Ruthless.Com pp-2 Page 7

  "I owe this cocksucking torture machine another fifteen minutes of my life," Weston said. "Next time, though. We'll have some pancakes."

  "Sure," Nordstrum said, starting toward the locker room.

  "Alex—"

  He paused and looked over his shoulder.

  "It's the key, not the lock. Tell that to Roger Gordian. Before the press conference. Okay?"

  Alex regarded Weston a moment, then nodded.

  "Okay," he said.

  Chapter Seven

  SINGAPORE

  SEPTEMBER 18, 2000

  The subtlest of visual cues jacked Blackburn to heightened alertness. He could not have expressed the feeling in words; it was instinctive, programmed into his neural circuits by long years of battle experience with the Special Air Service. And he trusted it no less than his eyes and ears.

  The man who had triggered his reaction had been poring through a magazine as he waited at the bus stop — so why had his eyes flicked over the upper edge of the magazine as Blackburn walked by? And why the sharp look of recognition on his features, the abrupt stiffening of his posture?

  Why, all at once, had Blackburn gotten the powerful sense of being watched?

  Perhaps twenty yards ahead of him, Kirsten was starting down the stairs in front of the Hyatt's entrance. Max slowed his pace and pulled back his gaze. He ranged it from right to left across an area several feet away and parallel to him, then reversed direction, scanning a larger, farther sector until it once again encompassed Kirsten. His attention had divided itself, automatically and simultaneously keying into separate frames of reference: the particular and the general, the narrow and the wide, points and lines.

  Blackburn marked the bodies of the people within eyeshot as stationary and moving objects, drawing correlations between their positions and the broader patterns of foot traffic. Scouting for any peculiarities in their interrelationships.

  Several were readily apparent.

  There was a man launching off the curb directly across the street to his left, beyond the pedestrian crossing, then weaving through traffic toward his side of the street — a rare sight in a country that punished jaywalking with steep fines. Another was advancing from a short distance up the sidewalk, shoving through the crowd. Two more were rapidly converging on the hotel from opposite sides of the entrance.

  Blackburn snapped a glance behind him, felt the skin on the back of his neck prickle. The man he had passed at the bus stop was pushing toward him, the magazine he'd been holding no longer in evidence.

  All four of the men were around the same age, Asian, and wearing the same basic style of clothing.

  The entire surveillance took under eight seconds and left him with little to consider. He had learned to be aware of everything that happened around him and quickly digest what he observed. It was clear now that he had walked into a trap. A closing trap. He did not know for certain who his enemies were, how they were deployed, or even their total number… but he did know the positions of five of them.

  He walked on, trying to control his nerves, making a tremendous effort to conceal the fact that he'd spotted his attackers. Kirsten was halfway down the steps now, the men nearest the hotel closing in on her. Which could only mean they — or whoever had sent them — knew something about the Monolith files. He had to to get her away from them. But how!

  Scanning the area near the hotel, he came up with an idea.

  Without wasting an instant, he reached into his sport jacket for his palm phone, flipped it open, thumbed the power button, keyed up one of the speed-dial numbers stored in its memory, and hit "Send." Hoping to God that Kirsten's cell phone was on, and that she would answer his call if it was.

  Kirsten had almost reached the sidewalk when her cellular trilled in her purse. She paused, looked toward Max, and smiled. He had lifted his own phone to his ear. Was he going to mutter sweet nothings to her as he came up the street?

  Moving against the handrail, she set her briefcase down on a step and got out the phone.

  "Hi-ho," she said into the mouthpiece. "I see you're finally—"

  "Don't talk. There isn't time."

  Confused, she looked across the short distance between them and saw that his face was as serious as his tone.

  "Max, what's wrong?"

  "I said to be quiet and listen."

  Her stomach clenched with tension. She swallowed, nodded, her hand squeezing the phone.

  "There's a taxi stand up the block to your right. Walk over to it as fast as you can without running."

