Assassin's Game

ELEVEN

Krav Maga, literally “contact combat,” is a style of fighting developed in Israel. Emphasizing the art of counterattack, it is the embodiment of street-fighting. There are no rules, and any and all resources are used to neutralize opponents. In training, emphasis is placed on reacting to unexpected and immediate threats, the worst-case scenario. In the real world, however, the preference is to recognize potential adversaries in advance and formulate preemptive strikes.

Operating under this mind-set, Slaton had been positioning for his assault ever since the katsa had sat down. In truth, even before the katsa had sat down. He knew a great deal about the table in front of him. He knew that it weighed very near fifteen pounds and was not secured to the floor. He knew it rested on three legs, two of which were now perfectly bracketing the katsa’s chair. He understood the table’s distribution of weight, and that its center of gravity lay just below a blunt edge that was situated between the katsa’s solar plexus and his holstered gun. The katsa’s chair was identical to his own, a typical four-legged affair, but atypically light and unstable. Slaton knew all of this because he had studied and weighed and measured for the better part of two hours. He also knew that the area behind the chair was clear, nothing but five feet of cold, hard concrete.

So before the katsa’s hand had even reached his windbreaker, Slaton was countering. Perfectly balanced by his right foot and left arm, his left foot hooked a front leg of the katsa’s chair and pulled, while at the same time his right hand pushed the tabletop in the opposite direction. The only possible result was for the man to rotate uncontrollably in his chair. The katsa’s free hand went up and back, a foreseeable reaction to falling blindly backward. His right hand cleared his jacket as he fell, and the predicted Beretta was there. But he was completely off balance, more flying than sitting, and his head slammed into the concrete.

Everything on the table flew to the floor, a clatter of breaking china and spinning utensils. Slaton moved instantly over the stunned katsa, but the man recovered quickly. He still had the Beretta, and started swinging it forward. Slaton lunged for the gun but got only a wrist. He grappled with his other hand and reached the weapon, covering the katsa’s desperate grip. The gun was frozen between them, two big men, but gravity was on Slaton’s side. He levered all his weight, and applied the hand and arm strength of a man who in the last months had moved three hundred tons of stone. The katsa buckled, and Slaton forced the barrel away from his own chest and toward his opponent.

Both men were grasping and pulling when the gun went off.

Slaton held firm, unrelenting.

The man below him went slack.

He wrestled the gun free, and saw a wound at the katsa’s throat pulsing blood. This, he knew, was no more than a mechanical aftereffect, fluid dynamics taking its course. The upward angle of the shot had sent the round into his head, and the man’s eyes were already lifeless and wide, staring at the sky. With bright red blood pooling on the floor, Slaton stood with the gun in his hand. He quickly gauged the movement around him, and registered nothing as a threat. Briefly, he considered searching the body for documents or identification, but knew it was pointless. And there was no time. He had completed his objective, made the sought connection. Now the situation had digressed, and only one thing mattered.

Get clear.

Slaton had backed one step away when he was struck by an opportunity. He pulled the phone from his pocket and took a quick photograph. Then he ran.

He dodged tables amid cries of shock and outrage. The chaos around him, on appearances random and uncontrolled, was in fact quite predictable. Those nearest the fray were leaning away and trying for distance, while others, farther back and with the illusion of security, dialed 112 on their mobile phones to reach the police. Slaton ignored them all. In the last hour he had studied every man and woman in the place, and seen no one with the air of a would-be hero. No off-duty policeman or soldier on leave. If a threat remained, it would be outside.

Reaching the sidewalk with the gun still in hand, he palmed it discreetly to his thigh. A voice from the past played in his head. A man moving fast generates attention. A man moving fast with a gun generates panic. Slaton broke into a purposeful jog, the pace of a man trying to reach a stopped bus before the door closed. He’d gone no more than five steps when he skidded to a stop.

Two men had him perfectly bracketed.

If there is a recipe for disaster it is to put three men who are armed and trained in one place, and then fix that each is unaware of the others’ motives.

Of the three, it was Sergeant Elmander who was taken completely by surprise. He’d been completing the call to dispatch, his mobile stuck to his ear, when he saw flashes of movement under the café’s cheerful yellow awning. He’d seen the table go flying, and watched Deadmarsh jump to his feet. The man who’d been sitting across from him disappeared in a burst of commotion.

