Ray appeared serious, as if he were adding numbers in his head. “Yeah, he wasn’t wearing no mustache when I saw him.”
“Is that all?”
“And. . and. .he was missing part of his left ear. Looked like he lost it in a fight or something. Pretty ugly.”
“Great,” Nick said, now certain that Rashid Baser was actually on American soil. He turned to see Matt sitting there feeling his empty holster, looking like a boy who’d left his fly open.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Matt said, looking at the four cement walls that contained them.
“No shit,” Nick said.
Ray looked lost.
Nick crouched down and pulled up on Ray’s chin until their eyes were inches apart. “What did you do, Ray? Did he pay you to set us up?”
“Huh?”
“Look, Ray, I know you’re stupid, but you don’t have to overdo it.”
Seville’s face tightened with confusion.
“Ray. He tried to kill you. He knows you made him. You don’t think he’s going to finish the job? You think he forgot about you? What if he followed you here and saw two FBI agents waltz in behind you? Especially agents who specialize in counterterrorism. Faces he knows.”
Seville’s eyes widened with recognition, like someone who just remembered he’d left the stove on.
“You think you were tagged, Ray?”
Seville just stared. Until the explosion broke the silence.
Chapter 2
The sound came from the outer hallway. It wasn’t the searing blast of a bomb destroying the building, but the muted pop of Semtex ripping apart the hinges of a steel door. Nick knew that the next thing he’d hear would be the thump of that big piece of steel slamming into the corridor. He also knew that Truth would be hustling furiously toward his demise. Which was exactly how it happened. Nick heard a couple of coughs from a silencer, then all three hundred pounds of Truth hit the floor heavy.
By now the red light in the poker room would be flashing, signaling a breach in the entrance. Everyone would scurry out the back exit for fear of being caught in a raid.
Nick searched for a way out, but saw nothing. He knew what it felt like to be trapped inside of a coffin. Nick glanced down at his cell phone. No reception. He looked at Matt and saw him examining his phone. He shook his head. Their service was being jammed.
Matt stood up and grasped his holster as if it could grow another gun. He stared at the solitary exit from the basement room. A rickety oak door that hung there more from habit than sound construction.
There was a tap on the door. It sounded exactly what the muzzle of a gun would sound like against brittle oak. A man’s voice came from the other side. It was soft, but firm, with a hint of an accent. “Raymond.”
The only noise was the hum of the fluorescent lights.
“Raymond, it’s not you I want. Just tell me if they’re armed and I’ll let you go untouched. It’s the only way you’ll leave here alive.”
“It’s him,” Ray murmured.
Nick put his fingers to his lips. Matt was on his knees quietly twisting off the leg of the coffee table.
“Raymond,” the voice said. “Don’t be a fool. These are not men worth dying for.”
Nick watched Seville carefully. The guy was actually thinking about it. He saw it in his eyes. Seville blurted, “They’re un-”
Matt reached him first. His uppercut smacked Ray hard under the chin. Seville’s head jerked back and his body instantly became a rag doll against the pillow of the sofa.
“Raymond?” came the voice on the other side of the door.
There was silence while Matt went back to work on the leg of the table. Nick saw him twisting the wooden dowel, but it was like watching from an out of body experience. A silent vacuum seemed to suck all of the oxygen from the room. Anxiety tightened its grip around Nick’s neck and forced him to remain still for fear of falling down. He was slipping away again.
A vision flashed across Nick’s mind. It was the image of a lipstick kiss his wife left for him on the mirror that morning. It hung there like the single digit sum to the chalkboard-crammed equation of his life. The kiss said everything that needed to be said. Suddenly, the floor seemed to be moving and he realized it was his legs wobbling beneath him.
“Nicholas,” the assassin said, breaking into Nick’s death dream. “I found two guns on the black man’s corpse. We both know who they belong to.”
Matt freed the wooden leg and motioned with his hand encouraging Nick to engage the killer in some dialog. The lipstick kiss evaporated.
“Nicholas,” Rashid said. “Is that your partner with you? Mathew?”
Rashid’s voice jarred him back to consciousness. The evil seeped through the door like toxic waste.
Nick’s heart felt as if it would burst through his chest. He forced himself to concentrate. He wasn’t about to accommodate his assassin with any concessions.
“Nicholas, you may as well speak. They will most certainly be your last words.”
Nick instantly went from resignation to anger. Fury built up inside of him like a bolt of adrenalin. He could practically see Rashid’s teeth showing through his shark-like grin.
“Rashid,” Nick said, “wipe that smile off your face.”
A small chuckle from behind the door. “Nicholas, I should have killed you in Istanbul.”
“You didn’t kill me in Istanbul because you couldn’t,” Nick said. “Just like now.”
A pop. The silenced bullet shot through the door and buzzed past Nick’s ear. Both agents hit the floor, their heads only a couple of feet apart. They scurried behind the sofa across from Ray.
“He’s being cautious,” Matt whispered. “We got lucky once. He won’t make that mistake again.”
“Or he’s relishing the moment,” Nick said. “Prolonging the pleasure.”
“Whatever he’s doing, we’ve got thirty seconds, maybe sixty if he’s in a sporting mood.”
Nick nodded. He pointed to the door. “How does he come in? Heavy, or slow?”
“He busts through, dives right and shoots around the room starting from his right.”
“Agreed.”
Another pop. This time the sound was louder. He was alternating guns. The bullet passed through the dilapidated sofa with little resistance. Rashid had them. Without return fire he would be on top of them in a matter of moments.
Matt gripped the table leg and got to a knee. He pointed at the door. “I’ll wait for him to barge through. He’ll see me first and fire, but I might get one swing in. It’s our only chance.”
Nick shook his head. “No. It’s suicide.”
“Of course it’s suicide. What, you think I was going to beat Rashid with a stick against his two guns.”
Nick thought a moment. Two guns. “You’re right. He’s got a gun in each hand.”
“Now you’re catching on. That’s why you’re the brains of the team.”
“How’s he going to turn the doorknob with a gun in each hand?”
Matt blinked. “What the fuck difference does that make? You see that thing, it’s barely hanging on its hinges.”
“Exactly,” Nick said, his voice growing stronger with each cogent thought. “He rams into that door with any momentum at all and it will give way.”
The both of them stared at the door.
“Nicholas,” Rashid’s voice sounded impatient.
“Okay,” Matt whispered. “What if I remove the hinges?”
“Yes,” Nick said. “He leans into it and it comes straight down. Rashid won’t expect it and for a moment, he’ll be exposed. Just a moment.”
Again a bullet spit through the flimsy door and this one plunged into Ray Seville’s chest. By the amount of blood hemorrhaging through his shirt, Nick could tell that the bullet had found his heart. The poor bastard never saw it coming.
Nick turned to Matt. “That’s precisely how much time you get. One moment. Don’t miss.”
Matt’s eyes had a glimmer of hope. As he crawled to the door with the table leg, he looked back and said, “Keep his attention toward you.”