Ghostman (34 page)

The Wolf picked up the .357 Magnum from the table, pointed it at my head and pulled the trigger. The hammer fell and clicked.

I didn’t flinch. I didn’t even blink.

“I want my hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

The guy in the bomber jacket shifted uncomfortably. His muscles were suddenly as tight as drums.

“If you kill me,” I said, “you’ll lose countless times that much. Once the cartels get word you stole a federal payload, even as payback, you’ll never make another deal. But we can still both win here. Give me what I want and I’ll make your money problem disappear before the sun comes up. It’s your only chance to get out of this spotless. We trade. A hundred and fifty grand for one point two million.”

The Wolf dropped the cylinder on his gun, slid another bullet in, spun the chambers, pulled back the hammer and fired.

Click
.

“You’re testing your luck,” I said. “Every time you pull that trigger, you run a chance of shooting
yourself
in the head. You can’t break me and you won’t get me to back down. So take the deal.”

The Wolf put the gun down on the table. The corner of his mouth twitched just once. It was his tell—a brief glimpse into his thoughts that was over almost as soon as it started.

“All right,” the Wolf said. “Here’s my offer, and you better listen well, because you won’t do better. I might not feel like killing you, but I can kill that cute FBI agent you’ve been working with instead. Give me the money or she’ll be a corpse by morning.”

54

“Do what you want with her,” I said. “Your deal with me remains the same.”

I slowly reached across the table and picked up the .357 by the barrel. It was heavy, like someone had taken a normal gun and tied a brick to it. In response the Wolf’s guy pulled a short polymer automatic from his back pocket and pointed it at me. It was a hole puncher, chambered with .22 Long Rifle, with a barrel shorter than a credit card. A gun like that wouldn’t be very accurate, but at this range it would be a miracle if he missed.

“Easy, Ghostman,” the Wolf said.

“I just want to show you what I care about,” I said.

I held the gun out and showed it to him. There were two bullets in it now, not just one, so the odds were different. I spun the cylinder and pressed the barrel to my temple. Pulling the trigger was as smooth and easy as tearing silk. The chambers turned and the hammer dropped.

Click
.

I pulled the trigger again. I listened to the sound of the chamber ratchet snap into place, the hammer sear lock and the trigger drop.

Click
.

The Wolf’s expression changed. He was uncomfortable. Like he didn’t know what I was going to do next. Like maybe he thought I’d blow my own brains out just to show him I could. He shifted around in his seat.

I pulled the trigger again.

Click
.

I put the gun down and gestured to the goon in the bomber jacket, who also looked nervous. “Before I play again,” I said, “could I bum a smoke?”

He nodded at me and smiled. I must have impressed him. He stepped forward, keeping his gun pointed at me, and patted a Marlboro loose from his pack. He took out a Zippo and leaned in to strike it. I put the cigarette between my lips and waited until he was right up close. I took two puffs, then picked up the Magnum, pressed it under his chin and pulled the trigger.

Bang
.

The pistol bark was muffled, as if I’d fired it through a pillow. The bullet punched a star-shaped hole in the top of his head and carried his brains out after it. The expanding gases peeled the flesh away from his skull and sent blood and bone fragments flying everywhere.

I kicked the table over and pushed until the Wolf toppled over and was pinned on the floor by the big sheet of plywood. My intention wasn’t to hurt him, just to keep him busy until I could take care of his men. I spun around and pointed the gun at the skinhead, who’d suddenly appeared at the door. I squeezed the trigger several times but nothing happened.
Click
. One of the rounds the Wolf put in must have been a dud—or maybe it was too wet to fire.

