Ultimate Weapon (44 page)

Georg reeled back and began a strange dance, screaming and pawing at his mouth. He slapped Tamar, once, twice.

“What is it? What is it? Where’s the antidote?” he bellowed. “What is the antidote, you fucking bitch?”

Antidote? Poison. Oh, God, no. Tamar.
No.

The shocked gaze of the man holding the gun on him skittered over to the spectacle. Val felt the relentless pressure of the gun barrel against his head waver for an instant—

Val flung himself backward against Henry, ignoring the flare of pain, forcing the man to shift his bulk, brace himself—

Now!

Val ran up the wall in three big steps, and flipped his body over Henry’s head. Henry shouted, and tumbled backward. They crashed to the ground together. The impact knocked Henry’s grip loose.

He grappled for Val, flipping him over with a roar of rage, and pinned Val beneath his huge, muscular bulk. Val heaved, struggled…and pushed with his thumb against the stone on the ring he wore, Tamar’s ring, that released the spike. Short, but razor sharp and wickedly pointed.

Henry’s grip slipped on Val’s bloody wrist. Val wrenched it loose with a shout—and stabbed the small spike into Henry’s carotid artery.

Gouts of hot blood splattered him, rhythmically. Henry choked, convulsed, stared down into his face, a look of betrayal in his eyes.

Val crawled out from under him, grabbed Henry’s gun, and clambered to his feet, blood-drenched and swaying.

He pointed it at the man whose job it had been to hold the gun to his head and asked a silent question with his eyes.

The gunman shook his head in reply. His wide eyes darted, from Georg’s corpse to Henry’s, to Tamar, and back to the gun in Val’s hand. The place was silent, but for Val’s breath sawing in and out of his mouth, and the moaning whisper of the wind. Heavy brocade drapes billowed and swirled. Candle flames leaped and flared.

He lifted his hands, pointing his gun in the air, and began to back warily toward the door, boots crunching and sliding on the broken glass. He stumbled over his colleague’s dead, bloody body. Caught himself, without even looking down.

“I’m gone,” the gunman said. “I’m out of here. I was never even here at all.”

Val nodded, and waited until the other man had slunk out the door. His running footsteps retreated. The silence was absolute.

Val turned to Tamar. She sagged in her ropes, eyes closed, face deathly pale. Blood streamed from her nose. More trickled from the corners of her mouth. Georg lay still, though his feet still twitched. Bloody froth foamed from his mouth. His face was blue, tongue protruding.

She’d pulled some poison trick. A kamikaze move. Ah, God.

All the times in his life that he had numbed himself to endure some atrocious thing had not prepared him for this. He was a helpless child again. Staring at the end of the world, lying on the bathroom floor.

Then, to his astonishment, her eyes fluttered open. They focused somewhere beyond him, and widened. She sucked in a bubbling breath.

“Watch out!” she cried.

He jerked to the side, and the bullet grazed his hip, plowing a deep furrow to join his other wounds. Novak grinned from his pool of blood on the floor, thin neck straining, and lifted his Walther PPK to try again.

Val emptied Henry’s Taurus into the old man and kept pulling the trigger compulsively even after the gun was empty.

He glanced wildly around the room. “Anyone else? Anyone?”

No one moved. No one spoke.

Val stumbled over to the dead man, the young one, who lay on his back with Val’s knife sticking out of his throat. He yanked it out and lunged toward Tamar.

He put his arm around her slender body as he reached up to saw at the rope. Just a few passes of the blade severed it, and her slight weight dropped into his arms. She was covered with tiny rivulets of blood. Small wounds, from the shards of flying glass.

He gathered her up, looking around for a place to lay her down that was not strewn with glass. There was none.

He dropped to his knees and cradled her.

Her eyes opened. Her gaze was still sharp. “Don’t…k-kiss me,” she croaked in a halting whisper. “I’m poisonous.”

Despair slammed through him. “Oh, fuck,” he said, his voice high and shaking. “You are killing me, Tamar.”

Her lips twitched. “Melodramatic,” she whispered. “Idiot.”

Their eyes met, full of pain and longing. She hitched in a shallow breath and said her daughter’s name with a whispering sigh. “Rachel,” she said. “András has her.”

Her eyes commanded him back into action.

