End Game (Will Robie #5)(5)

Robie’s right hand clamped down on the wrist with the knife. He torqued himself around so that he was on top when they slammed into the floor at the bottom of the stairs. The man beneath him was stunned by the impact but for only a second.

That was still a moment too long for survival.

Robie had used the man’s own knife to slit his throat. Arterial spray danced across his visor.

He hoped the handlers back in their safe space were enjoying the show.

It wasn’t nearly as much fun on his end.

Twelve down, four to go.

He rose, turned, and rolled out of the way as a volley of machine-gun fire blew down the stairs, ripping off part of the handrail, shredding the wall, and exploding a slew of the risers.

With his night vision, Robie could see where it was coming from.

Instead of trying to attack back up the stairs, he moved to his left, where the upper part of the stairway was partially covered by the wall rising from the lower floor.

He pointed the UMP at a forty-five-degree angle up and five clicks to the left. He pressed the trigger and fired half his mag. The ACP rounds blasted through the cheap drywall. Robie counted to three and watched as the shooter’s body rolled down the stairs and landed at the bottom and on top of the gent who’d had his throat slit by Robie.

Robie made sure the shooter was dead with an M11 round dotting the man’s forehead.

Thirteen down, three to go.

And those three were upstairs.

Now it became purely a tactical game. A chess match played with guns and battlefield strategy instead of molded pieces on a square board.

The enemy had the high ground and Robie the low. For him to attack, he would have to move through a funnel where they could concentrate their fire, and he couldn’t count on the liquid armor to see him through.

What Robie wanted was the high ground, and as he looked to his left, he saw a way to take it.

He popped open the window, climbed out, and found handholds in the uneven brick surface. On past missions he’d scaled what appeared to be sheer rock walls, so this was not a stretch for him.

The window was just above. The floor plan of the house told him exactly where this opening would take him. He spent three seconds calculating, which was his allotted time to think at any interval during a mission such as this.

Holding on to the windowsill with one hand, he jimmied the window with his knife. He did a controlled tumble through the opening and rolled up to a defensive position.

Having seized the tactical advantage, Robie charged into the upstairs hall and saw one man peering cautiously down the stairs, unaware that his rear flank was fully exposed.

His life ended with a pair of M11 rounds in his back.

Fourteen down, two to go.

The next man came out of another bedroom holding the exact same type of weapon that Robie held.

It was UMP versus UMP.

But not really. It wasn’t just about the hardware. A gun was a gun. The same models worked pretty much the same.

What really mattered was the software.

And the shooter was always the software.

Robie threw himself through a doorway as the muzzle of the opposing UMP took aim at him.

He transferred his UMP fully to his right hand, making sure by touch that his selector was still on full auto. The only part of him exposed was his gun and his hand. He used the lower part of the doorjamb as his fulcrum because the recoil kick on an UMP was not always kind if the collapsible stock was not firmly against one’s shoulder. That might foul the shot and Robie didn’t have the time for that.

The UMPs fired at the same time.

The man’s UMP managed to take a chunk of polymer off Robie’s weapon.

Robie’s UMP managed to blow the head off the man.

Robie dropped the UMP, his ammo exhausted.

Fifteen down, one to go.

But what a one it would turn out to be.

The young woman stepped out of a room and into the upstairs hall.

In her hand was not a weapon, at least not a conventional one.

Clenched in her fingers was a dead man’s—or in this case a dead woman’s—trigger wired to the vest around her torso. Strapped there were six packs of connected Semtex. More than enough to collapse the house and kill her and Robie, and maybe crack the belly of the cobalt bomb in the basement and radiate the neighborhood until the twenty-second century.

He understood at once. She was the designated fail-safe.

She smiled at him.

He didn’t return it.

The bloodstained KM2000 flashed through the air.

It severed the wire from the trigger to the suicide vest before lodging in the wall.

The woman looked down at the useless trigger, then back up at Robie. She screamed at him even as her hand went to the vest.

Robie did not wait for her to blow them up another way.

He shot her in the head and she fell to the floor wrapped in her unexploded bombs.

Sixteen down.

None to go.

Time clock punched.

Sunrise coming.

Ninety-nine percent was apparently good enough.





CHAPTER





3


The cleanup was quick and efficient.

To keep things as secret as possible, they made use of the same tunnel that Robie had. The house was going to be leveled in the next week and the debris buried forever. The tunnel was being permanently plugged. Any complaints about the sounds of explosions or gunfire that night would be referred to the appropriate agency with instructions to bury it as deeply as the remains of the house.