The unsuspecting FSB man had no idea that he was about to take a nap the hard way.
Fisher began by looping his right arm around the man’s neck, making sure the crook of his elbow was beneath the agent’s chin. Next, he placed the hand of that arm on his opposite bicep and then applied his left palm forcefully to the back of the agent’s head, pushing the man’s head and neck into the crook of his flexed arm.
Fisher’s attack didn’t stop there. He applied additional pressure by pinioning the man’s lower body. He did this by swinging his legs to lock around the agent’s and arching his back, just as the man dropped his phone and, as expected, reached up toward Fisher’s head.
The “blood choke” was a strangulation technique that compressed the carotid arteries without compressing the airway. The goal was to create cerebral ischemia and a temporary hypoxic condition in the brain.
A well-applied blood choke should render an opponent unconscious in a matter of seconds. Ironically, the blood choke required little physical strength to perform correctly and was a favorite of those operators who lacked the upper body conditioning for a more traditional stranglehold.
The agent struggled a few seconds more, then went limp in Fisher’s arm. He wouldn’t be unconscious for long.
Fisher got to work, dragging him into the forest behind the cars. He set the man down and checked for a carotid pulse. Good, still there. He bound the man’s wrists behind his back with one of the agent’s bootlaces, then improvised a gag with one of the man’s socks and his belt. He removed the man’s pistol, emptied the chamber, then took the magazine and the two spares the man was carrying and hurled them away, into the woods.
“Third guy’s come back outside, Sam,” said Charlie with an audible tremor in his voice.
“What’s his problem?”
“Don’t know. But he’s looking around for his buddy, shit…”
“Sam, you’d better get him before he gets back in the hotel.”
Fisher burst from the forest and went running straight at the man.
As the agent reached into his jacket to draw his not-so-expertly-concealed pistol, Fisher seized the man and tripped him flat onto his back, knocking the wind out of him.
Before the agent had a chance to regain his senses, Fisher spun him around, jerked the man’s arm behind his back and broke it. Snap!
Grimacing over the man’s scream, Fisher put him in a blood choke and had him unconscious in exactly eleven seconds. He dragged the agent behind the parked cars, then checked for a pulse. Perfect.
Once more, he used the agent’s bootlace, belt, and sock to immobilize and gag him. He disarmed the man and shoved his pistol and magazines behind the wheel of the nearest car. His pulse now raging, Fisher charged into the hotel.
“Briggs! I’m heading up the stairwell to the third floor. When I tell you, just shoot out that sliding glass door and move in. I’ll be coming in through the main door.”
“Roger that, but I’ve got IR on the room and something’s wrong,” said Briggs.
“Yeah, he’s right,” cried Charlie. “We got big problems. The BioHarness watches? Two of them have gone dead. Alarm’s been tripped.”
Fisher snorted. “No way, my two guys were good.”
“So was mine,” said Briggs.
“Grim, where are you?” cried Fisher. “Grim?”
Her silence sent him bounding up the stairwell. He reached the third-floor hallway where, at the end, he spotted a maid’s cart knocked aside just outside room 301.
As he ran, Grim finally answered, “Sam, I’m here, back in my room. I’ve been trying to figure out how they got tipped off.”
“Shit! Hotel security cams just went down — like they pulled the plug,” said Charlie. “No power to the system.”
“I’m heading inside the room,” Fisher said. He shot past the maid’s cart and found the door to room 301 hanging half open. He drew his SIG and tensed.
He swept his pistol from corner to corner, searching, assessing, taking inventory.
Faint trace of perfume in the air. TV. Double bed. Footprints on the rug. Many sets. Small electronic unit on the dresser: the BioHarness station. Bathroom. Small suitcases still lying open, clothes inside.
“Room’s clear.” He drew the curtain covering the balcony, then threw the lock and slid open the glass door. Briggs was crouched down and waiting for him.
“What the hell, Sam? How’d we lose them?”
The sound of screeching tires from below stole their attention.
A brown Skoda Yeti with driver and passenger in the front seat came bouncing out of the adjacent lot, turned onto the hotel’s driveway, then roared toward the exit.
“That’s them,” cried Fisher before he vaulted over the railing and plunged toward the SUV.
18
It was just Fisher’s luck that Bab had sold the EMP grenades she’d stolen from the old dead drop. A carefully tossed grenade would’ve rendered the Skoda’s engine useless. Game over. There was no way the Snow Maiden and her partner could’ve escaped with Nadia on foot.
Additionally, Fisher could’ve put Briggs to work with his sniper’s rifle in an attempt to take out a rear tire or two, but the rifle was slung around his back and he doubted Briggs could get it on target in time. They had their sidearms, but taking wild potshots would’ve been much too dangerous with Nadia inside the SUV — and they had to assume she was.
These were, admittedly, all afterthoughts that struck Fisher while he was in the air, realizing that, holy shit, landing on top of the SUV was going to hurt.
Knowing how to move through the impact was half the battle won. They taught you that in jumper school — how to land without breaking your legs. Your feet struck first, then you threw yourself sideways to distribute the shock along five points of contact: the balls of your feet, the calf, the thigh, the hip, and the side of your back.
Still, the years had not been kind to Fisher’s knees, and he was not prepared for another operation on a torn ACL, no. He could take the pain; hell, he embraced the pain, but an impact that might send him rolling off the top of the Skoda to crash to the asphalt had quickly become a very real and breath-robbing possibility.
His boots made impact first, creating a sizable dent in the roof, and then, as the SUV’s momentum threatened to send him flying backward, he threw himself forward, onto his chest, reaching out for the roof racks on either side. His right hand latched on first, and that was good, since the driver cut the wheel hard left, leaving the hotel’s driveway for Lenina Street. Fisher was wrenched sideways before hooking his boot onto the rack and pulling himself back up.
The first gunshot blasted through the rooftop about two inches away from his arm. In fact, as he shifted away, his jacket sleeve got caught on the ragged edge of the bullet hole.
Incredible. The shot had been fired from the passenger, and judging from the size of the hole, it was probably from a .40-caliber handgun. That someone had been reckless enough to discharge a weapon inside a closed vehicle with the windows rolled up was nearly as insane as what he was doing. Between the deafening crack and the heavy firing gases and smoke, not to mention the lead and traces of mercury in the air from the primer, the occupants inside would soon choke on their own foolishness.
But that didn’t stop them. Two more rounds punched through, and at the same time, voices sounded in the subdermaclass="underline"
“I’ve got an idea to cut them off,” cried Briggs.
“What’s going on?” cried Charlie. “I’m black over here.”