He peered around the crates, saw a tall figure enter the room, quickly sidestepping away from the door. Victor squeezed off a shot, but he wasn’t fast enough and the Israeli disappeared into cover.
A shot sounded from somewhere unseen and wood exploded as bullets punctured one of the crates. Victor backed off. He couldn’t see the assassin, and couldn’t risk exchanging fire if he did. His wrists were still bound, and the Beretta had just three rounds remaining.
There was a passageway to Victor’s left, which he guessed would take him back to the main factory floor. He made a break for it, sprinting out of cover, trusting to speed. A bullet pinged off machinery.
He made it, didn’t slow down, running along the wide corridor, seeing the huge broken windows in the distance. He ran out into the main factory floor, veered right to take him out of the immediate line of sight of anyone following him. Victor didn’t know if the second assassin was nearby. He had to risk it.
There was no time to fumble in the dark for something sharp to cut the straps so Victor tucked the Beretta into his waistband, grabbed a pipe from the floor and swung it at a corner of one of the metal pillars. It made a loud clang. He swung it three more times, hitting the pillar in exactly the same spot. He dropped the pipe and rubbed the strap between his wrists against where he’d smashed away paint, rust and grime to reveal cold steel beneath. He felt the heat of friction as he frantically sawed.
The clang of the pipe hitting the pillar would tell his enemies exactly where to find him, but he had no choice. If he wanted to live, he needed his hands back. He sawed harder, expecting the searing agony of a bullet’s impact at any moment.
The strap snapped. Finally, he was free.
Victor scrambled away, avoiding the swathes of light cutting through the air and reflecting off rain drops. When he reached the shelter of a rusty staircase leading up to a split-level lost in the darkness, he stopped, turned, and drew the Beretta. His hands were still numb and his wrists tingling, but it felt good to have independent movement again.
He heard footsteps crunching grit and other debris, but couldn’t see the source. He had to move. Every moment he stayed under the split-level gave the other assassins time to close in and flank him. There was an interior doorway about thirty feet away; he approached it, keeping close to the wall, stepping as slowly and quietly as he could. He couldn’t see where he was treading, and knew that one wrong footfall could give away his position. He would have taken off his shoes, but the floor was so littered with sharp objects he would have sliced his feet to shreds by the time he made it to the door.
Victor stopped ten feet from the doorway. There was too much light around it to move closer without revealing himself. His enemy could be watching the doorway, figuring he would head that way, and ready to shoot the second Victor moved into the light.
He took a breath, preparing to sprint and trust to speed again. He didn’t have a lot of choice.
Something brushed Victor’s ear. He flinched, reached a hand up and found a flake of rust on his shoulder. Instinctively, his head tilted backwards, looking up. He saw nothing but knew the split-level was twenty-plus feet above his head. Something up there had caused the flake of rust to fall.
The second assassin. As Victor had thought, they knew where he was hiding, and while one waited on the factory floor, the second was seeking to flank, not from the left or right, but from above.
Victor pivoted in the direction of the staircase. The Israeli above would have to come down that way, into the light. Victor stepped forward and to the side to get a better angle on the staircase. If he could kill this one, that left only one inside with him. Those were Victor’s kind of odds.
He knocked something with his shoe. It skidded into a puddle and splashed. Not loud, but loud enough in the silence.
A suppressor clacked and a bullet buried itself in the floor a couple of feet away. Another splashed into the puddle.
The shots came from above, firing through the wooden floorboards of the split level, impossible to tell exactly where from just two shots. Victor remained perfectly still, willing the Israeli to shoot again and give away his position. The assassin fired a third shot, then a fourth.
The final one hit the floor close enough for Victor to feel pieces of exploded concrete strike his shins. Moonlight glowed through a hole above. Victor calculated the trajectory and squeezed off a round. He heard it tear through wood. There was a grunt, a stumble. Victor tracked the sound and risked another shot. A second of silence before something small and hard hit the floorboards.
Something big and heavy followed. Dead, or maybe just wounded. Or pretending.
One round left in the Beretta. One too few to risk another blind shot, especially with another foe nearby. Victor felt around on the floor, found a heavy bolt, and hurled it at the open doorway. He was sprinting the instant the bolt clattered on the other side, knowing the Israeli on the factory floor couldn’t help but be distracted by it, if only for a moment. Victor reached the staircase and ascended fast. He heard movement below him as the assassin responded, moving to get a shot, and Victor flinched as a bullet struck the metal handrail behind him, but he made it to the top of the stairs and dived through a doorway on to the split-level.
He was in a derelict office. Moonlight shone through a wide, smashed-out window. Victor jumped to his feet and, gun up, moved quickly across the space. The time for stealth had passed. If the Israeli up here was dead, it didn’t matter. If he was still alive and wounded, Victor wanted to get to him before he could recover sufficiently to retrieve his weapon, and before the assassin below arrived. There was no furniture except for a dented filing cabinet against one wall. The drawers had all been removed and stood, upside down, on the floor. Makeshift stools. Crushed beer cans and broken bottles were spread across the floor.
Through another door, Victor emerged into a larger office, some kind of briefing room, perhaps. The carpet had been stripped to expose the floorboards. Rain fell through holes in the roof. There were piles of broken chairs and other junk, rusting filing cabinets lying on their sides, plastic water-cooler bottles scattered around. Too dark to see the bullets holes in the floor. There were two doors at the far end.
No dead or injured assassin.
Victor froze, knowing he couldn’t backtrack and go down the staircase. If the Israeli from the factory floor was still down there, he or she would have an easy time shooting Victor as he descended. He had to keep moving forward, knowing at least one assassin was waiting for him.
He stepped around the junk. There was nowhere for anyone to hide, but there were two doorways that led out of the room. Both open. An ambush could be waiting for him on the other side of either. At least two assassins close by.
One bullet.
CHAPTER 65
As Victor approached the doorways he saw the closest wasn’t an option. Junk packed the room beyond — broken chairs, boxes and other trash created an impassable blockage. Victor headed towards the second.
He walked down the hallway beyond, slowly, cautiously, one silent footstep after the next. The light was dim but abundant enough that he could see the details of the walls — old peeling paper, wires hanging where light fixtures had been removed, holes for hooks. The carpet had been stripped from the floor but some underlay was left over the floorboards. The roof above had yet to breach and the floor was dry.
There were two closed doors, the nearest to his left, the furthest to the right, before the hallway opened up to another area. Based on the width of the split-level, he imagined the closed doors would lead to small offices. Beyond the open space up ahead would be the other staircase. The cool air that flowed gently his way told him a large opening lay ahead, maybe a smashed-out window. He heard the relentless patter of rain hitting hard surfaces.