash-bang” is what she remembered Morgan calling it.
 
Some kind of stun grenade he said the British Special Air Service had first used to combat terrorists.
 
They were designed to protect innocents in a hostage situation, and now this one might save Morgan.

           
Something, it looked to her like a bread tie, held the pin in.
 
She twisted that off, pulled the pin out and flipped the spoon off.
 
With her back to the bar and feet braced against the wall, she tossed the grenade backward, up and over the bar.
 
Remembering what Morgan had told her about these devices, she clamped her hands over her ears and ducked her head.
 

           
Crouching in a corner of the elevator, Morgan heard the clunk of pulleys engaging, and felt the elevator cables go taut.
 
For less than a second he considered whether it would be safer to ride up or roll back out into the room.
 
While looking toward the bar he spotted the small black sphere rising into the air, appearing to hang in space for a second at its apogee.
 
He recognized it immediately and his face broke into a broad grin.
 
“I love that girl,” he whispered to himself as he covered his ears and buried his face in the elevator floor.

           
The small black ball arced over the crowd of shooters and dropped in front of them.
 
It had fallen to waist height when the world seemed to explode.
 
Almost no energy was expended in blast or heat.
 
However, the star burst rivaled that of a thousand flashbulbs popping in concert, and even with his hands over his ears, Morgan could not be completely prepared for the concussive bang like a sonic boom that burst windows and shattered glasses on the bar.

           
Morgan felt the elevator lurch and rolled out of the little car as it started to rise.
 
His ears were ringing but he was relatively unaffected, facing a room full of blinded and deafened gunmen.
 
They were disoriented and frightened, with pounding heads and dazed wits.
 
About half of them had dropped their guns in shock.
 
He loved it.
 

           
With a running start, Morgan leaped into the midst of his dazzled attackers.
 
The drop kick slapped two men to the floor.
 
A quick spinning back kick, an edge of the hand slash to the neck and a jarring back fist put three more on the carpet.
 
With his left, he thrust stiffened fingers into a guard’s already aching eyes.
 
He snapped a crisp jab into another’s nose, putting him down for the count.

           
While all this was going on, Felicity slipped out from behind the bar.
 
Morgan was purposely putting all of the attackers out of the fight without any further gunplay, and did not need any help, but he could see that she did not want to feel useless.
 

           
He saw Felicity seize a makeshift weapon from the bar, probably thinking she could bludgeon a few of the gunmen into submission.
 
She stepped forward, hefting the bottle she and Morgan had been drinking from.
 
He heard the dull thud behind him and turned to give her an encouraging smile.
 
However, after her first swing he could see that the result startled her.
 
As Morgan could have told her, the edge of a Napoleon Brandy bottle is a bit sturdier than the average professional strong-arm man’s head.
 
She must have expected her glass club to shatter, like they always do in the movies.

           
Morgan watched her dispatch the last four of Seagrave’s hirelings with the same bottle, looking more confident with each swing.
 
With the opposition neutralized, Morgan knelt beside Paul’s unconscious body.
 
He picked up the white handkerchief he had dropped beside Paul and tied it tightly around Paul’s upper arm.
 
Viscous red fluid was making his fingers slippery, but he did not care.
 
In the past few days he had faced Central American soldiers, hired killers, bodyguards and ambushers.
 
He was not about to let the only true professional he had encountered in the lot bleed to death.
 

           
While his fingers moved on their own, his mind was whirring like a high-speed computer, as he tried to calculate the time remaining for escape, Paul’s survival odds, and what his next move should be.
 
Backtracking to kill Seagrave might not leave them a sufficient getaway margin, but leaving him alive could turn out to be a fatal mistake.

           
All of that mental activity combined with an effort to monitor Paul’s condition, track Felicity’s position and observe the status of the dazed protectors to create a form of sensory overload.
 
Together, it all made it impossible for Morgan to pay sufficient attention to his little inner voice.
 
Too much was happening at once.
 
Morgan’s concentration was shaken by a single shouted word.

“You!”

Morgan looked up and to his right to see Adrian Seagrave, in yellow silk pajamas, looking aghast at the carnage in his main conference room.
 
Time seemed to grind into slow motion.
 
