Джеймс Паттерсон - Private Princess

It was the whispers. Flex is a pussy. Flex got his arse beat. Flex is crooked. Flex can’t be trusted. Flex knew that Morgan had started those rumors, and soon P-C-Gen was losing contracts hand over fist. Reputation was everything in this game, and Flex had lost his. What made it most unbearable to such a proud man was that no one had even been hostile about it. They’d simply stopped calling. And like guilty lovers, they’d stopped answering his calls.

And there was Morgan, the charismatic American twat who had whispered in the ears of CEOs, politicians and agents. Morgan was no soldier, Flex fumed to himself. He was a pilot who’d stuck his chopper into the ground, and hadn’t had the common courtesy to die with it, despite toasting his comrades. He was a schmoozing bastard, not a warrior, and Flex fumed at the thought of the prick’s smug face as he had stood over him in the gym and demanded — demanded — answers.

“Please don’t hurt me,” the doorman in Flex’s grip begged, sensing the rising swell of anger.

Flex obliged by smashing the man’s head into the elevator’s polished mirror. The man slumped to the floor, a smear of blood left behind by his ruined skull.

Flex looked dispassionately at the body. Another life taken because of Morgan. He was the instigator in all this. He was the one who didn’t have the decency to stand, fight and die.

“Bastard!” Flex roared in the confines of the elevator. “Bastard!” he fumed again, as the doors pinged open.

Early morning was a quiet time in the Shangri-La, customers of the five-star hotel asleep in their comfortable beds, or admiring panoramic views from their rooms over coffee. There were only a small number of people in the hotel’s reception, an international collection of the establishment’s workers, and all were pressed up against the glass of the floor-to-ceiling windows, their fearful eyes zoned in to the pandemonium on London Bridge below, where sirens wailed and lights flashed, dozens of police officers swarming about the bridge like ants on a log.

“I can see bodies,” a sharp-eyed receptionist gulped.

“Is it a terrorist attack?” one of the breakfast chefs asked, logging into Twitter.

“I hope not,” the duty manager prayed. The sound of the elevator doors pinging open behind them caused the group to turn. They stood frozen as they saw an armed police officer emerging, the body of the hotel’s doorman crumpled at his feet.

As Flex emerged from the elevator, he saw the fear on the faces of the people stood huddled in front of him. No , he corrected himself — not people. Sheep , just waiting for one of their flock to make the first move before the others followed. Flex could see their tiny minds trying to work out what was going on — a man lying slumped dead on the elevator’s floor, and a police officer — a symbol that they had been told all of their lives was a force for good — standing over him.

Flex decided he would help the sheep make up their minds, and shot the duty manager in the face.

Jack Morgan pressed himself as tightly as he could into the elevator’s front left corner. As soon as the doors opened, he expected incoming fire from Flex. Morgan would have a couple of seconds at most before the door was fully open, and he had less than half a foot of cover to hide behind. If Flex was waiting in ambush, Morgan would have a split second to decide if he would gut it out against all odds, or if he would hit the button to close the door and return him to ground level. Deep down, Morgan knew the decision had already been made.

For the memory of Jane Cook, there would be no retreat.

He watched as the elevator’s numbers crept upward, hitting thirty-four in a smooth stop. He pulled the pistol up to his shoulder, ready to punch out and aim immediately as the doors opened.

They did so with a pleasant ping, and Morgan prepared himself for a fusillade of gunshots.

None came. All was quiet but for the sobs of a chambermaid who leaned back against a high glass window. She was cradling someone in her arms. Morgan only needed one look at the limp body to see that the person was dead.

“Is he in here?” Morgan shouted, maintaining his position. “Is he in here?”

The woman shook her head and sobbed. Morgan stepped out, his eyes drawn to the body of a suited man who lay dead on the floor. Suddenly, Morgan’s ear was drawn to the sounds of relaxing, melodic music that continued to play in the reception area, despite the carnage that was playing out beneath the hidden speakers.

He swept his pistol left and right, but all was clear.

“Where is he? Where did he go?”

The chambermaid was incapable of speech, but she pointed in the direction of a second set of elevators.

“Does he have hostages?” Morgan asked, reaching into the woman’s pockets and coming up with her access card.

She nodded, sending tears dropping down onto the face of the young man in her arms. Morgan had no time to comfort her. He left, and ran in the direction of the elevators.

“Please don’t hurt me!” a man shouted. Morgan turned to see a businessman huddled shaking beneath a table. “Please!”

“Did you see who went in here?” Morgan asked sternly.

The man nodded.

“How many people with him?”

“Three, I think. Maybe four. Please don’t hurt me.”

“I’m not going to hurt you. There’s a woman over there.” Morgan pointed back toward the sobbing chambermaid at the window. “Grab her, and get downstairs. Go!”

After swallowing the lump of fear in his throat, the man scuttled away, and Morgan turned his attention to the elevator. It had only one destination: the highest floor.

He looked once more at the fleeing man, who had stopped at the sobbing woman, and was now moving her toward the elevator that would take them down to safety.

Morgan sucked in a deep breath to calm the nerves and adrenaline that pumped through his system. Then he cast a cool glance out at the magnificent vista of London.

Morgan had seen worse places to die. With that thought in his mind, he stepped into the elevator that would deliver him either to revenge or to his death.

“Get over there!” Flex ordered his six captives, brandishing his pistol. Four of them he had herded like the sheep they were from the thirty-fourth floor. Another two, both cleaners, had been acquired as they’d arrived in the building’s viewing rooms, and the highest reaches of the Shard. The viewing rooms were confined, Flex realized, and unsuited to his purposes — he couldn’t keep point of aim over all entry points, and he certainly couldn’t cover all angles in the room by himself, the layout stretching around the elevator at its center.

He realized there was only one true option for him. He dragged a hostage by the hair, moving the short distance to the window so that he could see the towers and buildings below, some reaching as high as the Shard’s waist.

“Look at the flags!” Flex told the younger woman. “What are they doing?”

“The flags?” she mumbled, confused.

Flex slapped her hard to sharpen her senses.

“I’ll look for you!” a young man offered bravely.

Flex didn’t need people deciding they were heroes. That could be trouble down the line, and so the young man’s offer earned him a bullet in the chest.

“What are the flags doing?” he demanded again, against the screams.

“Blowing! They’re blowing!” the woman bawled.

That was what Flex had seen, but his eyesight wasn’t what it had been, and he didn’t want to wager his life without a second opinion. Knowing that the winds were high, he made a calculated gamble. Chances of the commanders signing off on their snipers taking a shot in high wind speed, with hostages? Low. Chances of them storming the floor from a direction that Flex wasn’t facing, and killing him before he could react? High.