Thirty-Three
On the bottom step, Hammerton paused to make a visual sweep of the room before whispering, “Clear.”
He led Tom to the doorway. They paused again as Hammerton surveyed the narrow kitchen area first, then the crowded shop beyond.
Tom had lost track of the sound of the bodyguard’s footsteps as they’d made their way across the room, so all he heard now was the sound of the heavy rain drumming on the flat roof above.
He whispered, “Fuse box.”
A moment later Hammerton said, “I see it.”
Since there was electricity in the room upstairs but none here, it was likely that someone had intentionally tripped the fuses for the ground floor.
Getting to the box and resetting the switches should render the lights operable.
But there was another reason Tom wanted to get to the fuse box besides needing to see.
Carrington had made a point of telling him this building had no active utilities, so turning on the lights would confirm whether that had been a lie.
Tom was not going to take the Slav at his word.
He wanted proof of Carrington’s betrayal.
Hammerton stepped away then, and Tom tracked the man by the sounds he made as he moved through the machine shop.
Hammerton took several steps then stopped, likely to take cover behind a piece of machinery.
A few more steps, another pause, then a few more and another pause.
Finally, Tom heard the fuse box’s cover swinging open and then the dull taps of breakers being flipped one after the other.
Banks of fluorescent lights suspended from the high ceiling instantly hummed and blinked on.
Tom saw that Hammerton had taken cover behind a steel support beam on which the fuse box was mounted, putting the beam between himself and the door on the other side of the shop.
He had pulled the goggles down around his neck and was carefully leaning out from behind the beam to scan what he could see of the crowded room. Blood streamed from the cuts in the man’s already-scarred face.
His Beretta ready, Tom rose and bent at the waist, then moved to the nearest machine for cover.
He’d barely taken a step when another ear-splitting gunshot rang out, this time coming from direction of the door.
The only exit currently known to them.
Tom had done his best to keep a count of how many rounds the Slav’s bodyguard had fired.
A Desert Eagle chambered in .50 caliber held seven rounds in the mag.
That plus one in the chamber, for a total of eight.
The bodyguard had fired six, and though Tom hadn’t always been within earshot of the man, he had been for the past few minutes—and hadn’t heard a mag change.
He was confident that in this room he would have heard that, especially during those long moments when hearing was pretty much all he had.
Tom got Hammerton’s attention, gestured with a bladed hand in the bodyguard’s direction, then pointed at the grip of his own firearm before finally holding up his index and middle fingers.
Hammerton nodded that he understood and readied himself, removing the Glock from his waistband with his left hand, holding his SIG with his right.
One for cover fire, one for precision shooting.
He took a deep breath, then moved from his cover behind the beam toward the nearest piece of heavy machinery, firing the Glock without aiming in the direction of the bodyguard’s last position.
Tom got down low and also moved closer to the door, counting on the shots fired from the Glock to mask the sounds of his motion.
Hammerton’s fire didn’t draw any return fire from the bodyguard, but Tom had made it to a position in the loading dock area where he could see the door.
There were three machines large enough to offer cover to the bodyguard, but they were still a good twenty-five feet from Tom.
Controlling his breathing, Tom identified where he would go to next.
A drill press ten feet from the cluster of machines where the bodyguard had to be hiding.
From there he could get on the bodyguard’s flank—the man would not be able to hide from Tom without exposing himself to Hammerton, or vice versa.
It didn’t take long before Hammerton was in motion again, laying down cover fire with the Glock.
Tom scrambled for the drill press.
This time Hammerton drew the bodyguard’s fire—a single shot, and then another.
The eighth shot Tom had been counting on.
But what he hadn’t been counting on was Hammerton getting hit.
The man grunted, and though Tom could hear him go down, he could not see him.
There wasn’t time to look for him, anyway.
Tom had made it to the drill press. He saw the bodyguard crouching behind a CNC mill just feet from the exit.
