Into the Fire(57)
His earpiece activated on voice command, sparing him the slightest movement. “Dial.”
The RoamZone in his cargo pocket complied.
Through the scope he saw Petro pull the Turing Phone away from his cheek to check caller ID. His features set in a show of amusement. He clicked over, and a moment later his voice spoke in Evan’s ear. “Hello, boy.”
“Petro.”
The man’s face, magnified in the scope, tightened. “So you found a name. Am I supposed to be scared?”
“Not by that.” Evan kept gentle, steady pressure against the comb of the stock and gauged the come-up, adding the superelevation below the horizontal line.
Petro smirked. “Then by what?”
“By the fact that you had Grant Merriweather killed. And a doctor and two nurses. And Lorraine Lennox. And that you tried to take out Max Merriweather.”
“You think those names mean something to me?”
“No,” Evan said. “I think they mean nothing to you. Or to your men.”
A low ticking laugh came across the line and then the purr of that ten-grit voice. “The world, my world, is a much bigger place than you think. Expand your perspective, boy. At least for the few remaining days you have on this earth. My men have done things for me you can’t even imagine. I’ve watched them take people apart piece by piece while keeping the heart beating until the very end. Do you have any idea how much skill that requires?”
“Anything you’d like to say?”
“Before?”
“I mean, any last words?”
Petro’s eyes darted around. Then he relaxed back in his seat, smoothed the lapel of his suit, and grinned. “If you expect to scare me, you don’t know me at all.”
“How about your men? You want to ask them if they’re scared?” Evan made a microscopic adjustment, dropping the crosshairs to the spot where Petro’s arm met his trunk. The Timney trigger split the pad of Evan’s index finger. “At least the five within earshot right now?”
It took a quarter second for the words to clear the Turing Phone’s encryption. Another quarter second for Petro to register their meaning. His neck corded, a sheet of muscle as his flesh tightened with panic.
Evan applied 3.5 pounds of trigger pressure, and a crimson rose bloomed on Petro’s shoulder. He toppled back in his chair, landing splayed in clear view on the stone of the courtyard.
The platform gave the faintest wobble from the recoil but held firm.
Through the earpiece Evan heard the clatter of the Turing as it struck ground. He cycled the bolt, the expended case spinning in a lazy arc past his temple, and buried the next round in the meat above Petro’s left thigh. Petro gave a pained animal howl, bellowing for help.
The next two bullets knocked out the visible bodyguards.
Evan swept the Remington across the restaurant rooftop until he saw the bodyguard standing rigidly before the Town Car, one finger pressed to his earpiece. He found the man’s sweaty forehead, badly bruised from its encounter with the bathroom sink. The instant before he squeezed off another round, his vision streaked and then doubled, the glare of the windshield turning into a comet of light.
The shot sailed past the bodyguard’s ear, shattering the polished windshield.
The bodyguard turned to stare at the Town Car in disbelief. By the time he tensed to run, Evan had partially regained his focus. He squinted to bring the two images of the bodyguard into one and found the forehead once again. The next round splattered the hood.
Gritting his teeth, Evan rotated to the courtyard again. An ache started up at the back of his head where he’d cracked it on the asphalt.
Pandemonium had erupted in the restaurant, the patrons pouring out. He’d counted on the crowd response, bystanders going one way, bodyguards the other.
Each party ran the pattern as predicted, but to Evan’s view they looked like smudges of color. Sweat trickled down his forehead; he armed it away before it could reach his eyes.
Slowing his breaths and trying to fight off his nausea, Evan locked the sights on a single point of entry for the courtyard. From here there were no tricky adjustments; if he could manage to hold position, he’d be able to get it done. As he’d anticipated, Petro’s cries drew his remaining men in neat succession, Evan head-shotting them in order. The men piled across the courtyard, heaped on top of one another, the last falling across Petro and pinning him to the ground.
Petro’s face had turned to a blurry oval. Then it floated apart like a cell dividing. A ghost image of Petro hovered above the man himself, a spirit debating whether to depart. Sweat stung Evan’s eyes. He laid the crosshairs on the nose of what he took to be the real Petro, blew out a breath, squeezed off his final round.
And missed.
A spray of chips flew up from the flagstones, shredding Petro’s ear. He twisted around and dug at the ground with his fingernails, trying to worm his way out from beneath the bodies.
Aggravated, Evan reached back to the rope bag on his right thigh and freed a lengthy two-inch-thick hawser rope. It unfurled to the side of the platform, feeding out until the bottom whip-snapped up and then settled to sway a foot above the sidewalk.
Nice to see that even Trevon could make a twelve-inch miscalculation.
Evan had already set the anchor in the platform, so he simply rolled off the side, leaving the rifle behind as he fell. Cinching the rope between his gloves and the insteps of his boots, he fast-roped down. The sandstone whirred by as he kissed thirty miles per hour, a firehouse-pole slide. The pavement flew up and caught him, a healthy jolt to the ankles and knees, and he flung the gloves from his hands with a single violent shake. They lay on the sidewalk, steaming with friction heat.