The Killer

SEVENTY-FIVE

19:26 UST

Sykes hurried down the stairs, trailing behind Dalweg. The big ex-SEAL had his Beretta held out before him and moved fast and assured while Sykes breathlessly stumbled after him, one hand loosely gripping his own gun and the other on the banister to help keep him on his feet. Fear and acid reflux made for a lethal cocktail.

Gunshots made Sykes hesitate. They were loud, seemingly originating from outside the back of the hotel. Dalweg was unfazed, reaching the bottom of the staircase and taking up position to peer into the adjoining corridor. He looked back at Sykes.

“Come on,” he said. “You need to keep up, or I’m just gonna fucking leave you here. I don’t care.”

Dalweg headed down the corridor and Sykes followed, trying not to startle at every bang. It sounded like a full-scale war was being fought, but he was glad that those who were trying to kill one another were not doing so inside the building anymore. Sykes’s palm was moist around the SIG’s grip.

The lobby was deserted apart from a couple of members of the hotel staff cowering behind the check-in desk. Dalweg picked up speed, almost jogging across the open space of the lobby before reaching the main entrance. He put a shoulder to a wall and glanced through a window. He moved to another and looked out again.

“Looks clear. I think we’re good.”

Sykes swallowed and used the sleeve of his T-shirt to wipe his sweaty face. A sustained barrage of automatic fire made him freeze in place, and even Dalweg flinched. Shouting came next. It sounded like Russians in the adjoining bar and corridors.

A barrage of thoughts assailed Sykes’s mind. If Russians were here, they must have found out about the missiles. But who were they fighting? Who was the man who shot Wiechman? What the hell was going on? The answer terrified him.

Sykes felt Dalweg’s hand on his shoulder. He looked at him.

“Listen, you worthless little shit,” Dalweg said. “If you want me to get you out of this I’m going to want more money. A hell of a lot more.”

Sykes nodded several times. “Of course, whatever you want. Just get me the hell out of here. Please.”

Dalweg looked at him contemptuously and pushed through the main hotel door. Sunlight flooded through the doorway and made Sykes squint. He’d left his sunglasses in his room along with the rest of his belongings without a second’s thought.

Dalweg rushed out into the glare and took up a covering position behind a car parked in front of the hotel. Sykes ran after him and squatted down nearby, panting, terrified.

Dalweg looked left and right down the street. Locals were gathering in response to the gunfire. They appeared curious more than scared.

“I don’t see anyone,” Dalweg said.

Sykes kept low anyway. “What about the truck?”

“It’s still there.”

“No one’s near it?”

Dalweg shook his head. “If they were I would have said, idiot. Whatever’s going down here isn’t about those missiles.”

“It must be.”

Dalweg looked at him, scowling. “Then why, genius, are those clowns shooting the shit out of one another around the back and not making off with the truck?”

Sykes shrugged.

“Exactly,” Dalweg said.

“What are we going to do?”

“We’re leaving.”

Dalweg stood and hurried across the street and over toward the truck. He stopped and motioned for Sykes to follow. It took three deep breaths and a half-hearted prayer for Sykes to get his legs moving. He sprinted out from behind the car and across the street, heading toward where Dalweg was climbing into the truck’s cab.

Sykes heard the sound of a vehicle approaching and flattened himself against the truck as a Jeep hurtled closer. He stared at the driver, in shock. The Jeep sped past and Sykes watched it, openmouthed, disbelieving. Tesseract.

Movement caught his eye. A man emerged from out of a side street. The man had a buzz cut and a neck like a tree trunk, skin too light to be a local. It took a few seconds for Sykes’s brain to catch up with what he was seeing, and in that short time the man charged straight at him.

Sykes raised his gun hand, but he was nowhere near fast enough, and 205 pounds of angry Latino struck him shoulder first in the gut, sending Sykes flying backward, hitting the dusty blacktop on his back, hard. The gun flew from his hand and clattered out of sight.

Sykes wheezed, red faced, trying desperately to pull air into his deflated lungs.

Alvarez was on his feet in only a few seconds. He was a big guy, but he still had more speed than most people expected. A small crowd of Tanzanians were watching him, but he ignored them and looked around for Sykes’s gun. He couldn’t see it anywhere, and there was no more time to search.

He took a step back, turned around. A tall square canvas cover shielded the back of the truck and had a secured door in the middle of the back panel. Alvarez ripped the door open and peered inside. Two pickup trucks sped past him. The sickly strong smell of saltwater made him wince. Thick canvas sheets covered the cargo. Alvarez pulled them aside, seeing an assortment of items: dive tanks, regulators, an underwater cutting torch, lanyards, fins, open-bottom lift bags, underwater lights, a box of flares.

Lying among the equipment were huge tubular sections of white-painted metal that ran the entire length of the cargo box and that were as wide as Alvarez’s shoulders. They had obviously been dismantled to allow them to be brought to the surface, but the missiles were still much larger than Alvarez had imagined.

“Jackpot,” he whispered.

Alvarez heard the driver’s door open, pressed his back flat against the tailgate, and waited.

Sykes tried to call for help, but he didn’t have enough breath to make words. He struggled on the hot ground, scared and in agony. He watched a Land Rover accelerate out of the hotel’s driveway and heard Dalweg’s voice.

“What the fuck?”

