The Hunter

CHAPTER 4

08:34 CET

In the lobby Victor waited patiently as panic erupted around him. The hotel manager, a short slim man with a surprisingly loud voice, had to shout just to be heard above the frightened guests. Some were only half-dressed, rudely pulled from their beds by screams of a massacre. The manager was trying to explain that the police were on the way and everyone should remain calm. But it was far too late for that.

Victor sat in one of the luxurious leather armchairs in a corner of the lobby. It was very comfortable. He’d angled the chair so he could watch the main entrance in the middle of the far wall and most of the lobby without moving his head. He kept the entrance to the hotel bar and stairwell in his peripheral vision. He doubted anyone would use the elevators to his right, but if they did he was close enough to see them exiting before they noticed him.

The police would arrive soon, and the remaining members of the kill team were quickly running out of time to fulfil their contract. They would be panicking by now, having worked out that two of their men were dead. Either they would escape, which Victor didn’t expect, or they would try and finish the job. In the melee of guests and staff members fleeing the lobby it would be too crowded to kill him on the streets outside and too risky with cops on the way.

It took about a minute, longer than Victor had anticipated, and he marked their skills down a notch for the delay. He spotted them easily, first one man trying to negotiate his way through the crowd desperately struggling to get out. A moment later the second rushed into the lobby from a ground-floor corridor. The first man had blond hair, his right hand wedged into the pocket of his black leather jacket, his left outstretched, trying to guide himself through the horde of people. The other guy was tall, heavy set with a dark beard. Bulky jacket. He used both hands to shove people out of his path, no pretence of subtlety. Victor therefore deduced the blond man to be higher up the food chain and hence far more appetizing.

They reached each other in the centre of the lobby and conferred briefly. They made a cursory look around the room, quickly glancing into the bar as they passed through the lobby, the blond man heading for the stairs, the big guy to the elevator. Given the mass of people between them and Victor it was an understandable mistake not to spot him, but one that was going to cost them all the same.

Victor stood, timed his movements so a family exiting the elevator shielded him from the big guy’s view as they passed each other, and headed for the stairwell door. Victor was fast, coming up behind the man in the leather jacket just as he was pushing through.

The blond man saw the approaching shadow too late. He tried to pull out his gun but stopped immediately when a suppressor pushed against his ribs. Victor angled it upward, aiming at the heart. In the same instant Victor’s left hand grabbed hold of the guy’s testicles and squeezed with much of his considerable strength.

The man gasped and almost dropped to the floor under the sudden excruciating pain. Victor pushed him through the doorway and whispered into his ear in French.

‘Right hand — take it out of your pocket. Leave the gun.’

The man obeyed.

‘How many of you are there?’ Victor demanded.

The man struggled to remain standing, fought to keep his breathing steady enough to speak. He was terrified. Victor didn’t blame him. He only managed to form a single word.

‘What?’

Victor guided him up the first flight of stairs, tightening his grip on the man’s balls to dismiss any thoughts of his trying something foolish. It was hardly necessary.

‘This way.’

They continued up the next flight and over to the door on the first floor.

‘Through there. Open it.’

The man reached out a shaking hand and turned the handle. The door was half open when Victor pushed him through and headed down the hallway. They passed a maid hurrying along to the stairwell. An old woman, hair pulled tightly back in a bun, barely five feet tall. Victor heard her gasp — maybe due to the man’s contorted face or the hand clamped to his groin. Victor kept his own head positioned behind his prisoner’s so she couldn’t see his face.

He could kill her just for extra prudence, but another corpse in a corridor would only cause him more problems, and it wasn’t her fault she happened to be there. By the time she’d told someone who mattered he would be long gone.

They turned a corner into another corridor. It was quiet, every guest now congregated in the lobby or in the street outside.

‘Open a door,’ Victor ordered.

The man was trembling, his voice laboured. ‘Which one?’

Victor put three bullets through where the lock met the door frame. A single bullet only worked in the movies. ‘That one.’ The man hesitated, and Victor applied more pressure. ‘Open it. Now.’

He was slow to turn the handle, and so Victor shoved him through. He knocked the door closed behind him with his foot as he followed.

‘Throw the gun on the bed.’

The man reached into his pocket and slowly pulled out his handgun, gripping it with only thumb and forefinger. He threw it onto the bed. It landed in the centre. Not a bad throw considering.

Victor let go of the blond guy and hurled him forward. He stumbled and collapsed to the floor. He lay in a crumpled heap, almost foetal, clutching at his damaged testicles. His Casanova days were very over. He was younger than the other three, twenty-seven at most. His features were different, his demeanour more controlled. Victor regarded him curiously, recognizing that he didn’t quite fit in with the others. An outsider. Or leader.

The man’s eyes flicked toward his right foot then quickly looked away. In a black leather shin holster, barely visible where the right pants cuff had come up in the fall, was a black snubnosed revolver. He saw that Victor had seen him look and read his thought process.

Victor shook his head just once.

He took a step forward, levelled the gun at the centre of the man’s forehead. ‘How many of you are there?’

‘Seven.’

‘Including you?’

He nodded, grimacing, not able to speak for a moment because of the agony in his groin. Excluding the big guy in the elevator, somewhere there were three more.

‘How many cars did you bring?’

The blond man was quick to answer, spitting the word out as fast as he could. ‘One.’

‘Just one?’

‘It’s a van.’

‘What’s the registration?’

‘I… I don’t know.’

Victor put a 5.7 mm into the floor between his legs. It wasn’t very economical with the remaining bullets but he didn’t have time for a lengthy interrogation.

The blond man stared at the singed hole in the carpet. ‘I swear.’

‘What make is it?’

‘I don’t know… it’s blue. A rental.’

