Chapter Three
Three
Charlie went back to the door, listening for more transmissions in his earpiece, frantic for more clarity on his situation.
The gunfire below had stopped; Charlie knew this could mean the American was dead, or it could mean the attacker was well inside the building now, maybe even in the stairwell or on the elevator.
Minchev was shouting into his mobile phone, but Charlie tuned him out because he couldn’t understand.
Fuck, fuck, fuck! How can this be happening?
From behind him, back in the bedroom, he heard Minchev shout now, “Videv says the American is on the stairs now, coming up.”
“Which stairwell?”
“I…I don’t know.”
“Well, feckin’ find out!” Charlie shouted. Minchev began communicating in Bulgarian again, seemingly oblivious to the fact that his junior bodyguard was now screaming orders at him.
A new transmission came through Charlie’s earpiece, but it was garbled. The mic of the transmitting radio stayed open; it sounded like it was in a pocket, the scratching noises of someone moving quickly.
Then the boom of a pair of gunshots, fired in nearly impossible rapid succession.
A wave of terror shot through Charlie Coyle’s central nervous system as he realized what he was hearing.
The person with the radio was the attacker.
He’d just shot someone, or shot at someone, with the fastest double tap the young Northern Irishman had ever heard in his life, and the attacker also had the presence of mind to hijack the radio network by keeping the handset locked open as he moved through the building.
This bloke was good.
Behind Charlie, Minchev kept talking into his phone, his plaintive, panicking, coked-up tone and cadence only adding to the insanity of the moment.
Charlie Coyle felt a desire to run. To leave his responsibilities behind and just hoof it the fuck out of there.
He didn’t want to die for this criminal in this shit building in this foreign city.
He was only twenty-bloody-four.
His life was a mess, but he had time yet to sort things.
To put things right.
Charlie Coyle’s job was to keep his protectee alive, and he had been telling himself that a man’s word had to stand for something, but right now, he only thought of Ronan, of Deirdre, of getting the fuck out of here, of getting back home to Derry.
The sound of sirens audible outside the window told him the police were arriving en masse, but he had no illusions that the cops would get up here and control the scene before the American made it up the stairs and found the safe room.
Minchev shouted to him now. “The American was last seen on the southern stairs at the second floor.”
Just then, another pair of gunshots came through Charlie’s earpiece, as fast as the last salvo.
Minchev said, “Shit! Someone is shooting.” Into the phone he said, “Videv? Videv?”
Charlie ran through the living room to the front door of the suite, and he’d just made it to the glass-and-aluminum coffee table in front of the sofa when the lights went out.
Behind him, Minchev gasped.
The outside glow through the window helped Charlie negotiate his way around the coffee table to the door.
Opening it, he then pulled a flashlight out of his pocket and wiped his perspiring face with the back of the suit coat of his left arm, keeping his Walther pointed at the door to the south-side stairs with his right.
He did not turn on the flashlight; he didn’t want to give away his position.
Minchev stepped up behind him. In a whisper that was still way too loud given the circumstances, he said, “Videv isn’t responding. It’s just one man. Kill this guy, Coyle!”
Charlie whispered back, fighting to keep his voice down considering the tidal waves of adrenaline coursing through him. “Say another feckin’ word and you can deal with ’im on your own.”
Minchev went silent, and Charlie heard his employer’s footsteps retreat back through the living room of the suite.
And then Charlie stood there, looking into the dark, trying to control his breathing because he was as scared as he’d ever been in his life.
The good news was he had some intelligence now.
He was still only facing one enemy; his pistol was steady and aimed at where he’d been told the target would be coming from.
Also, he had excellent concealment behind the door and the wall of the suite, as only a small portion of his body was exposed to the hall.
The bad news was the fact that concealment, while good, was in no way a substitute for cover.
An enemy could not shoot through cover, but an enemy could shoot through concealment.
He heard the stairwell door creak open slowly, just ten yards away from him on the right. Charlie could barely make out the movement, but he lowered to a knee quickly, making himself a smaller target.
A figure appeared.
