The Assassin (48 page)

Kharmai joined Bennett, who was standing over the Austrian’s body. Kealey stepped into the room and started rifling through the desk. There wasn’t a single scrap of paper to be found. Opening the computer, he punched the POWER button, but all that came up was an error message. He caught sight of the burn bags scattered over the floor. Picking one up, he looked inside and was greeted by the faint odor of smoke. It was just as he’d feared; they were far too late.

Bennett had walked over to the windows. Now he stretched his arms and stared over the river. “I can’t believe it,” he finally said. His voice was filled with regret and embarrassment. “I’m sorry about this, guys. I should have had people watching the building.”

“It’s not your fault,” Kharmai said, staring down at the bloodied, distorted face of Thomas Rühmann. It was strange, but the sight didn’t seem to affect her at all. It didn’t make sense; losing her job had brought her to tears, but this terrible image meant nothing to her. It made her wonder if she had seen too much in her few years with the Agency, if she had lost something fundamental. “We were just too late. We should have been here a week ago.”

“Maybe you’re right, but still…” Something caught Bennett’s attention, and he shifted the draperies aside. “Hey, what the hell is this?”

Kealey, looking at the other man, caught sight of something wrong, something flashing silver in the bright light of the room. He reached for Naomi’s arm and screamed, “GET OUT! GET THE FUCK OUT NOW!”

Bennett turned instantly, his eyes opening wide, but Kealey didn’t see the other man’s final expression. All he could think about was getting back to the dining room. He dove to the floor, pulling Naomi down with him. She was shouting a question, probably demanding an explanation, but Kealey couldn’t hear a thing. The roar came behind him, the whistle of hundreds of projectiles, the sound of instant death.

Then everything turned black.

Vanderveen swore as he watched the scene unravel. His vantage point was less than ideal, he’d known that from the start, but the options were few. All he could see was the big man, the one who’d come in from the hall. He knew Kealey and the woman had entered from the dining room, because the big man had turned to his left, and his mouth was moving in conversation. But then he’d reached for the draperies, and Vanderveen was left with no choice but to fire.

At 100 meters, there was no need to compensate. He lined up the crosshairs and squeezed the trigger gently.

The explosion was drowned out by a sudden boom of thunder, which somehow minimized the effect. Lightning flashed overhead as the fifth-floor windows exploded outward, glass raining down to the river. The lights blinked out in the office, even as the lights came up on the floors underneath. Vanderveen didn’t wait to see if his plan had worked. Instead, he grabbed for the radio lying next to his side, under the poncho.

“They’re up on the fifth,” he shouted over the storm. “Get in there.
Now!
”

Yasmin Raseen flung open the door of the Mercedes and ran through the torrential rain to the door of the building. In her left hand she carried a pack filled with half a dozen 2-liter containers of liquid propane. She’d collected the fuel from a service station on the Müllerstrasse two hours earlier. She slipped the caretaker’s key into the lock, then entered the foyer.

There was one person present, a teenaged girl with braided blond hair. She paused on the stairs, a confused frown on her face as Raseen rushed in. She opened her mouth to speak, but she never got the words out. Raseen raised her suppressed Beretta and fired twice. The only sound was that of the slide moving back and forth. The first round left a neat hole over the girl’s right eye. The second missed entirely, tearing into the wood-paneled wall. The girl dropped without a sound, her lifeless body bumping over the remaining wooden stairs, coming to rest in the foyer.

Raseen crossed the linoleum floor quickly. There was a trash container next the elevator. She punched the button for the fourth floor. When the doors opened, she grabbed the container, placed it between the doors, then punched all the buttons at once. Racing back to the entrance, she tossed the backpack onto the stairs. Retreating as far as possible, she lifted the Beretta once more, covered her face, and squeezed the trigger. The backpack exploded, showering the stairs and the walls with burning propane.

Lowering the gun, she removed the Gemtech suppressor quickly, stuffing it into her pocket. She slipped the gun into the top of her jeans, under her shirt at the small of her back. She pushed out the door, aware of the screams on the first floor, aware of the shrill thump of the fire alarm. Seconds later she was back in the car, pulling onto the road, grabbing for the radio.

