Which left me in a quandary. I could grab the Uzi from the man I’d just killed and shoot his partner in the back . . . but that would make too much noise. Gunfire would be heard by the assault teams downstairs, letting them know this mission wasn’t the cakewalk they expected. I hoped to avoid that: life is easier when the enemy is overconfident.
The worst-case scenario was if the invaders stopped being sloppy and attacked me en masse. I couldn’t stand up to them in a head-to-head shoot-out. For one thing, when Dr. Jacek converted this place from church to clinic, the old skinflint had put up walls of the cheapest plasterboard—the sort that bullets passed through easily. Anywhere Reuben and I took cover, the bad guys could simply shoot us through the walls.
My ideal strategy meant picking off ruffians silently, one by one, like a horror-movie monster stalking teenagers. Gunplay was only a last resort. On the other hand, I had to do something soon. The thug in front of me was closing in on the room where Reuben lay. My arm was also getting tired holding up the man impaled on the end of my scissors . . . and my grip was growing slippery with his blood.
“Hey, you!”
It was the other gunman, speaking in Polish. Luckily, he wasn’t speaking to me. He stood in the fourth doorway down the hall, staring into the room that held Mr. Russian Mafia. “I know you’re not asleep,” the gunman said. “Stop faking.”
From where I stood, I couldn’t see into the room. Apparently, though, the Russian was following my advice, pretending to be unconscious. The act must have been unconvincing because the Polish gunman strode into the Russian’s room. “Do you think I’m stupid? What are you hiding? Open your eyes.”
I don’t know how the Russian responded . . . but with the Polish hooligan no longer in the corridor, I could deal with my own problems. Quietly, I lowered the dead man in my arms to the floor. I wished I had time to commandeer his Uzi, but it was secured on a shoulder strap; wrestling it free from the man’s corpse might take too long, especially since I couldn’t afford to make suspicious noises. I contented myself with cleaning my blood-smeared hand on his shirt. Then I left him lying under the sheet. I preferred not to look at my handiwork after the deed was done, no matter how necessary the kill had been.
Glad to get away from the body, I moved soundlessly toward the Russian’s room.
The Russian had given up playing possum . . . probably when he felt the muzzle of an Uzi pressed against his skull. At that point, however, the gunman and the Mafioso reached an impasse; the Pole clearly didn’t speak Russian, and the Russian showed no sign of speaking Polish. The gunman was now trying English, which didn’t strike a chord either. Globalization has a long way to go in the criminal world.
I took all this in with a quick peek around the doorframe. The men were too busy to notice. I might have walked in and rendered the gunman unconscious without too much trouble . . . except for the pistol he held pressed against the Russian’s head. The safety was off, and the man’s finger was on the trigger. Whatever I did to knock him out—whether a nerve strike, a sleeper hold, or a plain old punch to the jaw—I couldn’t be certain his hand wouldn’t clench by pure reflex and fire off a round. Not only would that alert his companions on the ground floor, it would probably kill the Russian.
I couldn’t allow that. Much as I suspected the Russian belonged to the Mafia, I didn’t know for certain. Even if he did, he might not have blood on his hands: a bookie or a fence, deserving jail but not a bullet to the brain.
So I waited . . . hoping the gunman wouldn’t shoot the Russian out of pique at the failure to communicate. It was touch and go for a few seconds; but at last the Pole must have realized the Russian wasn’t part of the mission at hand. The invaders wanted Reuben Baptiste, not some Moscow Mafioso with a broken leg. “You’re wasting my time,” the gunman said. He flicked on the Uzi’s safety and pistol-whipped the Russian hard across the face. The Russian fell back, blood gushing from his nose. At least he wouldn’t have to fake unconsciousness anymore.
Angrily, the gunman came stomping out of the room. As he reached the doorway, he snapped, “Have you finished with that whore yet?” He turned toward the spot where he’d last seen his partner and me.
That’s when I hit him with a ridge hand across the throat—a clothesline maneuver into which I put all my strength.
If that first strike didn’t collapse his windpipe, my second one did. I was in no mood to be gentle.