Charlie clicked on his flashlight, his finger on the trigger of his weapon with enough pressure to take the few millimeters of slack out of it. He just needed to apply a little more force to fire a gunshot.
But the light confirmed it was Pulev, so he relaxed his finger slightly.
And then Pulev’s weapon turned towards Charlie.
The Northern Irishman turned off his light as he shouted Pulev’s name, along with a few bits of Bulgarian he’d been taught for just such a situation. “Pulev! Ne strelyai! Si Coyle!” Pulev! Don’t shoot! It’s Coyle!
Pulev got the message, apparently, because he did not fire, but then the passenger elevator door opened, just across the hall to Charlie’s left.
Videv had told him hotel security was on the way up, but he didn’t know if Pulev knew this, so he shouted again. “Ne strelyai!” Don’t shoot.
This time, however, Pulev didn’t listen. He fired three times with his Glock; the flashes illuminated the hall, revealing a man stepping out of the elevator, twisting, and then falling facedown.
Pulev shouted something Charlie didn’t understand, and then the Bulgarian shined his own flashlight on the motionless figure crumpled on the carpet.
Charlie recognized the victim immediately. It was the head of security for the beach resort. He’d only met him briefly that afternoon, and he didn’t even know his name.
“Fecking hell,” he muttered to himself.
Pulev himself muttered something that sounded like a curse, but then a two-round burst of pistol fire, flashing in the hallway from the left, dropped Pulev to his knees.
Charlie launched backwards into the suite, out of the line of fire.
He landed in front of the glass coffee table, rolled onto his back, and looked up in time to see another flash of light right in front of the door as Pulev himself fired a round off in response to the person shooting at him.
But then Pulev recoiled, his pistol dropped from his hand, and his flashlight went dark.
The thud of a body dropping in the hall told Charlie that his teammate was down.
Charlie rose, stepping around and then just behind the coffee table to create more distance between himself and the door to the hall, his weapon still high in front of him, searching for a target there.
But just as he made it to the other side of the table, he jolted in surprise as fresh gunfire boomed. One round, then two, then three.
He couldn’t see the origin of fire, no flashes of light, but with the fourth shot he felt a hard tug on his left thigh, and he knew he’d been hit.
He returned fire reflexively; he had no target in the darkness, but he dumped round after round in the direction of the darkened doorway.
Then he realized what was happening.
The aggressor was not at the door; he was to the left, still in the hallway somewhere, firing through the wall of the suite.
Charlie shifted aim, and as he did so, he took one step to the left, but when he planted his foot, his wounded leg gave out and he fell behind the coffee table.
On his back now, he pushed himself up onto an elbow and began raising his gun again, but before he could sight in on the doorway, a dark figure appeared, sliding into the room like a wraith.
A string of three gunshots flared; Minchev cried out from the open kitchen on Charlie’s right, just as Charlie got his weapon up and back into the fight.
The young Northern Irishman centered his aim quickly and fired once at the dark figure as it floated through the living room.
The figure spun, fell, and crashed hard onto the tile flooring on the far side of the coffee table, and through the ringing in his ears Charlie heard the clang of a pistol as it bounced away.
He fired once more as the figure fell, but Charlie couldn’t be sure he’d hit his target with the second round.
Charlie realized he’d gotten lucky by falling here on this side of the table; the attacker had not seen him lying on the floor, and he had identified and targeted Minchev instead.
But now the bloody bastard was down himself.
Charlie rose, his gun pointed towards the other side of the table, and he struggled to get an angle to fire an insurance round into the body there.
He realized he’d have to stand to see his target, so he used the table’s edge to steady himself with his free hand, then pulled up, pushing off on his uninjured right leg.
When he rose to his feet, he peered through the dim light, and he saw the outline of a body lying there, crumpled, unmoving. He could make out no features, but he couldn’t ignore the possibility that the man was still alive, so he aimed at the man’s head and began to press his trigger.
Then, faster than he could squeeze off a round, the man’s legs shot out and his feet slammed into the coffee table, driving the heavy piece of furniture right into Charlie Coyle’s legs.
Charlie fell forwards; his gun fired, but he didn’t know where the round went. He crashed chest first into the table, the glass shattered, and he fell through, slamming down to the floor.
