Gregg Loomis - Gates Of Hades

He turned to Paco. "You got that syringe ready?"

Paco held up a SIG Sauer like Jason's. "Yeah, but I'm cocked an' locked."

The two men crept up a dimly lit companionway to the middle level of the vessel. At the top of the stairs a door led to a passageway that resembled the hall of a plush apartment building more than anything nautical. Thick carpet covered floors bounded by highly polished teak walls.

"Last door on the left," Jason whispered.

Paco, weapon ready, watched Jason make his way to the end. Jason stood outside the door covering Paco until he, too, stood outside it. Jason held up one finger, then a second. On the third, he opened the door and entered while Paco stood ready to supply covering fire if needed.

The only light in the stateroom seeped through half-curtained portholes from the late-night bars along the dock. Paco slipped inside and softly closed the door. A muffled click announced that he had locked it. Both men flattened themselves against the bulkhead while their eyes became accustomed to what illumination there was. The sound of light snoring came from a bed that was a dark blob to their right. Jason was beside it in two steps, his gun ready when Paco flipped the light switch.

Both occupants of the bed came immediately awake.

Jason jammed the stubby barrel of his gun into the man's gaping mouth. "One sound and your brains'll be all over those silk sheets," he whispered.

Jason saw that the other body was that of a woman, no doubt an advance on Alazar's ration of heavenly virgins. She emitted a squeak of terror as Paco placed his weapon next to her head and made a quiet shushing sound. Her eyes darted from the gun to the syringe he held in his other hand and back again.

Jason gave a quick nod, and Paco pulled the woman from the protection of the bedclothes. She was nude. He roughly shoved her toward the adjacent bath.

"You shut up," Paco cautioned. "I hear anythin' from you, and you dead."

From the expression on her face before Paco closed the door, she believed him.

Jason was counting on the fact that, unlike many of his clients, Alazar had no desire to meet Allah up close and personal just yet.

Alazar lay perfectly still, only a twitch of his eyes betraying his fear. Jason followed the direction in which the arms dealer had glanced. Without removing the gun from the man's mouth, Jason reached under a pillow and held up a. 38 Beretta. He jammed it into the waist of his pants.

"Don't even think about it," he said as he held out a hand toward Paco.

Paco slapped the syringe into his palm.

Alazar began to squirm, a series of unintelligible protests

Jason held the needle up, squeezing a few drops from the end to make sure there were no air bubbles.

"Hold still," he hissed. "If I were going to kill you, you'd be dead. You're going for a ride, and we want to make sure you don't become a party pooper on us."

He stuck the syringe into an arm.

Jason had not emptied the needle before Alazar's back arched. Teeth ground against the gun's barrel as the man's face contorted and spasmed. His arms flailed widely; then he moaned and was still. Dropping the syringe, Jason felt the neck for a pulse at the carotid artery. There was none. Blank eyes stared into eternity. As if he needed confirmation of the obvious, there was the smell of the result a re "Shit!" Jason spit. "There goes our security blanket. Some asshole overcooked the tranquilizer." He flung the syringe across the room. "Stupid bastards!"

Jason glanced around the stateroom. "Go through the bureau there; see if you can find papers, anything of interest."

As he spoke, Jason snatched a laptop computer from the table beside the bed. "With any luck at all, the recently departed used this for something other than games and

Paco quickly completed his search of the bureau's drawers. "Nothin', man, nothin' other 'n some 'spensive silk shirts." He held up what looked like the bottom to a woman's bright red bikini. "An' these."

Jason put the computer under his left arm. "We can discuss Alazar's taste in underwear later. Right now, we're history. Make sure the woman isn't getting out in the next few minutes. You can tie the door…"

There was a soft knock at the door to the passageway and muffled words Jason didn't understand.

A quick look around affirmed what he already knew: that door was the only exit from the stateroom. He pointed toward the bath, then the door. Paco understood. As Jason pressed himself against the bulkhead, Paco pulled the woman from the bathroom. Keeping her body and himself concealed behind the door, he opened it, pushing her head around the edge. His weapon rested along the back of her neck.

There was a murmured conversation.

Through the crack between the door and its frame, Jason could see a young man in a white jacket carrying what appeared to be a bottle of champagne like the two on the floor beside the bed. Alazar, it seemed, did not include bubbly in the prophet's injunction against alcohol.

In a single fluid movement, Jason stepped from behind the door, shoved the woman aside, and grabbed the astonished wine server's jacket with one hand while jamming the SIG Sauer between his eyes. The man offered no resistance as Jason snatched him into the room and gently closed the door. The only casualty of the maneuver was the champagne, which toppled from its tray. It had not been opened. Paco stooped.

"Leave it," Jason said. "Off vintage, anyway, I'll bet. The sort of crap the French would sell Arabs."

Paco picked the bottle up and stuffed it neck-first into his pants. "Mebbe off vintage, but th' fookin' price's ho-kay. Whatcha gonna do with 'em?"

The woman's fear-widened eyes were trying to avoid the body sprawled across the bed. The man could not tear his stare away.

"Rip the sheets into strips and tie and gag both of them. Let's hope nobody is scheduled to bring the caviar."

While both captives cowered under Jason's automatic, Paco tore strips from the bedsheets. Minutes later the man and woman were trussed like bucks slung over the hood of a pickup truck. Jason rummaged around the top of a bedside table until he found a set of keys, one of which he used to lock the stateroom once he and Paco were outside in the passageway.

They listened.

Silence is an absence of sound. But to someone whose adrenaline is pumping, someone whose life depends on his hearing at the moment, silence becomes a sound of its own, the sound of the heart thumping, of breaths taken deeply, and, loudest of all, the sound of emptiness and space that create a pressure upon the ears.

Jason's employer was going to be less than happy with a dead rather than captive arms salesman, but Jason and Paco hadn't formulated the contents of the deadly syringe. Maybe someone had planned for Alazar to die, lying to Jason for fear he would refuse to administer a fatal dose. If so, no one should have been concerned. Ridding the world of its Alazars was what Jason had sworn to do-kill all of them.

He would never be even for what they had done.

Alert to the possibility of being discovered, they began to move, to return the way they had come.

They had almost reached the anchor locker when they heard shouts and the sound of heavy and hurried feet. Jason and Paco traded stealth for haste.

Splinters, as deadly as bullets, flew from the ceiling over his head. He ducked reflexively as he and Paco stepped over the coaming and slammed the door.

In the cramped darkness of the tiny room they could see the harbor's water through the anchor port.

Jason motioned with his pistol. "You first. I'll cover."

"No, man. Take me too long to get through th' fookin' hole. You go."

The door trembled in its frame as jagged holes admitted light from the passageway outside. Wood fragments buzzed through the air like angry bees. No sound of gunshots. Silencers, Jason thought. They weren't using the arsenal of automatic weapons Alazar usually carried because rapid fire quickly burned out sound suppressors.