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bsp; It rang a few times before Nassar came on. Wilson was halfway through a babbling plea for backup when the phone beeped and a woman’s voice asked him to leave a message.
CHAPTER 49
RAPP continued to work his right knee, swinging his leg out over the courtyard as the battle raged on inside the church. He heard a scream behind him and glanced back in time to see one of Wilson’s men stagger into the plastic covering a hole in the roof. He slid down it, leaving a streak that glowed crimson in the dawn light.
“Mitch,” Kent Black said over his earpiece. “Are you just going to sit there all day? Can I have some coffee delivered?”
“Napoleon said, ‘When your enemy is doing something stupid, don’t interfere.’ ”
“I think the attribution is apocryphal,” Azarov commented.
“The point’s valid, though.”
“Agreed.”
The frequency of gunfire had leveled out and was now declining, indicating that the running battle inside had turned into a skirmish between forces with cover. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t turn into a war of attrition. Abdo probably already had reinforcements on the way.
Nassar wasn’t there, so Rapp had resigned himself to the fact that his carefully laid trap was a bust. In light of that, did he care what happened in that church? It wasn’t his nature to walk away from fights, but what was there to gain from going in there? He could kill Wilson and a few of Nassar’s men, but it seemed that Abdo had that well in hand. The only thing he could accomplish was to be seen or, worse, have someone snap a cell phone picture of him.
He missed the involvement of Irene Kennedy even more than he’d thought he would. The role of strategist was unsatisfying as hell.
“Kent, is there a way I can get off of here from the outside?”
“Not unless you’re Spider-Man. The walls are dead smooth and I wouldn’t trust any of that roof structure.”
“Copy,” Rapp said, feeling strangely relieved for an excuse not to slink out of there like the criminal he supposed he now was. “Looks like I’m going to have to go out the way I came in. Grisha, can you reposition so you can cover that line of retreat?”
“Affirmative. Two and a half minutes.”
“Two and a half minutes,” Rapp repeated, setting the timer on his watch. “Do it. I’m going in.”
He drew his weapon and slipped through the blood-smeared plastic. Only one of Nassar’s men had managed to set up in the balcony, and a series of bullets had stitched their way up through the floor, killing him. He was lying at the edge with his rifle hanging partially over it.
Rapp plucked the weapon from his lifeless hands and lay down on top of him. The fact that none of the rounds had come through the man’s back suggested he would provide sufficient protection.
Below, it looked like a bomb had gone off. Men were strewn across the floor, some taken out by gunfire and others by the impact of the pickup when it had crashed through the doors. Two of Nassar’s men were still alive and shooting from cover near the altar. Abdo’s force was down to three—two hugging the west wall and one just out of sight beneath the balcony overhang. Rapp scanned for a sign of Wilson but couldn’t see any.
“Has anyone come out?” he said into his radio.
All responses came back negative.
Could the FBI man be holed up in Black’s office? It seemed unlikely. There was a door leading to the outside, and if he knew Joel Wilson, he would have taken the opportunity to escape.
Rapp’s questions were answered a moment later when the man beneath the balcony broke cover and ran for the east wall. Nassar’s remaining shooters were too busy with the other two to worry about him, but a familiar white face popped up from behind a pew near the back wall and fired a few rounds that didn’t get within twenty feet.
Abdo’s man threw himself to the ground and began crawling toward Wilson. Rapp watched for a few seconds but then reluctantly reached for his silencer.
“Mitch,” Black said over the radio. “The spotters I can see are starting to move away.”
“I’m seeing something similar,” Azarov said.
“Me too,” Donatella confirmed.
“Copy,” Rapp said, screwing on his suppressor.
If he were an optimist, he’d think that they’d had enough and were retreating. It was much more likely, though, that Abdo had a secondary force moving in and that they were pulling back to join it. As much as he would have liked to wait until a few more of the people below had killed each other, there was no more time.
