The Assassin's Prayer (8 page)

The
men’s bathroom was down a short corridor, past the vending machines and a large
map on the wall with a big YOU ARE HERE caption on it. As Kain approached the
bathroom door, a man came out, nearly colliding with him. Kain’s muscles tensed,
but the guy wasn’t Robbins, just some traveler finished taking a leak.

“Whoa!
Sorry about that,” the stranger said. “Guess I need to slow down.” He smiled
and nodded an apology.

Kain
gave a slight nod back. “No problem.”

When
the man was gone, Kain drew his silenced Colt .45 from beneath his duster and
went through the door in a rush. Robbins was a professional and Kain’s best
chance of success was to catch him off guard, not saunter in like he was out
for a Sunday stroll.

Robbins
was washing his hands at the sink. The merc’s head jerked up at Kain’s sudden
intrusion. Recognition instantly flared in his eyes and he went for his gun. He
was fast, but not fast enough. Before he could clear leather, Kain rammed the
Colt into his stomach. “Take your hand away from your gun,” he said.

Robbins
hesitated, just as Kain had expected him to. The merc was calculating the odds,
running the numbers in his mind. Kain would have done the same thing if the
situation was reversed. It would have taken him about two seconds to realize
any play was suicide. It took Robbins three. The mercenary let his hand drop to
his side.

“Good
boy,” Kain said. “Now let’s go into one of the stalls and have a little chat. Keep
your hands where I can see them.” He backed Robbins into the nearest stall, maintaining
constant pressure with the .45. If given even the thinnest sliver of a chance,
Robbins would make a play that could turn things into a clusterfuck.

“So
what’s the plan?” Robbins asked once they were in the stall and Kain had
secured the door. “Blow my brains out and flush them down the crapper?”

“The
only thing I want in the crapper is your gun. Take it out—slowly—and toss it
in.”

Robbins
didn’t even hesitate this time. He took out his gun, an expensive Kimber
Stainless Pro Raptor, and dropped it in the toilet. Water splashed as the gun
sank to the bottom of the porcelain bowl. Robbins’ eyes were hot coals of hate.
“Do you have any idea how much that gun costs?”

“Pretty
sure you can afford another one with what Perelli is paying you.”

“Don’t
play me for a fool. You have no intention of letting me walk out of here
alive.”

“Why
don’t you just have a seat and we’ll see how it goes.”

“You’ve
got the gun, so right now you’re the boss.” Robbins reached behind him to lower
the seat.

“Leave
it up.” Forcing Robbins to sit on the toilet without the benefit of the seat
would keep the mercenary’s center of gravity lower, making it more difficult
for Robbins to launch himself into some kind of half-assed heroic play.

Robbins
obeyed, but Kain caught the foxlike cunning in the man’s eyes. Robbins might be
a cool-cat mercenary, but he would never cut it at the poker table. His eyes
gave up too much information. Robbins’ intent to try some sort of counterattack
was as obvious as a neon sign glowing in the dead of night. Kain knew he could
not afford to let his guard down.

Neither
could he afford to spend much time on this interrogation. This was a fairly
remote stretch of I-87, but it was still a public rest area and it would only
be a short time before somebody came in to use the facilities. Kain had to rip
the answers out of Robbins fast.

“Listen,”
he said to the mercenary. “I’m in a bit of a rush, so I’m going to skip the
foreplay and get right down to the dirty stuff. I want you to tell me where you
took Frank Giadello’s guns.”

“What
you want really doesn’t mean jack to me, because you’ve forgotten one very
important piece of information.”

“And
what would that be?”

Robbins
smiled nastily. “I’m not alone.” His eyes shifted to the stall door.

Kain
reacted instantly. He dropped to the floor a fraction of a second before autofire
knocked on the door. The bullets blew through and punched into the wall just
above Robbins’ head. Dust and debris exploded into the air.

Kain
hit the ground and rolled onto his back with the kind of snake-strike speed
that comes from a whole lot of years spent in the killing game. He saw a pair
of rubber-soled boots under the stall door and wasted no time putting a bullet
into the gunman’s ankle. The guy yelled in pain and toppled to the floor,
landing with a hard thud on his left shoulder.

