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But the real proof is about to come, and it will be unequivocal.
Devine started to combat-breathe: inhale for a four count, hold for four, exhale for four, and hold for four. Repeat. This would stop his sympathetic nervous system from kicking on, wiping out his peripheral vision, blowing to shit his fine motor skills, and turning him into a big dumb animal just waiting to be killed. He would die one day just like everyone else, but it would never happen like that.
He passed by Alpha and Bravo, neither of whom looked at him. The automatic doors slid open with a hydraulic sigh, and Devine entered the vestibule. The toilet was off to the right, just out of eyeline of the passengers.
A few moments later the toilet door opened and a few moments later it closed.
The big men rose as though tied together by string and headed after Devine.
As they walked they screwed suppressor cans onto the muzzles of overkill German-made machine pistols pulled from their overcoat pockets. They reached the vestibule, where they could hear water running, and someone talking inside the toilet. They took aim and fired right through the flimsy toilet door. The sounds of the suppressed rounds were covered by the enhanced roar of the train going through the tunnel, which was why they had waited until now to do the deed. They shot in tight patterns, high to low and in between, followed by crisscrossed streams; they were fields of fire that left no room for survival in the confined space. With sixty rounds total, death of the target was guaranteed.
While Bravo covered him, Alpha nudged open the wrecked door, just to make sure, since their kill contract required it, along with an iPhone pic of the corpse texted to their employer.
However, all he saw was an empty toilet with the water tap wedged on. And a phone on the floor and leaning against the wall next to the toilet; a podcast was playing on the device.
At that moment the door to the storage closet opposite the toilet swung open and caught Bravo at the right temple.
Having let them empty out their weapons, Devine was now the predator. Where each man stood Devine’s goal was to claim that ground. And the only way to do that was to gothroughthem.
Devine opened his campaign with twin-thumb eye gouges that blinded Bravo. Devine next formed a V with his hand, the thumb on one side and the four fingers on the other, and slammed the hard groove of the flesh between them against the man’s throat, collapsing his trachea. This was followed by twin crushing elbow strikes to the right side of the cervical spine that snapped two of the man’s vertebrae, cutting off his brain from the rest of his body. He dropped to the floor out of the fight and also out of life. This continuous, fluid movement had taken all of four seconds.
Devine next trapped a stunned Alpha and his machine pistol against the doorjamb of the toilet as the man tried to slap in a fresh mag. Devine made the gun fall from his hand by wrenching it downward and then to the side past the joint’s limits with cartilage-cracking torque. Alpha should have already reloaded and attempted to shoot Devine, but the man’s breathing was ragged as his adrenal glands flooded his bloodstream with cortisol, fouling his mind-body connection. His pupils went from two millimeters to nine in less than a breath; his peripheral vision was completely blown. Devine already knew he was going to win this fight, because none of that was happening to him. His cognitive, and hence his fighting, skills were operating fine.
Alpha awkwardly swung at Devine and caught him a glancing blow on the jaw. It was not hard enough to do any real damage, and the panicked man had forced himself off balance with the move. Two punishing elbow slams to the exposed right kidney dropped Alpha to his knees. Devine grabbed him by the collar and flung him headfirst against the train wall once and then again. The desperate man, perhaps sensing his own imminent death, pulled a knife and spun around, and the blade slashed against Devine’s arm. But his aim was shaky and thus off, and Devine’s thick parka took most of the damage.
Okay, time to end this. And him.
Devine broke the man’s grip on the knife and it clattered to the floor. He then slapped the man’s right ear with such force, the eardrum burst. The man seized up, presenting his face directly to Devine, who used a palm strike on his nose, hitting him once and then again with the cup of his hand, releasing all the kinetic energy from his brawny arm, shoulder, broad back, and thrust hip. This streamlined attack delivered massive torque that propelled the nose’s brittlely sharp cartilage straight into Alpha’s soft brain tissue. He dropped to the floor face first. Just to be certain, Devine reached down and broke the man’s neck in the exact way the U.S. Army had taught him.
Devine dragged both dead men and their weapons into the toilet, turned off the water, retrieved his phone, and wedged the shot-riddled door shut.
Fighting wasn’t just knowing certain techniques, although that was important; it was mostly an evolved state of mind. Without that, enhanced hand-to-hand combat skills meant squat because you would be too cowed to employ them. And the very concept ofself-defensewas a losing proposition, pretty much conceding the field and making you a victim in waiting. You didn’t defend, you attacked. You didn’t stop someone from hurting or killing you.Youhurt oryoukilled.Them.
Rubbing his bruised jaw and gingerly touching his cut arm, which he instinctively knew wasn’t that serious, he reentered the train car to see Charlie staring at him.
“What happened?” she exclaimed, her eyes agog. “What was that noise?”
All right, thought Devine,this is where the rubber meets the road.
As he walked toward her Devine glanced for a moment in the train window, which reflected the interior because they were still in the Simplon Tunnel for at least another few minutes. He saw what he needed to see.
He shrugged. “Two guys. Real mess in the toilet. Going to be quite a cleanup.”
“My goodness. Is there anything I can do?”
Her neck muscles were now relaxed, he noted, pupils normal, breathing the same. She was a cut above the deceased goons back there.
Devine stopped next to her, looked down at the drawing, and said, “Yeah, you could explain why you’ve been sitting here for over two hours working away and you haven’t added a damn thing to your sketch.”
She half rose and swung the long-bladed knife up from her lap, but Devine had already seen the weapon in the window reflection. He didn’t waste any time on a defensive block. He simply clocked her in the jaw, lifting her far smaller body off the floor and knocking her against the wall. She slumped down into unconsciousness from the force of his blow and her collision with the wall. Devine momentarily pondered whether to finish the job. But she was young and might repent of her evil ways. He took the knife, slid her ballcap down, draped her hair around her slender shoulders, and propped her up against her seat as though she were merely napping.
He grabbed his gear bag and walked into the dining car, and then through the second-class carriages until he reached the last car, where he slipped her knife into a trash receptacle. The train cleared the tunnel, and when it slowed and stopped at Stresa, the last station before Milan, Devine got off. The text he had sent earlier paid dividends when the black sedan picked him up. The driver would take Devine the rest of the way to Milan. There he would catch a flight back to the United States, where another mission surely awaited.
As he glanced back at the train, Devine wondered whether he had made a mistake in allowing the woman to live.
The answer wouldn’t be long in coming.
CHAPTER
