Tom Hinshelwood - The Killer

The smoking cartridge bounced on the floor tiles.

He searched her. Like the others she had no wallet, no identification of any kind. They were clearly smart operators even if they had been dumb enough to take this contract. One of those left had to have something Victor could use. He didn’t want to entertain the thought that they might not.

He discarded the Beretta and picked up the dead woman’s gun. It was a good weapon, a Heckler and Koch USP, compact version,.45 caliber, with a short, stubby suppressor. He pulled out the eight-round magazine, saw the match-grade hollow-point rounds, and slammed the mag back in. Obviously a killer who took pride in the tools of her trade. Well, used to.

He grabbed a spare mag from her jacket before rushing out the back entrance and into the alleyway, keeping low, gazing left, then right, sweeping the HK as he looked. No one. He hid the gun in his waistband and headed toward the main street, pleased that finally one of them had a decent gun for him to steal. Assassins could have such very poor taste.

With the woman dead that made five down.

Only two to go.

There was a large crowd outside the front of the hotel. Guests and employees alike, shocked, overawed and scared, seeking solace together. Only a handful of people knew what was lying in a corridor on the fourth floor, but talk of blood and bodies had spread fast. A single policeman was doing his best to try and move them back. Pedestrians were rushing to the scene to find out what was happening.

Victor exited the alleyway and walked among the crowd, his pace brisk but no quicker than anyone else’s, moving laterally as much as he could, not wanting to give any possible snipers an easy target. It was unlikely that anyone would take such a shot, but he wouldn’t bet his life on it. He saw the blue van parked fifty yards down the street, sitting anonymously along the curb by a phone booth. The rear doors were facing toward him. He couldn’t see if anyone was behind the wheel.

If it hadn’t gone yet there was a good chance that at least one more assassin was still about. As Victor approached he caught sight of exhaust gases emanating from the van. Good, there would be someone behind the wheel while the engine idled. In the commotion, Victor knew he could get right up alongside the van before any driver knew he was there. He went to cross the street, his right foot leaving the curb, but he went no farther.

On the other side of the road, directly opposite from the hotel, a stocky man was hurrying down the steps at the front of a whitewashed apartment building. Slung over his shoulder was a large black sports bag, the kind that could easily contain a tennis racket, hockey stick.

Or high-velocity rifle.

He stopped dead when he saw Victor looking straight at him. His reaction a perfect ID. Both men stood completely still as chaos swept around them. The sniper was first to break the stalemate. He glanced to his left, toward where the van was parked. He and Victor were equidistant from it.

Victor took a step forward. The sniper took one backward. He reached into his jacket. Victor did the same. A police car turned onto the street, lights flashing, siren blaring. Both men saw it and any thoughts of drawing guns vanished.

The sniper again glanced at the van, perhaps in the hope that help might be coming. When he realized it wasn’t he turned around and rushed back up the steps to the apartment building.

Victor quickened his pace but to avoid drawing attention couldn’t run. He reached the opposite sidewalk in time to see the door slam shut behind his prey. He took the steps two at a time. He tried the door handle but it was dead bolted. He couldn’t risk kicking it in or shooting the lock through, not with more police entering the street.

Victor descended the steps and looked both ways down the street, searching for some way to get round to the back of the building. There was an alleyway twenty yards to the right. Victor hurried toward it.

As soon as he was out of sight he sprinted, coming out of the far end and into the backstreet,.45 in hand. No sign of the sniper. If he’d left the building already Victor would be able to see him now. Which meant he was staying put. Victor was surprised. The sniper had chosen to wait, to fight.

Victor wasn’t about to disappoint him.

The lock on the back door was a good one and would’ve taken Victor almost thirty seconds to pick had the fat.45 caliber slugs not blasted it to pieces. He loaded a full magazine and stepped into a wide, sparsely furnished hallway, the floor covered in a colorful mosaic. There were three interior doors, two with numbers on them. A large staircase dominated the space.

Victor approached it, gun held out before him in a two-handed combat grip. His hotel room had been on the fourth floor and so it would be from the fifth that the sniper had been covering Victor’s window. That room was familiar, safe. If the sniper had fled to anywhere, he would have gone there.

Victor took the steps one at time, slowly, quietly, always looking up, ready in case the sniper was waiting to ambush him. He reached the second floor, scanned the landing, then started his way up the next flight of stairs.

He paused for a few seconds on the third floor to listen. When he didn’t hear anything he made his way up to the fourth. From the fifth floor, he heard a door open, then a woman’s voice, somewhat surprised, but friendly, helpful.

“Est-ce que je peux vous aider?” Can I help you?

Then a clack clack followed by the thud as a body hit the floor. Victor made his move, sprinting up the flight of steps while the sniper was momentarily distracted. He saw the sniper as he was turning around from his kill, standing at the top of the stairs.

Victor fired on the move, the angle bad, and a hollow point blew a chunk out of the banister. The sniper instinctively lurched back, and two more bullets blew holes from the ceiling above him, a fourth struck the black iron lattice beneath the banister and sent off a flash of bright sparks. The sniper let off a few rounds from his own handgun, firing blind as he threw himself out of Victor’s line of sight. He appeared again briefly, firing as he moved, Victor returning fire, neither man hitting.

Victor went into a crouch before he reached the top of the stairs and peered through the iron lattice. He saw the body sprawled out in the doorway of her apartment. A silver-haired woman in a raincoat lay dead, her only crime having asked politely if she could help the stranger waiting by the stairs. A good deed was its own reward.

The other of the floor’s two doors was half open, the sniper nowhere to be seen. Victor crept up the last few steps. He looked over to the first half-open door. It led to the apartment overlooking the same street as the hotel. The place where the sniper had originally taken up position, the place to which he had no doubt retreated. Except Victor did doubt.

Making no noise, he carefully stepped across the landing, avoided the glistening pool of blood, and pressed himself along the wall. He edged toward the open door that led to the dead woman’s apartment. Victor almost smiled. He wasn’t about to fall for the oldest trick in the book.

When he reached the door frame, he looked across to the other apartment, the one where the sniper would have been stationed, judging the angle to determine where someone inside the dead woman’s apartment would need to be to properly cover the other doorway.

Victor crouched down; placed his left hand on the door frame; and, using it as leverage, spun himself into the room. He saw the sniper straightaway, in a crouch, leaning around a partition wall, gun trained at the door to his old apartment. The sniper’s eyes widened in surprise.

Victor fired twice, one bullet missing but the second grazing the sniper’s head above the ear, sending up a small spray of blood. The sniper managed to get a shot off in response before he fell back into cover. The bullet hit the door frame inches from Victor’s face, blowing a cluster of long wooden splinters into his cheek. He didn’t flinch.