AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Kincaid understood the drones overhead; he’d had them in Guatemala and Mexico City, of course, but he had no idea how OC Gama was listening in to the state troopers’ radios.
Still, the setup was working for him, because just like every other time a gray Sierra pulled up and the driver presented an ID card, the trooper on duty soon enough waved the vehicle through.
Kincaid parked in an open space in front of a row house on the northern end of the street, then climbed out, pulling his phone from his jacket pocket as he did so. He turned it on and began looking at it as he locked the door of his truck with the key fob, and kept it in his face as he approached the steps up to the beautiful building.
In his right ear he heard the French woman’s voice from the operations center. “Front door is opening, one company officer present. No movement or voices inside at this time. Back alley remains clear.”
He did not acknowledge the transmission; he’d been getting updates from the OC since he left the apartment of the now-dead security officer in Watertown two hours earlier.
When he was still twenty feet from the door, a guard wearing an identical blue blazer leaned out. It was late at night and most everyone on the street who was not a security officer or a trooper was sleeping, so he whispered.
“Drew? That you? What the hell you doing here?”
Kincaid dropped his phone into the pocket of his blazer and looked up for the first time just as he stepped up onto the little sidewalk in front of the row house. The gas lamps on the street provided weak but sufficient illumination, and he knew he wouldn’t have much time to act.
The company security officer standing at the door cocked his head suddenly, indicating that he realized something wasn’t right. The assassin didn’t know if it was his proximity, his gait, or something else that gave him away, and he didn’t really care.
Because he was close enough.
Before the man could call out, Kincaid lunged forward; the hilt of a knife appeared in his right hand from under his cuff, and he pressed a button on the side of it as he thrust with his arm.
The blade of the six-inch Microtech Troodon jetted out from the hilt, then jammed between the man’s ribs, stabbing him through the heart.
Kincaid continued his momentum, lifted the man off the ground in the doorway, and drove him back inside.
In the entry hall Kincaid fell on top of the officer and then onto the wooden floor, used his foot to shut the door behind him, and used his left hand to cover the man’s mouth.
The assassin winced in pain as his now three-day-old gunshot graze burned on his right side, but he kept his weight on the security man and the knife in the man’s heart, and very soon the struggle ceased.
His controller spoke calmly. “Entry acknowledged. No signs of law enforcement response.”
He hadn’t been spotted by the cops at the ends of the little street, and this was good, but the crash here of two men onto the floor had echoed throughout the house, and the two security officers still alive somewhere in here with him would certainly come to investigate.
Lancer knew he had to cover as much ground as possible as fast as possible to silence anyone before they called the cops outside.
He rose from the dead body, retrieved the knife, and clicked it closed, blood covering his hand and slicking the weapon’s hilt. He dropped it into his jacket and drew his weapon, running for the stairs.
At the top of the narrow stairwell a man spun around the corner, gun in one hand and flashlight in the other, and he aimed at Lancer.
But the officer hesitated; his gun was pointed at a man wearing the blue blazer of his company, and he needed a moment to work out what was happening.
Kincaid, however, needed no time at all. He fired twice; the suppressed and subsonic 10-millimeter round pounded the air in the tight confines of the stairwell.
Both bullets hit the man in the upper chest, and he dropped his gun, fell to his face, and began tumbling down towards the assassin.
Kincaid realized his only chance to avoid getting knocked on his ass all the way down the stairs was to vault the body. He leapt into the air and jutted his arms and legs out, anchoring himself to the stairwell three feet above the steps, and the corpse tumbled below him on its way down to the entry hall, ending up just feet from where the other dead man lay.
Kincaid dropped back down to the steps, then continued up the stairs, careful to avoid slipping on the blood left behind.
He’d just made it up to the second floor when a man came charging out of a room on his right.
Kincaid spun and fired once, striking the last company security officer in the face above his right cheekbone, knocking him back into the restroom he’d been using when Lancer breached the home.
Lancer rushed for the upstairs master bedroom, where the operations center had told him he would find his target.
He kicked open the bedroom door and saw a man in his boxers and a T-shirt standing in the middle of the room, a baseball bat in his hand.
As soon as his target saw the blood-covered man in the security uniform he lowered it, but as Kincaid closed on him, his long pistol silencer protruding from the gun pointed at him, the target realized that this man wasn’t here to protect him.
