Near Dark (Scot Harvath #20) - Brad Thor Page 0,58
splinters of wood went flying everywhere.
She heard the man cry out in pain twice more. He fired three rounds in her general direction, but then he and his weapon fell silent.
“Help me!” the diplomat yelled.
“Are they dead?” she shouted back, her ears ringing from the booming cracks of her opponents’ weapons.
“Yes,” he shouted.
“Both of them?”
“The one nearest me is definitely dead,” the diplomat replied. “The other crawled out from under the table and has collapsed in the corner of the room. Near the window. He isn’t moving.”
Sølvi swapped out her current magazine with a new one, struggled to the far side of the living room, and then slowly moved behind the furniture toward the side with the windows.
Once she was confident that she’d be able to get a good line of sight into the dining room, she readied her pistol and risked a look.
The man was propped up in the corner, right where the diplomat had said he was. His shirt and his trousers were covered with blood. There was also a trickle dripping from his mouth. His hand, still wrapped around the butt of his gun, lay in his lap. His eyes were wide open and he was staring right at her—as if he knew exactly where she was going to reappear.
Pressing her trigger, she fired in two controlled pairs—two shots to his head, two shots to his chest.
Blood, skull fragments, and bits of brain splattered on the wall behind him. The gun fell from his hand. Slowly, his heavy body, slick with blood, tilted to the left and slid along the wallpaper until he landed on the floor with a thud.
Getting cautiously to her feet, Sølvi scanned for additional threats. As the ringing in her ears started to recede, she thought she could hear the wail of police klaxons.
“Is there anyone else here?” she asked.
The diplomat shook his head. “Only them. Untie me. Please.”
Motioning for him to be quiet as she slipped into the dining room, she checked the assailants and kicked their weapons away. They were both dead.
Cutting the diplomat loose, she gestured for him to stay put and stay quiet. Opening the kitchen door, she made sure no one else was hiding nearby. She then did the same thing with the bathrooms, the closets, and the children’s room.
Returning to the diplomat, she asked. “Are you injured?”
The man shook his head. “No.”
“Can you move?”
He nodded and Sølvi helped get him to his feet.
“You’ve been shot,” he said, eyeballing the dark spread of crimson across her midsection.
“I’ll be okay. Do you have any bandages?”
The man nodded again.
“Go grab them. And then we need to get the hell out of here.”
As the man went to do as she had instructed, Sølvi patted down the corpses. There was nothing on them—no passports, no wallets, no cell phones. Nothing.
When the diplomat came back into the dining room, Sølvi had trouble standing up and he had to assist her. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”
“I’m fine,” she lied. “Let’s go.”
Buttoning her jacket to hide the blood, Sølvi checked the hallway first before signaling to the diplomat that it was safe to follow.
Taking the stairs down to the ground level in her condition was out of the question, so she, the diplomat, and the one suitcase she had told him he could bring when they had originally hatched their plan, all crammed into the little cage elevator and headed down.
She kept her weapon handy in case any more assailants might be waiting, but the lobby was empty. Plenty of neighbors had heard the gunfire and many could be seen peeking out of doorways and peering over the stairwell railing.
Outside on the street, she guided the diplomat to her vehicle and reluctantly agreed to let him drive. After getting her into the passenger seat, he threw his bag in back and they took off for the airport.
“Slow down,” she admonished, as she kept one eye on her side mirror while bandaging her wound. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
“Are you sure? It looks bad.”
“I’ve seen worse. Just get us to the airport in one piece and you’ll be back with your family before you know it.”
Once the bandage was in place, she took out her cell phone and sent Pedersen an encrypted message. She had been shot and had lost a lot of blood. She was now traveling with the diplomat and they were on the way to the private aviation side of the airport. She needed a doctor.