The attack came before he took a single step.
Something tipped him off. The creak of the floor as the man attempted to sneak up behind him, a shadow moving on the wall, the rush of wind as the man drew back to hit him… Whatever it was, the premonition saved his life. He half-turned and threw up a hand to block the chair that his assailant was about to smash down on his head.
There was a splintering sound as the chair came apart on impact. Pain throbbed in Tremblay’s forearm and the pistol flew from his nerveless fingers, even as he staggered under the blow. Then, like a player in a slapstick movie, he tripped over one of the bodies on the floor and fell squarely on his backside.
The attacker pounced on the gun.
There wasn’t time to seek cover, so Tremblay did the only thing he could think of: he grabbed the body he’d tripped over — the corpse of the big man that had met him at the door — and hauled it front of him like a human shield.
Something heavy fell out from beneath the man’s jacket and slammed like a sledgehammer into Tremblay’s crotch. Even as he grimaced against this fresh wave of pain, he heard a faint coughing sound and the rasp of the Beretta’s bolt sliding back and ratcheting another round into the firing chamber. There was a faint tremor as the bullet punched into the dead man, but Tremblay barely noticed. His attention was fixed on the thing that had just punched him in the nuts.
It was a Desert Eagle Mark XIX. The weapon was a monster. Its ten inch barrel was almost as long as the Beretta with its attached suppressor, and at about five pounds, it weighed more than twice as much as the standard issue military sidearm. A cursory glance at the half-inch diameter of the barrel confirmed what Tremblay already suspected: the Desert Eagle was outfitted for the .50 caliber Action Express round.
He grabbed the pistol in his left hand, awkwardly reinforcing his grip with his still half-numb right hand, and shoved the enormous pistol against the back of his very dead human shield, pointing it in the direction of his assailant. His thumb swept the safety off and his finger pulled the trigger.
The report sounded like cannon-fire. It felt like it too…or maybe like holding a stick of dynamite. Because he’d been in a sitting position, there had been no way to brace his body against the recoil. Newton’s Third Law of Motion ruled against him and he toppled backward, barely keeping the gun in his clenched fist. He still fared better than his attacker though. The bullet had punched through the dead man’s soft abdomen, and continued forward undeterred, striking the man halfway across the room, spattering both men’s blood onto the walls and even the ceiling.
Tremblay quickly shook off the effects of both the unexpected attack and his stunning rejoinder, and scrambled to his feet. The report from the Desert Eagle had been loud enough to wake the dead, to say nothing of the other guests at the resort, and that was going to make getting out a bit trickier than he’d planned. He hastened to the room entrance, which was still open after his violent intrusion. In the hallway beyond, doors were opening and a growing tumult of voices was audible, but he didn’t step out to investigate. Instead, he stripped away the piece of tape he’d used to confound the latch bolt, and firmly closed the door. That would buy him a few minutes to figure out what to do next.
Remembering that he’d been caught off guard once already, he spun around with the Desert Eagle at the ready and quickly checked the suite to make sure there were no other occupants waiting in ambush. There were no more surprises of that sort, but he did find an open door leading to an exterior balcony where he suspected the third man had been lurking. The balcony also gave him an idea on how to make his exit.
He returned to the front room to retrieve his Beretta, a much more efficient weapon for field work than the overly powerful Desert Eagle, but as he was about to discard the latter, he hesitated.
Stan Tremblay had a deep appreciation for a well-engineered piece of killing technology. True, the Desert Eagle was about as useful to a stealthy Delta operator as a Lamborghini Diablo was to a soccer mom, but that didn’t make it any less a thing of beauty. Besides, the Fates had literally dropped it right in his lap, and not a moment too soon…obviously, the universe wanted him to have it.
Despite the urgency of his situation, he flashed an approving grin at his unassailably logical conclusion, and searched the body of the big Arab for spare magazines. To his utter delight, he found that the dead man’s shoulder holster rig contained not only four more seven-round magazines, but another identical pistol on the opposite side.
Tremblay let out a low whistle. “Holy shit, pal. Trying to overcompensate for something?”
Since breaking up a matched set seemed like bad luck, and it was probably dangerous to just leave them lying around, he appropriated the holster for himself and once he’d looped it around his own shoulders, he returned the first pistol to its place. He shifted the rig experimentally; the added weight felt strangely comfortable.
He lingered in the suite a moment longer, searching the closets until he found a baggy windbreaker jacket that would both conceal his new acquisitions and be a little less conspicuous than the white waiter’s outfit. Then he headed back to the balcony and swung over the rail.
Despite his size, or maybe because of it, he moved down the exterior of the hotel like King Kong on the Empire State Building. He’d grown up with the woods of New Hampshire as his playground; climbing was second nature to him. He swung between balconies, made dynamic leaps between the patios when necessary and finally dropped the last ten feet to the concrete deck that surrounded the entire building, whereupon he immediately melted into the shadows.
He considered trying to steal a car from the parking lot, but rejected the idea. Someone was bound to contact the authorities in response to the shooting; the last thing he needed was to roll up to a police checkpoint with a hot ride, a small arsenal and a bogus Canadian passport. Instead, he employed the method of travel that had served soldiers like himself well for untold millennia. He started walking.
The airport was only about six miles away, a distance he could have traversed in about an hour without even breaking a sweat, but when he emerged from the hills that separated the Gold Mohur coastal area from the residential areas of Aden, he was able to hail a taxi cab and shorten the journey. Forty minutes after leaving the hotel, he was on the tarmac at Aden International Airport where a USAF C-17 waited. As he hiked up to the open rear ramp of the enormous cargo jet, Vaughn stepped out to meet him.
Vaughn was a little shorter than Tremblay, but solidly built. He had wavy brown hair and a neatly trimmed beard that was — like Tremblay’s goatee — against Army regs, but Delta wasn’t like the regular army. Unit operators needed to be able to blend in with the general population as much as possible, and that meant some rules had to be bent a little. The Texan’s expression was uncharacteristically grim.
Tremblay nodded to him. “Houston, we have a problem?”
“Shake a leg, Juggernaut. There’s a fire.”
Tremblay’s brows creased but he withheld his questions until he was on the ramp. “What the fuck, over? Didn’t you get the kid?”
“We got the kid; zero complications. Handed him off to State fifteen minutes ago. This is something else.” Vaughn waved to one of the flight crew, then ushered Tremblay forward to where the rest of the team was waiting. When Tremblay was seated, Vaughn spoke again. “You know about Cipher element, right?”