Chapter 3
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Rolling away from the door, he kicked out from under his comforter and scrambled off his bed, landing on the floor with a muffled thud.
Even though he always left his pistol hot, he retracted the slide and glanced down to confirm that a round was seated in the chamber. With the hammer already cocked, he released the safety, and was good to go.
But good to go for what?
Maybe the noise had come from one of the neighbors’ units.
It was possible, Jameson thought, but he knew better than to dwell in the realm of “possibilities.” He had either heard someone enter his apartment or he hadn’t. It was black or white. There was no gray.
If someone had broken in, his mattress and box spring were lousy concealment and even worse cover. He needed to find a better place to be.
Getting into a crouch, with his 1911 ready to fire, he elevated his position just enough to peer over the tangle of bedclothes and pillows he’d left atop his bed.
He leaned toward the door, straining his ears for even a hint of sound. There was nothing.
Could he have dreamed it?
He was no stranger to lucid and quite often disturbing dreams, but this wasn’t that. He’d heard what he had heard. And it hadn’t come from a neighbor’s unit. Someone was in his apartment.
Chastising himself for not having grabbed his compact tactical flashlight from the opposite nightstand, he kept his eyes on the door and quickly moved away from the bed.
He only had the bathroom or the closet, which while they might have provided better concealment, were not going to provide much improved cover. Then he realized he had a third option.
“Look high or die” was a phrase his CQB instructors had used repeatedly in low-light training.
Invariably, when entering darkened rooms, most human beings failed to look up.
With all of the threats that had lurked in trees, it was amazing that human beings had tuned out threats from above.
They expected everything to be at their level or below.
Keeping his pistol trained on the entrance to his room, he used his left hand to grab the stack of books off his old-world wooden dresser and place them quietly on the floor.
While only one drawer wide, the marble-topped dresser was six drawers high, clocking in at a little over five feet tall. He had no idea if it would support his weight, but considering how heavy it was and what a pain in the ass it had been to lug up to his apartment, he sure hoped so.
He set his gun on top and then, placing the palms of his hands on the marble, leapt up like a forty-two-year-old gymnast mounting a pommel horse. The piece of furniture groaned in protest beneath him, but it held.
Without missing a beat, he snatched up his 1911, pointed it toward the door, and began applying pressure to the trigger.
In addition to leaving his flashlight in the nightstand drawer, he’d also left his spare magazines.
With one round in the chamber, he had eight more in the gun.
If those weren’t enough to stop the threat, he’d do what any good Marine would do and bludgeon the intruder to death with his empty weapon, tear off the man’s head, and then use his skull as a drinking vessel. Ooh-rah.
He was wondering how long he was going to have to wait when he saw the doorknob begin to rotate. Half a second later, the door began to slowly and quietly open.
Whoever was in his apartment was about to show himself, and Connor Jameson was going to fill him with .45-caliber holes.
But the intruder didn’t show himself. Instead, the tip of a pistol suppressor materialized and fired four times in rapid succession.
The target was the tangled-up comforter and pillows on his bed, which in the half-light spilling through the window could have been mistaken for a human form.
This wasn’t a robbery. It was an assassination attempt.
Jameson didn’t wait for the intruder to realize his error. Guesstimating where the man was standing, he pressed his trigger.
The boom that erupted from his 1911 was deafening, and the room was illuminated by its massive muzzle flash.
Like the good Marine he was, Jameson followed up with not one, but three additional shots, adjusting his fire each time, hoping to finish the would-be killer on the other side of his door before the intruder could adjust his aim and kill him.
At least one of his shots appeared to have found its mark because he heard the shooter stagger backward and fall to the living room floor.
Leaping off of the dresser, he shifted quickly to the other side of the bedroom—just in case the man had pinpointed his location and was about to return fire. But no fire came.
He waited several more seconds. When no sound came from the living room, he prepared to investigate.
Creeping toward the bedroom door, the first thing he saw was the shooter’s boots, followed by the rest of the man’s body splayed across his living room floor. Two rounds from the 1911 had hit the man center mass, square in the chest.