Kain
took one nanosecond to register the man’s face. It was the stranger who had
almost bumped into him outside the bathroom. Another nanosecond and Kain knew he
was engaged in a firefight with the mystery sniper, who still clutched the
Micro-Uzi he had used to spray the stall door. One more nanosecond and Kain realized
this rest area had been a prearranged rendezvous point.

And
then there were no more nanoseconds to spare. The sniper was lifting the
Micro-Uzi back into play. Robbins was lurching off the toilet. Kain was pinned down
flat on his back with a threat in front and a threat behind.

Robbins
might get his gun out of the toilet in another second or two, but the sniper
had his gun out right now. That made the sniper the primary threat.

Kain
canceled that threat by hammering a .45 slug right between the sniper’s eyes
and out the back of his skull. The mini-Uzi tumbled from lifeless fingers as chunks
of bone and brains splattered the far wall.

One
down, one to go.

Kain
immediately turned his attention to Robbins. The mercenary had his Kimber out,
dripping with water, and nearly had it leveled at Kain’s head.

No
time to use his gun. Kain kicked Robbins in the left kneecap. The merc’s body
jerked and buckled from the crippling blow. Robbins managed to pull the
trigger, but he was off balance. The bullet banged off the tile a couple inches
from Kain’s face.

Kain
tried to get his own gun into play, but the narrow confines of the stall were
making it tough to maneuver. As he thrust the Colt toward Robbins, the merc
chopped down with the Kimber, pistol-whipping the .45 right out of Kain’s hand.
It bounced off the rim of the toilet and skidded under the divider into the
next stall.

Kain
didn’t waste time going after it. He was prostrate and gun-less and facing an
enemy who was upright and armed. His only chance to survive the next few
seconds was to bring Robbins down to his level.

So
he reached up, grabbed a handful of Robbins’ balls, yanked down, and twisted
viciously.  Robbins snarled in pain and involuntarily hunched lower in an auto-response
attempt to ease the pain and avoid having his nuts torn off. As he did so, Kain
delivered a hard jackrabbit kick against the inside of the mercenary’s injured
left knee. Between the ball-yank and the knee-kick, Robbins dropped to the
floor.

As
Robbins crumpled, Kain used his free hand to chop the merc’s wrist, numbing
nerves and sending the Kimber tumbling. His other hand continued to crush
Robbins’ gonads.

The
merc managed to extricate himself from Kain’s clutches, but Kain was pretty
sure it cost him at least one torn testicle. Both men scrambled to their knees
and proceeded to trade punches, the blows short and sharp due to the
close-quarter confines of the stall. Kain knew this would not be a long, drawn
out battle. This was going to be a quick, nasty, down-and-dirty slugfest that
would be over in less than a minute with one of them shaking hands with the
devil at the gates of Hell.

Kain
took a rabbit punch to the kidney. Paid back the pain with a blow to Robbins’
solar plexus. Ducked the right elbow strike the merc whipped at his temple, then
got caught by a left cross that clipped his chin. The blow didn’t really daze
him, but he feigned injury and prayed to the gods of war that the mercenary
took the bait.

Robbins
swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.

Believing
Kain to be vulnerable, the merc tried to seize the moment by spearing a set of stiff
fingers at Kain’s seemingly exposed throat. Had they struck, they would have
snap-crackle-crunched Kain’s Adam’s apple and left him choking on cartilage
splinters. But Kain dodged the throat-jab, causing Robbins to miss his intended
target. This left Robbins slightly off balance, his arm overextended. Kain
grabbed the merc’s wrist with one hand, keeping the arm extended, and delivered
a sharp, powerful blow with the heel of his other hand to Robbins’ elbow. The merc’s
arm broke like a piece of balsa wood in the jaws of a Rottweiler, bone shards
bulging in grotesque knots just beneath the surface of the skin.