Sykes tried to look up to see Dalweg, but he didn’t have the strength. Instead he rolled his head to the side, seeing the world at a skewed angle and watching Dalweg approaching him along the side of the truck, on his way to help. Sykes rolled his head to the other side and saw Alvarez waiting behind the back of the truck, out of Dalweg’s sight.

“What happened to you?” Dalweg asked.

Sykes rolled his head back again and tried to warn Dalweg, but his shouts came out of his winded chest no louder than whimpers. He tried to point, but Dalweg didn’t understand.

The second Dalweg reached Sykes, Alvarez was upon him. He threw himself at Dalweg from behind, tackling him down to the ground, hitting the road to the left of where Sykes lay. Orange dust wafted into the air.

Sykes tried to shuffle out of the way as the two men grappled and punched each other next to him. He was still wheezing, but the intense pain in his chest was slowly fading with each second. He managed to roll to the right, first onto his front, and then onto his back again. He heard the grunts and sickening thwack as fists hit flesh no more than a few feet away. Blood specks landed on Sykes’s face.

Sykes pulled himself slowly to his feet and staggered backward until he found a wall to lean on. Some locals started cheering the fight.

Straight in front of him Alvarez and Dalweg pounded the crap out of each other. Both guys were strong, and both knew how to fight. Alvarez wrestled his way on top of Dalweg, using his left hand to pin Dalweg’s right arm to the ground while he punched and elbowed Dalweg with his own right. Blood erupted from a gash on Dalweg’s cheek. He was already bleeding from the mouth. Sykes could see it was all going to be over in a few seconds.

He couldn’t see his own gun, but Dalweg’s Beretta was lying close by in the road, just out of reach of either fighting man. Sykes pushed himself away from the wall and rushed over to the gun as fast as he could. He circled round where Alvarez and Dalweg fought, staggering to keep his balance.

Alvarez saw what was happening, let go of Dalweg, and scrambled after Sykes. He caught up with him before Sykes reached the weapon, wrapped his arms around Sykes’s thighs, hoisted him off his feet and brought him back down to ground. Hard.

Sykes’s arms cushioned the fall, but not enough to stop his face from finding the asphalt. He went limp and groaned quietly.

Alvarez got to his feet. He turned around to face Dalweg, only to see him heading back to the cab. The door was already opened, and he reached inside. When Dalweg pulled his arms back out, he had an Uzi in his hands.

Alvarez scooped up the Beretta and sprinted out of the line of fire before Dalweg had the submachine gun raised. Alvarez looked around frantically for some cover, realized there wasn’t any close enough for him to get to in time, turned back, and shot at Dalweg through the truck’s canvas backing, hoping for a lucky hit.

The Uzi roared in response, and a cluster of smoking holes appeared through the canvas. Rounds blasted chunks out of the masonry around Alvarez. He dropped down to his hands and knees, bending low to see underneath the truck. Dalweg was behind one of the rear wheels, only his shadow visible. The Uzi rattled off another burst, and more bullets sailed over Alvarez’s head.

Alvarez steadied his aim as much as he could and squeezed off a round.

The bullet blew out the truck’s tire, passing through the rubber and striking Dalweg in the leg on the other side. He howled in pain and abandoned his position. Alvarez fired another shot after him, but Dalweg was out of his field of view.

Alvarez got himself vertical, moved closer to the back of the truck, and tucked himself behind one of the big wheels like Dalweg had done. A second later more rounds came his way.

He stuck his head out of cover long enough to see that Dalweg was positioned behind a small wall on the other side of the road, and then pulled his skull back down. He felt the reverberations as bullets struck the truck and silently prayed that an unlucky round wasn’t going to set one of the warheads off. Alvarez didn’t know if they were armed or duds, and it had to be a long shot anyway, he told himself, but he didn’t want to wait around to test the theory.

He shuffled to the side and reached his arm backward and around the wheel to fire off a couple of shots in the general direction of Dalweg. His odds of hitting were probably longer than those of one of the warheads going bang, but he couldn’t have done too badly since the Uzi stopped blasting for a few seconds.

Alvarez didn’t waste the opportunity and changed positions, hurrying to the front of the truck and taking cover behind the wheel there. In a hunched-over crouch he moved around the front fender, leaned out of cover, and took a shot. He watched as the bullet plugged a hole in the wall shielding Dalweg.

The returning hail of 9 mms forced Alvarez back to behind the wheel. Rounds pinged off the truck’s hood, cracked the cab windows, whacked into the ground. Alvarez heard what sounded like running water and looked to his left to see fuel spilling out from a ruptured fuel tank, bullet holes through both sides.

Alvarez would be first to admit that his understanding of chemistry was nothing special, but he knew that diesel had a higher flashpoint than gasoline and was much harder to ignite. Even a match wouldn’t do it. But that fact was little comfort when a pool of the stuff was forming next to him.

He edged away from the diesel, wanting to make a run for it but aware he was completely pinned down. Moving out of the cover of the truck meant braving a storm of lead. Alvarez was brave, but he wasn’t stupid.

He popped out from behind the truck to fire another bullet at Dalweg, but, before he could fully squeeze the trigger, he felt a searing pain in his right shoulder and his legs gave way underneath him.

Alvarez landed on his back, grimaced against the unbelievable pain when he tried to move his right arm. He put his left fingers to the wound, feeling a small entry hole in the front of his outer deltoid. He stretched his fingers around to touch the much-larger exit wound at the back of his shoulder. A through and through. No bone damage, but when Alvarez withdrew his left hand, he saw that it was drenched with blood.

“Oh shit.”