The Killing Kind

24

Hendricks cut through the crowd, approaching from his target’s seven o’clock, his eyes locked on Leonwood. The big man was no more than forty feet away, a thicket of spectators between. As the lights dimmed, Hendricks focused on navigating the darkened space-on readying himself. He didn’t notice that to his right, a lithe blond man was tracking his approach.

Leonwood peered intently at the stage, where a cluster of presenters and security sporadically obscured his line of sight to Purkhiser, who sat waiting in the wings. He never saw Hendricks coming. He did, however, see the Pendleton’s security guard surveying the crowd from the stage linger a hair too long on him before his gaze continued past-and likewise noticed that same guard mutter into his shoulder mic a moment later. The guard was a pro-he’d only paused on Leonwood for a second, and he’d waited a beat, all casual-like, before reporting in-but Leonwood was a pro, too. He knew he’d been made.

He’d hoped to bide his time until the balloon drop, spray the stage with bullets-his suppressor blunting the worst of his gun’s report-and slip out before the popping of the prize-hungry casino patrons died down. But that plan went out the window the second he was spotted. If he was gonna take out Purkhiser, he was going to have to do it now.

Just inside the entrance to the banquet hall, Charlie Thompson’s earpiece crackled. “We got something,” Garfield said to her from his perch in the Pendleton’s surveillance room. “One of the casino’s guys spotted Leon-wood. Says he’s seated three tables back from the stage.”

“You got eyes on him?” she asked.

“Wish I did,” Garfield replied. “The cameras ain’t picking up a thing but balloons and netting.”

The impending balloon drop, thought Thompson-her chittering heart rate registering what her instincts were telling her seconds before her brain caught up. An obscured line of fire created by security and bystanders both. Leonwood’s position in the middle of the crowd-too close and too exposed for a precision rifle shot, but too far away to count on the limited accuracy of a handgun. A picture of carnage took shape in her mind.

“Could their guy see his hands?” she asked.

“What?” Garfield replied, perplexed.

“His hands. Could their guy see Leonwood’s hands, or were they under the table?”

An electronic crackle as Garfield broke the line, a pause as he conferred with casino security, and then he broke back in. “Under the table. What’re you thinking?”

Thompson’s stomach lurched. She unsnapped the thumb break on her holster and drew her sidearm. “I’m thinking he’s assembling an automatic weapon. I’m thinking he means to open fire. We need to put him down, and quick.”

Thompson moved along the right-hand wall of the room, her arms down and gun held ready, scanning the crowd for any sign of Leonwood. There were too many people still milling around for her to see. Too many bodies. She probed the crowd’s edge here and there-standing on tiptoe, or shoving folks aside-but he was lost to her. All she succeeded in doing was scaring anyone close enough to see she had a gun.

Tension seemed to ripple out through the crowd. The volume rose. And there was still no sign of Leonwood. Thompson broke out in a sweat. She was running out of time.

Leonwood’s hands worked frantically under the table: locking the hinged gunstock of his MP5K into place, inserting the magazine with a satisfying click, threading the suppressor onto its truncated barrel. Hendricks noted from Leonwood’s outline his flurry of activity beneath the table and realized that the time line for the hit had shifted. He lengthened his stride and reached for the knife inside his shirt. Engelmann saw Hendricks put on the speed, and did the same.

Hendricks closed the gap between him and Leonwood: ten yards, five. He threaded through the crowd like a running back-a quick sidestep, a glancing blow-receiving dirty looks and muttered epithets along the way. Engelmann cut through the crowd as well-like a dancer, or a knife through silk. The ballroom thrummed with agitation. The folks onstage could sense the crowd’s distress but didn’t know the cause-they stood awkwardly waiting for their cue, sweating through their fineries beneath the stage lights. Leonwood, heart racing as he too sensed the sea change in the crowd, completed assembly of his weapon and began to rise.

Hendricks never saw the waitress coming. He was three feet behind his intended target, who stood in an awkward half-crouch, his hands still hidden, as if waiting for the proper stage alignment to open fire. Hendricks drew his knife, knowing in that moment a stealthy end to Leonwood was no longer in the cards. He had to do something-even if it meant blowing his cover.

The waitress had been serving a group of men to Hendricks’s left from a silver platter of crudités and cheese. As Hendricks darted by, she wheeled, and they collided.

An upturned tray. A pretty face, eyes wide with surprise. Crudités everywhere. Dip smearing down the waitress’s shirt. Hendricks’s training kicked in, and-muscle memory guiding him-he spun away from her and caught the tray before it hit the floor.

That waitress-and that tray-saved Hendricks’s life.

He’d grabbed at it with one fluid motion, snatching it from the air like a Frisbee and carrying the motion through while he pivoted around the waitress. The sudden turn brought him momentarily face-to-face with Alexander Engelmann. Engelmann lashed out with the agility of a puff adder-five strikes with his ice pick in the blink of an eye. But he hadn’t counted on Hendricks catching the serving tray. The ice pick left behind five dimples in the silver and drove the tray into Hendricks’s chest, a far cry from the killing blow Engelmann intended.

Hendricks stumbled backward, confused and off-balance. He took a clumsy swipe at Engelmann with his ceramic knife. The crowd around them tried to scatter, but chairs and tables got in the way.