  She nodded again, looking at him with wide, questioning eyes. The stand was in the opposite direction from Max. What was going on?

  Suddenly the emotion gripping her middle was no longer anxiety but fear.

  The disk. God, this had to be connected to the—

  "I want you to jump into a cab and get the hell away from here. I'll contact you soon. Understand?"

  She gave him a third nod.

  "Go!" he said.

  Her heart knocking, she replaced the phone in her bag, snatched up her briefcase, and hastened down the remaining stairs to the street.

  The two members of the strike team nearest the woman saw her stop and pull out her cell phone, then looked down the street at Blackburn, saw him talking into his phone, and immediately knew they'd been discovered.

  One of them raised a hand to signal this to the others.

  Bare seconds later he saw her resume walking, reach the bottom of the steps, and swing away from Blackburn toward the cab stand.

  He and his companion increased their pace, pushing through the crowd, confident they were close enough to intercept her before she reached it.

  Blackburn was still a few steps away from Kirsten when he saw the man turn his head toward her, turn his head toward him, and then give what was clearly a signal to his companions.

  Not good, Blackburn thought. If the man had seen both of them on their phones, he wouldn't have to be a genius to conclude they were talking to each other, and that his group's little ambush was no longer any kind of secret.

  The gesture would have warned his friends to hurry up and make their move.

  Kirsten had reached the pavement, turned away from him, and started hastily toward the taxi stand, where a line of robin's-egg-blue Comfort cabs were waiting to pick up fares. The pair of men who'd been covering the door had veered off after her, right on her tail, blocking her from Blackburn's sight.

  His teeth clenched, Max bumped quickly past a group of women with shopping bags hung on their arms, shuffled past some dark-suited businessmen, and then moved up behind the pair at a fast walk, using every available ounce of self-restraint to keep from actually breaking into a run. If he did that, it was a safe bet his attackers would do the same, and he had no way of telling whether he'd made all of them, or whether there might be someone he hadn yt identified even nearer to Kirsten than the two men in front of him — and in an easy position to outrace him.

  He gained on the men, gained some more, and when he was almost on top of them suddenly swung around to their left, quickstepping off the curb, then stepping back onto it, passing them, putting himself between them and Kirsten. He was three feet behind her now, maybe less.

  Almost close enough to touch her.

  Almost…

  He heard hurried footsteps coming up behind him, and lunged ahead with a burst of speed, no longer checking himself, knowing there wasn't any room left for hesitation. Reaching her at last, he hooked his right arm around her shoulder and swept her along toward the idling cabs, bracing her so she wouldn't trip head over heels onto the asphalt, using his body to shield her from their pursuers.

  Rigid with shock, Kirsten stumbled along uncomprehendingly for several feet, trying to resist — then all at once realized it was Max and loosened up, letting him steer her forward.

  She glanced over at his face as they approached the cab stand, her eyes bright with distress, their cheeks almost touching. "Max, dear Heaven, Max, I thought you
were one of them. I—" "Shhh!"

  Kirsten fell silent, her body trembling against him. She had no sooner registered that he was looking past her toward one of the standing cabs, than he reached out and tore open the taxi's door so violently she had the wild idea that its handle would come off in his grasp.

  What followed would always be a blur in Kirsten's recollection. One instant they were together, she under his arm, Max practically carrying her along, and the next he'd shoved her into the backseat of the cab, and was standing on the street, standing there alone, leaning through the door from outside.

  "Selangor!" he shouted at the driver.

  The man behind the wheel jerked around to look at him through the safety partition, his shoulder rattling the clutch of religious trinkets dangling from his rearview mirror.

  "Sorry, no long distance, lah" he said, shaking his head.

  Blackburn jammed a hand into his pants pocket, hurriedly yanked out his billfold, and tossed it into the front seat.

  "There's more than two hundred American dollars in it," he said. "Take her and it's all yours."