The skinhead smiled like a demon and charged me. Neither of us had loaded guns, so a second later we were inches apart. The guy slammed the Magnum out of my hand like he was brushing off a fly. I jabbed him hard with my left, but it was like punching a block of concrete. He was quarried out of solid prison and chiseled on the yard equipment by
some sculptor who didn’t care much for what the finished piece would look like. My first punches were useless. His weren’t. He got off a wide and messy body shot that knocked the wind out of my lungs; two inches higher and he would’ve shattered some ribs. I didn’t bother to block, however. I attacked with everything I had. I landed an uppercut and could feel his jaw crack and whatever teeth he had left come loose. It was a blow that could’ve killed another man, but not this guy. He didn’t even seem shaken by it. He smiled as if to say,
What else you got?
Then he wrapped his hands around my neck and threw me against the wall hard enough to crack the plaster and started squeezing. Though I punched him four or five times in the chest, he didn’t even flinch. My vision started to get fuzzy as he cut off the oxygen to my brain.

I raised my arm and brought my elbow down like a hammer on the soft part of his inner arm. I nailed him right below the junkie vein, between his track marks, and heard a bone snap. He let go and stumbled away from me in agony.

I followed up with a jab to the nose. The cartilage shattered and the skin on my knuckles opened up and spattered his face with blood. I followed through with a cross like a freight train. The skin on that hand opened up too. He went like he was going to trip me, but I already had too much of an advantage. I landed another elbow on his skull in that spot where all the bone plates meet up. The old head jog. He stumbled away, stunned. I jumped on him and wrapped an arm around his neck. I pressed my other elbow into the back of his head between his spine and his skull and held it there. I had to keep this choke hold for ten seconds. That’s as long as it takes. The sleeper hold cuts off blood to the brain, so it works faster than suffocation. It’s like pressing the power button on a laptop. After a few seconds, the whole thing goes dead.

The skinhead stumbled around the room, trying to pry my arm off his neck. He slammed me against the wall again but couldn’t dislodge me. The blood from my hands dripped down his skull and ran into his fluttering eyes. He couldn’t make a sound. He opened his mouth like
a fish drowning in air, then his whole body drooped forward and went limp. I let him go and he fell to the floor like a sack full of rocks. He’d wake up in a few hours with the worst headache of his life.

In the meanwhile, the Wolf had unpinned himself and was scrambling for the plastic automatic the dead guy had dropped. I ran over and kicked as hard as I could just as his hand reached the gun. The gun slid across the floor and dropped through a hole in the floorboards. There was a splash as it hit the water in the basement.

The Wolf looked up at me, shaking the hand I’d just kicked, and scrambled a few feet toward the door, but stopped when I stood in front of him. His suit was ruined. I picked him up by the collar and said, “Give me one good reason.”

“A hundred and fifty grand,” he managed. “In my hotel room. Give me an hour. If that’s not enough to satisfy you, I’ll see you in hell.”

“What room number?”

“Penthouse,” he said. “No games this time.”

Then I dropped him back on the floor and walked out.

55

KUALA LUMPUR

Everything about the getaway went wrong the moment the elevator doors opened. As soon as we arrived in the second subbasement, I was hit by a giant ocean wave of light and sound. I didn’t know exactly what was happening to me, but I knew one thing.

It was a goddamn police trap.

I don’t know how it happened. Right before we got in the elevator going down, Alton had given us the all-clear. No police in the garage. Police were barricaded outside the garage, sure, and on the street all around the building, but the second subbasement was completely open and clear. Somehow in the minute and forty seconds since then, the situation had changed.

Now I was on the receiving end of a grenade.

The blast didn’t take me off my feet, but it blinded me. I couldn’t see or hear anything. I could feel someone grab my shoulder and pull me out of the elevator. I could feel the pavement under my boots. Finally I could make out gunfire. It sounded soft, at first, but soon became roaring. My vision started to come back. There were heavy muzzle flashes from the
foot of the garage. A skirmish line of Royal Malaysian police officers was firing at us from behind a barricade of police cars. The muzzle flashes lit up the corner like shooting stars. A tear-gas grenade between us poured out billows of thick yellow smoke.

I pulled up the G36 assault rifle, pressed it against my hip and let loose a stream of bullets at the barricade. I was firing blind. Each shot sounded like the low punch of a bass drum instead of the intense crack of a gun. Hsiu still had me by the shoulder. The armored car was just a few more feet away. We were all running toward it. I hoped like hell that Alton hadn’t been hit.

