The Last Protector(Clayton White #1)(18)

Van Heerden didn’t make the same mistake. He reached into his jacket and pulled his SIG Sauer from its shoulder holster. At such close range, there was no need to aim. He shot the agent in the head. The man crumpled without a sound.

Van Heerden’s head was spinning, but he forced himself to get up. He grabbed the agent’s badge from his belt and exited the elevator, holding his pistol in his right hand. He needed his left to hold on to the wall in order to keep his balance.

Despite the ringing in his ears, Van Heerden heard Chuck’s voice in his earbud.

“Albert from Chuck, we heard a gunshot. I think it’s on our floor.”

“Chuck from Albert, it was me. Breach the door!” ordered Van Heerden as he made his way toward Hammond’s room at the end of the hallway.

“Albert, are you okay?” Chuck asked.

“I’m fine and on my way to you. Breach now!” Van Heerden repeated.

A clutch of curious hotel guests had opened their doors and were peeking outside, trying to see what was going on. Van Heerden held the Secret Service badge in the air, quietly asking the nosey guests to return to their rooms. As he spoke, pain flooded the lower part of his face. He ran his tongue along the inside of his gums and tasted blood. But, by some miracle, there were no loose teeth. He tried to remember if he had seen or heard the agent he had killed in the elevator communicating with any of the surviving Secret Service agents. He didn’t think so, but he had to assume the man had.

What if he reached the mobile communications unit? he wondered, remembering he was yet to receive the all clear from the team tasked with seizing the van. Shit. He had to call them off.

“Erik, this is Albert,” he said.

“Go for Erik.”

“Are you with Frank?”

“Yes. We’re about to execute. We’re on foot, about two hundred feet from the target vehicle.”

Van Heerden briefly considered letting them continue but decided otherwise.

“Abort. I say again. Abort,” Van Heerden said. “Move to the staging area now. How copy?”

“Erik copies.”

“Frank copies.”

Van Heerden swore under his breath as he attached his silencer to the pistol. This wasn’t how he had envisioned the operation going down. His employer would be pissed, and Van Heerden’s reputation would take a hit. But now wasn’t the time to worry about that. He had to stay focused. He yearned for Veronica Hammond to be inside her room, because he was running out of time. He estimated that he and his men had a maximum of three minutes to complete the mission. The hotel would soon be swarming with police officers, and once they realized who had been the target, they would cordon off the entire area and request backup from a multitude of local, state, and federal agencies.

Van Heerden was still forty or so meters away from Hammond’s room when Chuck and Daniel breached it. And he was still thirty meters away when he heard two distinct double taps followed by a single shot.

One, two. One, two.

One.

Those five shots could have meant mission success, but there was only one problem. His men had suppressors. And these shots hadn’t come from a silenced pistol.





CHAPTER ELEVEN


The Ritz-Carlton


San Francisco, California

The ostentatiously loud noise had broken the spell. White let the blue box fall to the carpeted floor and got up, angling his body between the door and Veronica. He drew his pistol, aiming it at the door. Veronica had heard the shot too. She was clutching his arm, her fingers digging in. All White’s senses were alert.

Something wasn’t right. The little voice in the back of his mind, the same one that had saved his life numerous times in Iraq and Afghanistan, was trying to tell him something. To Veronica’s credit, she didn’t panic. She remained calm and in control. With his left hand, White pressed the little red button on his radio that would send an alarm signal to XJD-31 and keep his microphone open for the next sixty seconds.

“This is Vigil-One. Possible gunshot on Flower’s floor,” he said. “We’re hunkered down in her hotel room. Send additional agents to my location and prepare the stash car for possible evacuation.”

“XJD-31 copy. I’ll link with local law enforcement and try to get more information about this possible gunshot.”

Keeping his eyes on the door and his voice low, White said to Veronica, “Go to the bathroom, lock the door, and grab the GLG Bishop knife from my toiletry bag. I left it next to your sink.”

“Got it,” she replied, making her way toward the bathroom.

Made of G-10, a high-pressure fiberglass laminate, the Bishop knife could inflict a lot of damage at close range. White had personally pierced a one-quart paint can with it, and he had done so without damaging the tip or the blade. Looking around the room, he realized that the connecting door between his room and Veronica’s was still open. Two access points made them more vulnerable. He chastised himself for being so unprepared.

What the fuck were you thinking, Clay? His eyes briefly stopped on the blue box and the diamond engagement ring on the carpet. Stop thinking with your dick and start acting like a goddamn Secret Service special agent.

White was halfway between the bathroom and the connecting doors when the door of Veronica’s hotel room opened. Two men barged in. The first one, dressed in a dark business suit and armed with a silenced pistol, immediately swept the room left. White fired his pistol twice, a double tap to the assailant’s center mass, just as the man’s weapon was bearing on him. White switched his aim a bit to engage the second shooter, who had come in behind the first one. The second shooter, sensing motion to his left, had already started to pivot in White’s direction. But before the shooter could even swivel his head to face the threat, White fired two rounds into his torso. The shooter gave a muffled cry of pain and shock, the impact of the bullets flattening him against the wall. But he was still holding on to his pistol, clearly doing his best to bring it up toward White, who was now less than ten feet away. White squeezed the trigger and shot him in the face. The man slid down the wall, a smeared trail of blood glistening behind him.