Chapter 48
ONE moment Rapp was moving toward his chair.
The next, he was smashed against the wall with a pistol pressed into his ribs.
“Don’t move!”
“Easy,” Rapp said in his most soothing voice. “Calmo.”
He looked over his shoulder and recognized the gunman as one of the ambassador’s bodyguards.
Specifically, the man who’d been located by the bathrooms. Rapp didn’t know why her security detail now oriented on him, but there was no doubt that he’d been identified as a threat.
At the front of the room, the ambassador’s body man was in the process of hustling her out of the room, accompanied by a second member of her protective detail.
She wasn’t quite being carried, but neither was she walking under her own power, as evidenced by a single black pump that had been left in her wake.
The bodyguard noticed that Rapp was watching and smashed him into the wall a second time. Rapp turned his face in time to avoid breaking his nose or busting his mouth on the concrete, but his cheekbone wasn’t so lucky.
“Ladies and gentlemen, if you’ll please remain seated, the ambassador’s detail is addressing a security concern.”
Rapp caught a glimpse of the journalist who was speaking just before he was slammed into the wall yet again.
Though her white-knuckled fingers gripping the microphone were quivering, her voice was remarkably steady.
The pistol dug into the small of his back as the bodyguard changed positions and began to frisk him one-handed.
This wasn’t going to end well.
“Tranquillo,” Rapp said.
The scrum of bodies containing the ambassador disappeared through the side exit.
As the heavy fire door swung closed behind them, the realization of what was happening hit Rapp like a lightning bolt.
For a millisecond, he considered trying to explain to the bodyguard, but as soon as the thought materialized, he discarded it.
The man was convinced he was the threat.
Mere words would not persuade him otherwise.
Time for plan B.
Rapp pressed his lower back into the pistol until he could feel the barrel dimpling his skin. The bodyguard’s left hand was still frisking him, which meant the man was holding the weapon with his right.
Perfect.
Rapp spun right and latched onto the man’s gun arm, trapping the bodyguard’s wrist with his right hand while striking at the man’s unprotected throat with his left.
The blow wasn’t hard enough to collapse his windpipe or rupture his Adam’s apple, but it had the desired effect.
The man gagged and instinctively reached for his throat.
Rapp transferred both hands to the pistol and stripped it from the man’s grip in one fluid motion.
The bodyguard’s eyes widened.
Rapp fired a punch into the man’s chest about two inches below his breastbone.
The bodyguard folded, gasping for breath as his diaphragm spasmed.
An audience member screamed, but Rapp was already racing for the doorway the ambassador had just vacated.
A Good Samaritan sprang to his feet and interposed himself between Rapp and the exit.
Fear shone from the man’s eyes, but he gritted his teeth and stood his ground.
Rapp nodded, acknowledging the bystander’s courage.
Then he drove his shoulder into the man’s midsection with a textbook lacrosse body check.
The hit leveled the bystander. Rapp hurdled the man’s prone body and crashed the exit, chased from the room by more screams. Despite the amount of explaining he would have to do, part of him hoped he’d read the situation wrong.
That his inference had been driven by an overabundance of caution rather than his tactical sixth.
His first glimpse beyond the door proved this was just wishful thinking.
The ambassador’s two bodyguards were doing exactly what they should have been in that situation—moving their principal along the shortest route between the room where she’d been scheduled to give her talk and safety.
In this case, safety meant the hotel’s entrance located just down the hallway, where her motorcade was undoubtedly waiting.
This path took the trio past Rapp’s escape path and the open kitchen door.
Except the door was no longer propped open.
Because the Hezbollah commander didn’t want them to use it.
“Wait,” Rapp shouted. “It’s a trap!”
The bodyguard nearest Rapp leveled his pistol at him and dropped into a shooter’s stance. Cursing, Rapp ducked around the corner just as the weapon discharged. The section of wall just above his head exploded.
“Wait!” Rapp tried again, but his scream was drowned out by something louder.
An explosion.
The blast knocked him from his feet, but the wall shielded him from shrapnel. Getting up on unsteady legs, Rapp peeked around the corner. He swore. Through the smoke, he could make out three bodies sprawled across the hotel’s cobblestone entranceway.
Three unmoving bodies and a rapidly expanding pool of crimson.
A hand clamped down on his shoulder.
“They’re gone.”
Rapp turned toward the familiar voice to see Stan Hurley’s weather-beaten face.
“Come on, kid. Time to go.”