Then Elmander heard the gunshot.

He knew he had to do something, so he clambered out of his car. He heard the reassuring sound of a siren in the distance. Backup was on the way. His hand went under his jacket and he performed an awkward exchange — his phone for his SIG Sauer. At a cautious trot, Lars Elmander began moving toward the Renaissance Tea Room.

One hundred yards away, on an opposite diagonal to the café, a stocky and nearly bald man burst from a black Mercedes sedan. He too began moving, though at a decidedly more purposeful clip. His eyes alternated between the café and a blond man with a crew cut who had just come into play — judging by his dress, the bald man decided, almost certainly a policeman. As if to prove the point, the crew-cut man drew a weapon as he ran, and his other hand fumbled in a back pocket for what had to be his credentials.

The bald man altered his vector slightly, but he didn’t slow — not until he reached the street. The traffic was heavy, a nearby light having cycled to green at precisely the wrong time. That, he knew, could be fixed. He held up an open palm to stop oncoming traffic, and reinforced the directive with what was brandished in his other hand — a heavy handgun with a long barrel.

An approaching delivery truck skidded to a stop.

Slaton saw them both.

The policeman was closer, thirty yards and closing. He was holding his ID toward Slaton, but his gun was low, pointed at the pavement — a configuration that might prove fatal in a matter of seconds. The bald man’s weapon was ready, held steady and high. Slaton couldn’t identify the type of gun from forty yards, but it was a heavy piece.

Only the policeman seemed unaware of the triangular nature of the battlefield. Any of the three might shoot, and all had two targets from which to choose. It was a tactical riddle the likes of which Slaton had never experienced, indeed never imagined. The kind of situation his old instructors at the schoolhouse loved to conjure. In an instant, he narrowed his focus to one thing—his desired outcome. He had to separate from this place and get safe. Countless variables came into play — crowds, traffic, a low sun — all things that might or might not push an engagement in his favor. There was simply no time to compute it all. Slaton’s principal advantage was that he had faced such dilemmas before, and so he took immediate control.

With the Beretta still palmed tightly to his hip, he looked squarely at the cop. Slaton raised his empty left hand and pointed toward the third man in the street.

Elmander didn’t stop. But he looked where Deadmarsh was pointing. He saw a stocky man with a gun in the middle of the road.

On locking gazes both froze.

Elmander watched the bald man square his shoulders and raise his weapon. His policeman’s response was instantaneous, a sequence beaten into his head through years of training. He shouted, “Police, drop your weapon!” and set himself in a good platform as he brought his own weapon to bear. It was a motion he had practiced a thousand times on the firing range.

But this was not a firing range.

Elmander felt like he was moving in slow motion, like his limbs were stuck in quicksand. He saw the massive barrel being leveled at him, and knew that his own gun was coming up too late. His sited his target, but the picture was uncontrolled and wavering. Elmander tried to settle for a shot, knowing speed was nothing without accuracy. He watched the bald man doing the same. His finger began to squeeze, but the gun’s hammer never fell.

He was hit.

Excruciating pain seared into his right thigh, and before he knew it he was toppling sideways like a two-hundred-pound bowling pin. Strangely, in that instant, with the pavement rushing toward his left ear in an uncontrolled descent, Elmander swore he heard a second bullet whistle past his head. As he hit hard and rolled, every conscious effort went to one thing. Hold on to your gun, you idiot!

Elmander did. The hard steel stock was there in his hand, but when he tried to stand again his right leg buckled. Half sitting, half kneeling, he scanned for the bald man and saw him, just a flash disappearing behind the frame of a parked car. Elmander trained his gun in that direction — a terrible position from which to fire, but at least a deterrent. Something for the man to think about. He looked for Deadmarsh but didn’t see him anywhere.

Christ.

His leg felt as if it was on fire, but through either honed discipline or visceral fear Elmander ignored his wound. The siren was getting closer, echoing off the surrounding buildings in the most beautiful symphony he’d ever heard. He kept alert, his weapon poised, knowing that if he could just keep the assailant at bay for another minute, maybe two, help would arrive. Scanning the streets and sidewalks, he saw no sign of either Deadmarsh or the bald man. As it turned out, Elmander would never see either again.