He kept hold of his weapon in his right hand and flipped quickly onto his back, flinging aluminum and glass as he did so, but just as he began to look for the man above him, the dark figure landed on him.
Charlie felt hands on his wrist, on his pistol; a knee slammed into his wounded thigh, and he vomited from the pain. He threw punches with his left fist, but his attacker was too close for the blows to have any effect.
And then it happened. The American took a hand away from the pistol, drew it back, and Charlie expected him to rain a punch down towards his face.
The twenty-four-year-old turned his head to the left so that the punch would hit the side of his head and not his nose, but the punch didn’t go for his nose.
It went for his chest.
Charlie Coyle felt a sharp blade slip between his ribs just to the right of his sternum and just below his pectoral. The fist holding the knife punched him in the chest, and then the man on top of him pulled the blade out.
The American rose up to his knees, one hand still on Charlie’s gun.
Charlie saw the black knife, not in the American’s left hand but rather jutting from under his wrist.
And he knew what it was. Once, when Charlie was in the Foreign Legion and deployed in Ivory Coast, he’d met a Corsican in a bar who showed off his spring-loaded wrist stiletto, a weapon that remained hidden under his sleeve until he flexed his hand up in a certain way, at which point the narrow, razor-sharp blade fired from its scabbard and extended several inches.
He’d thought the weapon to be little more than a gimmick, but he’d just been on the receiving end of it, and he had a new appreciation of its value.
Charlie let go of his Walther because he suddenly felt very tired, and he knew instinctively that this fight was over.
He lay on his back, his feet raised over the aluminum edge of the shattered coffee table, his body covered with broken glass and twisted metal, and the man rolled off him, onto the floor, crunching more glass there as he did so.
How is this man alive? Charlie had shot him; he fecking knew he’d shot him.
It made no sense.
The American aimed the pistol with his right hand, not at Charlie but rather in the direction of the kitchen, and then he swiveled it to the front door of the suite, then back to where Minchev had been standing. The knife no longer jutted from under his left hand.
After just a moment, time counted off by the wheezes Charlie could feel in the wound in his chest, the man knelt back down to him, so close Charlie could smell his sweat.
He felt a rough hand rifling through his jacket, his pants pockets.
He was helpless to resist, weak, but he was able to focus on the man in the soft light above him.
Bearded, maybe forty years old, blood smeared on his neck and shirt collar, a tightness around the eyes that showed Charlie that the man was in a great deal of pain himself.
The American kept the Walther pointed up while he stripped Charlie of his one spare magazine, and then the man looked down into Charlie’s eyes briefly.
But only briefly.
Rising slowly, Charlie watched the man look away, then step towards the kitchen with not another glance to Charlie Coyle.
After a few receding footsteps across broken glass, and a few more footfalls on the tile heading toward the kitchen, he finally heard the man speak. “I’m gonna need that phone back.”
His voice was strained; he was injured, exhausted, but he somehow nevertheless sounded capable, resolute.
Utterly determined in his mission.
Minchev spoke now, his voice cracked with terror. “It’s here…sir. Take it…please. Just don’t—”
There was a quick pause; Charlie just lay there bleeding in the dark, and then Minchev screamed, “No! Please!”
A gun boomed, and an ejected shell casing bounced on the kitchen floor.
Minchev fell silent.
The attacker’s footsteps receded into the bedroom. Their cadence was unhurried, though the sirens outside seemed right on top of the location.
It was clear this man had a plan.
But that was the last Charlie thought of him.
He pressed hard into the wound on his chest now, ignoring the one in his leg. He wasn’t sure if he was dying. The leg wound was nothing; the chest wound was bad, but help was on the way. He just had to stanch the blood flow and, in all likelihood, he’d make it to a hospital.
The young Northern Irishman felt weak now, but he kept the pressure on.
There was a medical kit in the kitchen, but he couldn’t stand, couldn’t walk.
Right now, the kitchen might as well have been a hundred miles away.
Charlie Coyle leaned his head back, closed his eyes, and thought of home.
Right now, however, home might as well have been a million miles away.