The Hunter

CHAPTER 5

08:38 CET

Victor made his way through the hotel, walking quickly, keeping the Beretta in hand and hidden under his jacket. He had his empty FN in a pocket. He made his way through the corridors of the ground floor, in his head visualizing the hotel plans he’d memorized on his first night. He came to a door marked staff only.

He could hear policemen elsewhere on the floor, talking loudly, overwhelmed. They would be patrolmen first on the scene, responding to the emergency call. Others would be coming fast. If Victor wasn’t gone soon, he knew the hotel would be sealed off, the street following, and then probably the whole block. Victor wanted to be long gone before that happened.

He drew out the Beretta and pushed open the door to the kitchens with his left hand, using his knuckles out of habit despite the silicone coating on his fingertips.

It was surprisingly cool inside. The back door had been wedged open, perhaps in the mass exodus of frightened guests and employees. A refreshing breeze funnelled through. Victor noticed for the first time he was sweating. There were no members of the kitchen staff. Everyone had wisely fled. Victor drew the smell of cooked breakfasts into his nostrils. Eggs were burning in pans on the stove. Bread and croissants baked in ovens.

He continued breathing deeply to keep his pulse down and gripped the Beretta in both hands as he walked forward, slow, cautious of the large open space and the blind spots created by rows of appliances and storage. He kept his eyes moving as he crept toward the door, wary that there were three other gunman very much alive. He had to assume they were still after him, leaderless or not. If they hadn’t withdrawn they wouldn’t have left this exit unguarded.

He moved closer, staying near to cupboards and work surfaces for cover in case someone burst through from the alleyway beyond. An approaching siren beckoned him to walk faster, but his awareness of the current danger ensured his movements were slow and controlled.

If another gunman was waiting in the alley and covering the doorway, Victor would need to have surprise on his side to stand a chance of making it out alive. Hurrying would only make an enemy’s job easier. They were going to have to earn their money today.

He took another step and stopped.

Movement.

A reflection on the stainless steel cupboard door to his left. Just a blur of motion, but he understood its meaning and spun around to see a pantry door swinging open hard, a dark-haired woman charging out of the darkness, her handgun rapidly coming into line with his position.

Victor reacted faster, shooting first, two shots, hitting centre mass. The impact knocked her off her feet and threw her backwards into the adjoining room from where she’d emerged.

He covered the distance fast, saw her lying on her back, alive, eyes closed, two small circles of blood around the scorch marks in her blouse. She was gasping, one lung collapsed. The gun was right next to her, but she didn’t try to get to it. She was too scared.

Victor’s shadow fell over her and she looked up. She was surprisingly attractive, twenty-eight or — nine, pain in her delicate features, terror in her piercing eyes. She stared at him, gaze pleading, tears spilling down her cheeks, lips he would have liked to kiss, moving but making no sound, not enough air in her lungs to speak, to beg. Or to tell him anything useful. He spared a moment to consider how someone like her could have ended up in this business. But whatever her story had been, it was about to have a depressing end. Her head shook slowly from side to side.

The smoking cartridge bounced on the floor tiles.

He searched her. Like the others she had no wallet, no identification of any kind. They were clearly smart operators even if they had been dumb enough to take this contract. One of those left had to have something Victor could use. He didn’t want to entertain the thought that they might not.

He discarded the Beretta and picked up the dead woman’s gun. It was a good weapon, a Heckler and Koch USP, compact version, 45 calibre, with a short, stubby suppressor. He pulled out the eight-round magazine, saw the match-grade hollow-point rounds, and slammed the mag back in. Obviously a killer who took pride in the tools of her trade. Well, used to.

He grabbed a couple of spare mags from her jacket before rushing out the back entrance and into the alleyway, keeping low, gazing left, then right, sweeping the HK as he looked. No one. He hid the gun in his waistband and headed toward the main street, pleased that finally one of them had a decent gun for him to steal. Assassins could have such very poor taste.

With the woman dead that made five down. Only two to go.

There was a large crowd outside the front of the hotel. Guests and employees alike, shocked, overawed and scared, seeking solace together. Only a handful of people knew what was lying in a corridor on the fourth floor, but talk of blood and bodies had spread fast. A single policeman was doing his best to try and move them back. Pedestrians were rushing to the scene to find out what was happening.

Victor exited the alleyway and walked among the crowd, his pace brisk but no quicker than anyone else’s, moving laterally as much as he could, not wanting to give any possible snipers an easy target. It was unlikely that anyone would take such a shot, but he wouldn’t bet his life on it. He saw the blue van parked fifty yards down the street, sitting anonymously along the kerb by a phone booth. The rear doors were facing towards him. He couldn’t see if anyone was behind the wheel.