His French was good but not fluent, not a native speaker.

Victor asked, ‘Do you know who I am?’

He didn’t answer straightaway. Victor took another step closer and the man found his voice. ‘No.’

‘No?’

‘Just an alias, we had a picture…’

‘How did you know where I’m staying?’

‘We were given the name of the hotel.’

‘When?’

‘Three days ago.’

Then his accent clicked. Victor switched to English. ‘You’re American.’

He spoke back in English. ‘Yes.’ He was from the South, Texas maybe.

‘Who’s in charge?’ Victor asked.

‘I am.’

‘Private sector?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you been following me?’

‘We tried to but you always lost us.’

‘Why wait until now to kill me?’

The American paused for a moment before answering. ‘We had to wait for the green light.’

‘Which you received when?’

‘Oh-five-thirty.’

Victor could tell he had decided to tell the truth, perhaps thinking he might have a chance if he answered honestly. Blissful ignorance.

‘Why did you send those two guys in before I’d returned?’

The blond man grimaced again. ‘I lost my nerve. Thought you weren’t coming back. I sent them in to check.’ He scowled despite the pain. ‘Bad timing.’

‘That wasn’t very smart,’ Victor said. ‘What about the flash drive?’

‘We had to make sure you had it, then secure it and wait for instructions.’

Victor’s eyes narrowed. ‘Who are you working for?’

The man’s head slumped. Tears streamed down his cheeks. ‘Please…’

‘Who are you working for?’

He looked up at Victor, saw in his eyes that there was no mercy, no pity. He sobbed.

‘How the hell would I know?’

Victor believed him.

He shot him twice in the face.

He knelt down by the body, looking for some identification, and saw a radio in the inside jacket pocket, switched to send, the light flickering. There was a microphone attached to the underside of his collar.

A floorboard creaked.

Victor froze, looked over his shoulder.

Through the crack under the door Victor could see a shadow moving in the corridor outside. He dived to the right as the big guy with the dark beard burst into the room, submachine gun in hand, already firing before he’d acquired a target. It was a compact MP5K fitted with a long suppressor, its rapid reports reduced to a series of sustained muffled clicks.

The gunman shifted his aim, following Victor’s path as he leaped into the adjacent bathroom, bullets blowing a line of neat holes out of the wall behind him. Ejected brass cases clinked together on the carpet around the assassin’s feet.

In the bathroom, Victor came out of his roll into a crouch, letting off a quick shot, firing blind before he’d fully turned around. The bullet whizzed through the open doorway, sending up a puff of plaster as it struck the wall on the other side.

The bathroom was no more than six feet by four, a tiled box containing a bath, sink, and toilet. There were no defensible corners or objects behind which to take cover. On fully automatic the MP5K could unload its mag of thirty in just two and a quarter seconds. At this range, and with that volume of fire, the gunman literally couldn’t miss.

With his left hand Victor pulled the Beretta from the back of his waistband and pointed both guns at the doorway, one in each hand. Not so good for aiming accurately but he needed the extra stopping power if he was going to drop the gunman before he could open fire. He was a big guy and neither subsonic 5.7 mm or 9 mm rounds were going to guarantee putting him down instantly unless he was shot in the head, heart, or spine. But with enough bullets it wouldn’t matter where Victor hit. He held the Beretta directly below the FN so he could still line up one set of sights. Victor had seen amateurs hold two guns at arm’s length, hands shoulder-width apart, trying to emulate their favourite action movie stars. They always died quickly.

He heard something thud on the carpet and clink against the spent 9 mm casings on the floor. A second later came the sound of a gun reloading and the MP5K recocked. It hadn’t clicked empty but his attacker had loaded a full magazine anyway while he had the chance.

Victor stayed in a crouch, as far away from the opening as possible. If his enemy was smart enough to reload before he was empty he wouldn’t be stupid enough to burst into the room when all he had to do was point the gun around the door frame and spray in some rounds. Victor sensed the gunman was creeping along the dividing wall to do exactly that. In his current position Victor knew he was a dead man. He forced himself to stay calm.

He needed to do something, and quick.

He looked around, saw a towel on a rail, a line of toiletries above the wash basin — toothpaste, shaving foam, antiperspirant, a razor, aftershave.

His eyes fixed on the can of antiperspirant.

Victor fired another round from the Five-seveN at the doorway to act as a deterrent, then another a few seconds later to buy himself some time, to make the gunman wary. He placed the Beretta down in front of him, switched the FN to his left hand, stood, and grabbed the can of antiperspirant from above the sink.

Squatting back down, he fired through the doorway with the Five-seveN, twice more so the weapon clicked dry, advertising that he was out of ammo, giving the gunman all the incentive he needed to seize his chance.

Victor dropped the empty gun, switched the antiperspirant to his left hand, and took up the Beretta in his right. Jumping to his feet, he flung the aerosol through the doorway just below the top of the frame as the submachine gun’s muzzle rounded the corner.

Victor fired the Beretta three times.

The last bullet hit and the aerosol exploded in midair.

Victor was already running before he heard the scream, darting through the doorway, bent over, even as the panicking gunman opened fire.

The bullets missed, flying clear above him. The man was stumbling backward, pressed against the wall, the only thing keeping him on his feet. His gun was still raised at shoulder height, and he fired in desperation, spraying wildly.

Slim shards of glinting metal protruded from his scorched face and eyes. His hair was on fire.

The gun clicked empty, and for a moment the man’s groans subsided and his breaths came quick and sharp. He blindly looked around the room, weapon still raised in some last pitiful defence. The air smelled like roasted pork.

Victor stood up straight, pointed the Beretta at the centre of the gunman’s chest, and put two right through his heart.