Page 73 of Into the Fire

“Before?”

“I mean, any last words?”

Petro’s eyes darted around. Then he relaxed back in his seat, smoothed the lapel of his suit, and grinned. “If you expect to scare me, you don’t know me at all.”

“How about your men? You want to ask them if they’re scared?” Evan made a microscopic adjustment, dropping the crosshairs to the spot where Petro’s arm met his trunk. The Timney trigger split the pad of Evan’s index finger. “At least the five within earshot right now?”

It took a quarter second for the words to clear the Turing Phone’s encryption. Another quarter second for Petro to register their meaning. His neck corded, a sheet of muscle as his flesh tightened with panic.

Evan applied 3.5 pounds of trigger pressure, and a crimson rose bloomed on Petro’s shoulder. He toppled back in his chair, landing splayed in clear view on the stone of the courtyard.

The platform gave the faintest wobble from the recoil but held firm.

Through the earpiece Evan heard the clatter of the Turing as it struck ground. He cycled the bolt, the expended case spinning in a lazy arc past his temple, and buried the next round in the meat above Petro’s left thigh. Petro gave a pained animal howl, bellowing for help.

The next two bullets knocked out the visible bodyguards.

Evan swept the Remington across the restaurant rooftop until he saw the bodyguard standing rigidly before the Town Car, one finger pressed to his earpiece. He found the man’s sweaty forehead, badly bruised from its encounter with the bathroom sink. The instant before he squeezed off another round, his vision streaked and then doubled, the glare of the windshield turning into a comet of light.

The shot sailed past the bodyguard’s ear, shattering the polished windshield.

The bodyguard turned to stare at the Town Car in disbelief. By the time he tensed to run, Evan had partially regained his focus. He squinted to bring the two images of the bodyguard into one and found the forehead once again. The next round splattered the hood.

Gritting his teeth, Evan rotated to the courtyard again. An ache started up at the back of his head where he’d cracked it on the asphalt.

Pandemonium had erupted in the restaurant, the patrons pouring out. He’d counted on the crowd response, bystanders going one way, bodyguards the other.

Each party ran the pattern as predicted, but to Evan’s view they looked like smudges of color. Sweat trickled down his forehead; he armed it away before it could reach his eyes.

Slowing his breaths and trying to fight off his nausea, Evan locked the sights on a single point of entry for the courtyard. From here there were no tricky adjustments; if he could manage to hold position, he’d be able to get it done. As he’d anticipated, Petro’s cries drew his remaining men in neat succession, Evan head-shotting them in order. The men piled across the courtyard, heaped on top of one another, the last falling across Petro and pinning him to the ground.

Petro’s face had turned to a blurry oval. Then it floated apart like a cell dividing. A ghost image of Petro hovered above the man himself, a spirit debating whether to depart. Sweat stung Evan’s eyes. He laid the crosshairs on the nose of what he took to be the real Petro, blew out a breath, squeezed off his final round.

And missed.

A spray of chips flew up from the flagstones, shredding Petro’s ear. He twisted around and dug at the ground with his fingernails, trying to worm his way out from beneath the bodies.

Aggravated, Evan reached back to the rope bag on his right thigh and freed a lengthy two-inch-thick hawser rope. It unfurled to the side of the platform, feeding out until the bottom whip-snapped up and then settled to sway a foot above the sidewalk.

Nice to see that even Trevon could make a twelve-inch miscalculation.

Evan had already set the anchor in the platform, so he simply rolled off the side, leaving the rifle behind as he fell. Cinching the rope between his gloves and the insteps of his boots, he fast-roped down. The sandstone whirred by as he kissed thirty miles per hour, a firehouse-pole slide. The pavement flew up and caught him, a healthy jolt to the ankles and knees, and he flung the gloves from his hands with a single violent shake. They lay on the sidewalk, steaming with friction heat.

Roughly a half second had elapsed since he’d un-assed from the platform.

He took an instant for the pavement to stop spinning from the sudden exertion. The headache expanded, a pressure at the temples.

Finish it, he thought. Then you can rest all you want.

Despite the steel shanks, warmth rose through the soles of his Original S.W.A.T.s. His hands gleamed white from the latex gloves he’d worn beneath the aviators.

As part of his prep, he’d sliced and restitched his sand-tan combat shirt and cargo pants to make them tearaway, and he ripped them off now, a quick snap of his fists that left the fabric pooled on the ground. Beneath he wore a gray V-neck and jeans.

No passersby. No rubberneckers in the cars drifting past. The few people across the street remained distracted by the commotion over at the Three Monkeys Café.

Evan dug a Baggie out of the front pocket of his jeans. A wad of moist baby wipes waited inside. He freed a few and swiped at his face, brisk scrubs that cleared the cammy paint.

As he stepped off the curb, crossing the street to the restaurant, he looked like an ordinary pedestrian. His gait was unsteady, so he took great care to even it out.