“Yes,” he said thickly, smoothing back her sweat-stiffened hair. “I understand.” He pressed a kiss to her damp, icy forehead. “There’s glass everywhere,” he said, helpless. “I don’t know where to put you.”

“Fuck the glass,” she croaked. “Get…Rachel. Move your ass.”

He cleared a spot on the rug as best he could with his boot and laid her down gently. Then he forced his shaking legs to bear him over to the bloody carnage on the ground to scrounge for loaded weapons.

Rachel.
The last thing that he could do for her.

C
onnor stared out the windshield. His eyes burned like coals.

The atmosphere in the taxi had the tension of a bomb countdown.

There was nothing to say. It had already been said, repeated, hashed out, torn apart, attacked, picked to pieces. They were so on edge that anything anyone said annoyed the shit out of all the others, so they had collectively subsided into a gloomy, self-protective silence.

Connor sat in the front, clutching the monitor with the satellite map. Their driver sensed the weirdness, despite the language barrier, and kept casting nervous looks at him and the others, in the rearview mirror. Seth, Sean and Davy were crowded into the backseat, everyone red-eyed, grim, and tense from the strain of suppressing the thoughts of what might already have happened to Rachel, considering her ten-hour head start.

All they could do now was throw themselves at the location of the beacon in Rachel’s red coat and see what happened. Connor had called the FBI liaison in Budapest when they got to Hungary, and told him what was going on, just so that someone would be sure to follow up should the worst happen. They had been strictly forbidden to go anywhere near Novak.

What the fuck. To a man, not one of them had ever learned to do what they were told. And they were the only ones whose prime agenda was Rachel’s safety. They needed to be the first ones on the scene.

They were almost there, bumping over a narrow, ancient stone bridge over a narrow river and then down a long avenue next to a tall stone wall. All of them noted the cameras mounted at regular intervals along the top of it. The cab driver came to a stop at a big wrought iron gate. It was yawning wide open. Weird.

“We are arrive,” the driver ventured timidly.

As they watched, two men came sprinting out of the gate. They didn’t even look at the car, just ran, hell for leather, toward the bridge.

OK. Weirder.

The meter read 155 euros. Connor handed the guy two hundred-euro bills. They piled out and the cab peeled away, tires squealing. Connor didn’t blame him. It was very clearly a bad scene.

Then another guy came pounding out the gate. Davy grabbed him, slamming one of his thick forearms across the guy’s throat.

“What’s happening in there?” he demanded.

The guy gibbered in Hungarian. Davy gave him a shake and tried the same question in French, then in German. The guy just struggled and squawked, voice high. Finally, Davy flung him away in disgust.

“Get out of here,” he muttered.

The man stumbled, flailing, caught himself and ran.

“Rats leaving the ship,” Sean said. “Got a fix on Rachel?”

Connor peered at the handheld. “Got her. Let’s just go for it. They’re not manning the cameras now. The shit’s hit the fan. It’s every man for himself.”

They took off running, swift and silent, down the long, curving avenue of trees. No one challenged them; no one shot at them. A huge, decaying eighteenth-century palace came into view.

They veered around it to follow the signal, and found a long, low building that must once have been a stable. Getting closer. Forty meters. Thirty. The icon blipped on the screen, tantalizing them.

They burst into the building, peering around, guns at the ready.

No one was there, just a long row of covered parking slots. Fifteen meters, ten, eight. Dead silence.

The beacon was inside one of the cars. Connor’s heart pounded with dread. Five meters, four, three…there it was. A Mercedes coupe.

No one was inside it. They flashed their penlights in every direction. No one. The doors were locked.

They crowded around to the back of the vehicle, and stared at the trunk. The beacon was there. Connor tried it. Of course, it was locked.

He swallowed hard and pounded on it. “Rachel? Honey?”

No one answered. Seth elbowed through them, carrying a big, rusty garden implement, like heavy hedge clippers. “Everybody get the fuck out of the way.”

They all moved back, and Seth went berserk, smashing and pounding and cursing, until the back of the car was unrecognizable.

He finally jolted the lock loose. They wrenched the trunk open.

A puffy red child’s ski jacket lay there. No Rachel. Connor smelled urine. He put his hand on the carpeting under the coat, felt around.

Yes, there it was. Dampness. Pee.

“Baby piss,” he said. “They put her in the trunk. They put a three-year-old into the fucking trunk of a fucking car.”

