The Janus Reprisal

4

Smith turned his head to stare into the eyes of the man who was preparing to kill him. He expected some emotion there. Perhaps anger that Smith had eluded him so far, or glee that he finally had Smith where he wanted him, but all he saw was a calculated coldness. A gunshot cracked and the man’s head whipped back. Bits of blood shot out of a hole in the man’s temple, splattering across the window above the terrorist’s head. The bulk of the brain matter that Smith knew would be scattering as well remained contained within the man’s hood. The assassin slumped forward and his body hung there, half in and half out of the window. His fingers loosened and the assault weapon fell straight down. It made a clattering sound as it hit the ground below.

“Thank you, whoever you are,” Smith whispered the words.

Another attacker stuck his head out of the window.

Stupid, Smith thought. The gunshot echoed again and the second man slumped. This one hadn’t pushed all the way out, and his body fell backward, into the room.

Smith heard rather than saw the reaction of the crowds of police and fire personnel behind him. A man’s voice on a loudspeaker kept repeating the same sentence over and over in Dutch, and out of the corner of his eye Smith saw the crowds shifting, moving. One camera-toting observer stepped backward, keeping the lens of his commercial-grade equipment pointed at the hotel and Smith, but moving to a new position. The perimeter grew wider, farther away. There would be no ladder for him anytime soon.

Smith redirected his attention to moving to the corner. His fingers ached at each knuckle from the strain of gripping the small protrusion, and his biceps burned. His toes grasped the stone piece well enough, but his calves were in pain from being locked in the same position. He made it to the corner and carefully reached his hand around the point and grasped the section on the other side with a sigh. At least now he could stretch out his arms, which provided some relief to his biceps.

He shifted around the corner and was confronted with another window. This one had a hole in it where a stray bullet had exited. The curtains had been pulled, but Smith was able to peer into the room through a small opening between them. He saw a man’s foot hanging off the edge of the bed. The foot didn’t move. Presumably the terrorists had already visited this room, and the man was dead.

Smith glanced down, looking for an awning or something below that he could jump into with the hope of a semisoft landing. There was nothing. He wasn’t willing to keep going. The burn in his limbs signaled that they were reaching the failure point, and he could feel the beginnings of a cramp forming in his calf. He carefully released one hand from the ledge, balancing himself as well as he could, and reached behind and pulled his weapon out of his waistband. He flipped the gun over and hit the butt on the glass next to the bullet hole, trying to widen it enough to knock out a section. He couldn’t get his body at an angle that would allow him to generate any force, and as a result the blows were weak and ineffectual. The pane held.

While not a fitness fanatic, Smith worked out every day to maintain his strength and flexibility, and as a result he knew his abilities. Clinging to the ledge was pushing his muscles to the limit, and he wasn’t sure how much longer he would be able to continue inching along. He felt the panic that he’d been tamping down since the start of the ordeal begin to break through to the surface. He swallowed once and prepared to continue forward until his limbs failed completely.

He heard a gunshot crack, and the window shivered as a bullet shot through it, a few inches above and to the right of the existing hole, but this one making an entry pattern. Whoever had shot the terrorists was now shooting at the window. Slivers of glass flew and Smith closed his eyes against the shards. A second crack broke through the dark and another hole appeared, this one completing a triangle. Smith felt hope surge in him. The sniper knew how to shatter a window. A triangular pattern of shots would overcome even bulletproof glass, which this window certainly was not. He heard the double pane start to crack, and long fissures snaked out from the holes. Smith pulled out his weapon and tapped on the glass with the gun’s butt to speed it along. The entire pane came crashing down. He moved toward the opening, breathing a sigh of relief as his hand wrapped once again around the aluminum window edge. He swung a leg over the frame and lowered himself into the room on the other side.

Smith fell onto the rug and lay there a moment, breathing hard. He heard a smattering of applause from the police officers at the perimeter, but he was in no mood to celebrate with them. He was back in the heart of the disaster, with a dead man inside the room and no idea what awaited him outside. The terrorists still roamed the hotel.

Water sprayed down on him from the sprinkler system, but the alarm had stopped. The phone in his pocket began to ring and he jerked in surprise. He reached down and pulled it free. The display read “unknown.” Smith paused, wondering if he should answer, but decided that it might be Klein calling again from a different phone. He clicked it on and put it to his ear, saying nothing.

“Mr. Smith, this is the man who just shot the terrorists and the window. May I ask a favor? Could you collect any bullets that you find? The two that I used on the terrorists are meant to explode in a manner that renders them untraceable. Not so the two that I used on the window.”

Smith rose to standing while he took the extraordinary call. The man’s English was inflected with a slight accent that Smith thought might have been German or Swiss, and he spoke in a calm, relaxed manner, as if shooting terrorists dead were a daily occurrence and didn’t rattle him in the least.

“Why do you need them?” Smith asked.

“My employer would rather no questions be raised about my role here. I am technically not supposed to shoot people on foreign soil, no matter how despicable they are.”

Smith had initially thought that the man worked for Covert-One, but now he knew that was not possible. Covert-One was an organization so removed from governmental checks and balances that Smith doubted it was subject to any rules about shooting undesirables on foreign soil.

He searched around the far side of the bed, looking for the two bullets that had completed the triangle, and found them embedded in the wall. He propped the phone between his ear and shoulder while he used his fingers to dig them out. He dropped the bullets into his pocket.

“I’ve got them. How did you get this number?”

“My employer gave it to me. I don’t think there are any more terrorists on the third floor, but I don’t advise that you remain there. I suggest that you make your way down the north stairwell. I’m heading that way and will be prepared to cover you as you emerge. There’s a cordon of Dutch police forming, but I saw a second contingent of attackers on the move away from the hotel. This night is far from over.”

Smith ran through his mind the people who would have the expertise to shoot with the accuracy that this man had along with the ability to gain access to his private cell number. He decided that the caller was either employed by a European military group or was part of the intelligence organization of another country. His use of the term “foreign soil” meant that he wasn’t Dutch.

“CIA, Mossad, or MI6?” Smith said.

“I’ve been informed that I am to escort you safely out of that hotel if at all possible. You’ll be safe with me.” The man had dodged the question, but Smith decided to take him at his word. He’d just saved Smith’s life, and options were few in any event.

“I’m on my way,” he said.

He swept an eye over the dead man on the bed, but didn’t bother to take his pulse; the large bloom of blood growing on the man’s shirt where the bullet had entered his chest left little room for doubt. He checked his weapon and headed to the door, preparing to face whatever was out there.