I stashed the corpses under the unconscious Russian’s bed, leaving the first man wrapped in the sheet to avoid any pool of blood. Lady Macbeth asked, “. . . who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?” . . . but that proves Lady M. was an amateur when it came to violence. Dead bodies can spill
prodigious
quantities of blood. In a cheaply constructed place like Jacek’s, one must store corpses carefully to avoid leaks seeping through the floor and out the ceiling below. Blood dripping from the rafters may delight splatterpunk movie audiences, but it’s undesirable when one wants to be stealthy.
As I was hiding the dead men, I searched them. They’d brought precious little equipment with them: no standard mercenary gear like walkie-talkies or night-vision goggles. Not even an electric torch. They must have expected this mission to be a complete cakewalk. All they carried were weapons, which I took for myself—not just the Uzis but also a Kaybar commando knife in a sheath, which I slid onto my belt.
To my deep unease, one of the men also possessed a glittering grenade of a type I didn’t recognize. It was the size of my fist but spherical with a polished exterior that looked like sterling silver. There were two press buttons, one on either end. Presumably, one triggered the grenade by pressing both buttons simultaneously; but I couldn’t guess what happened after that. Did it explode? Was it a stun grenade, designed not to kill but to bang out a concussion wave strong enough to knock victims senseless? Could it contain noxious gas, and, if so, would the contents be simple tear gas or something more lethal?
Speculation was pointless. The next time I saw my armorer, I’d ask if he knew what the grenade was. For now, though, all I could do was stash the thing in my pocket. I certainly couldn’t
use
it: I didn’t know the timing delay—whether it went off in three seconds, five seconds, or longer. I’d feel like an utter prat if I whipped out this fancy grenade, then accidentally blew myself up.
Instead of brooding about the unknown weapon, I prepared a series of surprises for the next round of gunmen who might venture up the stairs. Afterward, I checked on Reuben. He lay in the bed with only his eyes showing beneath his bandages. “How’s it going?” he whispered.
“Our initial investment is earning interest,” I said, showing him the Uzis. “Soon we’ll begin collecting dividends.”
I had the guns strapped around my shoulders so I could fire with both hands if need be . . . but such two-fisted shooting is nearly useless, even if it looks brilliant in the cinema. Uzis kick like mules when firing full auto; if I let loose with both at once I’d be lucky to stay on my feet, let alone keep my aim on target. Quite possibly, the recoil would send me flying through one of the clinic’s flimsy walls . . .
Hmm.
Hmm.
“New strategy,” I told Reuben. “Stay in the bed but be ready to move at a moment’s notice.” I might have said more, but I could hear company coming up the stairs.
“Hey,” a man called from the stairwell. “What’s taking youse guys?” The accent was pure Brooklyn . . . which prompted me to reflect on what a diverse lot these villains were. Traditional organized crime gangs clump together by ethnicity—Colombian cartels, Japanese Yakuza, Chinese triads, and so on. Multiculturalism among criminals almost always means a force of mercenaries: soldiers of fortune from around the world, recruited higgledy-piggledy with no common bond except a greed for cash.
Most mercenaries have some military background and consider themselves professional warriors—la crème de la crème. Usually, though, they’re just men who like to play with guns. They may possess skills, but they’re too much in love with their own self-image to achieve true crème-dom. The majority have been discharged from regular armies for not following orders, and they turn even more unruly once they go independent. The group I was facing might see themselves as a well-coordinated unit, but when push came to shove, I was betting that they’d respond as egotistic individuals. The primary weakness of mercenaries is that they’re dreadful team players.
Then again, I’m one to talk.
The man in the stairwell called, “Hey! What’s up?” He received no answer. I could hear him muttering to someone—presumably one or more partners—then he began to ascend.
This thug came up more cautiously than the first two: slowly, listening for trouble. I doubt if he was truly worried—as far as he knew, he and his fifteen buddies faced a single unarmed man—but he must have wondered why no one up here was answering. When the Brooklyn man reached the final step, he stood out of sight in the stairwell and shouted down the hall, “Where are youse guys? Say something!”
No reply.
I’d had time to creep down to the room nearest the stairs. I stood there, back to the wall, the Kaybar knife in my hand. If I was lucky . . .
I was. The man on the stairs was only half a professional. His professional half was smart enough to call to his friends below, “Something’s up. Foxtrot and Golf are missing.” But instead of waiting for backup, the man’s glory-hound impulses propelled him forward: moving slowly, Uzi drawn, as if the pistol were enough to protect him.
It wasn’t. My knife, his throat—fill in the blanks yourself.
