He decided to be bold. He removed his black leather jacket, figuring that the black pants and shirt he wore were similar enough to the guard’s to confuse him for a second. He stood and began to whistle cheerfully. Immediately, he heard the unseen guard spring from a chair and begin moving toward him.
The guard turned a corner directly in front of Mercer, a machine pistol held at the ready. In the millisecond it took him to realize that Mercer wasn’t his partner, Mercer brought the Hi-Power to bear. The guard died an instant before his own trigger finger could squeeze. His body crumpled against a steel desk, his arm sweeping a pile of papers to the floor. The massive tissue damage caused by the Hi-Power sickened Mercer; a hole had been punched almost completely through the guard’s body.
Reclaiming his jacket, Mercer retraced his steps to the stairway and cautiously made his way to the ground floor.
The lobby of the building also occupied an entire floor. The waiting area was furnished with several tasteful couches, a large Turkish carpet, and an expansive reception desk. The walls were painted a calming salmon color and the prints which lined them were all of ships. A few dim lights kept the room more in shadow than light.
A figure leaned against the front doorframe, a holster cocked off one hip. For a moment, Mercer wondered if he could kill a man from behind, without warning.
As if alerted by some primal instinct, the guard whirled around, drawing his pistol and firing in one continuous motion. The bullet grazed Mercer’s pantleg as he dove out of the way. Mercer hit the floor rolling as bullets gouged the marble floor near his head and torso. He managed to duck behind the reception counter, and when he looked back to see where the guard had gone, another round slammed into the wood, driving splinters deep into his jaw and right cheek.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered, wiping blood from his face.
Suddenly, the lights went out in the lobby.
Mercer rolled silently from behind the counter, hugging one of the walls. His plan was to crawl to the light switch and flip it back on, hopefully using the surprise to target his opponent. Halfway to the switch, he bumped into the guard’s leg.
Neither man had anticipated the contact, so neither had an advantage. Mercer reared back, then sprang forward like an all-pro lineman playing in the Super Bowl, his shoulder connecting with the guard’s knee. The joint failed and the guard fell forward, but he still had time to whip his pistol at Mercer’s head, shearing skin from his already bleeding cheek. Mercer smashed a fist into the guard’s thigh, paralyzing the leg momentarily and giving himself time to bring up the Hi-Power.
The guard kicked out with his good leg and sent Mercer’s pistol skittering across the marbled floor. Mercer twisted away from the guard who was already trying to regain his feet. The room was too dark to see where the pistol wound up, so Mercer ignored it and concentrated on his opponent. He leapt to his feet and charged again, catching the guard low in the stomach and forcing the breath out of him in a loud whoosh. The guard backpedaled as Mercer continued to push him but twisted aside just before they hit the sofas. Mercer flew over one of them and crashed to the floor, wrenching his shoulder painfully.
There was a brief spark of muzzle flash as the guard fired his silenced pistol at Mercer, but the shot was several feet off target. Mercer used the flash to locate the other man in the darkness and leapt at him, but missed. The guard had moved. Mercer hit the floor and rolled twice, coming up hard against another wall. It was cat and mouse again. Neither man could see the other in the gloom and neither could hear the other over his own labored breathing. Mercer edged forward, feeling along the floor, and found his pistol. The cool steel was a needed reassurance.
Just then the lights snapped back on in full brilliance. The nerves and muscles that controlled Mercer’s pupils reacted just the barest fraction of a second faster than the assassin’s. While the other man was squinting through nearly closed eyes, disoriented by the glare, Mercer’s gaze was sweeping the room. Tish stood next to the bank of light switches, one hand still on the rheostat, the other holding the bulky night-vision goggles. The guard was twenty feet away, peering off to Mercer’s left. Mercer didn’t take the time to properly aim. He fired from the hip, his first two shots going wide but his next six catching the guard squarely, pounding his torso into an unrecognizable mess.
Mercer moved over to Tish and took the goggles from her slack hand. “Tish.” Her eyes swiveled to his. “I told you to wait upstairs. Please, from now on, never listen to me again, okay?”
He slid his arms around her and her body eased into his embrace. He calmly stroked her hair for a moment. “Now we’re even. I saved your life and you just saved mine. Thank you.”
“I waited until you had your gun and he was turned away from you,” she replied after a moment.
They went back up to the third floor, dousing all the lights again and relying on Mercer’s goggles to get them to the executive offices. Quickly scanning the names on the doors, they found the locked door of the highest ranking employee, a vice president. Mercer smirked at the man’s name: Russo.
“Nice touch,” he commented.
“If they are Russian,” Tish replied.
“To have guards like those two, they’re something.”
It took Mercer five frustrating minutes to pick the lock. Although he remembered the technique from his CIA training, theory and practice were two entirely different things. One of Hat’s men could have done it in ten seconds.
The office was paneled in rich oak, the carpet was soft under their feet. A window behind the broad desk looked out onto Eleventh Avenue. Mercer shut the thick drapes and turned on the desk lamp. Pictures of the OF amp;C fleet adorned the walls. David Saulman in Miami had been right. Each ship had a different bunch of flowers painted on the funnels: April Lilac, September Laurel, December Iris, and a score of others. There was a fish tank against one wall, and though it was large it only contained a single fish.
Mercer turned to the four squat filing cabinets and opened a drawer at random. He started leafing through the folders within.
“Pick a drawer, any drawer,” he said lightly.
“What are we looking for?”
“Anything that might jog your memory. There could be something here that you may remember from when you were rescued, a name, anything.”
Tish pointed to a picture on the wall. “That’s the ship that rescued me, I think.”
Mercer looked at the picture and recognized the September Laurel as she calmly plied some distant sea.
“That may be the ship that reported finding you, but I don’t think it’s the ship that pulled you from the water. You remembered a black circle and a yellow dot on the funnel, not a bunch of flowers. Besides, Dave Saulman told me that her crew are mostly Italians, not Russians.”
“I could have been wrong about hearing Russian.”
“Even if you are, it’s obvious that something is going on here. Let’s just go through the files and see if anything turns up.”
For the next half hour, Mercer and Tish pored through the files without turning up anything conclusive. The only odd thing was a loose file tab labeled “John Dory” lying on the bottom of the drawer containing the ownership papers of the OF amp;C ships. There was no file to go along with the tiny scrap of paper. Because all OF amp;C vessels were named after a month and a flower, Mercer guessed that John Dory was the name of a captain or ship’s officer employed by OF amp;C.
“This has been a complete waste of time, hasn’t it?” There was hopelessness in Tish’s voice.
“I know I’m right. There has to be something here that we haven’t seen,” Mercer persisted. “But we have to get out of here.”
“Did you kill those guards without a reason?”