There were about three seconds of appalled silence. Sean broke it. “Let’s move,” he said harshly. “Let’s go hunt. I need to kill something. Now.”

“Right on,” Seth growled.

A ragged burst of gunfire came from the direction of the mansion.

They took off running again.

He would recognize Rachel’s screaming anywhere. It would cut throught any kind of noise, a gun fight, an air raid, even the roaring and ringing of his ears. Val followed the sound, lurching forward in an unsteady, limping run fueled by unmixed adrenaline. He left a trail of blood behind him, but he didn’t care. If his blood supply lasted long enough to kill András, that was all he asked of it.

He lost the sound and stopped, straining to hear her again. The wounds throbbed and burned, all of them, the old ones and the new. There was a burning hole in his chest. Every panting breath hurt. Broken ribs, from the bullets that had punched into the Kevlar.

He rounded a corner. The shrill, faraway wail crescendoed. He launched himself forward again. Blood ran from the gouge in his hip, down his leg, into his boot. His foot squelched with every step.

The layout of the place was coming back. The sound seemed to come from above him, though it could be an aural illusion. He ran toward the grand staircase and took the steps three at a time, driven by terror. He would hang on as long as he could for Tamar’s sake, but he knew what his body could and could not do, wounded as he was. He knew that feeling: the faintness, the cold, the nasty tingle.

He had only minutes before his body failed him.

He stopped at the top to listen, guts sinking at the silence. There it was, a squeak, quickly cut off—to the left. He stumbled down the corridor toward the sound, abandoning all effort at stealth.

András rounded the corner, clutching a writhing, squirming Rachel under one arm, brandishing his gun with the other hand.

He stopped cold when he saw Val, jerking Rachel up so that she shielded his chest, neck and head.

Val dove for the nearest doorway as András opened fire on him, tearing the rotten door loose from its antique, rusty hinges. He pitched forward into the stifling darkness. Bullets crashed into walls, the floor, sending splinters and shards of wood, tile, and stucco flying.

At the first moment of silence, Val called out over the ringing in his ears. “It’s over, András. They’re dead. Put her down.”

“Who’s dead?” András demanded.

“Everyone,” Val said. “Dead, or else running. Didn’t you hear the guns?”

András paused. He had heard them, and not known what to make of them. “I’ll judge when it’s over, dickhead,” András growled, but there was uncertainty in his voice.

Rachel let loose with another piercing ultrahigh shriek that rattled all the molecules in his body. Val heard a slap, muffled cursing. “Shut up, you squeaking brat, or I’ll—”

His words were obscured by another shriek, more ear-shattering than the last. Val lunged for the door, peered around the frame.

Zing
, a bullet flicked past his ear, ruffling his hair. He jerked back, having ascertained that Rachel’s squirming body still shielded all the good target points.
Merde.
Trapped, like a fucking rat in a cage. He couldn’t return fire, couldn’t give chase. He was useless.

“I’ve got the gun to her head,” said András, his voice taunting. “Throw your guns out into the corridor, and step out of the room with your hands before you. We’re going to talk to the boss.”

“He’s dead,” Val said wearily.

“Of course he is,” András crooned. “And this screaming little darling will be, too. It can’t be too soon for me.”

“It’s all over. Novak is dead. They’re all dead,” Val repeated.

“Really? If the boss is dead, what reason is there for me not to kill her right now? Or better yet, I could shoot something off her, a hand, a foot. It would be a pleasure, after the trouble she’s given me. At this range, I could probably blow her leg right off at the knee. Shall we see? Should I try it?”

“No,” Val said swiftly. “Don’t.”

“No? You don’t like that idea? Then throw out your guns, fuckhead. Now.”

The gun stocks were sticky with his drying blood. Val peeled them loose from his hand, the Beretta and the SIG he’d gleaned from the dead PSS agents.

“Did you hear what I said, you cocksucking man whore?” András’s voice sharpened with tension. “On the count of five, she loses a foot. One. Two. Three—”

Val let the guns drop. They clattered onto the tiles.

“Kick them out into the corridor,” András directed, pitching his voice over Rachel’s shrieks. “Then put out your hands.”

Val kicked the guns. They slid over the tiles with a clatter.

His hands were dripping blood. He held them out the door, fingers splayed wide, turning them to show that they were empty.

“Step out, and put them on top of your head.”

