Prodigal Son (Orphan X #6) - Gregg Andrew Hurwitz Page 0,66

lot and the tall man with the flashlight in his mouth were both jerking in breaths, not quite panicked but not far from it either. The team leader’s partner, Diaz, was circling the kiosk. He looked dead calm, like he’d done this too many times with a positive result, cocky enough to let his guard slip. The other two with monocular night-vision displayed good combat breathing, shuddering intakes, slow exhalations. Appropriately alert but not too nervous.

They’d be the most dangerous.

Evan rolled out from under the Bronco, darting low through the next row of cars, threading past a jagged bumper, and planting himself along the trajectory of the tall operator with the readied MP5 and the flashlight clenched between his teeth. Evan sank low behind a Pathfinder with half its hood sheared off.

He listened to the footfall. Shards of glass crusted the asphalt like jewels, providing a nice crunch that broadcast the man’s position.

Fifteen yards away.

Now ten.

The tight cone of the flashlight appeared at Evan’s side, a cold white beam sweeping left to right. Shadows stretched and warped as the man neared. His nervous inhalations, barely audible, sounded quick and shallow.

Five yards.

Two.

Evan waited for the cone to rotate to the far side of the aisle, which required the man’s face to rotate with it. The beam illuminated the tire inches from Evan’s heel and then swept slowly away.

Evan held until it reached the vehicles across the aisle and then rose, setting his legs and hips to generate power for the punch.

He was standing just beyond the point of the man’s peripheral vision. The silhouette of the flashlight protruded from the guy’s mouth like an anodized-aluminum cigar.

Evan said, “Psst.”

As the man pivoted, Evan hammered the end of the flashlight with a palm-heel strike, his hand flexed back, fingers pointing up. The shaft rocketed back into the man’s mouth and through the soft tissue at the rear of the throat, and there was a crackle as the spinal cord gave way. Evan caught his sagging weight.

He slid the flashlight free of the man’s ruined mouth, clicked it off, and slipped it into his thigh cargo pocket. He thought about taking the MP5 but preferred his own pistol for agility.

The man’s glassy eyes stared up at Evan, tears running down his temples. The stink of his panic breath rose with each fading exhalation. He blinked and then blinked again.

Evan whispered, “It’s okay, now. It’s okay.”

The man stopped blinking.

Evan let him pour to the ground and then was up, scooting between cars, circling the kiosk from a distance and assessing the locations of the remaining five men. The team leader had turned the Tesla around to aim it at the open front gate, ready for a getaway.

Diaz kept a tight rotation around the kiosk, MP5 held casually, aimed outward. Still too confident.

No sounds of approaching bystanders. No distant sirens. Just a car alarm screaming somewhere in the distance. Given the men’s kill orders, Evan hoped the lot was sufficiently isolated not to draw bystanders. Still, he didn’t want to take his time and find out.

Creeping through the maze of cars, making his way around the kiosk, he stuck his head up at intervals to track the men’s movements around the lot. The night air chilled his throat, his lungs. He finally reached the back side of the kiosk, taking a position so it blocked him from view of the team leader’s idling Tesla.

The other three men moved steadily through the property’s periphery, one behind Evan, the others to either side of him. Beneath the sharp ridge of the masks’ nose lines, their breath puffed through the thermal fabric.

Evan timed Diaz’s pace as Diaz vanished around the corner of the kiosk. Counted to three. Then emerged from the cover of the damaged vehicles, bearing down on Diaz as he came back into sight.

Approaching swiftly, Evan shot him three times in rapid succession—thigh, hip, and right shoulder. Diaz managed to depress the trigger, but given his destroyed shooting arm it was nothing more than a spray-and-pray to the side, the rounds sparking off the nearby cars before the MP5 kicked from his hand of its own volition. The bullet that had shattered his hip had also knocked the still-holstered Hi-Power clean off his belt, the Silverback round doing what it did best.

With his left hand, Diaz ripped a KA-BAR straight-edge from a thigh sheath and swiped at Evan’s face, but Evan trapped the wrist against the wall, caught the falling knife, and slammed it through Diaz’s palm,