If it hadn’t gone yet there was a good chance that at least one more assassin was still about. As Victor approached he caught sight of exhaust gases emanating from the van. Good, there would be someone behind the wheel while the engine idled. In the commotion, Victor knew he could get right up alongside the van before any driver knew he was there. He went to cross the street, his right foot leaving the kerb, but he went no farther.

On the other side of the road, directly opposite from the hotel, a stocky man was hurrying down the steps at the front of a whitewashed apartment building. Slung over his shoulder was a large black sports bag, the kind that could easily contain a tennis racket, hockey stick.

Or high-velocity rifle.

He stopped dead when he saw Victor looking straight at him. His reaction a perfect ID. Both men stood completely still as chaos swept around them. The stocky man was first to break the stalemate. He glanced to his left, towards where the van was parked. He and Victor were equidistant from it.

Victor took a step forwards. The man took one backwards. He reached into his jacket. Victor did the same. A police car turned onto the street, lights flashing, siren blaring. Both men saw it and any thoughts of drawing guns vanished.

The assassin again glanced at the van, perhaps in the hope that help might be coming. When he realized it wasn’t he turned around and rushed back up the steps to the apartment building.

Victor quickened his pace but to avoid drawing attention couldn’t run. He reached the opposite sidewalk in time to see the door slam shut behind his prey. He took the steps two at a time. He tried the door handle but it was dead bolted. He couldn’t risk kicking it in or shooting the lock through, not with more police entering the street.

Victor descended the steps and looked up and down the street, searching for some way to get round to the back of the building. There was an alleyway twenty yards to the right. Victor hurried towards it.

As soon as he was out of sight he sprinted, coming out of the far end and into the backstreet, 45 in hand. No sign of the stocky man. If he’d left the building already Victor would be able to see him now. Which meant he was staying put. Victor was surprised. The assassin had chosen to wait, to fight.

Victor wasn’t about to disappoint him.

The lock on the back door was a good one and would’ve taken Victor almost thirty seconds to pick had the fat. 45 calibre slugs not blasted it to pieces. He loaded a full magazine and stepped into a wide, sparsely furnished hallway, the floor covered in a colourful mosaic. There were three interior doors, two with numbers on them. A large staircase dominated the space.

Victor approached it, gun held out before him in a two-handed combat grip. His hotel room had been on the fourth floor and so it would be from the fifth that the stocky man had been covering Victor’s window. That room was familiar, safe. If the man had fled to anywhere, he would have gone there.

Victor took the steps one at time, slowly, quietly, always looking up, ready in case the assassin was waiting to ambush him. He reached the second floor, scanned the landing, then started his way up the next flight of stairs.

He paused for a few seconds on the third floor to listen. When he didn’t hear anything he made his way up to the fourth. From the fifth floor, he heard a door open, then a woman’s voice, somewhat surprised, but friendly, helpful.

‘Puis-je vous aider?’ Can I help you?

Then a clack clack followed by the thud as a body hit the floor. Victor made his move, sprinting up the flight of steps while the assassin was momentarily distracted. He saw the stocky man as he was turning around from his kill, standing at the top of the stairs.

Victor fired on the move, the angle bad, and a hollow point blew a chunk out of the banister. The assassin instinctively lurched back, and as two more bullets blew holes from the ceiling above him, a fourth struck the black iron lattice beneath the banister and sent off a flash of bright sparks. The man let off a few rounds from his own handgun, firing blind as he threw himself out of Victor’s line of sight. He appeared again briefly, firing as he moved, Victor returning fire, neither man hitting.

Victor went into a crouch before he reached the top of the stairs and peered through the iron lattice. He saw the body sprawled out in the doorway of her apartment. A silver-haired woman in a raincoat lay dead, her only crime having asked politely if she could help the stranger waiting by the stairs. A good deed was its own reward.

The other of the floor’s two doors was half open, the assassin nowhere to be seen. Victor crept up the last few steps. He looked over to the first half-open door. It led to the apartment where the assassin had originally taken up position, the place to which he had no doubt retreated. Except Victor did doubt.

Making no noise, he carefully stepped across the landing, avoided the glistening pool of blood, and pressed himself along the wall. He edged towards the open door that led to the dead woman’s apartment. Victor almost smiled. He wasn’t about to fall for the oldest trick in the book.

When he reached the door frame, he looked across to the other apartment, the one where the stocky man would have been stationed, judging the angle to determine where someone inside the dead woman’s apartment would need to be to properly cover the other doorway.

Victor crouched down; placed his left hand on the door frame; and, using it as leverage, spun himself into the room. He saw the assassin straight away, in a crouch, leaning around a partition wall, gun trained at the door to his old apartment. The man’s eyes widened in surprise.

