The Prophecy

40

Payne started getting nervous when Jones and Megan didn’t appear in the lobby shortly after the cops had entered the front stairwell. He knew if everything had gone smoothly, the two events should have occurred nearly in unison. Through his years of experience, he realized unforeseen variables often popped up during a mission, but they weren’t always disastrous. So Payne wasn’t about to overreact and charge forward with his guns blazing.

Perhaps Megan knew the Keymaster, and the two of them had stopped to chat in the hallway. Or maybe the cops didn’t even go into the basement, giving Jones more time to continue his search.

Whatever the case, Payne wasn’t truly worried about things until the elevator doors popped open and his best friend emerged in handcuffs.

Vinnie the meathead appeared next, followed by his partner, and then Megan. Thankfully, her hands were free, which meant she wasn’t under arrest and would be able to explain everything that had transpired. For the life of him, Payne couldn’t imagine what had happened because he knew Jones wasn’t the type to lose his cool under pressure. Were there security cameras that they didn’t know about? Or had Megan panicked and done something stupid? If that were the case, she would have been the one in cuffs, not Jones, unless he had tried to intervene.

Payne leaned forward, trying to get a better view of Jones as he was pushed out of the main entrance towards the police car. For an instant, the two friends made eye contact from fifty feet away. Jones simply shook his head in frustration, as if to say he had done nothing wrong and was sorry for letting Payne down.

Ironically, Payne felt even worse than Jones. The guilt he felt for sitting on his ass and watching his friend get hauled off to jail was overwhelming. But what choice did he have? If he had been permitted, Payne would have willingly traded places with Jones, just to spare him the humiliation of being taken into custody. But that wasn’t the way the system worked. And he knew if he rushed forward and told the cops he knew Jones, there was always a chance Payne would be arrested, too — which would do neither of them any good.

No, the best thing he could do was pick up Megan and follow Jones to the police station where Payne could use every connection he had to get Jones released.

With any luck, they’d be back on the street in less than an hour.

Of course, that plan became moot when the first shot was fired.

One moment Vinnie was shoving Jones into the back of the squad car, the next his meat head was being splattered all over the door and window. The killshot was so unexpected it took Payne a moment to process what had actually happened. By the time he did, bullet number two was airborne and headed his way. A splitsecond later, he heard a loud crack and flinched as the front windshield of the Suburban absorbed the impact of the round. Thankfully, the bulletproof glass held firm, saving Payne from nearcertain death.

It also helped him figure out where the gunman was positioned.

Using simple geometry, Payne knew the shooter had to be somewhere near the street otherwise he couldn’t have hit the cop and the Suburban in rapid succession. Leaning to his right, Payne tried to see around the web-like fracture in the glass, hoping to spot him. But before he got a clean view of the road, another shot hit the windshield, pushing the glass to its breaking point. There was a loud thwack followed by a soft crinkling that reminded Payne of ice cracking on a frozen pond. One more shot, and he knew the window might collapse.

Wasting no time, Payne shifted the SUV into drive and punched his foot on the gas. The Chevy shot forward and clipped the bumper of the BMW sedan parked in front of it, knocking it into oncoming traffic. Tyres screeched loudly as Payne turned the wheel hard to the left and rocketed across the road to a chorus of blaring horns. None of that mattered to Payne. His only concern was surviving long enough to rescue Jones and Megan.

Jones didn’t need rescuing. He was quite capable of saving himself.

Covered in blood splatter in the back of the police car, he pulled his knees towards his chest and slid his wrists beyond his feet. A moment later, his cuffed hands were in front him, giving him the freedom to run or fight.

Jones opted to run now, fight later.

The racist cop had fallen face down on the sidewalk, his body twisted against the car. Blood and brains coated the door, telling Jones everything he needed to know about the guy’s condition. The bastard couldn’t be saved. The meathead was dead.

A black polymer handle dangled from the back of the cop’s belt. Jones recognized it at once. It was his Sig Sauer P228. With a smile on his face, he stretched forward and grabbed his gun.

Suddenly the playing field was a lot more even.

A shot rang out from the nearby street, followed by the crack of glass. Jones turned and glanced at the road but couldn’t see the gunman. He was definitely back there, but where? Realizing he was in a position of weakness — pinned down in the back of a squad car, unable to reach the ignition because of an iron partition between the seats — Jones knew he had to move before the shooter came any closer.

The front entrance to the building was roughly twenty feet away. A long distance to run with bound hands. He stared through the blood-streaked window, trying to gauge how long it would take to cover the ground and where he should go once he got inside. In his opinion, the entire lobby was a tactical nightmare. Furniture was sparse. Counters and barriers were nonexistent. And the front of the building was lined with windows. If not for the back hallway and the shielded space near the mailboxes, it wouldn’t be worth the exposure time. But he knew if he remained in the car, he was a sitting duck.

‘Screw it,’ he mumbled as he got ready to run.

Taking a deep breath, Jones burst from the car like a sprinter from his starting block. A gunshot echoed behind him, followed by the screeching of tyres and the honking of horns, but his sole concern was getting indoors as quickly as possible. To hasten his entrance, Jones raised his gun and fired two shots at the front window of the building. The glass shattered on impact, sending tiny shards crashing to the lobby floor. They tinked and clanked in a melodic song, one he didn’t notice as he leapt through the empty window frame and scrambled for cover.

Originally he had planned on running left and hunkering down by the mailboxes, using its angled wall for protection. But out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the middle elevator had just arrived and its doors were sliding open. Taking that as an omen, he cut sharply to his right and dived inside before the gunman could clip him from behind.

Unfortunately for Jones, the elevator wasn’t empty.

Paul was ten feet behind his partner when Vinnie’s head erupted like a pink volcano.

The shot had come from their left, somewhere near the busy road, not from the suspect they had in handcuffs, although there was a chance he had an accomplice who had pulled the trigger. With that in mind, Paul did what he had been trained to do — he grabbed the nearest civilian and dragged her to safety in the opposite direction. Megan was thankful he did otherwise she would have remained standing in the middle of the sidewalk, too stunned by the graphic nature of the killshot to react rationally.

She had never seen someone murdered before; it took a moment for her to recover.

When she finally snapped out of her haze, she was already halfway across the lobby, running towards the sitting area beyond the bank of elevators. Paul pulled her arm and yanked her behind a faux-leather couch that would temporarily shield them from the gunman outside.

‘Stay down,’ he warned her as he pulled his Glock 21, a .45-calibre semiautomatic handgun, from his holster. ‘I’m calling for backup.’

Megan said nothing as she cowered next to him on the floor.

With his free hand, Paul clicked the button on his transmitter and called in a ten-double-zero, police code for officer down, all patrols respond. A few seconds later, Jones fired two shots at the window and sprinted across the lobby.

Suddenly, Paul had more important things to worry about than backup.

He had an armed suspect to take out.