Then I watched Joe Landis go down. A bullet struck him in the head maybe two steps in front of me. His body didn’t so much fall as slump over given all the equipment on his back. He was dead before I could do anything, and his pack was still loaded with nitroglycerine.

The Italian brothers came out of the elevator next with their shotguns raised. They pumped the actions so fast the red shotgun shells collided with one another in the air.

The police had made a choke point at the garage opening. They must have rushed down at the last minute in Unimog police trucks. I couldn’t see them all, but from this distance I could make out two men in black berets crouched on the bed of the second truck. They let out steady bursts of gunfire from automatic MP5A2 submachine guns. A bullet clipped Angela’s pack.

My mag was out. I hit the release and pulled it off, then fumbled another one from under my shirt. Before I could pull the bolt spring, I felt a heavy punch in my chest. I was hit. The bullet knocked the wind out of me and I stumbled back. I couldn’t breathe. Another one hit me, then another in quick succession. I was weighed down by the equipment on my back and still shocked from the first hit, so I fell over. I rolled back and forth on the pavement for a few seconds. I inhaled as hard as I could, but nothing happened. My lungs wouldn’t let in air. It was like someone was sitting on my chest.

Hsiu and Vincent saved me. They came from behind and grabbed
me by the arms and dragged me over to the armored truck. Vincent loaded me in the back while Mancini knelt next to us and licked shots out the back of the truck. He pulled the G36 from my arms, finished reloading and opened fire at the police in quick, controlled carbine bursts. He switched targets like he was blowing up glass bottles on a shooting range. Once I was secured, he tapped the roof twice, shut the doors and the car took off squealing.

I glimpsed Alton through the small window into the cab. He veered left, hard. I was thrown against the right wall. Angela climbed next to me over the bags of supplies. She started to say something, but the words never came out.

The armored car plowed through both of the police trucks, which didn’t stand a chance. They crumpled against the armored car’s grille and were dragged sideways for ten feet up the ramp until they were launched apart in different directions.

The standard armored truck is equipped with sixteen gun ports that look like little mail-slot windows. You slide them open from the inside by a handle and they’re just barely large enough to squeeze a shotgun muzzle through. They work on the principle that it’s almost impossible to shoot a target that small from the outside, unless you’re standing right next to it.

There were two on the rear doors.

Mancini slid one of them open. He took careful aim down the aperture sights through the little metal hole and emptied round after round into Joe’s body. I could feel the vibrations of a car crash behind us, then an explosion. The nitroglycerine in Landis’s kit went. That shock wave coursed through the pavement. Muzzle flashes filled the dark space, then the smell of burned gunpowder and vaporized concrete. It was so thick it seemed like smoke. Hot brass poured out of Mancini’s action. He reached down and pulled a clip from my vest and charged the G36.

I was in a special universe of pain. I writhed around on the floor of the truck, taking short and fast fish breaths. I could barely see. Everything was dark. I peeled my hat off and clawed at my chest until the shirt
came open. Under it was a tactical vest with two titanium trauma plates designed to stop assault-rifle bullets. A trio of 9mm hollow points were stuck inside the left plate. They’d cut through the Kevlar just over my heart. I picked one of them off. It looked like a mushroom.

Angela screamed something in my ear, but I couldn’t hear it. The only thing I could hear was a high-pitched ringing, like a fire alarm going off inside my skull. She tapped me on the ears and her gloves came away with red specks. The blood was dripping down from my eardrums and soaking into my shirt collar.

She screamed and screamed at me until I could hear her.

“Did one go through?” she was saying.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t breathe.”

“Keep calm!” she shouted into my ear. “You were shot three times and hit by a flashbang. I don’t see any other blood, so you should be all right. Maybe broken ribs, that’s all.”

A flashbang grenade emits a sound ten thousand times louder than a shotgun blast and a sudden flash of light as bright as the sun. It uses magnesium and ammonium nitrate. Makes the target wish he was dead. I felt like I was swimming in static. I can best describe it as a migraine headache that was happening over my entire body.