Chapter Thirty
Thirty
Matt Hanley peered through handheld binos because Arnold had packed up the tripods, and he watched smoke fill the living room of the small condo.
He wished he had a sniper rifle right now; even with a pistol at this distance, he could probably drop Deep Space as soon as he appeared in the living room.
But Hanley hadn’t considered for an instant he’d need to be arming himself on an operation to collect intelligence to pass off to a CIA investigator inside Washington, D.C.
This entire surveillance operation had gone insane in the past few hours, and now he was just hoping like hell his three assets—two and a half when you considered the fact that Hightower wasn’t even operating at full strength—could control these three scenes and get out with their lives in the next few minutes.
The only lights in the condo on the eighth floor across the street were from the TV and filtering through the windows, so the dense smoke darkened Matt’s view momentarily.
Jill watched the same scene from a different viewpoint—the hallway camera—and then she shifted her attention to the cameras Teddy and Six had placed inside the unit earlier in the day, looking for the hit man, somewhere in the darkness, in the smoke.
She spoke into her phone now. “Irene, is the bathroom door locked?”
The woman was in a state of shock, but finally she answered. “Yes.”
“And the bedroom door?”
“Shit! No…I forgot to lock it.”
Hanley called out to her over the speakerphone. “It’s okay. Don’t leave the bathroom. Get in your bathtub. My man will be there, and he will help you.”
Irene whispered. “How close is he?”
“He’s almost to you.”
Jill looked to Hanley, who looked back to her. He shrugged a little—he had no clue how close Court was—and then he took a few steps away from the speakerphone, deeper into the kitchen of the suite. Cupping his hand between his mouth and his earpiece, he said, “Six, status?”
“I’m on the ninth floor.”
“Subject is on the eighth! You know that!”
“Yep. Okay…I’m inside the condo next door and one above her. It seems empty.”
Hanley didn’t give a shit if there was a convention of nuns meeting in that condo, he just wanted Court to get out to the balcony, find a way over and down to Irene’s bedroom window, and then save Ortega. As he was about to respond to his asset, however, Jill spoke.
“Deep Space is in the living room. He has got his gun up, he’s moving toward the bedroom. The TV is on, there’s half a glass of wine on the coffee table. He’s going to know someone is there.”
Hanley moved back toward the phone in Jill’s hand as Arnold ran by, moving cases to the door of the hotel suite.
Hanley said, “Irene, don’t make a sound.”
Six spoke up over the network again. “I need a minute to figure out how to get over to—”
“You don’t have a minute!” Hanley shouted back.
Jill kept watching the screen in front of her.
She said, “He’s in the bedroom.” After a short pause, she said, “He’s trying the bathroom door.
It’s locked. Irene, get as flat to the ground as you can.
” She thought Deep Space was going to shoot open the lock, but then he pulled another breaching charge out of his pocket.
Jill had a perfect view of Deep Space; a camera Teddy and Six had placed in a corner vent earlier in the day was pointed right at the bathroom door from across the room.
Calmly, the assassin played out the wire, then stepped to the side of the door. Jill covered her phone and softly said, “He’s going to blow the door and shoot her.” From the tone of her voice, all was already lost.
Hanley had moved over to the window; watching the apartment with his naked eye, he could see the residual smoke hanging in the living room, but he couldn’t see the bedroom from here. Into his earpiece he said, “Six, if we lose Irene, we lose whatever information she has about—”
Court snapped back, “I know what’s at stake, dammit! I’m just trying to figure out how I’m gonna fly!”
—
As he ran through the large hotel suite towards the balcony door, Court felt around in the utility belt he wore around his waist, pulled a hammer from it, then kept feeling around the belt, hunting for something else.
He put on work gloves as he leapt onto a white sofa, jumped over the back, then landed on his boots at a run and made his way around a dining table, finding himself at the balcony door of the huge suite.
Soon he had a coiled Ethernet wire in his hand, and then he slid open the balcony door of the hotel room, raced to the railing, and looped the end of the wire over the railing.
This done, he climbed up onto the railing, using the wall closest to the Carriage House Condominium building to balance himself, and played out several yards of wire, then wrapped it around his wrist and hand.
There was no way this little computer cable in his hand could possibly hold the dynamic weight of a 180-pound man falling through the air, but Court’s life of kinetic operations had taught him an incredible amount about practical physics.
He thought this could work, but he was in no way certain.
On the contrary, he was just desperate.
Court heard a loud boom in the adjacent building, coming from Irene’s bedroom.
This would be Spiral blasting in the bathroom door, and if this asshole had any room-clearing training at all, he would be standing wide of the door, giving the smoke a few seconds to clear.
After this, he would just roll into the room with his gun drawn and, as soon as he had a target, he’d shoot until the target was dead.
