The back of his neck itched. People stationed outside in the darkness? Yeah. What he’d do.
“Thought I’d hitch a ride to Prague,” Poole said, just as casually as he walked toward him. He was a good hundred or so feet away. Too big a gap for the fatal bullet to look like it came from an ally’s weapon. Nope. He needed to come closer. “That okay with you?”
Senses wide-open, Rafael maintained eye contact. Eyes, he had found with experience, gave a tell seconds before a trigger was pulled. Of course, it was harder to ID the tell from this distance.
Come on in, pal.
Close observation had saved his ass more times than he could count.
“Who turned you, Poole?” If he were the designated shooter, and his mark was a highly trained operative with more tricks up his sleeve than Poole could learn in a hundred years, he’d do it now. Poole wasn’t as experienced, and his ego was demanding he toy with his prey till the last second.
“Where’s your girlfriend?” Poole answered instead.
“Honey? Left her back at the hotel; this’ll just be a quick trip. You know how she is, likes to stay close to her computer.”
Poole pulled a Para Hawg 7 from the small of his back when just thirty feet separated them. A bit too soon for the result he wanted, as far as Rafael was concerned. But hey, he hadn’t trained the asshole. He noticed the abrasions on Poole’s knuckles. He’d managed to hide them while the team had been together most of the day. Now he didn’t give a flying fuck if Rafael knew he was one of his attackers from the night before. “What happened to your hand?”
“What happened to my
hand
? I’m aiming a fucking .45 at your head, dickhead. Wanna talk about
that
?”
LockOut covered Rafe’s entire head, and most of his face. If he were Poole, he’d aim for an eye. Quick, easy, efficient. What was the guy waiting for? He should chew his ass for wasting a prime opportunity to take out an opponent. He figured he’d let Poole learn that in the seconds before he found a bullet between his own eyes for his stupidity. Who the hell trained the man?
Was Poole waiting for Winston to show? So the timing was spot-on? Maybe. Rafael watched the man’s eyes. Nope. He was in monologue mode, not shooting mode. “I’d rather talk about
why
. Shit, I’m gonna die anyway, might as well tell me what this is all about, right?”
“Take out your weapons,
slowly.
Drop them on the floor. The ankle knife too. Hurry up. I won’t miss at this range.”
Jesus. Either Poole was wet behind the ears as an operative, or he was just plain cocky as hell. Based on what a stupid prick he was being, Rafael bet he was just cocky. “Seriously? Did you skip the day at basic training when they taught us to disarm first, chat later, asshole?” Rafael fired from inside his pocket. The bullet shot through the fabric of his coat just fine, striking Poole in the wrist. LockOut glove would’ve prevented the bone from shattering.
Half of Poole’s arm was blown away in a spray of blood and bone. With a tortured scream, Poole dropped to his knees, clutching his arm to his chest, his face a rictus of pain.
Rafael removed his weapon from his pocket, stepped right up, and dug the muzzle into Poole’s temple. He kicked the bloodied weapon so it skittered across the cement floor. Unattended, Poole would bleed out in minutes. “Next time,
dickhead,
shoot first, chitchat later.” Not that there would be a next time, but Rafael hated to leave a lesson unlearned.
“Who sent you?” He raised his voice over the man’s hysterical sobbing. “And what’s their agenda? Start talking you little prick. I can shoot off bits of you and keep you alive for as long as I w—” His words were cut off by two shots in rapid succession from somewhere behind and high above him.
Rafael spun, returning fire as he ran for cover behind the tractor. Bullets ricocheted off the metal walls of the hangar like violent hailstones, echoing in the vast space in surround sound. The reverberations made it hard to pinpoint the direction of the shooter.
“Winston?” Because for crap-sake he didn’t want to shoot
her
.
No answer.
