OUTCAST Ops: The Poseidon Initiative

TWENTY

In Amir’s hotel room bathroom, Tanner adjusted his radio’s squelch setting, attempting to get a cleaner signal.

“Say again, Bravo — did you say four guys?”

“That’s affirmative! Coming in now. Should I follow them in?”

“Yes! We’ve got control of the tango up here.” He gave Liam the room number.

“Copy that, in pursuit.”

Tanner felt much better knowing he had the ex-SEAL on his side. Three on four — or three on five if one counted Amir — were much preferable odds to two on five. Tanner considered that they might be able to use Amir as a hostage, but in his experience terrorists cared little for their own. They would not shed a tear for their fallen comrade.

He walked out of the bathroom and back into the main room, where Amir was pleading with Danielle to let him go.

“Shut up, Amir,” Tanner said, collecting his laptop and tossing it into his briefcase.

“They split up,” Liam said over the radio, audible to everyone in the room, including Amir.

“Two going up the elevator, two went ground level out back, by the pool.”

Tanner ran to the balcony and pulled the curtain aside just enough to get a look outside. The pool deck was underneath, mostly empty at this evening hour but with a small group in the hot tub. He didn’t see a fire ladder or any way to readily access the balconies from below, although he knew that a prepared team could make easy work of it.

“You have support on the outside!” Amir accused. “Who are you? You are not simply a biotechnology company wanting to help people with your product, are you? You don’t even have a product — the sample you gave us was pure trash. Who do you work for? CIA?”

Tanner knew Danielle was too disciplined to look away from her charge, but he could see her flinch at the closeness with which Amir’s verbal dart came to hitting the bullseye.

“Sorry, Amir, old buddy,” Tanner said as he crossed the room to the phone on the nightstand, “But there’s no time to chat now.”

“What are you doing?” Amir asked.

Tanner pressed a button on the phone and waited a second before saying, “Yes, I’d like a bottle of your best champagne brought up immediately, please. Yes, charge it to the room. Thank you.”

Tanner let the phone receiver drop and turned to Amir. “Sorry to pile on the expenses, pal, but your boss will understand, I’m sure.” He raised his gun and walked toward Amir until the barrel pressed into his temple. “Who’s coming up here? Do they work for you or do you work for them?”

Amir breathed heavily, his substantial gut heaving in anxiety-riddled gasps. A tracer of blood sluiced down his temple to his cheek.

“Answer the question!”

Danielle interjected. “They’re here.”

They heard men calling through the door in Danish. Tanner heard what he was pretty sure was a name, but it wasn’t Amir, not that he thought Amir was his real name.

“Answer it!” He jammed the gun barrel into Amir’s head at the same time as a little warning bell went off in his mind.

His hands are still untied…

They heard the door being kicked in at the same time as Amir rammed his head into the belly of Tanner, who had been looking at the entrance.

“Tanner!” Danielle fired two shots at the intruders, who wore black ski masks with their eyes blacked out and brandished sound-suppressed handguns. Tanner fired a shot of his own at the doorway and at that moment Amir made his move. Not bothering to get up from the chair, he lashed out with a vicious judo chop to Tanner’s arms, both of which were holding his gun. Tanner’s second shot went low, hitting the carpet. His gun went flying a couple of feet away onto the floor.

Tanner dove for his gun but Amir toppled over in his chair onto him, grabbing his legs. The OUTCAST leader wormed his way on the floor toward his weapon while Amir struggled to pull him away from it.

Danielle fired two more rounds at the advancing intruders. One of them grunted in pain as he took a bullet and spun into the wall, but the other kept shooting. Danielle used the end of the dresser as cover, crouching behind it just as a bullet chipped away a corner, missing her but spraying a splinter into her left eye and blurring her vision in that orb. She fired again, this time at the Hofstad man she hadn’t hit, who was now advancing on Tanner’s fallen pistol. She hit him in the gut but he kept coming and she knew he was wearing body armor beneath his clothes.

In another second, four things happened at once.

They heard a knock on the hotel door followed by a woman calling, “Room service!”

Tanner was grappling with Amir and the gunman who had advanced into the room.

Danielle saw an opportunity and shot the same man she’d hit before in the head, splashing his cerebral matter onto the cerulean wallpaper.

The sliding glass door leading to the balcony exploded in a shower of glass and two more Hofstad men crashed through into the room. Danielle’s heart sank for a moment. Then she saw that they were both already dead.

“Freeze, don’t move!” The terrorist inside the room shouted. He had his shoe on Tanner’s gun and his own firearm pointed at Tanner’s head.

Danielle swiveled the barrel of her gun from Amir to the balcony. When she started to swing it back to Amir, the terrorist yelled at her: “Put it down or I blow your friend away!”

Amir outstretched his meaty palm. “Give it to me.”

And then she watched as the head of the man pointing the gun at Tanner seemed to explode into a misshapen mass of extruded meat, his eyes suddenly traveling down the sides of his face. His gun flew up into the air as his cranial contents dripped to the floor. With a surprising degree of alacrity for a man of his bulk, Amir reached up and caught the weapon in mid-air.

Tanner gut shot him as soon as he did. Amir made a coughing sound and dropped to his knees, both hands, including the one still holding the gun clutching at his ruined mid-section.

Then they heard Liam’s voice. “Balcony, clear!”

“Main room, clear,” Tanner responded. His voice did not sound nearly as energetic as Liam’s.

The ex-SEAL stormed into the room, counting the bodies as he looked about.

“Got what we need?”

Tanner nodded.

“Time to go, boys and girls, unless you want to stick around to explain five dead bodies.”

Tanner got to his feet and looked around at the carnage, disparaged. Every single Hofstad man was dead. Quickly, the three of them searched each body for anything that might lead them higher up the terror organization’s hierarchical structure.

But they found nothing.

Then came shouting coming from the hall, the trammel of fast-moving footsteps, and the room phone ringing.

“This way, please.” Liam patiently waved an arm at the balcony. “Rope slide. Let’s go.”

He led them to the balcony, drawing the curtain and door shut as they heard loud knocking at the door, hotel employees calling into the room.

Liam jumped off the balcony, seeming to barely touch the rope on the way to the ground. Tanner and Danielle went next, their egress slower than Liam’s almost supernatural glide but still serviceable.

With a flick of the wrist Liam pulled the rope down from the balcony as they ran down a maintenance path. The trio of operatives made it to Tanner’s vehicle and they left the area, abandoning Liam’s scooter.

Behind the wheel, Tanner felt the sting of failure along with the rush of wind through his hair. They’d dispatched five Hofstad agents, none of them key members. They were no closer than before to following the beast’s tentacles back to its head.

The mission was a failure.

He could only hope that his agents were having more luck at Jasmijn’s lab. Or that Shah — even though his objective had the lowest probability of success of all of them — was courting Lady Luck in the embassy.