He heard a noise — something clattering — from behind him, coming from the opposite end of the suite. He turned around, exited the bathroom and the master bedroom, stepping back out into the lounge. Without shoes his footsteps were silent on the thick carpet. He hurried into the TV area, hearing a whisper he couldn’t decipher from the second bedroom, an answer he likewise couldn’t understand. Victor stood to the left of the door, depressed the trigger completely for full auto, firing a waist-high burst through the door at a ten-degree angle, sending the bullets along the wall directly to the door’s right, then switched positions and shot another burst from the opposite side.
There was a groan, a clatter of metal on wood. In these kind of situations, people always stood or crouched to the side of doors.
He shot through the handle and lock before dropping to his stomach. He shuffled forward until he was lying with his left shoulder against the skirting board, body parallel to the wall, head in line with the doorframe. He pushed the door open a fraction with the muzzle of the SP-90. The door creaked faintly.
In response, sternum-high holes exploded directly through the door panels. Bullets embedded themselves in the wall at the far side of the suite, some at head height, others higher still. Two shooters then, one very low — prone or kneeling — the other in a tactical crouch.
Victor, still on his stomach, kicked a dining chair and it fell over, thudding on the carpet. The shooting paused at that, and he added a wheezing groan to the ploy as he crawled forward in front of the door, elbowed it open and immediately saw the first shooter — the one he’d shot through the door — sitting on the floor, back against the room’s bed, legs splayed out before him in a pool of black blood. The man saw Victor a split second before 5.7 mm bullets punctured his heart, lungs and spine.
Victor quickly rose into a crouch, acquired the second man crouched down on the far side of the bed, using it as cover, his face contorting in an instant of surprise as Victor appeared seemingly out of nowhere before him. Victor shot him twice in the forehead, stood, swept through the room, but saw no one else. That left the adjoining bathroom. Where the second dead guy fell, he’d brought down one of the drapes and the artificial night light of the city flowed into the room.
The bathroom door was closed. Three guys left, now crowded into the bathroom for safety. Trapped. Victor checked the magazine, saw it still had around thirty per cent capacity. More than enough.
He walked forward but stopped when he heard the crunch of an expended shell casing somewhere behind him — from the lounge. He turned around fast, moving into the doorway, expecting to see a bewildered guest or rent-a-cop investigating. Instead, he saw the dark grey silhouette of a slim man in the middle of the lounge, another by his side, shorter and muscular, both with arms out in front, holding pale grey handguns in their black hands. They’d already seen him in the faint gloom provided by the uncovered window, and fired first.
Their suppressed gunshots clacked in the quiet air, muzzle flashes tiny black bursts through the infrared. They fired almost in unison, the first bullet catching Victor on the right triceps, the second hitting him three inches below his sternum and dropping him before he could shoot back.
The impact knocked the air from his lungs and despite the shock and pain he lay still, hearing their footsteps rushing closer. He breathed as shallowly as he could, eyes shut so they didn’t catch the light, right fist still closed round the P90’s grip. His stomach ached from the subsonic bullet but the pain was only like getting punched, thanks to the Kevlar vest. The arm wound hurt, but he fought to keep it from his face.
He figured they were more associates of Yamout, probably responding to a panicked cell phone call. They had to have been close to have got here so quickly; on the same floor, in another suite, but must have arrived earlier since Victor had not seen them. He thought of the watcher from the lobby, cursed himself for thinking the watcher was alone.
Their footsteps slowed as they came closer. In the darkness they wouldn’t be able to see he was wearing body armour. The floorboards beneath the carpet creaked as a heavy foot stepped close to Victor’s right leg. A shoe nudged him in the hip. A useless check, but one people with too much adrenalin in them tended to make.
Another voice shouted from the bathroom of the master bedroom. It was in Russian — presumably Petrenko — a desperate plea for help. A second cry sounded in Arabic, presumably from Yamout. There was no response from the two men near Victor.
The foot near to his leg moved and Victor sensed the man standing next to his right arm. A second man moved to his left, then past him. The man to his right stepped over his arm and Victor waited until he’d taken three steps forward before opening his eyes. He rolled his head back, saw the grey shapes of the two men ahead of him, upside down, stepping into the bedroom, slowly, despite the cries for help.
Victor clutched the P90’s forward grip in his left hand, raised the sub-machine gun over his head, took aim on the first man’s back and squeezed the trigger.
A jagged line of bullet holes tore along the man’s spine. The recoil of firing upside down and without proper support made the P90 dance in Victor’s hands and waste rounds. He shifted his aim and watched the second man shot in the hip, back, arm and head. Both men hit the carpet, dead.
The pain began to intensify in his arm. He checked the wound. It was bleeding but not badly. The bullet hadn’t gone in, but had dug a shallow groove through the skin and muscle. Not serious but he wouldn’t be doing any push-ups for a while. He rose into a crouch.
A bullet ripped a chunk out of the carpet and floorboard next to Victor.
He felt another cut the air above. There was a third party-crasher firing from the lounge, having difficulty making out exactly where Victor was, so low to the ground. Victor quickly brought up the P90 to return fire but he didn’t have time to fully acquire the target and missed. The suppressing fire did its job, however, and the gunman ducked into cover, but the P90 clicked empty.
There was no time to reload — the gunman could reappear at any moment — so Victor dropped the sub-machine gun, drew the USP, adopted a two-handed grip, held his breath, and waited for his attacker to show himself.
He did. Victor fired.
There was no cry but he heard the distinctive wet thunk of a. 45 calibre slug punching through flesh.
If there were three men he hadn’t known about there could easily be more, so Victor stayed still for five seconds, waiting, USP trained on the space in the centre of the lounge where anyone else entering would appear. When they didn’t, he stood. Thanks to the open lobby, the noise of his attack would have carried far, suppressed weapons or not. Hotel security could be on the way. The police may have already been called.
He knew he should abort, extract immediately, but his target was less than twenty feet away.
He rushed back into the second bedroom, careful with his footfalls to avoid tripping on the corpses in the doorway. He could hear the sound of traffic as he approached the en suite door, understanding what that meant before he felt the draught. He kicked open the door.
Light through the smashed-out window provided enough illumination for him to see the bathroom was empty even without thermal imaging goggles. The window was small but big enough for even a large man to squeeze through if his life depended on it. Victor stepped into the tub, stretched upwards to peer through the gap. There was blood and strips of clothing on the fragments of glass that hadn’t been cleared. He saw the exterior of the hotel. No three men, but a ledge wide enough to shimmy along. He heard sirens.
Victor dashed back through the suite, realising by the groaning from the lounge that the last guy he’d shot wasn’t dead, just incapacitated. Victor ignored him, exited on to the balcony corridor in time to see an elevator descending, already two floors below him, the hint of grey and black from those inside. The elevators, unlike every other electrically operated device in the hotel, wouldn’t have been rendered useless when Victor blew the power. Most systems had auxiliary power for just such emergencies.