Red Right Hand

33.

REYES?” HENDRICKS SAID. “What the hell are you doing here?”

The two of them had worked together years ago, when Hendricks’s Special Forces unit was brought in on a mission to rescue eleven U.S. NGO workers-three of whom were actually CIA assets-who’d been kidnapped by narco-guerrillas in Colombia. Reyes had been the Company’s top field agent in the area at the time, working out of the U.S. embassy in Bogotá, officially as a cultural attaché.

“That’s a funny question coming from a guy I heard was dead.”

“Those reports were greatly exaggerated.”

Reyes looked him up and down. “Maybe not greatly. You look like shit.”

Hendricks believed him. His cheeks felt flushed. His throat was parched. The stitched-up knife wound in his side was burning up and seeping blood.

“Really? I’ve never felt better. When did you go private? Last time we crossed paths, you were with the CIA.”

“Yeah, well, last time we crossed paths, you were one of the good guys.”

“Funny. I was gonna say the same of you, but I don’t know if you’re crooked now or just a patsy.”

“Fuck you, Mike. After what you did to my men-”

“Relax. Given proper medical attention, they’ll recover. I don’t kill without good reason. As far as I’m concerned, you guys aren’t my enemies-you’re just soldiers following orders.”

“And what are you?”

“I’m the guy who’s gonna leave with Frank Segreti. What’d Yancey tell you about him?”

“Just that he’s a person of interest in the bridge attack. Until now, I didn’t even know his last name.”

“Segreti had nothing to do with what happened at the bridge.”

“You sure about that?”

“Pretty sure.”

“Then how about you put the guns down and we can sort this whole thing out?”

“I wish I could, but I don’t know if I can trust you. Get on your knees. Put your hands behind your head.”

“C’mon, Hendricks-don’t do this.”

Hendricks circled him, and put Pappas’s.45 to Reyes’s head.

“Don’t make me ask again.”

Finally, with obvious reluctance, Reyes did as Hendricks asked.

“For what it’s worth,” Hendricks said, “I’m sorry our reunion has to end this way.”

“Forgive me if I don’t find that terribly comforting,” Reyes replied. Then he closed his eyes and waited for the gunshot that would end his life.

Hendricks wrapped his left arm around Reyes’s neck and locked his right elbow around his left wrist. Reyes struggled as Hendricks tightened his chokehold, then slackened.

Hendricks lowered Reyes’s unconscious form to the ground and searched his pockets. When he found what he was looking for, he smiled.

“Bigelow? Stahelski? Goddamn it, somebody report!”

The only reply Yancey received was static. Seven minutes had passed since they’d lost contact with the team outside. In the house, he and his men grew more anxious by the second. Even Segreti seemed to feel the strain because he was uncharacteristically quiet, his mouth a grim straight line. Then again, he might’ve been grieving. While Yancey’s men glanced nervously from curtained window to curtained window, Segreti’s gaze never left the body on the floor.

“You want us to go check out the situation?” Swinson offered.

“No,” Yancey replied. “The prisoner’s our first priority. Call for backup. We’ll sit tight until they arrive.”

He did as Yancey ordered. Yancey crossed the living room, parted the curtains slightly, and peeked outside.

“You got eyes on ’em, boss?” This from Lutz.

“Nope. I can’t see shit through all this fog.” But as he said it, he realized that wasn’t quite true. Something big and dark was moving out there, too far away for him to make out the details.

Then its headlights lit up and its engine roared, and he realized what he was looking at.

It was one of the Humvees they’d left parked out front-and it was coming right at him.

“Look out!” Yancey shouted.

He staggered backward, releasing the curtain. The room darkened as it swung closed. Yancey’s calves connected with the coffee table and he toppled over, the table splintering beneath his weight. Lutz and Weddle moved to help him, but he waved them off and rolled frantically to his left.

Then the front wall imploded as five thousand pounds of diesel-powered steel crashed into the house.

The rat-a-tat of automatic fire pierced the night as the Bellum men unloaded on the Humvee. As strategies went, it wasn’t the smartest. For one thing, the vehicle was bulletproof. For another, Hendricks wasn’t in it.

After he’d popped the hatchback and maneuvered it into position, Hendricks wedged one of the assault rifles he’d confiscated between the gas pedal and driver’s seat. The engine screamed, but the Humvee, still in neutral, stayed put. When he reached through the open driver’s-side door and dropped it into gear, the vehicle leaped forward like an animal released, damn near taking off his arm in the process.