Val walked slowly out into the corridor, lifted his arms, placed his hands on his head.

András’s arm was clasped around Rachel’s waist, in a cruelly tight grip. Rachel kept struggling, undaunted.

Val wanted to applaud. The child did her mother proud. He stared at András, balancing like a tightrope walker suspended over a boiling lava pit. Blood trickled down his arm, slow and hot and ticklish.

Checkmate.
Three steps back. Detached. Floating. Wait for it.

Rachel flailed, flopped, shrieked. András had to struggle to hold her. “Get down on your knees,” he growled. “Stay still, you little shit, or I’ll peel you like a grape.”

Val sank slowly to his knees. Waiting, watching for his opening. Widening out his senses, softening.
Wait for it. Wait.

András adjusted his grip, lifting her higher. Rachel flung herself forward against his face, almost as if she were kissing him. Suddenly András yanked her away from his face and flung her to the ground. A red bite wound flamed on his cheek. Broken skin. Blood

Now!

Val let the Walther PPK slide from the sleeve of his jacket and into his hand as Rachel skittered on hands and knees, and darted into the door he had broken through. András shot after her, bullets pumping out, screaming something unintelligible, his hand to his distorted, bleeding face.

Val opened fire with the Walther.
Bam, bam, bam.
Head, throat, chest.

András toppled across the threshhold, a look of stupid surprise on his face. There was a hole in the center of his forehead.

The sudden silence was disorienting. Val’s cool detachment evaporated the instant there was no desperate use for it. He began shaking convulsively. He almost fell. Caught himself.

He lurched to his feet, limped over to András. Kneeled by him to make sure he was dead. He prodded the man with his gun. The condition of András’s skull convinced him. There was very little left inside it. Good.

He blundered into the room, bumping painfully into various obstacles and trying to intuit where a light source might be. The darkness was so dense. The room appeared to be crowded with bulky furniture covered with canvas dropcloths.

There might be no light source at all. Back in his time, entire wings of the old palace had been left to fall into decay just as they had been in the eighteenth century. No wiring, no modern plumbing.

“Rachel?” He got down to his knees with a grunt of pain, putting himself in the glow of twilight from the door so that she could see him, wherever she was. If she was alive. If András had not shot her.

“Rachel?” He tried to pitch his voice normally, but it rasped and quavered, barely recognizable. “It’s Val, remember? Your Mamma’s friend? It’s all right now. Come out to me.”

She did, to his astonishment. He heard a rustle, a squeak, and a tiny body scrabbled across the floor toward him. Rachel ran into him full on, knocking him onto his ass, and wound her arms around his neck. He grabbed her, held her, chest shaking uncontrollably. She was alive.

Ah, no. Not yet. Please. He could not fall apart. Not yet.

He picked her up, swaying dangerously. He didn’t have much time left. He had to find someone to care for her, to make the phone calls, the arrangements. He could not slide down into oblivion and leave Rachel alone in this slaughterhouse just because all his blood had drained out of his body.

That was no fucking excuse. He had promised Tamar.

He lurched out into the corridor, gasping for air.

“Mamma?” Rachel asked, her voice breathless.

His chest tightened around his heart like a fist. “I’m sorry. I don’t know about Mamma, baby,” he whispered. “We’ll see about Mamma.”

Rachel squeezed her eyes shut, digging her fingers into the blood-soaked fabric of his coat. “Mamma. Mamma. Mamma. Mamma,” she repeated. Like a mantra. Blocking out the world with the magic word.

He envied her the trick.

He scooped up the guns and staggered back toward the Saints Salon, following his own trail of blood. He was not sure what the fuck to do now. He couldn’t show Rachel her mamma naked and covered in blood, not if the unspeakable had happened. Yet Tamar’s vibe dragged at him like a steel cable attached to his insides. Someone was reeling it mercilessly in.

He had a bad moment when he turned the corner outside the Saints Salon and saw the two men, but as soon as he focused his eyes, the shock of blond hair struck an instant chord of recognition.

Connor McCloud, Seth Mackey. Val was so relieved, he might even have wept. He didn’t care.

Connor hurried toward them, his face gray with strain. “Oh, thank God, thank God,” he muttered. “Rachel? Honey? You OK? Holy Jesus, Janos, what’s all this blood? Is she—”

“Not hers,” he said, exhausted. “She’s all right.”