Tom also saw that the slide of the Desert Eagle was locked back in the open position, confirming that his count had been accurate—the weapon was empty.
The bodyguard, still crouched, had released the empty mag and was removing one of two backups from his shoulder holster’s mag carrier, located under his right arm.
The man was fast, his actions well practiced.
But before he could insert the loaded mag, Tom rose and took several steps forward, his Beretta aimed.
“Don’t move,” he said.
The bodyguard froze, then turned his head just enough to look at Tom.
His eyes went to the firearm in Tom’s hand, and then he did something Tom had not expected and did not understand.
The bodyguard smiled.
“That’s a nice Beretta you have there,” he said.
His accent was distinctly Russian.
“Place your weapon on the floor,” Tom said calmly.
The bodyguard continued to smile.
“Where’d you get that?” he said.
Tom repeated, “Place your weapon on the floor.”
“Your new buddy gave you that, didn’t he? Simpson, right? That was his name? Simpson?”
“You have one second.”
The bodyguard laid the weapon and mag on the concrete, then stood.
“Hands on top of your head, fingers locked,” Tom said.
“I have a better idea.”
He reached for the cargo pocket of his black pants.
“Don’t do it,” Tom said.
“Just let me show you what I have. I think you especially will appreciate it.”
The man put his hand into his pocket.
“Last warning.”
The man didn’t stop, giving Tom no choice.
He transferred his finger into the trigger guard and eased the trigger back.
Instead of firing a round, the Beretta simply emitted a dull, metallic click.
Misfire.
The bodyguard continued to smile, his hand reaching deeper into his cargo pocket.
Tom quickly racked the slide, ejecting the faulty round and feeding another into the chamber, then reacquired his target and squeezed the trigger again.
Another dull click.
He repeated the process—rack, reacquire, squeeze—but got the same result.
“Sounds to me like you’ve got a missing firing pin,” the bodyguard said. “Hate when that happens.”
Simpson has a sidearm for you,
Carrington had said.
I’d rather if it comes down to it that your life didn’t depend on a relic from seventy years ago.
Before Tom could even process the betrayal, the bodyguard removed his hand from his pocket.
He was holding an M67 grenade.
“How about a blast from your past?” the bodyguard said.
Without hesitating, he removed the pin and released the lever, then tossed the grenade toward Tom.
The last Tom saw of the bodyguard was out of the corner of his eye.
The man crouched to grab his weapon, then inserted the mag as he bolted through the exit. He pulled the door closed behind him.
There was nothing Tom could do to stop him.
Stunned into motionlessness, he watched the grenade roll across the concrete floor till it came to a stop at the foot of one of the nearby machines.
In that split second, Tom thought of all the things he had done over the past five years—all the decisions he had made, the directions he had headed into, and the directions he hadn’t—only to find himself here, face-to-face once again with a live grenade.
It was unfathomable—too much even for his quick mind.
His hesitation ended abruptly as a surge of adrenaline rose through him.
Tom scrambled to put as many of those heavy machines as possible between himself and the grenade.
He passed one machine, then another, then a third, weaving around them all and finally taking cover behind a fourth.
A prewar press brake machine. Identical to the one he operated back home.
Stretched out on his stomach behind the mammoth machine, Tom covered his ears with his arms and his head with his gloved hands.
The blast came less than a second later, the wave of compressed air tearing through the room with the force of a tornado.
It ended as quickly as it hit—a microstorm that scattered countless shards of hot metal—but it took a moment before Tom was able to get up.
And even when he was finally standing, the first few steps he took walking were really just falling turned into forward motion.
Somehow he made his way to where Hammerton had collapsed behind an industrial lathe and knelt quickly by the facedown man.
An initial check showed no indication that the man had taken any shrapnel fragments.
Tom spoke Hammerton’s name several times but got no response.
He checked for a pulse and detected one—a strong one.
Rolling the man onto his side, Tom expected blood and torn tissue but saw none.
