Authors: Andrew Britton
The Operative (15 page)
The fact that the men were clustered around the door, not fully turned toward the corridor, showed that his plan had worked. They had been facing the room, waiting to see who had managed to get a cell phone inside. That had bought him the seconds he needed to cross the walkway after shooting the guard.
As soon as the four men went down, Kealey stiff-armed Allison across the chest, pushing her back toward the wall and following her up against it. He waited. He did not think that whoever was inside the room would strafe the corridor without first making sure the four guards were down.
A masked forehead poked out, one eye looking down the corridor. The side of the man’s face evaporated in blood. The head dropped.
“
Down!
” Kealey hissed to Allison, simultaneously pulling her and dropping. He held his firearm in front of him, arms extended, hands cradling the weapon. He might have only a second to fire.
Down!
” Kealey hissed to Allison, simultaneously pulling her and dropping. He held his firearm in front of him, arms extended, hands cradling the weapon. He might have only a second to fire.
Someone else inside stuck his automatic out and fired chest high down the corridor—just as Kealey had expected. He saw the black glove and ignored the flashing gunfire, which chewed ceramic projectiles from the wall and painfully peppered his head and cheek. He found the hand with the nub on the barrel and destroyed it with a three-shot burst. The man yelped, dropped the gun, and withdrew his hand.
Though his ears were singing from the gunfire, Kealey had long ago trained himself to filter sounds through the hum. It was like listening underwater: the activity was there, but at a different pitch and volume. Fortunately, the enemy usually suffered from the same disability without Kealey’s training.
There were no sounds from inside the room. The hostages hadn’t been emboldened to take him out, which meant he had another weapon or there were still other gunmen inside. The fact that killers had not emerged from any other locations suggested they assumed this was just another mass murder of hostages. Still, it wouldn’t be long before some centralized control checked in. There had to be a unit leader. The room had to be taken before then.
He turned to Allison. She was breathing like a rabbit.
“As soon as I take off, I want you to count to thirty Mississippi,” Kealey said. “When you’re done, call Colin’s number.”
“Why?”
“I haven’t seen his cell phone anywhere,” Kealey told her. “One or two thugs may still be among the hostages. I’ll try and use my target as a shield, tag whoever’s left. But if more of these guys come down the hall from ahead, get out the way we came. Fast.”
She was processing the information, nodding numbly.
“Stay strong,” he said. “I think reinforcements are on the way.”
She shot him a questioning look, but he did not elaborate.
Kealey let his weapon hang from its strap. He got his feet under him, reached into his jacket, and withdrew his
balisong.
A flick of his wrist and the double-handled knife snapped open, its six-inch stainless-steel blade locking with a soft click, coldly mirroring Kealey’s eyes as they stared ahead.
balisong.
A flick of his wrist and the double-handled knife snapped open, its six-inch stainless-steel blade locking with a soft click, coldly mirroring Kealey’s eyes as they stared ahead.
Taking a breath and exhaling, he took three charging steps forward. Kealey swung into the open door like a bull, low with his hands in front like horns. He saw the man with the wounded hand kneeling. He was snarling in the ear of a blond woman, his gun at her head. Her hands were raised, and she was sobbing, shaking her head, but she was rising just the same. The gunman was getting up with her. He obviously intended to use her as a human shield. The wounded man turned just in time to be hit, full on, by Kealey.
The American locked his left hand around the wrist with the gun, pointing the weapon up. With his right hand he sank the blade into the hollow of the man’s throat, a quarter inch above the collarbone. The blonde shrieked and dropped and covered her head with her fingers, still screaming. The man gurgled and thrashed, hot blood brewing from the wound, his hands clutching at Kealey’s, trying to pull it away from him, pull the knife from his throat. But Kealey thrust it in deeper, angling the blade up toward the subclavian and giving it a hard, sharp twist to completely sever the artery and finish him.
All the while Kealey held the man up by his forearm and the blade, keeping him between himself and the hostages—and any potential attacker.
His knuckles wet and slick around the knife, he felt the man go limp. Kealey was carrying his deadweight now and went to his knees. It was quiet enough for Kealey to hear the splash of the man’s blood as it hit the floor around him.
No one fired at him, but that didn’t mean anything. Kealey had a dead man for protection and an assault rifle on his shoulder. He was still a formidable enemy.
The phone sounded. Someone barked with surprise, threw it with a grunt. The phone cracked on the floor.
The voice had come from the corner ahead and to Kealey’s left. Kealey glanced under the dead man’s armpit. He saw a gunman rise from the back of the crowd, pulling Colin Dearborn with him. He had the young man by the collar, the bore of his assault rifle pushing into the soft flesh under his chin. Kealey guessed the man had heard him talking to Allison or had simply assumed there were others out there, possibly an entire unit. He couldn’t know for sure, and there had been enough shooting to create that impression.
Which is probably the reason no one from the other rooms has attacked,
Kealey thought. He had a good idea the bad guys hadn’t been able to confirm anything with video surveillance. Someone on the outside had seen Allison’s tweet. Somewhere, someone had either cut the trunk line that ran the system or had gotten into the security center. That could also have fueled the idea that they were under siege.
Kealey thought. He had a good idea the bad guys hadn’t been able to confirm anything with video surveillance. Someone on the outside had seen Allison’s tweet. Somewhere, someone had either cut the trunk line that ran the system or had gotten into the security center. That could also have fueled the idea that they were under siege.