He had to figure it wasn’t her or she was down. Holding his fire, he moved swiftly behind equipment, heading deeper into the hanger. A quick glance over his shoulder showed Poole lying in a widening pool of dark blood. Most of his head gone. A sniper with extraordinary skill killed the traitor while Rafael stood within inches of him. The bullets had Poole’s name on them, because if whomever were up there wanted Rafael dead, he fucking would be. An inch to the left or right and he’d be the one on the ground. Why?
What could they gain by only killing Poole if he was the eventual target anyway? Unless he wasn’t.
Winston.
He kept firing intermittently in the general direction of where he thought the sniper was hiding, laying his own cover as he scanned the shadowy catwalk near the ceiling for any sign of movement.
Where the hell
was
Winston? His chest constricted with fear for her, something that never happened when he was with a male partner.
Get over it
, he cautioned himself. She was as highly trained as he was.
For several minutes, there was silence, apart from the
flub-dub, flub-dub
of his heartbeat and the electrical hum and sizzle of the lights. Rafael remained motionless, only his eyes moving, alert for the smallest sound.
The scrape of a boot on metal broke the quiet.
A grunt.
A gunshot far overhead.
The clatter of a gun dropping from a great height to the skitter on the floor twenty feet away.
His gaze shot up.
Oh, fuck! Honey and a man grappled against the hip-high railing of the catwalk a hundred feet overhead. The guy was dressed in black, his face covered by a balaclava so just his eyes were exposed. Honey’s hair was loose, a blonde cloud around the blackness of her Lockout. Fuck! She looked like a
girl
up there. No. Not a girl. A highly trained operative who was giving as good as she got.
Her opponent shoved her shoulders over the railing.
Rafael ran. A bullet pinged off the metal wall inches in front of him, but he didn’t stop, just zigged and zagged out in the clear. No cover here. He fired several rounds over his shoulder as he sprinted toward a ladder that would take him up to the catwalk. He looked over his shoulder in time to see the muzzle flash as his would-be assassin took another shot. The bullet struck the ladder beside him a second before Rafe returned fire and was rewarded with a scream.
Wasting no time, he jumped up the first several rungs and started climbing. His attention fixed on Honey and her attacker, each determined to throw the other over. The man punched her. She kneed him in the groin.
Rafael paused to try to get a bead on the man, but they were as entwined as lovers. He didn’t dare risk the shot. Fuckit! He climbed faster.
Winston, God damn it, was fighting
barefoot
. Those Goddamned boots…
She bobbed and weaved as the man lashed out. His fist struck her a glancing blow to the side of her neck but didn’t slow her down. Rafael saw by the tightening of her jaw that it just pissed her off. Honey mad was Honey cool, calm, and methodical. She didn’t let the blows slow her any.
She backed up, bare feet sure on the steel platform only a few feet wide. Widening the distance between them. The man was a “close fighter,” wanting to keep her within arm’s distance so he could wrestle her down. Rafael knew Honey was a distance fighter. In hand-to-hand combat, she liked to kick, use her whole body. Problem was, the catwalk was narrow, restricting her movements. One wrong move and the guy would flip her over the railing. A hundred-foot drop.
Honey’s slender body, dodging and weaving, blocked Rafe’s shot.
The guy came at her; she shot out her elbow, hitting him hard on the muscle of his inner arm before she danced away. He howled his pain but kept coming. His arms were longer, her feet faster. She arched backward, flipped end for end like a gymnast on a balance beam, kicking her attacker with a quick uppercut as her feet spun over her. Three back flips in succession, her form and placement as precise as a champion gymnast’s, and her opponent was wobbly.
The guy wanted to punch and maim. Honey’s focus helped her make more strikes. Even though he threw two to her one, hers were spot-on accurate. Focused and cool under pressure, Rafael felt a weird swell of pride watching her in action. She was as graceful as she was deadly accurate.
He didn’t waste more time trying to get a bead on the guy. Time was of the essence; he had to get up there with her,
fast
. Shoot first, admire her skill later.