“It’s done. I’m on my way to your location.”

There was no reply. She pressed the TRANSMIT button and repeated the message. Still nothing. Dropping the radio, she shifted into second gear and punched the pedal, squealing onto the Friedrichstrasse.

Kealey came back to consciousness slowly, the plasterwork ceiling swimming into view, everything shifting crazily. He tried to sit up, but his limbs didn’t seem to be working. He forced himself to think, to gain a sense of his surroundings. First, he was aware of the dark. It hadn’t been dark a few seconds ago, but now the room was pitch black. He was completely blind. Worse was the ringing in his ears, which was more like a constant, high-pitched whine than anything else. He put down his hands for support, then pulled them back sharply; the wood floor was covered with shards of glass. He could feel warm, wet pain in his palms as he rolled unsteadily to his feet, trying to clear the haze in his mind.

Naomi
. When it cut through the gloom, the thought hit him hard. Where was she? Was she even alive? He fell to his knees, ignoring the stabbing pain of the glass, and felt around on the floor. A sound caused him to turn to his right. Crawling forward, he reached out and felt something warm beneath his hand. He felt his way up to her hair, brushing it back from her face.

“Naomi?” His voice sounded far away, like it belonged to somebody else. “Can you hear me? How bad is it? Where does it hurt?”

She let out a low moan and tried to sit up. He moved behind her and helped her into a sitting position. “Can you hear? Come on, talk to me. Say something.”

“My… my arm. My left arm. Something’s wrong with it.”

Kealey’s eyes were starting to adjust to the dark. Turning her carefully, he could see several tears in her light blue pullover, wet stains spreading around the holes. A sick feeling washed over him instantly.

“It’s nothing,” he said, trying to sound more confident than he felt. “You’re going to be fine. But we have to get out of here. Come on, I’ll help you up.”

“What about Bennett?” she asked, stifling a cry as he hefted her to her feet. “Where is he?”

Kealey moved carefully to the door and looked into the office. The light was weak, but he could see that Shane Bennett was clearly dead. He was lying on his back in the middle of the room, arms outstretched, his face and chest reduced to a mass of bloody pulp.

Kealey moved back to Kharmai, who was leaning against the diningroom table. “He’s gone. Come on, we have to get out of here.”

He guided her back through the kitchen. The lights were still on in the entrance hall, and it was there that he got his first good look at her wounds. Her left sleeve was virtually shredded, but there didn’t seem to be as much blood as he’d initially thought. Her eyes were glazed over, though, and she could barely stand on her own; she was clearly in shock.

There wasn’t time to be gentle; he had to check something out, but he couldn’t leave her standing, not in the shape she was in. He pushed her down to the floor, propping her against the wall. Then he pulled open the service door. He was instantly greeted by a gust of hot air and the stench of acrid smoke. Down the stairs, he could hear people screaming on the other side of the second door, the one with the keypad. The stairs were clearly impassable. On the fifth-floor landing, there was an aluminum ladder leading up to the roof. He had noticed it before, but now it was more than a visual distraction — it was their only means of escape.

He went to the base of the ladder and looked up. There was a cheap combination lock on the hatch that led up to the roof. He hesitated; he could shoot the lock off, but the bullet would probably ricochet. Still, there was no other choice. He raised his Sig, took aim, and fired. He flinched involuntarily as the round bounced off the steel and slammed into the floor by his right foot, but looking up, he could see that the shackle had popped open.

He climbed the ladder quickly but awkwardly, the gun still in his hand. Bracing himself inside the concrete shaft, he pulled off the broken padlock and pushed open the hatch. Rain instantly started to pound his upper body as he threw back the metal cover, planted his hands on the roof, and lifted himself up, examining his surroundings. There was a large air-conditioning unit right in front of him, partially obscuring the buildings on the other side of the river. He could hear rapidly approaching sirens, but not much else over the thunderous rain.