Victor fired twice, one bullet missing but the second grazing his target’s head above the ear, sending up a small spray of blood. The assassin managed to get a shot off in response before he fell back into cover. The bullet hit the door frame inches from Victor’s face, blowing a cluster of long wooden splinters into his cheek. He didn’t flinch.

Victor was on his feet in an instant, quickly changing position, moving into the centre of the room, knowing that he had to keep moving, that to stay in the same place only made it easier for his assailant.

The assassin ducked back round the corner and fired off two quick shots in the direction of the doorway, the bullets sailing through the open space where Victor’s head had been seconds before. He moved further into the room, making the angle between him and his enemy more and more acute. If the assassin wanted to see him he was going to have to stick his head around the corner. When he did, Victor was going to blow it off. But he didn’t take the bait.

Five seconds passed and Victor imagined the stocky man moving through the apartment to get behind him. There were two other ways out of the lounge, too far apart to watch them both at once.

Victor dashed over to the dining-room entrance, leaned round the corner. The assassin had gone. There was an open door at the opposite end, through which Victor could see the kitchen. Silently he moved over to the kitchen and peered inside. Empty. There was only one other door. Victor hurried over to it, noting the tiny dark spots of blood on the white tiled floor.

Looking through the doorway he saw the assassin. He was crouched down in a hallway, his back pressed against a wall, gun in both hands, about to lean into the lounge and shoot Victor in the back. At least that’s what he thought.

He was taking a series of deep breaths, summoning courage. He stopped mid inhale. Maybe he saw a dark shape in his peripheral vision, maybe some sixth sense warned him. He twisted to fire and Victor shot him in the chest. He slumped farther down the wall, still alive, the gun held loosely in his hand. On his face was etched an expression of amazement, as if he couldn’t comprehend he’d been shot. A red mist hung in the air.

The slide was back on the. 45, so Victor released the empty mag and slammed the spare in, pulled the slide to load a bullet into the chamber, and shot the assassin twice more.

Victor checked the body, took the earpiece and transmitter, but found nothing else. He headed to the floor’s other apartment. Inside the hallway he found the black sports bag; unzipping it he discovered a SIG556 ER rifle with scope and what looked like a custom-made suppressor. In a side pocket, he found a dry-cleaning receipt and an electronic door key. He took both. On the receipt it said: Hotel Abrial.

Now he had something.

He moved into the lounge and opened a window. Leaning out, he saw the blue van still parked by the kerb in the street below.

A crackle of static. A voice came through the earpiece. The French was broken, strained. Another foreigner. The ones who could speak French probably used it as the common language. Maybe it had been a requirement on the application form.

‘R e pondez quelqu’un, quiconque.’

In the background he could hear a police siren, close to the speaker. The last man was outside. Then the voice came through again. The same plea for contact. Again the police siren in the background, then the rumble of an engine as a vehicle passed the speaker. Victor watched a police motorcycle slowly pass the blue van before stopping right in front of the hotel.

He took the rifle from the bag and extended the collapsible buttstock. With his left hand, he turned the radio’s frequency dial a fraction, to add some static. He held the radio up and pressed send, speaking in French, his accent deliberately off, sentence construction as basic as possible to make sure the guy would understand.

‘We’re the only two left,’ he said, sounding scared. ‘He’s killed everyone else.’

He released the button, giving whoever it was chance to respond. The voice that came back was thin, desperate.

‘Where are you?’

‘Inside the hotel.’

‘The target?’

Victor began screwing the suppressor in place.

‘Heading for the front exit. He’s wounded. I shot him.’

He made sure the suppressor was tight and attached the telescopic sight.

‘If you’re quick you can get him when he comes out. He’s not armed. Hurry.’

He checked the scope’s magnification, made sure a bullet was in the chamber, and thumbed off the safety. Victor put the radio down, took up a seated position on the window sill, and held the rifle out of sight.

The driver’s-side door opened and a man jumped out onto the kerb. He was strongly built, well over six feet tall, short hair, wearing a loose denim jacket. He quickly moved along the exterior of the van and leaned round the back end, looking toward the hotel across the street. He drew a handgun and held it out of sight under his jacket, attention firmly fixed on the hotel entrance. He was in good cover, between the van and the phone booth. Victor watched him, anticipating his movements. The man moved well, skill evident. They should have used him inside.

For a long moment he remained perfectly still, watching, waiting. After a minute his posture stiffened and he glanced from side to side, eyes searching the crowds. He stepped back, out of cover, turned around, looked up.

Straight at Victor.

Through the telescopic sight Victor watched the man’s eyes go wide for an instant before a corona of blood erupted from the back of his head. He dropped out of sight, leaving half the contents of his skull sliding slowly down the van’s rear windows.