Robert Ludlum's the Bourne Evolution - Brian Freeman Page 0,120

underground room, like everything else, was unlit. He used his flashlight to find a stairwell, and he took it upstairs and carefully emerged into a shadowy hallway on the ground floor of the estate. The hallway led to a catering kitchen, where he found half a dozen bodies on the floor.

Chefs. Servers. All dead. All shot. Broken glass sprinkled the ceramic tile like popcorn. In the doorway that led out of the kitchen, he found two guards, dead on the floor, their weapons taken.

He heard Miss Shirley’s voice in the headset again.

“Philly, New York, Chicago, clear the downstairs, make sure no one comes up behind us. Kill anyone you find. We’re heading to the next level.”

Bourne exited the kitchen into a huge interior courtyard that was open to the evening air beneath a retractable roof five stories above him. Stone railings on the upper floors of the estate rose over the atrium. The square courtyard space had been set up for a nighttime cocktail party, but it was empty, just palm trees, black-draped tables, and Caribbean sculptures in wild colors. White columns bordered the space, leading to hallways on all sides.

He ventured into the courtyard. Gunfire immediately erupted from his right, chasing him across the pavers. He dived for cover behind a stone urn, and when he stole a look over the rim, he saw one of the estate’s security guards firing from behind a column on the east wall. To the guards, Bourne was a threat. He had no way to let them know he was on their side.

Then the guard made the mistake of breaking cover. He crossed from one column to the next, but a gunshot cracked across the courtyard from an entirely new direction, and the guard dropped with a bullet in his head.

Bourne heard a voice, not on his headset, but ten feet away from inside the courtyard. Someone was there, invisible on the other side of the stone urn.

“Jersey? That you? Why’d you leave the tunnel?”

If the Medusa man got any closer, he’d see that Bourne was an outsider, not one of his own. Bourne steadied the rifle in his hands. He expected the man to be wearing body armor, so there was no point in going for anything but a head shot. He whirled to his feet with the rifle balanced against his shoulder and fired. Two shots, one that missed over the man’s shoulder, one that landed square in the middle of the assassin’s forehead. The man died with a surprised expression on his face.

Bourne grabbed a second rifle from the assassin and slung it around his neck. He ran to the far side of the courtyard and found a hallway built with salmon-colored stone tiles. The pastel yellow wall was interrupted by a series of double doors all made of intricate stained glass. He opened the first door and found a small leather-furnished den that was empty. He continued to the next room and found a patio with an interior swimming pool and a series of floor-to-ceiling windows that led outside to the grounds of the estate. When he listened, he heard a low whimper of scared, labored breathing. He spotted a wet bar near the patio doors and found a young woman in a flowered cocktail dress hiding behind the bar. When she saw him, saw the blood on his face and the rifle in his arms, she began to scream, and he quickly clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle it. He whispered into her ear.

“I’m here to help. Don’t be afraid. Stay right here, and you’ll be fine.”

He peeled away his hand, and she nodded silently at him.

“Where would the execs be?” he asked her. “Where are they hiding?”

She pointed a finger upward. “Top floor.”

“Don’t move. It’ll be over soon.”

Bourne got up from the bar. As he did, he spotted two Medusa operatives on the other side of the patio doors, patrolling the estate grounds. The men spotted him, too, and fired, shattering the glass, scoring the room with a rapid, deadly stream of fire. At his feet, the young woman screamed, and Bourne hit the floor and rolled away, drawing the bullets from her. He rolled until he found cover behind one of the wide legs of a cherrywood pool table, but a hail of bullets ricocheted around him, and he felt a searing pain in his calf. He spun away again, his shoes slipping on the floor, then fired back with one arm, sending bullets