He did, however, hear their shots.

With the policeman out of the fight, Slaton ran an arc around the bald man, pulling him away from the wounded officer. He was moving at full speed, skirting the busy street. The .22 Beretta is a light weapon, and even in his practiced hand a handicap in terms of range, accuracy, and stopping power. Slaton fired from fifty feet on a hard run, and the fact that he scored any hits at all was testament that his marksmanship had not faded. Of the three rounds he sent, two found their mark.

His target rocked once, twice, and almost fell.

Almost.

He’s wearing a vest, Slaton thought.

The stocky man returned fired, and a round smacked into the wall just in front of Slaton, concrete chips stinging his face.

Move, move!

Slaton fired across his body, but missed. At this range, on the run, the odds of a successful headshot were virtually nil. With two rounds remaining, and no spare magazine, he was on the defensive. There was nothing to be gained from an engagement — only risk. He changed his angle and sprinted toward a corner that would put him clear. A bus wheeled around from the side street, giving momentary cover, and Slaton lowered his weapon and went for flat-out speed. He was two steps from safety when another shot came. Another miss.

He never saw the scooter.

He would later surmise that it was a kid trying to get away. Whatever the case, the scooter appeared in a flash and hit him like an express train. Slaton clattered to the ground and slammed into a lamppost stanchion. Something slashed his arm. He was facedown on the sidewalk, arms and legs sprawled wide. The killer had to be right behind him, closing fast with a capable weapon — and now at a range where he wouldn’t miss.

With all the self-discipline he had, Slaton lay perfectly still.

He imagined the bald man nearing, imagined him focusing on his downed target and closing for a coup de grâce. Amid the raucous street noise, Slaton discerned the sound of slowing footsteps.

One …

Absolute stillness, his body relaxed. He sensed the footsteps shuffle to a pause.

Two …

A vision of the bald man raising his weapon, settling his sight.

Three.

Slaton snap-rolled left, and in the next instant a bullet smacked the concrete where his head had just been. The Beretta moved in a flash, his right hand sweeping a high arc to intersect the man’s head. At precisely the right instant—

Fire.

Flat on his back, Slaton again went still. The recoiling Beretta was calm in his hand, ready with one round remaining. He didn’t need it.

The killer, with a new and neat hole in his forehead, crumpled to the concrete and didn’t move.

Slaton did.

With the gunfire at an end, order would soon be restored. And order was his enemy. He scrambled to his feet and turned onto the side street. Were there any others? he wondered. Slaton hoped he’d been facing a team of two, but there was no way to be sure. He ran a block east, then a block south, glancing over his shoulder at every turn. He kept up the zigzag pattern, east then south, for five minutes. His arm stung, but he was moving fluently, adrenaline doing its job. He kept an eye on the cars and people around him, watching for movement that was abrupt or counter to the natural flow. Nothing drew his attention.

Spotting an in-service taxi at a stoplight, he hailed it with his good arm. The driver waved him in and Slaton careened into the backseat, whipping the door shut behind him.

“Gustav Vasa church,” he said breathlessly. “I’m late. How long will it take?”

“Fifteen minutes,” the driver said, not questioning the idea of being late for church on a Sunday morning.

Slaton threw a hundred-dollar bill through the Plexiglas window — there was no time for subtly. He caught the man’s eyes in the mirror. “Make it ten.”

Not another word was spoken. The cab jumped ahead.

Slaton examined his arm. Pain, moderate bleeding, but his shirt helped mask the damage — red on red. He settled back into the seat and felt his heart thumping, something you never noticed until the downside of a firefight.

The driver was worthy. He ran two red lights and hurtled over a curb to reach the church in nine minutes. Slaton got out and started toward the main chapel where a large crowd was spilling into the street. Tourists perhaps, or well-blessed parishioners leaving the midmorning service. He didn’t bother to differentiate. As soon as the cab was out of sight, Slaton reversed course and walked fifty yards to the Odenplan subway entrance. He quick-stepped down and disappeared.