I'm two feet behind him when he senses me. Starts to turn. I wrap my arm around his throat and squeeze. He thrashes, grabs at my forearm, kicks the desk. The laptop slides. The radio falls. I hold the choke for eight seconds until he goes limp. Not dead. Unconscious. I zip-tie his wrists behind his back and leave him on the floor.
Down the hall, Claudio's suppressor coughs three times in quick succession. Then silence. He appears at the far end of the corridor, holds up two fingers, draws them across his throat. Two more down.
Seven total. Maybe eight left, concentrated on the third floor where they're guarding the asset. Guardingmywoman.
I reload. Check my corners. Head for the stairwell.
The stairs from the second floor to the third are narrower. Older. The concrete gives way to metal grating that could ring like a bell under careless feet. I slow down. Each step is a negotiation between speed and silence, my weight distributed across the ball of my foot, my hand on the railing for balance.
My earpiece clicks. Emilio's voice, barely a whisper: "Movement on three. I count five through the thermal. Four clustered at the east end, one stationary further west."
The one further west. Stationary. That's her guard. Or her.
"Hallway layout?" I subvocalize.
"Straight shot from the stairwell. Thirty meters. Four hostiles between you and the west end."
Thirty meters. The length of a basketball court. In an enclosed hallway with four armed men and no room to maneuver.
Claudio appears beside me on the landing. I hold up four fingers, point down the hallway, then point to my eyes. He nods. Understands. We have to be fast. Once the first shot fires, the others will react, and in a narrow hallway reaction time is everything.
I pull a flash grenade from my vest. Hold it up. Claudio mirrors with one of his own.
I mouth the count.Three. Two. One.
I round the corner and throw.
The grenade bounces twice on the metal grating and detonates. White light fills the hallway. The concussive bang is deafening in the enclosed space, rattling the walls, and I'm already moving before the flash fades. Claudio's grenade goes a second later, further down, a staggered one-two that keeps the disorientation rolling.
The first man is on his knees, hands over his ears, rifle on the ground beside him. I kick the rifle away and put a round through his shoulder. He screams and crumples. Non-lethal. He's not between me and her.
The second man is tougher. Already recovering, blinking through the flash, raising his weapon. I shoot him twice in the chest. Center mass. He hits the wall and slides down it, leaving a red smear on the plaster.
Third man. Coming out of a side room, fully armed, eyes clear. He wasn't in the hallway when the flash went off. He sees me and fires. The round hits my vest, dead center, and the impact knocks me back a step. The ceramic plate cracks but holds. I feel the bruise blooming across my sternum, a deep, nauseating throb, and I return fire on instinct. Three rounds. Two in the chest, one in the head. He drops.
Claudio is past me now, moving down the corridor. The fourth man has taken cover behind an overturned table at the far end. He fires blind, rounds punching into the walls, the ceiling, sending chips of plaster and concrete raining down. Claudio slides low, almost on his belly, and fires upward beneath the table's edge. Two shots. The man's legs buckle. He falls sideways, and Claudio puts a final round through the table into his chest.
Silence.
My ears are ringing from the flash grenade. The hallway smells like cordite and plaster dust. Eight men down on this floor and the ones below. My hands are steady. My breathing is controlled. But underneath the discipline, underneath the training and the muscle memory, there's a sound building in my chest. A frequency I've never felt before. Not rage. Not fear. Older. Something that predates language.
The sound a man makes when the only thing that matters is on the other side of a door.
I walk down the corridor. Past the bodies. Past the shell casings and the blood and the cracked plaster. Claudio falls in behind me, covering our six, but I've stopped thinking about threats. I've stopped thinking about anything except the door at the end of the hall.
Steel. Locked. A dead man is slumped against the wall beside it. The heavy guard, based on his build. Claudio's work, from the angle. There's a second body a few feet away. Lighter. Younger. A hole in his chest and a look of surprise frozen on his face.
I crouch beside the heavy guard and search his pockets. Keys. A ring with three on it. I try the first. Wrong. The second.
The lock clicks.
My hand rests on the handle. For one fraction of a second, one tiny sliver of time between heartbeats, I'm afraid. Not of what's behind this door. Of what I'll become if she's not there. If they moved her. If I'm too late. If I fought through fourteen men and three floors and my own organization's orders and she's gone.
I push the door open.
She's standing against the wall beside the doorframe. She's holding a broken chair leg raised above her head like a weapon. Her hair is wild. Her face is bruised, purple and swollen along her left cheekbone. Her shirt, the one she was wearing this morning, is torn at the collar. Her wrists are ringed with raw red marks.
She's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
