One bullet.
CHAPTER 65
As Victor approached the doorways he saw the closest wasn’t an option. Junk packed the room beyond — broken chairs, boxes and other trash created an impassable blockage. Victor headed towards the second.
He walked down the hallway beyond, slowly, cautiously, one silent footstep after the next. The light was dim but abundant enough that he could see the details of the walls — old peeling paper, wires hanging where light fixtures had been removed, holes for hooks. The carpet had been stripped from the floor but some underlay was left over the floorboards. The roof above had yet to breach and the floor was dry.
There were two closed doors, the nearest to his left, the furthest to the right, before the hallway opened up to another area. Based on the width of the split-level, he imagined the closed doors would lead to small offices. Beyond the open space up ahead would be the other staircase. The cool air that flowed gently his way told him a large opening lay ahead, maybe a smashed-out window. He heard the relentless patter of rain hitting hard surfaces.
Victor ignored the doors. A Kidon assassin would not have trapped him- or herself in a small office with only one exit. He or she would be in the area at the end of the corridor or somewhere beyond.
Twelve more steps and he was almost in the open area. A rotting couch and a water cooler with no bottle revealed it as having once been a reception room or lounge. Rain soaked the floorboards beneath a huge hole in the ceiling. The couch had no cushions, bare springs visible and rusty.
A doorless entranceway on the opposite side of the lounge led to a kitchen. Victor could see the remnants of white-painted units and cabinets. He stepped quickly into the open area, first looking left, then right, sweeping with the Beretta as he did. No sign of an assassin and nowhere for one to hide. Shards of glass from broken bottles and crushed cans were scattered across the floor. Through an open door to Victor’s right, he saw a metal balcony and another staircase.
The door leading to the balcony was open fully, letting in a swathe of dim light from the night sky above. Pieces of glass jutted from the door around the square hole that had once been a window.
Victor stepped forward again so he could see further into the kitchen and get a better angle on the balcony, but there were still blind spots that would only be revealed if he moved closer to one, presenting his back to the other. He knew there had to be an assassin hiding in one of the locations, but which one?
The open staircase door could have been like that before — nothing to do with his enemies — or maybe it was open to lure Victor towards it, so he could be ambushed from behind. Or maybe an assassin was on the balcony, figuring that Victor would think it a trap and head to the kitchen. Beyond that was double and triple bluff, a never-ending stream of potential deception. Tactics didn’t come into it. Experience didn’t help. In the end it was a straight fifty-fifty.
He had to pick one, fast. He couldn’t hang around. The second Kidon assassin would be closing. The third one from outside could even have been called in, now Victor was trapped on the split-level.
He headed to the staircase door so that if he was wrong and the assassin attacked from the kitchen they would come out of hiding with the moonlight in their eyes. Victor approached side-on so that he could keep looking left towards the kitchen.
Eighteen inches from the balcony, he stopped. Any closer and he would give himself away an instant before he had a visual on his enemy. At the same time, Victor would reveal himself to anyone in the kitchen. And he couldn’t be looking in both directions at once.
He grabbed the balcony door and flung it shut, creating an obstacle and combined warning system if he was wrong. Before he’d let go of the door, he was spinning round, aiming at the kitchen doorway.
He wasn’t wrong.
The short woman with the plain face and boyish hair emerged from the darkness beyond, gun up, a two- handed grip, arms bent slightly at the elbow. She was already squinting, in preparation for looking into the light, expecting to see Victor’s back.
He fired first, at centre mass, not risking his last round on a head-shot on a fast-moving target in the dark.
The expended shell case clinked quietly on the floorboards.
The Israeli let out a dull cry, staggered backward, and fell into the kitchen. She wasn’t dead — he guessed due to a concealed Kevlar vest. A subsonic 9 mm would not have penetrated it, but the blunt-force trauma to the sternum had stunned her, paralysing her diaphragm and leaving her gasping for breath.
Victor hurried over to complete the kill and take her weapon and radio if she had one, but he heard a noise, to his left — from the hallway where he’d entered — spun around and hurled the empty Beretta at the open doorway.
The gun clipped the six-four Israeli on the forehead as he appeared out of the shadows. The forehead was the hardest part of the skull, but even empty the Beretta weighed almost two pounds.
The assassin reeled from the impact, arms flailing, giving Victor time to close the distance. Using his left hand, he grabbed the Israeli’s own Beretta while there was only one hand gripping it, hooked his thumb around the end of the index finger through the trigger guard, and squeezed the guy’s nail against the hard edge of metal, at the same time twisting the hand back on itself and against the joint.
The Israeli released his weapon. Victor caught it by the barrel in his right hand, tried to reposition his grip, but the assassin shouldered Victor first, knocking him into the wall, pinning him there with his size and strength, trapping Victor’s arms so he couldn’t attack. His enemy was only a couple of inches taller, but forty pounds of muscle heavier. The Israeli slammed a forearm down on Victor’s wrist, and he dropped the gun before it could be ripped from his hand. It clattered on the wet floorboards.
Victor’s weight was on his left leg so he lifted his right, wrapped it around his enemy’s own load-bearing leg and wrenched it off the floor.
The Israeli fell, landing on his back, Victor on top of him, rolling away, going for the gun, on his hands and knees, cutting himself on broken glass.
He grabbed the Beretta and spun around.
The assassin threw himself at Victor before he could take aim, knocking the gun aside and punching Victor clean in the face. The Israeli didn’t get his full power behind it, but the fist caught Victor on the jaw and sent a huge jolt of pain and disorientation through him. The gun was torn from his hand with ease.
Victor grabbed a handful of broken glass from the floor and smashed it into his enemy’s face as the muzzle twisted Victor’s way. The assassin grunted, knocked sideways, shards of glass buried in his cheek and forehead.
A hard kick to the wrist forced him to drop the Beretta and it skidded across the floorboards. Victor jumped to his feet and moved, circling his enemy, towards the gun. The Israeli stood just as fast, stepped laterally into Victor’s path, blocking him before he could get close to the weapon.
The assassin charged forward, arms out, ready to grapple — two hundred and twenty pounds of strength and skill. Victor timed the attack, waiting until the Israeli’s head inevitably dipped to grab him below his centre of gravity, and brought his knee up into his enemy’s face. It caught him under the jaw, but the Israeli’s momentum carried him forward regardless and he collided with Victor, slamming him backward into a wall. Plaster cracked. Victor elbowed the Israeli on the back of his head but the blow wasn’t hard enough to stop him grabbing Victor and spinning him around — off the wall — and hurling him.
He hit the floor, cracking wet floorboards, and rolled backward over his head and on to his feet. Blood, rain and sweat covered the Israeli’s face. Moonlight glimmered against the shards of glass buried in his cheek.
Victor took a series of deep breaths. Hand-to-hand combat was exhausting against a similarly sized enemy, let alone a bigger, stronger one. The female assassin writhed on the floor of the kitchen, still winded, but she wouldn’t be for much longer. Victor spotted the gun. It was too far to get to before his opponent was upon him. Victor read the assassin’s expression well enough. He wasn’t going to risk it either. But he didn’t need to.
The Israeli grabbed a shard of glass from a broken window of the staircase door, held it like a knife. It was slim and narrow, five inches long. He gripped it tightly, not caring that it was cutting into his palm and fingers.