  Kirsten was gaping up at him with a kind of helpless desperation. The driver, meanwhile, had already lifted the billfold off the seat and was peering into it with astonishment.

  "Max, I don't understand," she cried shrilly. "What's happening? Why aren't you coming?"

  "Stay with your sister," he said. "If you don't hear from me in a few days, I want you to get in touch with a man named Pete Ni—"

  Max felt a hand seize on his left elbow from behind. He tensed, trying to keep himself planted between the two attackers and the cab.

  "Get moving!" he screamed into its interior, then pulled his head out of the door, slamming it shut with his right hand. He could see the reflections of the two attackers in the window — one still holding onto him, the other trying to scramble past him to the car.

  For a seemingly endless moment the cab remained stationary, and Max was sure the driver wasn't going to bite at his offer. Then he saw him push down the lever of the meter to start it running, and expelled a sigh of relief.

  Her face bewildered and terrified, Kirsten shifted around in her seat as the taxi angled from the curb, staring at him through the rear window.

  Their eyes met briefly, his narrow and resolute, hers moist with tears.. and then the taxi joined the heavy flow of northbound traffic, and was gone.

  It was the last they ever saw of each other.

  Max heard a short, frustrated breath escape the man that had taken hold of his right forearm.

  "You come with me, kambing," he hissed, and tightened his grip. His lips were against Max's ear, his body pressing up behind him.

  Max didn't budge. The man's partner had jogged after the cab for several yards, then been forced to get out of the way of speeding traffic, scrambled back onto the sidewalk, and turned around — but he hadn't yet returned to where they were standing.

  Which left Max with a small but workable opening.

  Moving with reflexive swiftness, he brought his left arm around in front of him, reaching across his middle, shifting his weight onto his right leg to pull his captor sharply toward him. As the man staggered forward with one hand still clamped over Max's forearm, Max put his free hand over it, gripped three of its fingers, and bent them back hard.

  The man released him with a gasp of pain and surprise, struggling to regain his balance.

  Max moved away from him and wheeled in a full circle, glancing up and down the street. A few nearby pedestrians had paused to gawk at the scuffle, but most were hustling past as if they hadn't noticed anything unusual. Maybe they really had not, or maybe they were just mindful that, however prosperous, Singapore was still a dictatorship where it was best to mind one's own business.

  Either way, he had more urgent concerns. The magazine reader was coming at him from the left, and now he had the jaywalker for company. A third member of the strike team was hustling toward him from the right. Counting the man he'd just shaken off, and the man who had been chasing the cab — both of whom were behind Max — the odds against him were at least five to one.

  The only direction left open was straight ahead, toward the hotel.

  He ran across the sidewalk and bounded up the stairs to its entrance.

  * * *

  Max cut a line through the lobby without a backward glance. He was acquainted with its layout from his regular stays in UpLink's long-term guest suites, and he knew what he was looking for. To the rear of the desk and main lounge area was a bank of elevators and, on their right, a short, straight corridor leading to a service entrance. Beyond that, a stairwell that would presumably take him down to the basement and loading doors. No hotel security guards on duty, or at least none in sight… and he'd been hoping their presence might turn aside his pursuers. Still, if he could reach the service entrance before his pursuers caught up to him — a big "if" since they'd been following right on his heels — he'd be able to shake them by ducking out the side of the hotel.

  Max saw a clot of new arrivals making a commotion at the check-in desk, German tourists from the sound of them. Hoping for momentary cover, he plunged into the noisy, milling group, then moved on past the entrances to the hotel dance club and bar, past the elevators, and over toward the service entrance, still not looking back over his shoulder — no time for that, no time at all.

  The gray metal door was slightly recessed from the wall and had a pane of wired glass set into it at eye level. No one was anywhere near it. Max turned the knob with his left hand, pushed the door open with the flat of his right, went through, and stepped from carpeting to bare concrete.

