Rising Tiger: A Thriller (80)

Like coworkers the world over, one was sharing the banalities of his life with the other. He had a son leaving for college.

As their shoes crunched along the gravel, the man talked about his child’s exceptional College Board scores, his regret at not starting a financial plan earlier, and how he was going to need to take out a second mortgage to pay for everything.

By the time the pair drew even with him, he was ready to shoot himself in order to not have to listen to them anymore.

They were not worthy of respect in his mind. They were no longer human. They were pencil marks in a ledger; rungs on a ladder he was charged with climbing. Their deaths were a fait accompli.

Stepping out in front of them, he took a fraction of a second to savor the delicious look of shock on their faces.

As the man in the blue jacket started to charge, he shot him through his left eye. The bullet bore into his brain. The momentum he had started allowed him to take two additional steps before he collapsed to the ground, dead.

The man in the gray jacket had his hand on the butt of his pistol and was pulling it from its holster when the killer put a round into his forehead, just above the bridge of his nose. It was like throwing a circuit breaker. He dropped as rapidly as his colleague had.

He quickly pulled both men out of view of the cameras. Very seldom were residential security feeds being monitored in real time. Nevertheless, he didn’t want to risk exposing his presence. He had at least two more targets, and hopefully a third, waiting for him inside. Taking a radio off one of the corpses, he listened for any communication that would suggest that he had been spotted.

At first everything was quiet. There was zero traffic. Then came one word that told him he no longer had the element of surprise.

“Contact.”





CHAPTER 51


Using a Lishi tool to pick the lock, Carbon quietly opened one of the patio doors and slipped inside.

There was a flash of movement from the man in the kitchen. He had a pistol in his hand and was headed deeper into the house. The killer decided to follow.

Most probably, he was moving to link up with the other operative from the roof. Per Military Operations on Urban Terrain, or “MOUT” training, if the home had an elevator, the man coming down would not be using it—not in a tactical situation. It was a hard-and-fast rule.

In fact, in the early stages of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the killer had been stunned to see CCTV footage of Russian paratroopers trapped in an elevator in the city of Kharkiv.

As soon as the doors had closed and the carriage had begun to rise, a clever group of Ukrainian soldiers had simply cut the power, imprisoning the Russians inside.

Then, after ordering the paratroopers to disarm—and verifying everything via the CCTV—the Ukrainians returned the elevator to the lobby, met the Russians with an overwhelming show of force, and took them all prisoner. It had been positively shocking to witness how flaccid and inept Russia’s military actually was.

But right now, Carbon wasn’t dealing with Russians, he was dealing with Americans. And, based on everything he knew about the Carlton Group, they only employed highly skilled, former Special Operations personnel.

He’d had the upper hand with the two men outside. They’d had no idea of the impending attack; no opportunity to prepare. The two men he was hunting now, however, were in fact prepared and likely expecting his attack.

There had been no sign, thus far, of the Troll. If he was inside the house, the men would be working to get him to a safe location within the structure and would be summoning backup.

If the little man wasn’t in the home, it meant a different set of rules and an entirely different ball game.

The men wouldn’t be sitting still, waiting for him to come to them. They would also be hunting.

And they had a distinct advantage. They knew the house inside and out. He was on their terrain.

As he crept cautiously forward, his pistol at the ready, he passed a well-appointed bar, its shelves stocked with expensive brandies and liquors.

Farther ahead, he saw a massive, ornately carved staircase, with an elevator rising out of its center, enclosed in wood paneling.

The elevator’s door was closed but he could hear that it was moving. The only question was, was it going up, or was it coming down?

The killer didn’t like it. It had to be a trap. Even if the Troll had trouble navigating stairs, his security detail would never let him use the elevator. They’d pick him up and carry him if they had to.

In a house this big and this expensive, there had to be a panic room. Considering the little man’s inability to move quickly on such tiny legs, there was probably more than one.

If the killer had to guess, there’d be one adjacent to the Troll’s bedroom, as well as his office or study. Maybe something off the kitchen or the dining room that could do double duty, such as a reinforced pantry. If the little man was in the house, one of those places is where the operatives would have rushed him.

What was the purpose of the elevator moving, then? A distraction? A means by which to hold the intruder’s attention and buy themselves a little more time? Carbon soon had a partial answer.

The elevator wasn’t on its way up. It was on its way down. Without knowing where the corresponding electrical panel was located, he couldn’t do what the Ukrainians had done to the Russians and cut the power, potentially trapping any occupants inside.

But he was convinced that would also be a waste of time. Someone was trying to slow him down.