Still
on his knees, Kain spun around behind Robbins, grabbed him by the back of the
neck, and slammed his head down against the front edge of the toilet bowl. A
large chunk of the bowl shattered and broke away, leaving behind a grin-shaped
gap full of jagged porcelain teeth. The water sluiced out, soaking both men.

The
blow to the head would have knocked out the average man, but Robbins wasn’t
average. While clearly dazed from having his skull used as a battering ram, he
still managed to dig out a combat knife from wherever it had been hidden. With
Kain still grasping the back of his neck, Robbins couldn’t turn his head to
line up a target, so he just jabbed backward blindly.

Kain
dodged to the side without relinquishing his grip, narrowly avoiding being
stabbed. He then drove Robbins’ head back down into the broken toilet. The jagged
porcelain stumps smashed into the merc’s face and acted like saw blades,
shearing through gums and palate and cutting open the corners of the mouth so
that Robbins’ upper jaw and lower jaw were on opposite sides of the broken rim.
The classic curb-stomp position.

Kain
climbed to his feet and stood over Robbins. In the movies, this was the
climactic moment when the hero would spout off a witty one-liner before
dispatching the villain. But this was not the movies and Kain knew he was no
hero. So instead of wasting time coming up with a smartass comment, he just
raised his boot and stomped down as hard as he could on the back of Robbins’
neck. The sharp porcelain stalagmites finished ripping through flesh and bone
so that the merc’s body slumped to the floor, his lower jaw still attached. The
upper jaw and the rest of his head tumbled into the empty toilet, splattering
it with blood.

Kain
stood there for a moment, staring down at the gruesome sight as the combat
adrenaline cooled in his veins, then reached down and retrieved his Colt before
exiting the stall. He had to step over the corpse of the sniper, the punctured
head haloed in crimson. He left the bodies—as well as the Kimber and the miniature
Uzi—where they lay. This being a public spot, there was no chance for clean-up
and sanitization. The next traveler who stopped to use the facilities was in
for a shock. Public restrooms are notoriously filthy places, but nobody expects
to find half a severed head staring up at them from the bottom of the bowl.

Outside
in the parking lot, Kain paused, letting his brain pick, poke, and prod at the
problem he now faced. He had survived his rumble with Robbins, but killing the
merc had also killed his chance to find out where Frank’s hijacked guns were
holed up. There was no question he could have forced Robbins to spill his
secrets. Crank a couple bullets into the kneecaps, maybe blast one into the
balls, and the mercenary would have been begging for mercy. But that was no
longer an option.

Kain
walked across the parking lot to Robbins’ Blazer and peered inside. Stuck to
the windshield by a suction cup mount was a GPS. Could he be that lucky?

He
tried the door, but it was locked. The keys were no doubt on Robbins’ corpse,
but Kain didn’t have time to retrieve them. Instead, he smashed open the
driver’s side window with the butt of his gun. Messier than a key, but just as
effective. He reached in and plucked the GPS from its holder.

He
didn’t waste time studying it right there, but instead hopped into the Jeep
Cherokee and high-tailed it back toward the city. He stopped at the next rest
area and used the GPS’s touchscreen to access the information he was looking
for. Before his violent demise in the dirty stall of a remote public bathroom, one
of the best operatives in the guns-for-hire market had programmed in his
destination, an address in the downtown slums of Albany.

Kain
was betting that’s where the guns were.

******

It
was mid-afternoon by the time Kain got back to the Giadello estate. The return
trip had seemed longer than it actually was because he could not stop thinking
about how wretched Robbins had looked lying on the floor, head sheared in half,
blood splattered everywhere. It was a tough way to check out and Kain found
himself strangely shaken by the whole brutal business. It just cut so close to
home.

Robbins
had been just like him, a professional, a modern day gunslinger, and Kain
couldn’t shake the chilling sensation that he had looked into the mirror of his
own fate. It was as if the giant hand of the god of war had reached down, grabbed
him by the back of the neck, and rubbed his weary face in his own sickening
future.
See that? That’s how your life is going to end. Someday you’ll be on
the wrong end of a gun and it will all be over.