Collision

42

The waiter, mouth a thin line, pushed the room service cart into the room. Ben saw the coffee and carafe and the covered dishes. His stomach rumbled. But the waiter said nothing, no hello, how are you, kept his head bowed as if expecting a blow.

Pritchard stepped forward to sign the ticket. Two sharp bleats, the waiter falling over the tray, Pritchard reeling, collapsing onto her back. Jackie Lynch stood in the doorway, silencer-capped gun raised, his eyes seeking his next target, closing the suite’s door behind him.

Vochek stumbled backward toward the coffee table. Jackie raised the gun.

“No!” Ben yelled. “No!”

Jackie saw Ben. A twisted smile touched his battered lips and he shifted the gun’s aim from Vochek toward Ben.

But in the second it took for the gun to point toward Ben, Vochek rushed Jackie and kicked him in the solar plexus. He staggered back and she threw herself against him so that the gun, for barely a moment, pointed only at the floor.

Ben ran and slammed Jackie against the wall, leveraging all his weight into the younger man’s shoulder, pinning the gun between them, closing his hands around the weapon. Fury fueled his muscles. He got hold of Jackie’s pinky and snapped hard.

Jackie screeched and fired, the bullet popping into the carpet.

Vochek tangled fingers in Jackie’s long hair, knocked his head against the wall. Once, twice, and he roared in anger. Ben twisted the gun around, toward Jackie; he tried to fire but Jackie’s broken, bent finger jammed the trigger.

Jackie head-butted Ben’s face, hammering into his cheek, but even with the bolt of pain, Ben did not let go. Jackie wrenched free of Vochek’s grip. With Ben pinning his hands, he landed a kick hard in Vochek’s chest, and she fell to the floor.

“It ends now!” Jackie screamed. He knocked Ben loose; Ben fell against the cart. The heat of the coffee decanter touched his arm. He grabbed the carafe and swung it hard-no time to unscrew the top, Jackie was lifting the gun to put a bullet between Ben’s eyes. Ben caught the gun hard but couldn’t knock it free of Jackie’s grip. Ben swung the carafe back, trying to connect with Jackie’s head, but missed. Jackie leveled the gun to fire again and Ben caught his hand, raised the gun toward the ceiling.

“I’m going to kill you-” Ben shouted.

Vochek got up and ran toward the bedroom.

Jackie grunted in fury, started to wrench his hand from Ben’s grip.

With the other hand, frantic, Ben thumbed the pour control on the hot carafe and dumped coffee on Jackie’s groin. Jackie shrieked and tried to jump back through the wall. Ben slammed the carafe into Jackie’s face. Hot coffee splashed Ben’s hand. He didn’t feel pain.

Jackie’s face contorted in rage. He bent and Ben grabbed the gun, but Jackie kept his grip. Screaming with fury, he slapped the gun into Ben’s face, once, twice, as Ben fought to keep a grip on the pistol.

Don’t let go don’t let go, he thought.

Ben fell to his knees, his forehead bleeding, his cheek cut. Jackie wrenched the pistol from Ben’s hold and swung it toward him.

The sound of the shot boomed and a hole appeared in Jackie’s hand, a nickel-sized coin of gore, and then Vochek shot him again, in the stomach, and Jackie folded, dropping the gun.

Vochek stood over Pritchard, the gun Ben had surrendered to her in her hands. “Get his gun,” she yelled.

Jackie lunged for the gun as Ben grabbed it and Vochek shot him again, in the chest. He shrieked and curled into a ball. Ben locked the gun on Jackie’s head.

“Where is Hector? Where’s his target?”

“Ah, God,” Jackie moaned. “Hurts, hurts.”

“We’ll get you a doctor but tell us where’s the target,” Ben said.

“Nicky, Nicky,” Jackie sobbed. Spit and snot flew from his face and he gagged, writhing on the carpet. “No, no, no…” and then a broken hum. His eyes widened in pain, then he went still.

Ben stood. His mind felt wiped clean, blank, his body shivering with adrenaline. No. This wasn’t over. He reached into Jackie’s pocket. He found car keys, a pass card, and a scrap of paper with the hotel’s address. No cell phone. He took the keys.

Vochek knelt by Pritchard, touched her throat. “Oh, my God. Ben.. call the front desk.”

Ben checked the poor waiter, slumped by the cart. He was dead as well. “This is Hector cleaning house,” Ben said. “Shutting up Pritchard and you before you became a bigger threat to him, before you started questioning his tactics and results. He doesn’t need you anymore. We have to find him. Now. Call the CIA. Tell them their safe house is in danger. Or the police.”

“We don’t even know where to tell the police to go. And calling the CIA, they’ll have to confirm my identity. That’s a lot of bureaucracy to navigate.”

“Check her cell phone. Check the page of phone records I got on her. Someone at the CIA told her about the operation so she wouldn’t interfere, there has to be a record.”

Vochek nodded.

“I have another idea.” He closed his hand around Jackie’s car keys. He stood and hurried down the hallway, past a couple of frightened guests who’d heard the fight. “I’ll be right back,” he lied.

“Ben!” Vochek yelled at his back. “Stop! Where are you going?”

The breeze outside the hotel was damp and cool. Ben took in a bracing breath as he exited via the hotel’s fire exit into a narrow brick alley. Sirens flashed, the police already pulling into the front of the Hotel Marquis de Lafayette, blue and red light painting the bricks bright as a child’s room.

Ben put Jackie’s gun in his pocket. He went down the bricked alleyway by the hotel, toward the closest parking lot. He thumbed the remote on the keys, kept at it until he hit the third row and a rental Chevrolet winked its lights.

He searched the seat, the glove compartment. Jackie was from Belfast; presumably he didn’t know New Orleans well. There should be a page of directions, maybe, that Ben could backtrack, follow to where Jackie came from. Nothing. The scrap in his pocket carried only the address of the hotel, no directions.

Then he noticed the GPS monitor. He touched the screen and the GPS purred to life. He studied the controls, tapped a button that displayed the last search. Which was for the Hotel Marquis de Lafayette. He went to the previous address. It was in Metairie.

Okay, then off to Metairie.

But caution made him pause. Think like Jackie. Where would Jackie have been before coming to execute the hit? Perhaps at wherever the Cellar group convened, with Hector, and they wouldn’t be there now. He checked again. Up another address, to a warehouse near Louis Armstrong International. Then the next address, as he retraced the list, was that of the car rental company.

He had to choose where to go. He tried to think like Hector. If things went bad, or the Cellar people didn’t accept Hector or believe his story, then Hector would need a place to hide. Maybe it was the warehouse.

Or maybe these were directions summoned by the last customer to rent the car. He could waste precious time on a pointless drive.

Warehouse. Hector Global had deployed a security force here in the chaotic, sad aftermath of Katrina. Near the airport. He remembered contracts signed and negotiated, the difficulty of tracking down the owners of the property in the exodus after the storm, when Hector Global wanted to rent the space.

It was all he had to go on.

He clicked back to the warehouse map, studied it, and pulled out of the lot. He switched on the cell phone he’d stolen from the pilot. The battery showed the phone’s charge was nearly at its end. He had no recharger. He called Pilgrim.