Kealey dropped back into the shaft and descended the ladder, heading back for Naomi. When he turned the corner, he saw she was standing, leaning against the wall for support. She had obviously shaken off some of the shock, but her eyes were still glazed over, and he couldn’t help but wonder if she had suffered a concussion. He grabbed her good arm and pulled her back to the ladder. The screams on the lower floors were starting to intensify. Kealey knew there was no fire escape, but there wasn’t a thing he could do for the building’s residents. All he could think about was getting Kharmai out safely.

He guided her to the ladder and turned her to face him. “Naomi, you have to climb. Do you hear what I’m saying? Nod if you understand.”

She nodded, her eyes momentarily clearing. She reached out for the ladder and started to climb. She’d only gotten up a few rungs before she stopped. Kealey, following right behind, wedged himself up against her body to see what was wrong. Her face was pained and covered in sweat, and her eyes were squeezed shut.

“I’m sorry,” she gasped. “My arm is killing me.”

“I know, but we have to move.” The smoke was starting to fill the shaft, choking them and stinging their eyes, even though the hatch was still open and rain was drilling in through the gap. “We have to get out. Come on, climb.
Climb!
”

A few seconds later, she reached for the next rung, then the next. After what seemed like an hour, they were on the roof. Naomi collapsed on the wet gravel, her chest heaving, her face contorted in pain. Kealey grabbed her shirt, dragged her over to the air conditioner, and drew his weapon.

The relentless rain seemed to have revived her. She sat up and leaned against the unit, then noticed the gun in his hand. “What are you doing?”

Kealey didn’t answer; his mind was whirring. Something about the explosion seemed very familiar. He tried to block out the sound of the storm, the scream of the sirens, and the hoarse shouts of the people in the street to his rear. He tried to project himself back to the stunned silence that had followed the explosion. When he’d gone back to check on Bennett, the floor had been littered with steel ball bearings. Kealey knew of only one device that utilized that kind of projectile: the M18. But when Bennett had pulled back the draperies, he had seen the device for a split second, and it didn’t look like a Claymore.

But if it wasn’t that, it was something similar, and he knew he’d seen it before….

And then it hit him. Will Vanderveen had demonstrated the exact same thing at a demo range nine years earlier. Suddenly, everything became clear; not only had Vanderveen killed Rühmann, he had signed his work. The improvised explosive device bore all of his trademarks, and with this realization, Kealey knew exactly how he’d detonated the device. Vanderveen was one of the finest marksmen he’d ever known, a graduate of the U.S. Army Sniper School. He would have set the trap with a sniper’s mentality, which could only mean one thing: he’d used an electrical gate to complete the circuit. A rifle would have afforded him the protection of distance, and the roofs on the other side of the river offered a perfect vantage point.

There wasn’t any solid evidence to support this theory, but Kealey had survived for years on the edge by trusting his instincts, and right now, they were telling him he’d gotten it right. There was no doubt in his mind that Vanderveen was responsible, but there was something else: somehow, he knew the other man was still out there, waiting to finish the job.

Pressing his back to the air conditioner, he moved sideways to the edge of the unit. He was completely involved in the moment, but he also felt a little sick, realizing how naïve he had been. The only reason they hadn’t died in the office was luck. The same was true of their venture onto the roof; Vanderveen would have fired if he’d had a bead on the hatch. At the same time, Kealey knew that they’d used up whatever luck they had started with. Now the slightest mistake would result in death. If his head showed around the side of the air conditioner, the other man would take instant advantage. All it would take was a split second; the bullet would travel faster than he could possibly react.

He crouched, leaned his head against the unit, and tried to think it through, aware of Naomi’s pained, questioning gaze. Turning toward her, he said, “Did you see this building when we crossed the bridge?”

She looked at him blankly. “From the north, you mean?”

“Yes. When we approached from the north, did you see this building?”

“I guess so.” He could barely hear her over the sound of the storm. “I wasn’t sure which building it was, but I must have seen it.”

“Did it drop straight to the river? Or was there a—”

“They all dropped straight to the river.”

He moved back to her, trying to stay low, the gravel scraping beneath his legs. “Are you sure?”

She looked confused. “Yes. Why?”