Marcus sighed and said, “That’s very exciting but you’re going to have to excuse me. I’ve really got to get going. Have a nice time tonight.”
Outside the hospital, the media presence had melted away for the night. Marcus breezed in, not relishing another turn at a childish board game, but looking forward to seeing the girls. He never supposed he’d bond with a couple of young kids, but then again, there was a lot about his life he never anticipated.
When he got off the elevator at the Hematology ward and looked down the hall, he noticed something was off. The Carabinieri guard wasn’t stationed outside their room. If the policeman had to take a lavatory break or needed a coffee, the correct procedure would be to radio for a colleague to come up from the lobby. Maybe they were getting lax. He made a mental note to complain.
As he pushed the door open, he prepared himself for an onslaught of cuteness and cuddles, but that didn’t happen.
He processed things fast, a holdover from his Agency days.
The Carabinieri officer, laid out on the floor, zip-tied and gagged, bleeding from a head wound.
Two men, both in hospital scrubs, lab coats, and surgical masks, one blond with long hair, one brown-haired, each hunched over a girl, taping their mouths shut.
He didn’t have a plan. He was an unarmed fifty-four-year-old about to confront two much younger adversaries.
He heard himself shout, “Hey!”
The blond turned first, dropping his roll of tape. A flick knife appeared from the pocket of his jacket so quickly it seemed like magic.
“Out. Get out,” the blond man said with a Slavic accent. To Marcus, the most unnerving part of it was the quiet, professional tone.
The brown-haired guy turned too and emptied his hands.
Elizabeth gave out a muffled cry.
“Girls, stay where you are!” Marcus shouted.
“Okay, mister,” the blond man said. “Time to die.”
Marcus did what anyone would do. He screamed at the top of his lungs. “Help!”
For all the potential scrapes and dodgy situations he’d encountered in life, he’d only been in one fight where there was the actual threat of grievous bodily harm. It was when he was a college freshman and it involved defending the honor of a girl he didn’t even know when he drunkenly waded into a group of boozed-up idiots wielding beer bottles. He gave a spirited showing of himself, charging them with an aluminum trash can before getting the crap beat out of him and spending a day in the infirmary with a broken nose and a cracked rib. During his induction training at CIA, he was schooled in various self-defense techniques, but as an operations officer he had never used his fists, his feet, or a weapon, and besides, the training was half a lifetime ago.
Brown-haired man was closer and made contact first, a two-armed tackle around his waist, bringing him to the floor. The guy was strong and he was able to work his hands up from Marcus’s torso to his neck. At the first squeeze, Marcus felt the terror of air-hunger. He reacted by violently bringing his right knee into his attacker’s groin. The man’s grip loosened and Marcus was able to roll away, but just then, he felt an excruciating pain in his left shoulder, near the tip of his collarbone, where blond man managed to plant his flick knife.
It came as a surprise to him that he didn’t cry out. Instead, the sharp pain seemed to infuse him with a raging burst of strength. He found himself on his feet, his fists balled up, a moment before brown-haired man tackled him to the floor again. This time, he didn’t let the brute get anywhere near his neck or face. He pummeled him in the temples with alternating rights and lefts, while out of the corner of his eye, he saw blond man preparing another knife assault.
Both girls must have peeled off their mouth tape, because he heard them screaming and crying. He felt something hard against his leg, the policeman’s leather holster. He reached for it, found the snap, and when the Beretta Cougar was in his right hand, he got his thumb on the rear-mounted safety and clicked it down. While he was fumbling, brown-haired man was capitalizing on his wandering arm by getting hands around his neck again.
He didn’t know if there was a round in the chamber, but the blast was the answer to his prayer.
The slug entered brown-haired man’s side, tearing through his liver and intestines. Impossibly, he managed to crush his thumbs down even harder onto Marcus’s larynx, but before he could choke him out, Marcus fired three more times into the same spot.
The pressure dissipated and the man’s body went slack.
The room was hazy and fouled with gunpowder.
The girls were hysterical.
The door to the room opened and a nurse appeared, recoiling in terror.
Marcus raised the Beretta, but blond man, with a cat-like move, got one arm looped around the nurse’s neck and put his knife-hand to her throat, positioning her as a shield.
The nurse screamed and blond man calmly said, “Shh-shh,” and backed her out the door.
Marcus told the girls to stay in the room and followed
