End Game (Will Robie #5)(2)

Later, Big Ben chimed midnight. It was a soothing, familiar melody to most Brits. To Robie, it was like the sound of a time card being punched.

He donned a customized, lightweight, black one-piece waterproof motorcycle suit and left by the back door. He opened the locked door of a garage in the mews and climbed astride the black Ducati XDiavel parked there and key-started it. The big engine bled noise and power through its stacked twin oval exit pipes. He slipped on his helmet, popped the kickstand, gunned the throttle, and blew out of the garage riding a power plant that displaced more than twelve hundred ccs cranking at a max rpm of 9,500. Its Bosch fuel injection system was a full ride-by-wire package.

For most, this was an expensive toy that, fully racked out, would set you back about twenty grand.

Tonight, it was simply Robie’s ride to work.

He headed northwest.

The bike’s tires gripped the asphalt firmly and threw up rainwater as he flashed through nearly empty streets. A bit later his destination was up ahead. Well, it was the first of his destinations tonight. He thundered into an alley and quickly slowed.

He cut the power to the bike, hopped off, and used a tool hidden behind a dustbin to lift the manhole cover located there. This was Destination #1. He used the metal rungs to clamber down about a hundred feet.

He kept his helmet on for one reason only.

He hit a switch at the back of the headpiece, and his helmet became the latest-generation panoramic night-vision optics, the same platform used by American combat pilots. It enhanced the visuals in the darkened utility tunnel to such a degree that it was almost like he was on the surface of the sun, minus the heat. Researchers were now working on contact lenses utilizing a thin layer of graphene between slender layers of glass that could take the place of the current bulky devices. The percentage of light pickup was not yet where it needed to be to make the innovation viable, so for now, Robie wore a bulky helmet to see in the dark.

High-tech to kill.

But it wasn’t like the other side came to the battle with six-shooters and WWII-era optics.

He looked at his watch. He was one minute ahead of schedule. He slowed his pace. Early in his line of work was never a good thing.

He was forty-one years old, six one, a buck-eighty, and physically ripped because his job required it. His endurance levels and pain tolerances were off the chart—again, because they had to be. He had been selected for this line of work with the basic requirements already in place: He had a body, he had a mind, and he feared basically nothing.

Then over the years they had ground into him a whole other being, still possessing the basics plus a spectrum of skills that most people could never imagine, much less achieve.

Some days it was hard for Robie to see where the machine ended and the human began. If the human was in fact still there. In Mississippi it had shown itself. Now? It had receded.

Maybe forever.

His face was lean and weathered, and his eyes deep-set and alert. His hair was always cut short because he had no time to bother with it. He had old wounds and scars over his torso and limbs; each told a story of near-fatal results he would rather forget.

As he walked along he moved his right arm in a slow circular motion. All surgically repaired, scar tissue removed, tendons and ligaments all tidied up, as the Brits would say. It was 99 percent of what it used to be, the docs had assured him. That was really good. But really good rarely cut it in Robie’s world.

They rebuilt me. But am I as good as I was? Or am I a slightly lesser version?

He would find out tonight if the missing one percent made the key difference between his walking away from this or remaining behind as a corpse.

Destination #2 was just up ahead.

If the Ducati had gotten him to Destination #1, what was coming up would get him back.

Alive.

He used a key to unlock a door set in the wall of the tunnel he was in.

Inside the small storage room revealed behind the door, he gunned up and put on his protective gear, which included the newest generation of personal armor.

His main arsenal consisted of an H&K UMP chambered in .45 ACP with a thirty-round box mag. He checked all working parts of the weapon and slung it over his shoulder. He slipped two extra mags into long pockets on his one-piece designed for just this purpose.

He figured if he couldn’t do the job with ninety rounds he didn’t deserve to come back. But just in case, there were twin M11s, each chambered in ten-millimeter with a laser sight built under the barrel. Where the dot hit so did the round.

He slipped the gun belt around his waist. Both pistols rode on the left side so he could pull with his dominant right hand, though if it came to it, he could kill ambidextrously with great efficiency.

A German-made KM2000 combat knife in its holder was attached to his belt.

Two M84 stun grenades were cradled in pockets on the rear of his belt.

Robie closed the door behind him and walked on.

Destination #3 was a quarter mile away.

In a fairly short time, Will Robie would know if he would get to see another sunrise or not.





CHAPTER





2


Oxford Circus.

It was one of the busiest stations on the London Underground, vying with both Waterloo and King’s Cross in a back-and-forth annual battle for the statistical title. It was in an upscale part of London with pricey and fashionable shops and buildings resting above it. The Underground carried nearly a billion and a half passengers per year and nearly a hundred million of them came through the Oxford Circus station annually.