Jeff Abbott - Collision

The target.

The Cellar team would be fast. The safe house probably had reinforced doors and windows, but they would deactivate the alarm systems and they would be in and murdering and out in sixty seconds. In the house, one dim light gleamed on a second floor, someone unable to sleep or standing guard.

He’d never slept well while on training; too eager to learn, to soak up data and techniques and analysis. He felt an instant kindred spirit with the night owl in the target house.

He hurried back to the van. Shot out the lock, yanked open the door. A man inside, headphones on, turned toward him. He went for his gun and Pilgrim stopped him with a kick in the gut. The guy collapsed, airless. Pilgrim carefully deactivated the headphones and wrapped the cable around the guy’s neck. He tightened it hard into the throat’s flesh, then loosened it a bit for a display of mercy, tightened it again while he asked his question.

“How many of them on the attack?”

The guy struggled and Pilgrim yanked the cable tighter. Turning purple, the guy held up six fingers. Hector and five more Cellar agents, not counting this one.

“Guns? Explosives?”

“Guns, knives. Nothing heavier.” The guy choked.

“What’s your call sign? Don’t lie to me. If I give the wrong sign and I have to run, I’ll kill you on my way out. Right now you’re getting to live.” He eased up enough on the cable and the guy said, “Strict numbers. I’m Seven.”

“By the way, I didn’t kill Teach. You get out of this alive and I don’t, kill Hector for me.” He slammed the guy’s head against the corner of the equipment table, twice, and the guy slumped unconscious.

Pilgrim’s own clothes were not night stalker-ready-he wore khakis and a pale shirt. The unconscious man wore a black turtleneck and black pants. Pilgrim relieved him of his dark clothes; they were tight on Pilgrim’s big frame but they fit well enough.

Pilgrim took the guy’s gun and knife, fished an earpiece from the curl of his ear, and tucked it into his own. He activated it and listened to the Cellar chatter as the team deployed. One and Two had deactivated the perimeter security system and were approaching the house, to deal with its alarm box. Which meant two of them should be close to the low stone wall, holding back to watch the group’s rear, ready to join the others when the alarm system was cut.

For an instant Pilgrim considered revving the van, laying on the horn, creating a disturbance to awaken everyone in the house. But that would trigger a retreat, all of them heading straight for him. He’d be outnumbered and outgunned. And if he went live on the com network and informed them that Hector killed Teach-there was the chance they might not believe him. He had killed two other Cellar agents in self-defense, but when it was dark and tense, one could not always have rational discussions with heavily armed people.

So he’d have to do this the hard way.

He slipped out of the van.

You’re going to die. He was fairly sure of the outcome. Six now against one, and if anyone inside the CIA safe house was armed-and no doubt they were-they were just as likely to shoot him.

Do what’s necessary. He had done it for ten years and Ben kept telling him that it was fine, it was understandable. Ben was one of those people who thought dirty jobs had their place in the cogs of society; as long as his own hands didn’t get bloodied, it was okay. Lots of people thought that way. But now Pilgrim faced killing his own colleagues to keep them from doing a serious and harmful wrong to the country, and it wasn’t their fault.

Do what you have to do.

His heart weighed like a stone.

He listened to the silence. No one saying anything, which meant they were waiting for the alarm system to go down. He crept from the van-every streetlight had been doused. The road was dark, the moon hiding its face.

He studied the length of the wall. Five feet high, a foot wide. He got close to the house’s main driveway. A spot along here was a likely station for whoever was ordered to hold back-enough to cover a retreat for those at the alarm box, far back enough to see any encroaching danger.

He stopped ten feet shy of the driveway, listened. After a minute he heard, four feet to his left, the faintest rustle of a heel shifting weight in grass.

He moved back, heard a whispered “Copy” as someone announced they were nearly through the decode sequence for the alarm, and went over the wall.

Pilgrim practically landed on one of them, a woman, his feet knocking into her back, nailing her to the grass. The other was a man, short and powerfully built. Pilgrim grabbed his head, slammed it against the stone with three brutal blows, breaking the man’s nose, savaging his cheek. The man went down; Pilgrim dropped him. He knelt by the woman; she was semiconscious and he struck the flat of his palm against her neck, knocking her out.

He scooped their earpieces from their ears. Three down, four to go.

“Five, Four, report.” Hector’s baritone in his earpiece. The noise of the takedown drew his attention.

“This is Seven,” Pilgrim whispered. “I see them, they are heading back to the van. Four is tapping at ear. I’ll check their pieces.”

A pause, as though his whisper was being judged. “Tell them to get the hell back here.”

“Copy.” Pilgrim ran low and hard, moving toward a small stone outbuilding where a driveway dead-ended. He had to neutralize the team: three more agents, two of them working on the alarm.

And where was Hector?

“We’re found,” he heard a woman say, both in his earpiece and in his ear, and a kick hammered into his chest. She’d been behind the outbuilding and he’d been careless. Her blow staggered him. A flash of silver danced in the spare moonlight; she had a knife, trying to avoid the noise of a gun that would rouse the house. She slashed at him with the blade, slicing through the borrowed black turtleneck and scoring across his chest. But she overshot on the blow, tried to recover by launching another powerhouse kick at his face. He caught her leg high and shoved her hard into the brick building she’d hidden behind. Hushed and sudden chatter from the others filled his ear.

They knew he was there.

“Alarm down,” a man announced.

“Hit now,” Hector ordered.

Pilgrim fractured his attacker’s arm with the next blow, but better than killing her, he thought. She dropped the knife and contained her scream- brave and well trained, trying not to alarm the target. He hit her twice, hard, with respect and regret, and she went down, maybe not knocked out but hurt enough to be out of the fight.

Two more Cellar agents and Hector remained. Pilgrim was at the house’s side porch and he figured the assault would open at the back, away from the street.

He heard the muted sound of a shot hitting steel, a reinforced door. The opportunity for stealth had passed; he was too late. He spoke into the earpiece. “Hector killed Teach. Not me. Shoot him. Shoot him.”

No answer. No acknowledgment. Two more shots.

“You’re not killing terrorists. You’re attacking a CIA safe house. He’s a traitor,” Pilgrim said. He broke into a hard run. “Four are down, none are dead. I’m not the liar. Stand down.”

Nothing. They were ignoring him, or Hector had silenced the communications network. He could see movement inside the windows.

Hector and the Cellar were already inside.

They knew he was here; one would be watching the door for him while the others began the kills. The door was a trap. So he fired rounds at a back window, bullets slamming into the reinforced glass. He vaulted up the porch steps. Those inside would think he was stupid and heading for the nearly unbreakable glass he was trying to shatter with his gunfire. He kept firing at the pane but at the last moment he leapt through the doorway.