“No one’s contacted you since?”
“No. When I was told to come here, they said to just wait until I hear from them.”
“You’re sure the same person that hired you arranged this?”
“Yes.”
“Clever guy like you would keep details, wouldn’t he? E-mails, bank information… A little insurance.”
“Uh… come on, man, they’ll kill me.”
Sam drew his pistol and pointed it at Greenhorn’s forehead. “They’ll be late.”
“Jesus, okay, okay. Yeah, I kept some stuff.” Greenhorn reached into the pocket of his robe and handed over a thumb-sized USB flash drive. “It’s all there.”
Fisher plugged the drive into the OPSAT’s USB port, waited for the OPSAT to download the contents, then stuffed it into his arm pouch.
From the corner of his eye, Fisher saw something move. Gun still trained on Greenhorn, he slowly turned his head. Greenhorn’s girlfriend, now clad in panties and nothing else, padded across the room, rubbing her eyes. She saw Greenhorn and stopped. Fisher, still in shadow, lowered the pistol, leaned deeper into the couch.
“Hey, Marcus,” she said, voice raspy. “Whatchya doing just sitting here in the dark?”
“Uh… you know, just looking at the fish. Couldn’t sleep.”
She took a step toward him. “Want some company?”
“No, babe, that’s fine. Go on back to bed.”
“Okay…”
She turned back toward the master bedroom, then stopped. She turned back. She looked at Fisher, then blinked a few times and cocked her head.
Ah, damnit, he thought. He had no desire to kill some woman Greenhorn had dragged into his mess of a life. He thumbed the pistol’s selector to DART.
Greenhorn said, “Sweetie, just go back to bed, I’ll be there in a minute.”
She continued to stare at Fisher, blinking, trying to decipher what her still-fuzzy brain was registering. Fisher was about to dart her when she opened her mouth and started screaming.
22
What came out of her mouth wasn’t as much a scream as it was a shriek so piercing that Fisher was momentarily taken aback. In that split second, the woman turned and ran, nimble as a jackrabbit, around the fish tank and toward the door. “Help, help!”
Fisher stood up, grabbed Greenhorn, spun him, and got his neck in an elbow lock. He pressed the pistol’s barrel to the soft spot just below Greenhorn’s ear and then began stepping to his left, toward the windows and the nearest balcony door.
The door to the suite burst open and four figures in black coveralls rushed inside. Their entrance left Fisher with no doubt he was dealing with professionals. They moved as one in a crescent formation, each man scanning his own sector of the room. One of them shouted something and they all turned toward Fisher, their weapons raised and steady as they stalked forward.
Fisher’s idea of taking Greenhorn with him had just evaporated, as had his original exfiltration plan. “Don’t make a move unless I do,” he whispered to Greenhorn.
“Okay, whatever you—”
Fisher heard a single, muted pop. Greenhorn’s head snapped back. He went limp in Fisher’s arms. That was no mistake, he realized instantly. These men were too disciplined to risk such a shot, and too good to miss what they were aiming at. They were following orders. If captured, Greenhorn was not to leave the hotel alive.
Fisher switched his grip on Greenhorn’s body, grabbing him by the collar, then took aim on the nearest Al-Mughaaweer and fired. Even as the man fell, Fisher adjusted aim, fired again, and dropped a second man. The other two scattered toward the nearest cover and opened fire.
Greenhorn’s body began jerking as it took the bullet strikes. Fisher felt something pluck at his left arm, then his right side. He felt no pain, and assumed/hoped the RhinoPlate was doing its job. Behind him he heard the glass cracking. With Greenhorn as a shield, he kept firing, backing toward the door until he felt his heel bump against it.
He holstered the pistol, plucked a flash-bang grenade off his harness, pulled the pin, and tossed it. Per Fisher’s preference, the grenade ran on a quick two-second fuse. He closed his eyes. Through his lids he sensed a flash of white light and felt the concussion ripple through Greenhorn’s body.
Fisher drew the pistol again and started firing, hoping to keep the gunmen’s heads down. He reached back, turned the doorknob, opened the door. He dropped Greenhorn’s body, turned, sprinted across the balcony, and dove over the railing.
His decision against penetrating the hotel via parachute was proven right the instant he cleared the rail. He was grabbed by the cyclonic winds whipping around the building and sent tumbling. A thousand feet tall and sitting offshore, the hotel faced both inland and seaward weather systems, which included wind shears that would terrify any pilot, let alone a lone man with a parafoil strapped to his back.
He’d added the compact parafoil to his pack at the last minute in response to that little voice in the back of his head. Getting into the hotel would be a challenge; getting out could be an even bigger one. Better to have a backup and not need it rather than vice versa.
Whether the Al-Mughaaweer were firing on him from the balcony worried Fisher not at all. Though only seconds had passed since his leap, he was by now lost in the darkness, hurtling away from the hotel and toward the ocean’s surface at sixty miles per hour He had thirty seconds, no more.
He arched his body, arms and legs spread wide to catch as much air as possible. He felt himself lift ever so slightly. He glanced to his right and saw the lights of the seafront shops and restaurants. He twisted that way.
He lifted the OPSAT to his face and punched a button, bringing up his altimeter: 710 FEET. He’d lost a third of the hotel’s height in roughly ten seconds. Given the volatility of the winds, he needed to wait until the last possible moment to open his chute.
He checked his OPSAT:
490 FEET/90 MPH.
A few more seconds…
He reached across his chest and ripped free a Velcro patch, revealing the chute’s D-ring release.
390 FEET.
Wait…
340 FEET.
He jerked the toggle, heard the swoosh and flutter of the parafoil deploying. He was jerked upward, felt his stomach rising into his throat, shoulders wrenched backward. He reached up, found the riser toggles, and gently pulled to counter the parafoil’s initial lift. At this height, in the crosscurrent winds, the parafoil would naturally nose up, trading airspeed for lift, a combination sure to create a stall.
He checked the OPSAT: 255 FEET/40MPH. He switched views to radar mode. To his left up the coast, a red triangle blinked. This too had been the result of Fisher’s last-minute equipment change. Earlier, as he waited for nightfall, he’d meandered up the coast a few miles and secreted a pathfinder transponder on a rock outcropping.
By now every available cop in Dubai would be responding to the reports of gunfire at the city’s most luxurious hotel. Of course, no one had his description, but the sooner he left the area, the better. He confirmed the transponder’s bearing on the OPSAT, then pulled on the left toggle and banked north.
Eyes closed, hands behind his back, Kuan-Yin Zhao paced the perimeter of the room, his shoes echoing off the marble floor and the vaulted ceiling. He’d walked this room hundreds of times over the last two years, seeing the game in his mind, imagining his opponent’s moves and countermoves until nothing had been left to chance. And now… now it was all coming to fruition.