Morgan glanced at Felicity, a flash of anger quickly fading as he remembered the pre-operational briefing she had given him.
 
The sleep mist Felicity had sprayed upstairs was a mild sedative, but clearly not sufficient to block out the mass of gunfire that had flown through that room moments ago.
 
Even if it had, the concussion grenade shook the entire building.
 
But Seagrave must have rung for the elevator before that, which was why it began to rise while Morgan was in it.
 
Now the man Morgan had gone there to kill staggered dazedly out of the elevator, looking like he had wandered into a nightmare.

           
Within the same second, Seagrave shouted his one word, Felicity gasped, and Morgan felt a massive hairy paw clamp onto his shoulder.

           
Monk, in a tee shirt and slacks, lifted Morgan into the air with one huge hand.
 
The brute flipped Morgan casually, using no judo skill or leverage at all, and sent Morgan sailing across the room.
 
He rolled with the fall as well as he could, but slammed hard into the wall.
 
Through his haze, he could hear Seagrave shouting, “Kill him” again and again in a high, hysterical voice.
 

Blue spots bounced in front of Morgan’s eyes as he grasped clumsily for his pistol.
 
He managed to draw his weapon and get the safety off before Monk’s grip on his wrist made his hand go numb, and the automatic dropped into the carpet.
 
The other ape paw wrapped around Morgan’s neck.
 
He felt himself lifted from the floor, dangling as helplessly as a child.

           
If Monk had not managed a sneak attack, Morgan would have given himself pretty good odds against him.
 
Now it looked as though this monster would literally tear him apart before he had a chance to fight back.
 
Those arms were like twin oak beams.
 
Morgan snap kicked into Monk’s unprotected ribs with no apparent affect.
 
Monk had a gut like granite.

           
Felicity moved in close and raised her brandy bottle like a baseball player waiting for a fastball to come across home plate.
 
She smashed her bottle over Monk’s head and this time it did shatter like the spun sugar bottles on a movie set.
 
Monk shook his head, his hair spraying droplets of liquor, and turned toward her with a crooked grin.
 
She looked around frantically, and the light of an idea came on in her eyes.
 
She flashed a palm at Morgan, signaling him to hold on, and darted across the room.

           
Morgan wondered if she was looking for another weapon.
 
He was not sure what Felicity had in mind, but he knew he had better coordinate his actions with hers.
 
While she grabbed another bottle of brandy and ran to snatch something from the desk across the room, he dropped his free hand to his belt.

           
Monk was slowly pulling Morgan’s head to one side, his right arm to the other, grinning like a child in anticipation of the cracking sound he loved.
 
Morgan was strong and would resist to the last, but judging from Monk’s face, that was a good thing, as if it would make the bone snap better when it came.

           
Felicity could see Seagrave at the other end of the room, behind Monk.
 
His eyes showed white all around, his face alight with madness.
 
She now realized how wrong she had been before.
 
This was no simple ambitious businessman.
 
This madman was truly evil.

           
Felicity jogged to the side, to get behind Monk.
 
She jumped up and swung with all her strength.
 
A full bottle of cognac shattered over Monk’s head.
 
The pungent odor bit into her nostrils and appeared to work like smelling salts on Morgan.
 
The liquor ran like sweat into Monk’s eyes.
 
As if on cue, Morgan yanked off his belt buckle and plunged the three-inch double-edged push dagger into Monk’s outstretched forearm.
 
With a startled roar, the giant dropped Morgan to the floor but Morgan immediately sprang back up, smashing the first two knuckles of his right fist into Monk’s throat, then slapping hard onto the giant’s ears with both palms.
 

Monk rocked back with his mouth gaping, but he was not finished yet.
 
He turned toward Felicity, his eyes reflecting the madness she’d seen on Seagrave’s face.
 
Monk, however, was clearly overcome by rage and in her mind was no longer human at all, but a crazed animal lurching toward her.
 
That made her next action easier.
 
She pushed her left hand forward, flipping the striker on the cigarette lighter she had swept up from the desk.
 

“Let’s see how tough a bugger you are when we’ve turned you into an ape-man flambé,” she said.
 
Monk’s brandy soaked tee shirt burst into a corona of flames that rushed up his back and swept around his head.