The intruder didn’t fit Jameson’s mental picture of a D.C. home invader. He didn’t look like a junkie or a gangbanger. He actually looked like him—white guy, late thirties to early forties, short hair, fit. Then there was his weapon.
In his years of living in the nation’s capital, Jameson didn’t think he’d ever heard of a suppressor being used in a burglary.
Just then, his thoughts were interrupted by movement from the kitchen. There was a second intruder.
As soon as he had clocked the additional threat, he saw the barrel of another suppressed pistol and a wave of subsonic rounds was sent in his direction.
Jameson dove back into the bedroom for cover.
Bringing his 1911 to bear, he fired three rounds at the kitchen, straight through the drywall.
He had two bullets left—at least until he could get to the four fully loaded magazines in his nightstand drawer. But to get to them, he would have to risk exposing himself in front of his open bedroom door.
As another wave of rounds rained down on the bedroom, he scanned for anything he might be able to use to swing the door shut.
There was nothing. He was going to have to risk exposure.
Getting to his feet, he moved as close as he could to the door. Then, sticking his 1911 into the opening and aiming for where he imagined the threat was, he fired twice as he lunged for his nightstand.
In the instant he was exposed, he saw how far off his last two rounds had been. The second intruder was no longer in the kitchen. He was at the front door.
With his slide locked back, Jameson dropped the spent magazine, slammed home a fresh one from the drawer and, snatching up a second mag in his left hand, depressed the slide release. He was not only ready to get back in the fight, but to end it.
Positioning himself near the bedroom entrance, he exhaled, applied pressure to his trigger, and stole a peek into the living room just in time.
The front door was wide open and the other shooter was about to flee. Jameson lit him up, dumping almost his entire magazine into him. The man fell dead, half in the former Marine’s apartment, and half outside in the hallway.
After checking to make sure the man in the living room was actually dead, Jameson did the same with the second intruder, dragged him back inside the apartment, and then closed and locked the front door. The police would already be on their way. He needed to act fast.
Quickly patting each of the men down, he looked for something, anything, that would tell him why they had come to his apartment and why they wanted him dead. This was no run-of-the-mill burglary.
Neither of the men had wallets. They didn’t have phones either. They were completely sterile, which cemented one very chilling fact for Jameson—the men were professionals.
But who the hell would send professional killers after him? Was it possible that they had made a mistake? Maybe they had hit the wrong apartment.
Somehow, he knew this wasn’t a mistake. He also knew that he was allowing himself to slide back into the realm of possibilities again. Guys who were professional enough not to carry a single piece of pocket litter were likely professional enough not to hit the wrong apartment.
Until he had evidence to the contrary, everything he did from this moment forward was going to be based upon the assumption that he was the intended target. Right now the why of it didn’t matter. Neither did the who—as in who were these guys and who were they working for?
There was no time to process what had happened. That would come later. Right now, he needed to move. He needed to be gone before the police arrived.
After taking pictures of the would-be killers, he air-dropped them to his personal cloud and pulled the hard drives from his network attached storage device, which he threw in his go-bag, along with his laptop.
He set the backpack as close as he could to the front door without getting any blood on it and got dressed in record time.
He dressed in jeans, boots, a sweatshirt, and a ball cap, hid the 1911 in a holster at the small of his back, and shrugged on a waxed Barbour jacket, the pockets of which were stuffed with two boxes of ammo, his tactical flashlight, and his spare magazines.
Thirty seconds later, he was descending the fire stairs two at a time.
Out on the street, he kept his head down and moved with purpose, but not so much purpose that it would draw attention.
Near a nightclub at Dupont Circle, he found a hammered bachelorette party tending to their bride-to-be, who was throwing up on the sidewalk, and planted his cell phone on one of the young women.
If anyone was trying to track him, it wouldn’t throw them off for long, but it would buy him a little added time, and that was all he cared about right now.
With that bait and switch complete, he needed some place safe to hole up—some place no one would ever expect him to go.
There was only one location that fit the bill. It was a long shot, but it was the only shot he had.