Hitman vs Hitman - L.A. Witt Page 0,19
same time. Yeah, probably not security.
He let himself into the back stairwell and quickly but quietly hurried down to the ground floor, keeping the phone in his hand so he could monitor which entrances had been used. Sure enough, by the time he set foot on the first floor, the front and side door sensors had picked up movement.
The rear door was still black, but Ricardo wasn’t taking that for granted. The sensor only tripped if someone actually came in.
Approaching the door cautiously, Ricardo pulled the pistol from his shoulder holster, clicked off the safety, and readied the weapon.
He leaned back against the push bar, slowly easing it against the door and letting the latch soundlessly release. Then he nudged the door open a crack. Nothing. No one.
Carefully, he opened the door a little farther.
The door suddenly swung all the way open, startling Ricardo but not throwing him off-balance like the other person probably intended. Ricardo spun around just in time to see a baseball bat swinging toward his face. He ducked, and the bat connected with the metal door instead, prompting a painful yelp from the assailant.
Ricardo lunged at him, and despite the man being bigger, Ricardo knocked him flat. The big man’s kneecap cracked on the concrete a second before his skull did. While the assailant was stunned, Ricardo pistol-whipped him, then got up and ran. Shouts followed. At least three different voices, possibly four.
A vehicle pulled in front of the gate, shining high beams into Ricardo’s eyes.
He veered into the shadows, swearing as he rubbed his eyes. He was blinded for a few seconds, still seeing spots for a few more, but he recovered and darted toward the fence, using darkness for cover as he slipped between the facility’s fleet of rental trucks and portable storage pods.
In theory, he was cornered now with a razor-wire topped chain link fence between him and freedom. Fortunately for him, he had all the paranoia of a fugitive and the preparedness of a Boy Scout, and when he’d left a life sentence’s worth of illegal weapons in this building, he’d also left himself several escape routes.
In this case, a pair of bolt cutters in a waterproof vinyl case and buried an inch or so below the dirt along the fence line.
As men spread out and footsteps came closer, Ricardo dug up the bolt cutters. Cutting a hole in the chain link would take too long and the hole would be too conspicuous. Instead, he snipped the metal ties securing the sheet of chain link to the lower bar, and two of the ties securing it to the vertical bar at the corner. Then it was just a matter of shoving it back like a curtain, slipping out, and letting the fence fall back into place.
There were some bushes, and then a gully, and he picked his way across, through ankle-deep mud, and back up the other side. In the storage lot behind him, confused and furious voices told him his plan was working—they couldn’t find him, and they had no idea if or how he’d left the premises.
While they kept searching for him, he jogged across a couple of properties before reaching the backside of the parking lot where he’d left his car. No one was around, though he didn’t take for granted that he was in the clear.
He quickly replaced his license plates with a fake pair from inside the spare tire compartment. Then he covered the spare tire, put the sniper rifle over the top of it, paused to brush some of the mud off his shoes, and then drove as casually as he could out of the area.
The escape had been an easy one, but he had no illusions that the next one would be. The storage facility was a controlled environment—one he’d analyzed from all angles and prepared ahead of time in case he ever had to elude the feds. Giving the slip to some goons was a piece of cake.
But if they found him again, it was doubtful he’d have that kind of advantage. He didn’t dare go back to his house. Even his safehouses were questionable; he’d definitely have to leave town and hunker down in one of his more remote havens. If the Cavalcantes really were connected to what had happened at Baldwin’s place tonight, then he couldn’t be too careful. There was no such thing as too careful when you were dealing with the fucking mob.
His mind drifted to August, and Ricardo swore.
Whoever