  Blackburn took a hurried look around — narrow flights of stairs ran up and down from where he stood on a wide landing. He started toward the descending stairs, but got no further than the end of the landing before the door crashed open behind him, a hand clamped onto his shoulder, and he was pulled backward with tremendous wrenching force.

  Max caught hold of the rail an instant before he would have gone stumbling off his feet. He whirled on whoever had grabbed him, found himself standing with a butterfly knife pressed against his throat.

  "Come with me." It was Jaywalker. Facing him from inches away, his fist clenched around the weapon's double handle. "Now."

  Blackburn met his gaze and saw no hint of human emotion in it, only a sort of cold, vortical emptiness. Then he heard muffled footsteps and broke eye contact, switching his attention to the door pane. Magazine Man and two others were approaching from the outer hall. They would burst through onto the landing within seconds. And there was still nobody else around.

  Blackburn stood motionless. His hands at his sides. The blade against the right side of his throat, less than an inch below the ear, where it could easily slice into his carotid artery. Blood trickled down from where its razor edge had broken his skin.

  His mind raced. He was carrying a Heckler & Koch MK23 in a concealment holster against his waist, but his assailant wasn't going to give him the chance to draw it. He was in the most vulnerable position he could imagine, and the close quarters left precious little room to maneuver.

  So what, then?

  He didn't have a split second to waste debating it with himself. Sweeping his left arm up from his side, he slammed the outer part of his forearm against the back of Jaywalker's knife hand, knocking the blade away from his throat, then grabbing his wrist to keep him from bringing it back up. Caught by surprise, Jaywalker tried to tear free, but Blackburn held fast to him, bringing his knee up into his groin. Jaywalker doubled over, gasping for air, his knife clattering to the floor. Max moved in closer and followed with a rapid combination of punches to the head — left cross, right jab, left hook. Gasping for breath, his nose and lips bleeding, Jaywalker staggered back against the rail. Max didn't relent for a heartbeat. His chin tucked low in a boxer's stance, he hit his opponent with another smashing blow to the side of his face, putting all his weight into it, wanting to take him out before he could r
ecover… and before his friends came to his assistance.

  But he only got half of what he wanted. As Jaywalker dropped to the floor in an unconscious heap, the fire door winged open and the others bolted through onto the landing. The one in the lead was small and wire-thin, wearing a baggy tan shirt, chinos, and Oakley sunglasses. Running up behind him, Magazine Man was perhaps a head taller and a good deal bulkier.

  It was Oakley that proved to be trouble of a sort Max never could have seen coming.

  He was reaching for his gun when Oakley dropped into a low squat, and, spinning on one leg, snapped the other leg out parallel to the floor, the side of his foot striking Max's ankle with shocking impact as the kick reached the end of its arc. Caught completely off guard by the move, firebolts jagging up to his knee, Max went staggering, fumbled for the rail, was unable to grab it this time, and tumbled down the stairs.

  He rolled twice, somehow keeping his right hand fastened around the butt of his semi-auto, his other arm twisting underneath him as he threw it out to brace his fall. He hit the lower landing with an audible crash, winced, a huge flare of pain suffusing his entire left side.

  There was little doubt he'd seriously injured his shoulder blade, perhaps even fractured it.

  He still had his gun, though. Still had the blessed thing cocked and ready in his fist.

  Rocking onto his back, he saw Oakley hurtling down toward the landing, toward him, coming on like a goddamned homing missile. The funneling, empty look hadn't left his eyes. Aware he'd be finished if his shot went awry, Max brought up the pistol, aimed dead center at his attacker's rib cage, and squeezed the trigger.

  The report was oddly flat and unechoing in the concrete stairwell, but its effect was nonetheless dramatic. Blood and shreds of material blew from the front of Oakley's shirt as the heavy.45 ACP slug tore into him. His sunglasses whirled off his head and smacked against the wall. He sailed backward as if suddenly having been switched into reverse, his arms flailing, his eyes wide and unbelieving. Then he sprawled limply onto the stairs.