It roared up the Broussards’ walkway, snapped the porch supports like matchsticks, and buried itself to its rear tires inside the house before it stalled. Hendricks sprinted after it. Once the Bellum men stopped shooting, he climbed through the open hatchback and entered the living room via the Humvee’s back left door.

The Humvee’d made a wreck of the beautiful old house. A portion of the ceiling had collapsed, half burying the vehicle in rubble and pinning its right passenger-side doors closed. One Bellum man was pinned between the Humvee and an interior wall. He was alive but screaming, and it looked as if his pelvis was crushed. Hendricks swore. He’d hoped the headlights would serve as fair warning.

Another had taken a ricochet to the knee when he’d opened fire on the Humvee. He was on the floor at Hendricks’s feet, one hand pressed tight to the pulsing wound, the other trying to free his sidearm from its holster. Hendricks kicked him in the face and his eyes rolled up in his head.

A click behind Hendricks alerted him to the fact that someone outside his line of sight had just reloaded. He dove further into the ruined living room as the floor behind him was pocked with bullet holes, rolling as he landed and then putting three rounds into his would-be killer’s chest. The man went down writhing in pain and pawing at the edges of his tactical vest.

The vest had kept him alive, as Hendricks knew it would, dispersing the energy of the bullets before they could punch through. Still, the force of impact was enough to squeeze the air out of his lungs and break his ribs. It’d be fifteen, twenty seconds before his body remembered how to breathe, and even then it’d be an agony.

Hendricks looked around. Saw the woman from the photo Cameron had intercepted lying dead on the floor, a gunshot wound in her chest. Then, on the other side of the Humvee, a handgun boomed, and the couch beside Hendricks coughed batting.

The shot had come from Yancey’s gun. He was cut off from the living room by the vehicle, so he’d pushed aside enough of the rubble atop it to take aim.

Hendricks returned fire. He didn’t expect to hit Yancey, but he wanted to make him think twice before he took another shot. Then he crawled behind the couch for cover and came face to face with Frank Segreti.

Segreti lay flat on his back, bound. His face was bruised and swollen. Fresh blood oozed from his nose. The man was a born survivor; it looked to Hendricks like he’d launched himself over the couch when the shooting started.

Hendricks fished the X-Acto knife from his cargo pocket, uncapped it with his teeth, and used it to cut Segreti’s bonds. “C’mon,” he said. “We’re getting out of here.”

“Who the fuck are you?” Segreti asked.

“Does it matter?”

The couch shuddered as Yancey fired again.

“No,” Segreti said. “I guess it doesn’t.”

Hendricks shot off a few more rounds in Yancey’s direction. Then he and Segreti cut through the kitchen to the back door, Yancey cursing loudly behind them.

When Hendricks yanked the door open, he heard sirens in the distance. But as he stepped into the night, Segreti grabbed him by the shirt.

“What?” Hendricks said. “We’re kind of in a hurry here!”

Segreti snatched something off the countertop and slapped it into Hendricks’s hand. Hendricks looked at it and broke into a grin.

It was a key fob for the Jaguar in the driveway.

They sprinted toward the car, a sleek two-seat coupe with the exterior of a 1960s race car and the interior of a fighter cockpit. It unlocked automatically as they approached. Somewhere behind them, glass tinkled. Hendricks climbed into the car, but Segreti struggled to figure out the recessed door handle. A bullet thunked into the pavement at his feet.

Yancey, unable to follow them, had headed upstairs and was shooting at them from a window on the second floor.

Hendricks leaned across the passenger seat and opened Segreti’s door from the inside. Then he pressed the Jaguar’s start button and the engine roared to life, 550 horses strong.

A bullet shattered the rear window. Another punched through the roof and buried itself in the dash, passing an inch from Segreti’s head along the way.

The car lurched forward, tires squealing. Four Bellum Humvees pulled up in front of the house. One rocked to a halt at the end of the driveway, cutting off Hendricks and Segreti. Hendricks jerked the wheel and stomped on the gas. The Jaguar fishtailed when its tires hit the lawn. Then it took off like a rocket through the fog.

Hendricks killed the headlights and drove blind, instinct guiding him. They roared through gardens, down footpaths, and over curbs, no destination but away. Two of the Humvees gave chase, but they were too wide to slip through narrow gaps and no match for the Jaguar’s speed.

Eventually, Hendricks and Segreti were alone save for the engine’s roar and the endless wail of sirens in the distance.