Near Miss

Chapter 70

A voice said, “We have the package.”

To Stone, it sounded like whoever was speaking was right next to him. Which was odd enough, but even stranger, Stone seemed to be moving, but not by his own power. And then there was the fact that something hard was pressing against his chest.

It took him two tries to open his eyes without feeling dizzy.

He appeared to be in a giant empty room, lit by the moving beams of several flashlights. Only the floor was above him, passing quickly under a pair of feet that couldn’t be his. He could hear other footsteps, too, so there had to be multiple people around him.

When he realized his cheek was bouncing off someone’s torso, it all came back to him. He’d been sitting at the table in the ballroom, talking with Bill Eggers, Herb Fisher, and Carly, when all the lights had gone out. Then some kind of liquid spray had hit him in the head, landing more on his ear than his face, and the next thing he knew, he was here, in what was clearly another, albeit unused, ballroom.

Recalling the spray triggered another memory, distant and foggy. He concentrated and then it came to him. The same knockout spray that had been used on Carly when she’d been kidnapped must have been used on him, only the person doing the spraying’s aim had been off. If Stone had been hit square in the face, no telling how long he would have been unconscious.

“Get the door,” the man carrying him said.

A pair of footsteps ran ahead, and moments later, a door opened.

Stone had no idea where the door led, but he was sure he couldn’t let himself be taken through it.

Marshaling as much strength as he could, he swung his elbow upward into the underside of the man’s jaw.

His kidnapper’s head snapped backward, and the guy yelled in pain.

Stone had expected that much, but he hadn’t expected the crack of a gun that echoed across the room at the exact same moment his blow had landed. The boom was quickly followed by the sound of the door that had opened closing again.

Ignoring both, Stone rolled off the man’s shoulder and fell toward the floor, where he landed awkwardly on his hands and feet, almost but not quite like a cat.

A second bang ripped through the air, and one of the people behind Stone dropped lifeless to the floor, the person’s flashlight smacking against the tile, and spinning around and around until coming to rest, pointing at a wall.

“Stone, stay down!” Carly called out.

A third gunshot was accompanied by a flash that briefly lit up Carly’s position, and another body dropped.

The guy who’d carried Stone had recovered enough to rush to a nearby door. He shoved it open and disappeared through it.

Stone reached for his gun, but it wasn’t there. He’d finally followed Dino’s advice to carry, and someone had taken his weapon. Just his luck.

He started crawling toward one of the people Carly had shot to borrow their weapon when a hand grabbed the collar of his jacket and yanked him back.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”

Stone twisted out of his jacket, sending the guy who’d grabbed him stumbling backward, and scrambled to the nearest downed man.

His hand landed on the butt of a pistol just as Carly yelled, “Stone! Watch out!”

He whirled around, his fingers gripping the gun. In the dim halo of a flashlight, he saw the guy from a moment before barreling toward him.

Stone raised the pistol and fired; the sound was dampened by the attached silencer.

The man staggered backward as a dark spot grew on his chest. He looked at his shirt, confused, then collapsed two feet away from Stone, unmoving.

Stone heard feet running toward him and swung the gun toward the sound.

“It’s me,” Carly said.

Stone lowered his weapon.

“Did we get them all?” she asked.

“No,” he said, nodding at the nearby door, “one of them went through there. Let’s get out of here before he comes back.”

As Stone pushed himself to his feet, the door at the far end of the ballroom banged open.

Dial, aka Teddy Fay, had been assigned guard duty on the hotel service entrance, with three other men. Two were stationed outside, while he and the remaining guard were to keep watch inside. As soon as they’d taken their positions and his partner looked the other way, Teddy shot him in the head, then stepped into the doorway and did the same to the other two.

He whirled around and hurried in the direction the Sarge and the other men had gone, soon spotting two more of the Sarge’s men guarding a stairwell door. He dropped them with head shots before they knew he was there.

As he stepped into the stairwell, muffled gunshots echoed down from above.

Teddy raced up the stairs.

Korolev had watched the Sarge and his people enter the hotel from atop a building on the other side of the alley, and then witnessed one of the Sarge’s men come back out and shoot the two who were guarding the door.

What the hell?

He made his way down to the alley and sneaked up to the hotel service entrance. It only took one glance to confirm both lookouts were dead.

Through the partially opened doorway, he heard several distant gunshots, and immediately retreated down the alley and called the Bean Counter.

“I don’t know what the Sarge’s plan is,” he told his boss, “but I don’t think a gunfight inside the hotel is a part of it.”

“Come get me,” the Bean Counter said. “It’s time to clean up this mess.”