Carpenter eased past that door, however, saving it for last: he had other business first. He’d timed his assault to begin five minutes after the guards in the lobby would’ve done their usual every-thirty-minute walkie-talkie check-in with the especially well-trained man guarding their boss.
Four doors past Benjamin’s room, Carpenter paused. His ear to the door reported a woman within, moaning loudly. Not in pain. Registered here was Lawrence Schafer, Benjamin’s accountant. Finally he would get the chance to see the fetching Lynn Barr naked, a frequent daydream now about to come true, but not in the circumstances he might have wished.
The magnetic passkey wouldn’t be silent, but the couple inside sounded suitably distracted. He slid the key down the slot, heard the lock click, then opened the door a few inches, just short of where the night latch would have stopped his action.
Bedsprings sang, a man grunted, a woman moaned. If they were aware that their door was now ajar, their performance gave no hint. Carpenter inserted a flat piece of flexible metal through the opening, then pulled the door almost completely shut as he slid the metal piece farther in, pushing the latch off the door.
His shoulder nudged the door open a few more inches. He slipped inside. Bedsprings sang, man grunted, female moaned, louder now, building. If they’d tipped to his presence, these were consummate actors. He very carefully shut the door, knowing it would make a click doing so and was ready to react.
But bedsprings sang on, grunts, moans.
Two silent steps took the blond down the short entry hall past the opposing bathroom and closet, and then there they were. Curtains drawn, room dark, but Carpenter could easily make out, on top of the covers, the beautiful naked woman riding the naked handsome man.
Grinding down on him as he thrust up into her, her brown hair down (usually in that uptight bun) and flouncing on her shoulders, she bounced and bounced on Schafer’s dick. Carpenter could see the swell of her full breasts as they bobbed above a sex-drunk Schafer’s gaping mouth.
Two high-class, powerful business types, going at it like the animals they really were at heart. Like everybody was.
They were climaxing and Carpenter let them. He wasn’t devoid of mercy. When Barr, head back, moaned, “Give it to me, give it to me,” he waited till Schafer had, then gave it to her, in the back of the head, much of the insides of which splattered abstractly on a realistic framed summer landscape screwed to the wall over the bed.
Her corpse fell, literal dead weight, onto her sexual partner, her flesh muffling his scream. Carpenter didn’t even have to pull the female body off the man — he pushed her to one side, off the bed, and crawled out on the other, between screams.
And as the accountant widened his mouth to resume that screaming, Carpenter fired into the open hole, the bullet carving a groove in the victim’s tongue on its way to severing his spinal cord.
A corpse on either side of the bed, sprawls of lifeless nothing. No need for second head shots here.
He exited without touching anything, went two doors back toward Benjamin’s room, 45 up and ready, just in case the bodyguard had heard something and might stick his head out to check.
The passkey was enough this time. Frank Elmore never used the latch — it only slowed him down when his boss beckoned.
Carpenter went in, 45 leading the way down another mini hall past closet and can. But Elmore wasn’t around the corner in bed, he was seated at a small desk against the wall, straight ahead.
The security chief looked up from his laptop and turned, expecting a staffer or possibly housekeeping, and instead saw the extended snout of the sound-suppressed .45.
No widened eyes or mouth yawning open to scream. No sign of alarm at all. It was as if this were a delivery he was expecting, and ready to sign for. His eyes were at droopy half-mast, red-rimmed, and the dried trails of tears were evident on a face smeared with five o’clock shadow. A whiskey bottle and an empty tumbler were at hand near the laptop.
“I don’t give a shit,” Elmore said.
Carpenter didn’t either. He put one between the droopy eyes and Elmore went backward, taking the desk chair with him, like a doll somebody tipped over. His black-stockinged feet looked at the mercenary, who didn’t bother with a redundant head shot here, either.
But when he checked Elmore’s corpse, Carpenter glanced up and saw a photo that took up all of the laptop screen, a very, almost too pretty black woman who he immediately recognized. With a shudder of something that was almost fear, Carpenter slapped the laptop shut and took it by its edge in his gloved left hand, and slammed it into the lip of the desk with a metallic crunch. Then he tossed it.
He reloaded and stepped back into the corridor and headed for Benjamin’s suite. The guard in there, Asher, a former Ranger, was the genuine shit. Elite. The others had been good — had being the operative word — and should have been better, but the easy gig had lulled them. But now they were history, with only Asher remaining.
The real threat among them.
He knocked, listening as Asher moved to the door. When the bodyguard was looking through the peephole, Carpenter fired a bullet through it. Then, in case he’d misjudged somehow, he quickly shifted alongside the wall next to the door, his back to it.
But the whump of the bodyguard falling to the floor spoke volumes. Some movement within the room indicated maybe Benjamin was trying to get out a window. He was just about to slide the key card down its slot when he heard coming from the lobby, “What the hell?”
A female voice.
Then from the mouth of the halclass="underline" “FBI! Freeze!”
That goddamned FBI bitch!
She was peeking around the corner. He pressed himself to Benjamin’s door in its slight recess, giving her no real sight line to shoot at him, then fired three quick rounds in her direction. When she ducked back, as the quiet shots loudly chewed the edge of the wall she was tucked behind, he took off the other way.
The bullets had distracted her enough to give Carpenter time to start down the hall, but then she was coming, and he hit the deck as her shots went wide and over him. He rolled and had both .45s out now, pointed her way, forcing her to cram herself against a hotel room door. He sent her two rounds to keep her there, and then that fucking Reeder was in the mouth of the hall behind her, coming his way, an automatic in hand.
On his feet now, on the run, Carpenter emptied his magazine back up the corridor, not bothering to see if he hit anyone or anything. He hit the exit-door crash bar and let cold in and himself out, sprinting into the parking lot. The Nissan was around front, and he abandoned it, taking off on foot.
If Reeder and that bitch had brought backup, he would be running into a world of hurt. But it appeared they hadn’t, and maybe he should lay back and wait and take them out.
But his larger mission remained, and that was the priority — that, and breathing.
He took off running.
Eighteen
“These are the times that try men’s souls.”
Reeder helped Rogers up from the rough carpet — they’d hit the deck when their man emptied his weapon at them — just as the shooter went out the exit at the end of the corridor.
Arriving at the Holiday Inn Express, they’d spotted a Nissan Altima that, despite its different plates, seemed to be the vehicle the blond assassin had been using. Rogers called that in to the Falls Church police, and then they’d parked in the otherwise nearly empty lot and entered the lobby and its scene of unbelievable carnage.