Leonwood’s system jolted with the queasy, invigorating prickle of adrenaline as the fight broke out behind him. Before he could react, Hendricks staggered into him, driving him downward onto the tabletop. But Hendricks couldn’t take advantage of the situation-he and Leonwood were back-to-back, and his immediate threat was the man before him with the ice pick.

Which, to the great misfortune of everyone in the room, gave Leonwood a chance to think.

Leonwood had no idea what the fuck the fight behind him was all about. Near as he could tell, it had nothing to do with him. For a moment he even entertained the notion that the guy onstage hadn’t spotted him at all, but had instead been reacting to these two brawling shitbags. Then he realized it didn’t matter-casino security was gonna be on high alert now either way. Which meant if he wanted to get out of here alive, he’d have to shoot his way out. And that was gonna be one hell of a lot easier before security could lock down the perimeter.

Leonwood might not have been the smartest man, but he was cunning, and good at what he did. He knew his odds of walking out of here weren’t stellar. And he also knew deep down that another fall wasn’t an option for him. He’d made a lot of enemies over the years-and at his age, he’d no longer be the toughest, meanest bastard on the cell block.

So okay then, he decided: freedom or a bullet- preferably the former. But either way, he thought, I’m putting Purkhiser in the ground.

When Engelmann and Hendricks engaged, Thompson could sense something in the room had changed-but the details of what was happening were unclear thanks to the sound and fury of the frightened crowd.

“The hell’s going on down there?” chirped Garfield through her earpiece. “Our guy onstage says there’s some kind of scuffle.”

“Honestly, I have no goddamn idea,” said Thompson. “You still in the dark up there?”

“Yup-we can’t see shit past these balloons.”

Thompson heard mounting worry in Garfield’s tone. Worry and helplessness. She peered over the heads of the scrambling, fleeing crowd, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. She saw the arc of Leonwood’s table being upturned, the swing of an elongated barrel brought to bear. Too late, she realized what was happening.

“FBI-everybody on the floor!” she shouted, though in their mounting terror, few listened. Then, to Garfield: “What’s above me?”

“What?”

“In the casino-what’s above this room?”

Someone on Garfield’s end barked an answer, which he relayed. “Nothing. The hotel’s over the gaming floor itself. Why?”

Thompson shot twice into the air-deafening in the enclosed space-and suddenly all eyes were on her. “I said everybody on the floor-now!” she yelled. This time, some listened. Thompson caught a glimpse of what looked like two men grappling, and Leonwood pressing his gunstock tight to his shoulder-its barrel aimed not toward her but toward the frozen men onstage.

In the fleeting seconds between Engelmann’s first strike and Thompson’s warning shots, Hendricks and Engelmann were locked in a battle as well-matched as it proved brief. Rare is the knife fight that lasts more than thirty seconds, and even rarer is the knife fight that doesn’t leave both participants bloodied.

This fight, despite the skill of its participants, was not so rare as either.

As Hendricks stumbled into Leonwood and rebounded, the silver tray clattering to the floor, Engelmann struck once more. It was his only play, but not a good one. He hoped to take advantage of his quarry’s forward momentum, to impale him on the ice pick. But Hendricks kept his head. He blocked Engelmann’s jab with an openhanded slap to the rounded side of the pick’s steel spike, knocking his opponent’s arm wide.

The inside of Engelmann’s elbow exposed, Hendricks slashed downward with his ceramic knife, hoping to sever Engelmann’s distal biceps tendon and render his attack arm useless. But Engelmann anticipated the attack and blocked it, his left forearm slamming upward into Hendricks’s in a white-hot flare of bone-jolting pain.

His arms open, his chest vulnerable, Hendricks was exposed. Engelmann released his ice pick and grabbed at Hendricks’s knife hand, held aloft as he tried to drive the knife down against the resistance of Engelmann’s block. Engelmann’s fingers closed around Hendricks’s wrist, and he twisted with all he had, spinning Hendricks around and wrenching his hand upward into a hammerlock.

Hendricks’s shoulder dislocated with the sickly pop of a drumstick separating from a turkey, and he screamed. His knife clattered to the floor as his hand went slack.

Engelmann forced Hendricks facedown onto a nearby table, trapping Hendricks’s good arm beneath him. He kept pressure on Hendricks’s injured shoulder with one hand and held him fast by driving his knee to the small of Hendricks’s back. With his free hand, he reached through the open-bottomed pocket of his trousers and slipped his combat blade from its leg sheath.

Engelmann released Hendricks’s wrist and grabbed a fistful of Hendricks’s hair, yanking back his head. His blade dimpled the tender flesh of Hendricks’s neck, its stinging pressure against his Adam’s apple heralding the killing blow Hendricks had expected-even, on occasion, wished for-for so long. In that moment, Hendricks realized he’d been mistaken. Much as he’d loathed himself for the things he’d done in the name of God and country, he didn’t want to die. Not without balancing his accounts. Not without saving more lives than he had ruined. It was ironic, he thought, that such a revelation only came-maybe only could come-in the instant his demise was certain.

“Goodbye, Cowboy,” Engelmann said.

Then, as he began to draw his blade across Hendricks’s neck, Thompson fired into the ceiling, and everything Engelmann had worked for went to shit.