This ape was supposed to find that out. He had a Bluetooth in his ear, like the others. He was going to try to hostage his way into the corridor, see what was up, let the others know. Kealey hadn’t slipped on one of the headsets he’d confiscated, because he hadn’t wanted to be distracted.
The man stood behind Colin, his back to the floor-to-ceiling window, one arm locked around Colin’s throat. The rest of the frightened, wide-eyed hostages had begun sliding to the other side of the room, creating a clear path between the man and Kealey.
“
Jebem ti mater!
” the gunman husked through his mask. “
Vi
ete ga gledati umreti
.”
Jebem ti mater!
” the gunman husked through his mask. “
Vi
ete ga gledati umreti.”
Kealey regarded him without expression. Still on his knees, he simultaneously hefted the dead man to his right and swung his own firearm around. He felt as if he’d been kicked through a dark, spiraling time warp. His lack of visible emotion gave no hint of his surprise and puzzlement. It had been over a decade since he’d heard Serbian spoken by a native, but he’d recognized it now, remembered the dialect from down in southern Kosovo, and understood the coarse profanity followed by an invitation to watch Colin die. No doubt the man hadn’t expected Kealey to understand. It was just one of those spit-in-your-eye gestures so common to Eastern European insurgents. What was stranger, though, was that in the corridor minutes ago, when the other hostage takers had been shouting excitedly to one another, they had been speaking some other language entirely.
A moment passed. Another. Kealey stood there, pulling the long-unused vocabulary from his memory, giving its particular syntax a moment to click into place.
“Steta ga i ... da
e ... biti ubi Jeni,” he said at last. He was warning the man that he would also wind up dead if he tried anything. “Ja
u te ubiti ... sebe.” Kealey was promising that he would make sure of it, would kill the man himself.
e ... biti ubi Jeni,” he said at last. He was warning the man that he would also wind up dead if he tried anything. “Jau te ubiti ... sebe.” Kealey was promising that he would make sure of it, would kill the man himself.The man snorted.
“Yawa zhaba heskla bus nada!”
“Yawa zhaba heskla bus nada!”
Kealey didn’t respond. That had not been Serbian. It was the same language he’d heard from the others out in the corridor.
Pashto,
he thought.
Pashto,
he thought.
What the hell is this? A convention of anti-American terrorists?
Someone at Immigration and Naturalization was going to have a lot of explaining to do when, dead or alive, the gunmen were all ID’d.
Someone at Immigration and Naturalization was going to have a lot of explaining to do when, dead or alive, the gunmen were all ID’d.
Kealey kept staring into the room. Behind the gunman, the window shimmered a little as the lights of a hovering helicopter bounced off its tinted laminated glass, coming in almost horizontally over the church across the street. For a moment, the hostage taker and Colin were in stark silhouette. The helicopter was far enough away, at least a half mile, so that the sound did not intrude. Their gun-muffled hearing also worked to conceal its presence.
Shifting his gaze to Colin, Kealey was able to hear his rasping intakes of air. He looked at the weapon under Colin’s chin, at the hand in the fingerless shooter’s glove clenched around its stippled grip.
“I didn’t come to play games,” Kealey said at last. “What do you want with these people?”
The gunman laughed, shifting to English. “They say the more languages one speaks, the better one can know other men.”
Kealey looked at him. “That doesn’t answer my question.”
“Who are you?” the man asked. “You do not seem FBI.”
“I’m the janitor,” Kealey said flatly.
“That doesn’t answer
my
question,” the man snapped. Without warning, he tightened his choke hold around Colin’s neck, pushing his head up higher with the assault rifle. Colin gagged audibly, a sound like water draining through a clogged pipe.
my
question,” the man snapped. Without warning, he tightened his choke hold around Colin’s neck, pushing his head up higher with the assault rifle. Colin gagged audibly, a sound like water draining through a clogged pipe.
“Who is out there? How many of you?” the man demanded.
“What’s it matter?” Kealey asked. “You’ve lost.”
“I have won!” he roared. “I enter your house to kill as many as I can, to send your people to the grave one after another.”
There were muffled sobs from different places around the room.
“Even if it means joining them?” Kealey asked.
“If I accomplish my goal, yes.”
Kealey felt his stomach wring tight with anger, but he just kept staring at him, his face a shield of calm. He needed to stall. Help was coming, but he had to make sure it came soon enough to save Colin.
“I remember Cuska after the massacre,” Kealey said. “I saw what the Sakali did to the villagers. Do you know what I said to one of the killers?”
The man did not respond. Obviously, Kealey was not FBI. The references had caught him off guard.
“I told him that he would die in torment if he harmed anyone else.” Kealey’s voice dropped as he said, “I told him, ‘
Al sizvul
.’ ” He had chosen his words carefully, using the idiomatic Serbian phrase for “blood oath.” “I say that now to you,” Kealey went on, “and to whoever is working with you, and to whoever you leave behind. I will find them and make it my business to kill them. Or we can stop this now.”
Al sizvul
.’ ” He had chosen his words carefully, using the idiomatic Serbian phrase for “blood oath.” “I say that now to you,” Kealey went on, “and to whoever is working with you, and to whoever you leave behind. I will find them and make it my business to kill them. Or we can stop this now.”
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