The Last Protector(Clayton White #1)(58)
The humidity was stifling. White could feel his sweat soaking through his shirt and trousers. His lungs were burning, but he kept pushing. He was now four or five blocks away from his hotel, and the sidewalks were filled with cheap street vendors, tourists crowded in front of them looking for a bargain. Both sides of the street were lined with shops: a men’s clothing store, take-out restaurants, and coffee shops. White crossed the street again, aiming for an alleyway he’d spotted on his left next to a pizza place. He sprinted between speeding bicycles and vehicles, narrowly dodging them as he moved.
From his open car window, a taxi driver yelled something at White that he didn’t understand. The man was looking straight at him, waving his fist menacingly in the air as he accelerated to block White’s path—until the driver had to press the brake hard, almost running his vehicle into the rear bumper of the black Mercedes sedan in front of him. White cut across a last string of cars and hit the sidewalk on the opposite side at full speed. He entered the alleyway sprinting and almost fell on his ass, his right foot losing its grip on a shiny oil puddle. Off balance, his body slammed into the wall of one of the buildings, costing him all his forward momentum.
The alleyway was narrow, dirty, and barely large enough to accommodate the width of a MINI Cooper. White had hoped there would be back doors to the retail shops and restaurants on both sides that he could access, but this wasn’t the case. There was nothing but two plain brick walls and a couple of windows far too high to be reachable.
“Damn it,” he said out loud as he started to run again. The last thing he wanted was to get surrounded in the alleyway.
An instant later, White stopped dead in his tracks. The two men who had peeled from the main group two street blocks away emerged at the end of the alley.
Behind him, the three other men, all dressed in dark clothes, blocked his escape route.
Out of breath, his chest heaving, White had a decision to make. Either his pursuers had been given the order to kill him, or they hadn’t. One way or the other, he wasn’t going to let himself get taken without a fight.
The smaller group of two men was quickly closing the distance. Both were approximately the same height as White, but he had at least twenty pounds on them. That was the good news. The not-so-good news was that compared to the three men behind him who were panting hard from the chase, these two looked as cool as cucumbers. As they got closer, White got a better look at them. They were identical twins. Both were slim but muscular and had their hair cut tight. Their eyes were set in a cold, hard stare as they closed on White. Instead of stopping, like most people would when confronted by five men, White summoned up his strength and sprinted toward the twins.
The twins’ eyes widened in surprise as White plowed through them at full speed like an out-of-control truck. With his right elbow, he shoved one of the twins hard to the side, the man’s head meeting the brick wall behind him with a loud thud. The other twin, his initial surprise dissipated, lunged at White. He almost missed, but one of his hands caught White’s left ankle. White fell forward. He thrust his hands out, hoping to save his head from connecting too hard with the pavement, and rolled forward. Something sharp bit into his left palm.
Broken glass, he thought as he landed on his feet. At that moment, he heard the squeal of tires as a white panel van came to a stop at the end of the alleyway. When the side door rolled open and four solidly built men jumped out, White knew he was in trouble. He pulled out the cell phone Hammond had given him. He pressed the preloaded number. The four men stood in front of him twenty feet away, confident and serious, quietly staring at him.
“What is this about?” White asked the new arrivals, forcing a smile to his lips as his right hand slid into his pants pocket, dropping the phone inside.
The largest man, who must have been three or four inches taller than White, pulled out an extendable baton and snapped it all the way open with a flick of his forearm. The man was dressed in a pair of dark jeans, with a long-sleeve gray T-shirt that did nothing to hide the hard muscles beneath. If White had any lingering doubts before, he was now convinced his pursuers didn’t want him dead. Which didn’t mean they weren’t going to hurt him. His initial five pursuers had caught up and were right behind him. He had no way out.
“Roy Oxley wants to speak with you,” the man holding the baton said.
“Roy who?” White asked, his senses on alert.
The twin White had knocked over first made his move. The man dove at White’s back, trying to tackle him to the ground. White, having heard the man’s feet scrape against the pavement, sidestepped to his left and grabbed the twin’s extended left arm. Using the man’s momentum, White spun him hard in a semicircular motion that once again sent the twin’s head smack against the brick wall. This time he didn’t get up. The second twin, growling with anger, wrapped his arms around White and pushed him against the wall. White swung his head back as hard as he could and felt it connect with the man’s nose. The twin yelled in pain and let go, bringing his hands to his face to cup his shattered nose. White lost no time and gyrated to his right 180 degrees, striking the twin directly on the temple with his elbow. The man collapsed in a heap a few feet away from his brother.
The large man with the baton came at White, who stepped into the attack and caught the man’s wrist as it was descending. Had White stayed where he’d been an instant before, the telescopic baton would have snapped his right clavicle in half. White brought his left knee up into the man’s groin just as he heard the crack of a second telescoping baton firing out to its full length. The large man’s legs weakened, and White stripped him of his baton by twisting hard to the left and up as the man fell to his knees. White used his newly acquired two-foot-long blunt instrument to block the strike of the second attacker, who had swung his baton toward White’s opposite arm.