Nine stories above the ground, Court took a chance on the looped wire.
He leapt forward, out over the sidewalk below, but angled sharply to his left. He kicked his legs, shot several feet away from the building, and then he felt the wire go taut against his hand and wrist.
He began swinging back in towards the structure; Court’s momentum had him sailing right at her window, dropping from gravity at the same time.
He spun his body in the air, let go of the wire, and flung the big hammer into the glass in front of him as hard as he could, and then, as it shattered right in front of him, he flew towards the window.
He heard the sounds of gunfire booming in the street below as he crashed feet first through the glass and flew into the bedroom, drawing the Glock 43 pistol on his hip as he did so.
The barrel of the small but potent handgun just cleared leather as his boots hit the carpet, the momentum of his swing continued propelling him forward, and he rolled onto the king-sized bed in the center of the room full of smoke.
—
Fifteen seconds earlier, the man behind the wheel of the Audi still had not lifted his hands to the steering wheel.
“Here’s the deal, ace. We ain’t getting out.
We haven’t done shit, and we ain’t got no idea what potential assassination you are referring to.
Now, best you turn around, walk off into the night, go back to wherever you came from, and forget you—”
A muted boom eight stories above the Audi caused all three men to look up at the source of the noise and the sound of shattering glass that came soon after it.
Travers was all but certain the man behind the wheel of the Audi had a gun pointed at him through the door, so as soon as the boom rumbled down here to the street, he rocketed back hard to his right and raised his pistol at the car.
The first gunshot cracked inside the Audi; Travers felt the pressure of the round disturbing the air just to his left.
He returned fire at the driver, but he did it as his feet were retreating as fast as they could move.
He had identified his closest point of cover even as he approached the car with the Gauntlet men inside, a corner where the Carriage House building jutted farther out into the sidewalk next to a ramp down to a parking garage at the Ritz-Carlton.
The garage door was shut and locked for the night, so seeking cover here would pin Travers into a corner that the two enemy could exploit, but it would also get him out of any potential line of fire and, right now, that was more important.
He headed back towards the corner between the buildings, but he shuffled backwards, not taking his eyes or his weapon off the threat.
The driver and the passenger both opened their doors as Travers backpedaled; window glass from the condo above crashed onto the sidewalk right next to the Audi where Chris had been standing, and this slowed the Gauntlet duo down a couple of seconds, but quickly the passenger stood, spun his gun arm over the roof of the sedan, and opened fire.
Chris dumped rounds into the driver’s door just as the driver bailed flat onto the sidewalk.
Chris fired again; the driver fired his own pistol, but he was still in the process of rolling out and onto the sidewalk and his shots went wild.
It was the third round from the passenger’s gun that struck Chris Travers, high on the right side of his neck, spinning him to the ground.
—
Thirty seconds earlier, Zack Hightower had just cajoled the other two men out of the Ford Expedition, using intimidation tactics he’d called upon many times in his life.
They had IDs out claiming they worked for a government contractor and were allowed to carry firearms, but he just kept shining a light on them, doing whatever he could to delay.
He had not drawn his gun, hadn’t needed to, but his right hand was ready.
Then the low boom came from the building behind him, echoed along the quiet misty street.
The sound of the explosion was soft yet distinct at this distance, and Zack suspected that even if he did not draw his pistol now, these amped-up assholes would probably go for theirs.
He started to put a hand out, a warning to them not to move, when a gunshot boomed directly behind him, here at street level.
Glass impacting the road or the sidewalk, probably falling from above, added to the cacophony coming from behind Hightower now.
It was clear to Zack that Travers was engaging or being engaged; he was likely outnumbered, as was Zack, and Zack was ready to kill all three of these motherfuckers in front of him so he could get over there and support the one teammate he actually had a chance of reaching.
Hightower had his Glock 19 out of its duty holster quickly; all three men reached behind their backs and began to separate in front of him, and he knew they were going to engage him on a wide arc, even though they were just steps apart.
These were Gauntlet security men, but he imagined they’d all gotten their training on SWAT teams, in federal law enforcement, or in the military. They would know what they were doing, and all he could do was try to get back around the minivan just behind him for some concealment.
He clicked on the flashlight in his hand, threw it towards the three, and fired his first round from the G19 at the man in the center of the trio.
Return fire came instantly; he heard the windshield of the GMC van shatter next to him, but he kept regressing and firing. Three rounds, then five, then ten before he dropped to a knee at the back of the vehicle.
He knew he’d hit the man in the center, maybe the guy on the left, but he didn’t know if either of them was down. This meant he was facing off against somewhere between one and three enemy, and he had no situational awareness as to where they were.
He was deep in the shit here, and behind him, the gunfire from Travers’s position suddenly stopped.