“Get up,” he ordered Avery. “We have to get out of here.”
Avery winced and gasped as he rolled over onto his side like an old man. He maneuvered slowly onto all fours, reached out to hold onto the bed for support, and worked his way onto his feet. He was barely able to stand upright without gasping. The pain was excruciating.
Castillo gestured toward the door with his Barak and took a few steps back, careful not to allow Avery to become too close. The Colombian let Avery pass him and then followed him out of the bedroom.
“If you don’t want to kill me, why the hell was your sniper taking shots at me?”
“Hey, I don’t want to kill you. It doesn’t matter to me what happens to you. But the thing is, there’s this crazy bitch, and she sure as fuck wants to kill you. Her first preference would be up close and personal. Sorry, man. You’d have been better off eating the grenade or getting sniped, because she’s one nasty, demented cunt.”
Avery didn’t have a clue what Castillo was talking about.
“How much did they pay you, Jon?”
They stepped over Muňoz’s body and crossed the kitchen.
Avery saw another Latin shooter standing near the doorway. He wore a t-shirt, and his arms were adorned with the same gang tattoos as the first man Avery had dropped. The gangbanger stepped out into the hallway and then called out to Castillo in Spanish, telling him that it was clear.
“Fifty-thousand,” Castillo answered. “It was an impulsive decision. I heard that I was being turned over to that guy Daniel to back you up on some secret spook shit. Right after this guy from the cartel says FARC is offering money for anyone with information about an American codenamed Carnivore. I fucking couldn’t believe it, man. Sometimes you just get lucky.”
Avery lifted his eyebrows, surprised to hear that his life was worth $50,000 to someone.
Castillo guided Avery into the hallway. The bullet-riddled bodies of four hotel security staff were heaped on the floor, oozing blood. The hallway was silent now. All of the guests had either fled or were hunkered down inside their rooms, too afraid to leave.
Avery and Castillo followed the gangbanger down the hallway toward the stairwell, where he opened the door and stuck his head into the stairwell to take a peak before venturing inside. Avery and Castillo were right behind him.
“Sorry, man. It’s nothing personal, but money’s money,” Castillo said as they descended the stairs.
“Gonna take care of your kids with that?”
“Yeah, get them the fuck out of here, give them a fresh start. Give me one, too. No more doing shit like this or getting bit to hell by bugs in the jungle.”
“Who bought you out, Jon?” Avery asked as they descended the stairs. Each step sent a flash of pain through his upper back. The feeling grew more intense as the adrenaline wore off.
Castillo didn’t answer.
Leading the way, the gangbanger stepped onto the thirty-first floor landing. As he turned the bend for the next set of stairs, he saw something and shouted a warning in Spanish, urgent and surprised, and brought up his pistol, but his warning was cut short by a single gunshot.
The gangbanger’s head snapped back, spraying a small red mist through the air, and he fell over onto the concrete landing.
Felix Aguilar came up the stairs and met Avery and Castillo on the landing. Seeing his teammates, he lowered his weapon, surprised to see Castillo.
“Where the hell did you come from, Jon?” Aguilar glanced down at the body near his feet. “I saw this guy standing outside Canastilla’s room when I walked by a minute ago. I knew he was carrying, and I recognized his tattoos. He’s Los Perros.”
“Come on,” Castillo said, taking a step forward. “Let’s go. This place is filling up with police. My fucking radio died.”
But Aguilar saw that Avery, a step behind Castillo, didn’t budge. He read the expression in Avery’s eyes, quickly assessed the situation, and glanced back to Castillo.
“I asked where were you, Jon?”
Castillo raised his Uzi in Aguilar’s direction. As his finger tightened around the trigger, Avery dived into him from behind, wrapping his arms around him and knocking them both over. As they tumbled down the stairs, Castillo’s hand lost the Uzi, and he came to a stop with Avery on the next landing. He head butted Avery, stunning him and breaking his nose. He pushed Avery’s weight off him, offering Aguilar a clear shot.
Without a second’s hesitation, Aguilar fired twice into Castillo’s forehead. Then he holstered the Barak, covered the remaining stairs to the landing, and extended a hand to help Avery onto his feet.
“Mind telling me what the fuck just happened?”
Avery used the back of his hand to wipe Castillo’s blood off his face. His own blood gushed from his nostrils, but he didn’t care about that, except for the attention it would draw. He hated getting other people’s blood on him.
“Castillo sold us out. I don’t know to whom. He was right about one thing, though. We need to get out of here.”
Fuck, his back hurt. It was getting worse. He could barely stand. Now his head hurt, too.
“You okay, man?” Aguilar asked.
“I took a bullet back there. It’s bad.”
Aguilar slipped a hand beneath Avery’s vest, slowly felt around for holes in his flesh, and shook his head. His hand came out dry.
“No, you’re good. It didn’t go through. You’re going to have a hell of a bruise, though.”
Avery retrieved the pistol — a Brazilian Taurus automatic — from the Los Perros corpse.
They went down another flight of stairs. Then they took a crowded elevator to the foyer and walked to the main entrance, blending in with the roving crowds of people who were in a hurry to get to safety. One cop stopped them, when he saw Avery’s bloody face, and Aguilar said that he was pushed over during the stampede. The cop accepted the answer, telling them there were paramedics outside, and moved on. More police armed with submachine guns ran in the opposite direction.
The Viper passed the rail-mounted telescopic sight once more over the large bands of people pouring out in disorganized waves from the brightly lit front entrance of the Trump Ocean Club Tower some four hundred feet below. Police officers directed people away from the building to make room for the newly arrived ambulances and fire trucks. As guests and residents streamed out, police in tactical gear continued going into the tower with paramedics standing by outside until they were told it was safe to enter.
Scanning the crowds, the Viper looked out for the bright blue windbreaker worn by Castillo, or Carnivore’s black hoody, but she could not discern either in the mass of bodies. She’d lost them the moment Castillo had escorted the American out of the hotel suite in the adjacent tower directly across from her.
She’d fired two shots at the American, using 9mm SP-5 subsonic ammunition. They’d been good shots, and she’d successfully eliminated targets with this weapon at longer distances, but her mind still struggled to process the fact that she’d actually missed.
Never before had the Viper pulled the trigger twice and not eliminated her target.
The VSS Vintorez, or Thread Cutter, was a Russian-manufactured rifle, essentially a modified AS Val assault rifle, designed for KGB spetsnaz. This one originated from Soviet stockpiles originally provided to Cuba, later passed on to FARC. Vintorez was a good weapon, but the drawback was that the heavy, subsonic tungsten-tipped, armor piercing ammunition wasn’t suitable for long distance kills. The rounds continuously and rapidly dropped in flight.
The Viper’s first shot missed because the target had jumped up from his hiding spot behind the table the split second she hit the trigger. Ridiculously good luck on his part.