Examining Hammerton’s chest, Tom felt something beneath the man’s shirt.
Hammerton was wearing a bullet-resistant vest.
But a .50-caliber AE was a powerful pistol round, and while the vest might stop the round from penetrating, it would not stop the blunt-force trauma of being hit with a 300-grain bullet traveling at fifteen hundred feet per second.
Tom tore Hammerton’s shirt open and saw that the .50-caliber slug was in fact embedded in the vest’s dense fabric. The angle of the round told him that it hadn’t struck Hammerton head-on.
Still, the slug had gone as deeply as it could into the vest without penetrating, and the shock that had been transferred into Hammerton upon impact, even from a glancing hit, would be enough to cause internal injuries.
Hammerton wasn’t bleeding—externally, at least—but Tom knew that the man needed medical attention, fast.
Tom said Hammerton’s name several more times, wanted to avoid carrying the man if he could because he knew doing so would likely cause even more harm.
But he was still getting no response and was about to the pull the man up and hoist him into a fireman’s carry when he heard something.
A faint but steady beeping.
One that had just started.
Tom rose and pinpointed the sound’s location—a tarp-covered machine just feet away.
Lifting the heavy canvas, Tom saw that beneath it wasn’t a machine at all.
It was two twenty-gallon plastic drums strapped together.
Mounted on top of one of the drums was an electronic device encased in clear plastic. And inside the device were four blocks of C-4 and a digital clock counting backward.
The faint beeping was in sync with the seconds ticking away on a clock that had clearly been activated remotely.
2:57, 2:56, 2:55
Tom said, “Shit,” and returned to Hammerton, shaking the man’s shoulders and calling his name louder and louder.
Hammerton’s eyes fluttered beneath his closed lids and his head gradually began to rock from side to side.
Tom had to shout the man’s name to bring him all the way to full consciousness.
Hammerton drew a breath and quickly clenched his teeth at the pain simply inhaling had caused.
His eyes were wide, almost wild, blinking.
Baffled, disoriented—but Tom couldn’t care about that.
“We need to move, trooper,” Tom said. “Now.”
As confused as he was, Hammerton must have heard the urgency in Tom’s voice because he nodded, braced himself for the inevitable pain as Tom pulled him to a seated position, then got in close beside him and wound the man’s left arm around his own neck.
Standing, Tom lifted Hammerton to his feet.
Hammerton gritted his teeth and grunted, but Tom ignored that, too.
He leaned Hammerton against a nearby machine and made sure the man would stay upright before retrieving the two pistols from the floor.
He put the SIG in Hammerton’s hand and quick-checked the Glock.
One in the chamber, two in the mag.
Tom stuffed the Glock into his waistband as he got in beside Hammerton again and half-led, half-dragged him toward the door.
As they moved past it, Hammerton saw the truck bomb and said, “Fuck.”
He started moving more quickly then, trying to keep pace with Tom.
Together, they were an unwieldy beast, but they reached the door and Tom swung it open, standing to the side of it, just in case.
He heard only the heavy rain.
That was the first glimpse of sky Tom had had since entering the warehouse at four o’clock.
The downpour combined with the low-hanging clouds turned the November twilight as dark as night.
Though they had been in there less than an hour, for Tom it felt as if days had passed since he’d left Stella.
All he wanted was to get back to her.
Seconds were ticking away, yes, but there was no reason now to be careless.
No reason to run blindly into what his gut told him could be an ambush.
Even with the moments they had to spare, they would need to put serious distance between themselves and this building.
The truck bomb combined with the stash of C-4 they had seen would be enough to make an entire city block disappear.
And cause significant damage to the blocks surrounding it.
Tom had no choice but to lean into the open doorway and make a visual check.
The only way to know if the bodyguard was waiting outside was to either spot him or to draw the man’s fire yet again.
No easy thing, but those moments they’d had to spare were quickly slipping away, so Tom braced himself, exhaled, and leaned into the open doorway.