plan now.” He gave her another look and smiled. “Can I interest you in a cocktail on the water?”
After a little back and forth, she was able to extract herself graciously, begging off due to a headache — Roberto refused to accept any payment but insisted she take his cell number. If she hadn’t been running for her life, she might have even been interested in having a beer or two with him, but tonight wasn’t meant to be. She had to figure out how she was going to get off the island while she still could. It was only a matter of time before the police locked it down.
Maya paused a hundred yards from her apartment building, wary of surveillance. Further down the block, a dog barked — a pit bull that she knew from experience was mostly attitude. But the tone of the barking, strident and agitated, gave her pause — there was an unusual urgency to it.
The few cars in the neighborhood were dilapidated, beaten by time, their exteriors corroded by the salt air and decades of neglect. She didn’t see any unfamiliar vehicles, so if her pursuers knew where she lived, they weren’t mounting a watch from the road.
A few porch lamps provided scant illumination, the street lights long ago having burned out, the city’s promises of replacement as hollow as most of the other assurances of change. She moved cautiously in the shadows, senses on alert. There was still at least the one man from the bar out there somewhere, and quite possibly more, although the number sent to terminate one target would likely be low, and her adversaries might continue to underestimate her.
Circling the block, she didn’t see anything suspicious. Maya always paid for the apartment in cash every month, no lease, so there was no way to track her to it short of following her, which she almost surely would have detected. Even if she was a little rusty, she still had the sixth sense for being watched that she’d honed. Many of the better field operatives developed it over time, and she had been the best.
On second approach, she came in from the back of the complex, having climbed over a wall separating the garbage area from the neighbor. Her second floor apartment was dark, and there was no sign that anyone had been there. No watchers in the trees, no suspicious loitering figures.
A black and white cat tore across her path with a hiss. Startled, she whipped out the pistol before registering what it was. Seeing its furry form scurry away, she took several deep breaths to slow the pulse pounding in her ears back to normal.
Maybe she was more than a little rusty.
In the old days, none of this would have raised her heart rate above eighty.
As she took another few silent steps, she caught movement on the periphery of her vision. The glint of something by the parking area. Maybe a watch. She peered into the gloom, eyes searching, but she didn’t see anything more.
It didn’t matter.
It was enough.
Someone was there.
The gunfire came with no warning. She rolled behind a low cinderblock wall, listening to the rapid-fire cracking of the silenced pistol some forty yards away.
The slugs slammed harmlessly against the concrete. The dark had helped her. Just enough. She’d caught a break at last. Now the question was whether to fight or run.
Her instinct was to fight, but she had no information about her attackers, which placed her at a distinct disadvantage.
She emptied seven shots at what she guessed was the shooter’s position and sprinted for the back of the building, weaving as she ran. It was dark enough and with sufficient cover, so she wasn’t worried. The gunman had probably been waiting for her to go into the apartment, having planned to take her there — if he hadn’t wired it with explosives already. Or there was someone inside waiting patiently for her to make the last mistake of her life.
Moments later, Maya was over the wall and zigzagging across the property. She didn’t hear any more shots, so her pursuer was probably wasting a few precious seconds debating what to do — seconds that would be the difference between escape and death.
She ran efficiently, effortlessly, with an economy that spoke to endurance. If necessary, she could keep up a good pace for an hour. Every morning she did so, part of her routine.
A bullet grazed her shoulder, burning as it seared a groove across her deltoid muscle — she abruptly cut between two small houses. As Maya regained her breath, she heard the rev of a car motor and the squeal of poorly maintained brakes, followed by the distinctive sound of two doors slamming. Another car revved, and tires squealed.
She vaulted over a fence, barely slowing for it, and cut back, returning the way she’d come, but three houses down from where she’d heard the car. That would be the last thing they’d expect — her doubling back.
Three slugs struck the wall behind her.
She saw the flash from a car sixty yards away — a black sedan, all of its windows down. Ducking, she emptied the silenced pistol at it as she scrambled for cover. A round whistled by her head, so she threw herself behind a brick garbage enclosure.
She slipped off the backpack, unzipped it, then gripped the handle of the MP7 and pulled it free. Another round thumped into the brick as she methodically screwed the sound suppressor into place, and then she slipped the extra magazines into her back pockets before dropping the pistol into the backpack and pulling it back on.
Maya rolled from the cover of the structure, took aim, then fired a slew of two-round bursts into the sedan. The submachine gun’s armor-piercing bullets sliced through the doors like they were warm butter; the horn sounded as the driver’s head smashed forward against the steering wheel. The shooting from the car stopped.
A dark Ford Explorer screeched around the corner and raced directly at her. She could see a figure leaning out of the passenger side window with a pistol, and she didn’t hesitate to use the MP7’s superior range. She flipped the weapon to full auto and emptied the gun into the SUV. Without taking her eyes off the Explorer as it bore down on her, she ejected the spent magazine and slammed another one home, then continued firing burst after burst at close range. The gunman fell back into the cab with a grunt, and his pistol clattered to the ground.
The vehicle slowed, then veered away from her before bouncing onto the sidewalk and crashing into a parked Mitsubishi. Maya emptied the rest of the second clip at it and slapped the third one into place.
A light went on in the house behind it.
The bullet-riddled SUV showed no signs of life.
She listened intently for any more vehicles but couldn’t discern much over the din of the dead sedan’s horn, which was still blaring.
A light went on in another nearby home. Glancing around, Maya spun and ran as fast as her legs would carry her, reversing her direction to take her farther from her apartment.
At the end of the block, she stopped and unscrewed the suppressor, then stowed the weapon back in the bag. No point in terrifying everyone she came across.
She kept moving until, two blocks away from the gun battle, she saw a solitary headlight bouncing towards her. A motor scooter whined its way down the little street, moving along at no more than twenty miles per hour. Maya stopped and waved until it slowed and then rolled to a stop. A young man looked her up and down in the faint lighting.
Maya threw him a luminescent smile. “Hey. Are you going to the party by the water? My ankle is hurting…”
He returned the smile. “Sure. Hop on. I’m Kyle.”
“Nice to meet you, Kyle. Veronique.”
She put her arms around him, and they sped off. Her pursuers, and the police, if they were now part of her problems, would be looking for a single woman, not a couple on a motorbike.
Maya removed her left arm from his waist and felt the bullet graze on her shoulder. Her hand came away with blood on it, but she could tell it was only a flesh wound. Still, she had the problem of how to conceal it — she’d hoped by now it would have stopped bleeding.
A block from the beach Kyle eased to a stop to avoid a swarm of drunken pedestrians, and she abruptly hopped off the back.
“Thanks, Kyle. See you around,” she said, vanishing into the crowd as he tried to process what had just