I didn’t have time to hide the body—more people were coming up the stairs. A lot of them. I did take a second to do a quick visual once-over of the corpse but saw nothing of interest. The dead man had been carrying nothing except his Uzi: no radio, no torch, not even one of those strange silver grenades.
Someone spoke unintelligibly in the stairwell, and I knew I had to go. I raced back to Reuben’s room. “Get ready to move,” I whispered. “We’re leaving.”
“How? Aren’t there bad guys on the stairs?”
“We won’t take the stairs.”
He stared at me. I said, “Stand back. When I run, follow.”
Plenty of noise on the stairs now. Four mercs; maybe more. But before I’d killed the previous one, I’d arranged a vigorous welcome for such visitors.
I’d removed the two spare oxygen tanks from the end room and positioned them on either side of the doorway to the stairs. At the base of one tank, I’d placed the bottle of rubbing alcohol. By the other, I’d set the spray can of disinfectant. The arrangement might look odd to someone peeking out from the stairwell, but not enough to raise dire suspicions. After all, oxygen tanks and the rest were common items in a clinic. The mercenaries would probably assume the tanks were kept by the stairwell for lack of better storage space.
A man appeared in the doorway. I ducked out of sight. Five seconds passed. Then I heard the scuff of army boots as someone scurried out of the stairwell and bolted to the first doorway. The mercenaries clearly planned to advance forward, one man at a time, straight from the team ops’ textbook. I waited for boots again, then popped one Uzi around the doorframe and fired.
I didn’t have to see my targets—I wasn’t aiming at men in motion, I was shooting at the unmoving oxygen tanks. A burst of full auto straight down the hall couldn’t help hitting both big metal canisters just standing there. Couldn’t help puncturing them either . . . at which point the two steel tanks containing gas under high pressure turned into modest but effective pipe bombs.
This wasn’t the sort of explosion that’s powered by a flaming detonation. The percussive energy came entirely from oxygen bursting outward with a force of thousands of pounds per square inch. I doubt if it caught fire at all; but then I can’t give an eyewitness description. It seemed unwise to stick my head out into a corridor full of (a) gunmen, and (b) shards of flying metal. Still, I heard the tanks rupture with a satisfying bang, followed by rapid-fire thunks as bits of steel blew outward and embedded themselves into anything nearby. That included at least one ruffian, who screamed in astonished agony.
But the hurtling metal fragments were only the start of the chaos. The oxygen tanks were holed and breached but still mostly intact. All the holes were on the side facing me . . . which meant that the oxygen shot straight down the hall at high pressure, like the exhaust blast from rocket engines. In response to Newton’s third law, the tanks embarked upon an equal and opposite reaction: bashing their way through the thin wall separating the corridor from the stairs and careening into the stairwell at significant velocity. The stairwell, being part of the church’s original bell tower, was stone lined and strong enough to withstand the flying O
2
tanks. The tanks clanged furiously within the contained volume, bouncing off anything in their path until all the gas inside had escaped.
I myself have never been struck full force by a jet-propelled oxygen tank. Judging by the shrieks from the men on the stairs, I doubt it’s a pleasant experience.
The immediate response was gunfire—shooting at random. The mercenaries weren’t sure who’d attacked them, but their first instincts said to spray the world with bullets. They were probably smart enough not to shoot each other; beyond that, all bets were off.
I can’t tell you if the bottle of rubbing alcohol got broken at that point, or if it had already been smashed when the oxygen tanks blew. Either way, this was the moment at which the flammable alcohol caught fire amid the pandemonium of hot lead and muzzle flashes.
Whoosh.
Then
bang
. . . as blazing alcohol spilled across the floor and reached the disinfectant spray can, causing another small-yield high-pressure explosion. Uzis chattered toward the source of the noise; the gunmen must have thought the bursting can was someone shooting from behind them.
I hoped the men would eventually calm down and stamp out the fire—I didn’t want to torch the entire clinic. Meanwhile, however, under cover of the uncontrolled gunfire in the hall, I opened up with the second Uzi I held: blasting the back wall of Reuben’s hospital room. Half the clip made a ragged polka-dot effect that weakened the cheap plasterboard to the consistency of tissue paper. I sprinted forward, ramming the wall full strength with my shoulder . . . and crashed through into falling darkness.