Mobility was her trump card. She was faster, more agile, especially in bare feet. Her balance was good, her coordination exceptional. God. She was poetry in motion. Rafael realized he’d stopped climbing to admire her fucking technique and sped up again, cursing himself.
His heart double-clutched as the man grabbed her throat one-handed, crowding her against the railing again. Her back arched over a hundred feet of chill air. She didn’t scream, her concentration intense. Trying to break his hold with her right forearm bearing down on his wrist, Rafael saw her left hand curl, and the tendons in her neck extend as she suddenly cobra-struck her curled fingers hard and fast into the man’s larynx.
With a gargled cry, he stumbled back, one hand clutching his throat, the other beat a frantic tattoo on the wall beside him as he struggled to free the restriction to his breathing caused by a broken windpipe. Sorry Charlie. You’re screwed.
Winston righted herself, spreading her feet for balance, and without taking her attention off her opponent, she shouted, “Were you going to shoot this son of a bitch or just wait until he tossed me over?” Winston rubbed her own throat, lungs heaving from the exertion as she kept her eyes on the man who’d fallen against the wall, gasping like a fish out of water.
Rafael joined her.“A laryngeal fracture? Nice job, Winston.”
“Whatever.” She pushed off the rail and grabbed the guy by the front of his jacket. Since he couldn’t speak, she didn’t ask questions, just patted him down.
“Where’d you learn to do that back flip? That’s not a standard technique.”
“Six years of gymnastics. My parents thought it would help me develop social skills,” she said dryly as she handed each weapon she found on her assailant to Rafael, who stood grinning nearby.
“I think I’m in love,” he said admiringly, tucking a Glock and two knives into his belt.
Winston grunted, spinning the man around like a toy. “You should see me do the splits, Navarro.”
His mouth went dry. “Swear to God. You have to marry me, Winston.”
She snorted inelegantly as she shoved up the back of the guy’s jacket with the muzzle of her SIG to expose bare skin. “How do you like that?” She stepped aside to show him the tattoo in the small of the man’s hairy, sweaty back.
Rafael whistled softly, all thoughts of erotic sexual positions forgotten. “Well, well, a Black Rose asset. What do you know.”
“I know I’m about to throw him over. Do you have any more questions for him? I’m kinda in a hurry and my feet are freezing.”
“No questions. Do you need help with that?” he asked politely, as she strong armed the man to the rail and grunted as she bent to lift his flailing legs.
“No thanks, I’m good.” She tossed her opponent over then brushed her hands giving Rafe the stink eye as the guy screamed all the way down to the cement below. “You took your sweet damn time, Navarro. Did you stop for tea?”
SEVENTEEN
M
ike Blinston was a smart guy. The pilot-retired operative, seeing the bad guy’s men’s stealthy arrival, literally took up the drawbridge. Pulled up the stairs, locked the doors, and stayed put inside his bulletproof plane. His “heads up” texts to both Navarro and herself went unseen due to their preoccupation.
Navarro strapped in beside the pilot for takeoff, and Honey limped to a rear seat, falling into it with a quiet groan. LockOut might be almost everything-proof, but she’d felt every blow, buffered as it was. She’d be a mass of bruises by morning.
She took the SIG out of the belt holster, placing it on the coffee table, then leaned back, eyes closed. While she’d been out in the field for years, it wasn’t the norm for her anymore. Usually, she was behind the scenes slaving over a keyboard. Thank God, she never missed a practice session and kept herself in top physical form. If she weren’t, that little dance up on the catwalk would’ve finished her off. Not that she’d let Navarro know she was in any way soft. It had unnerved her to realize just how much she gave a damn about him when she’d seen Poole reach for his weapon.
Man up, Winston.
Saving the world wasn’t for sissies. Operatives were killed every day of the week.
Not him. Not on her watch, damn it.
They’d left the bodies in the hangar for Garbage to collect and process.