Oath of Office

“Let’s move,” Clark said. “I’d like to get da Rocha before they quiet him for good.”

Midas recalled the drone, and two minutes later the team spread out in the trees, far enough to get a wider field of view but close enough that they could still see one another in the long shadows. The Russians, if that’s who it was, made the classic mistake of forgetting about their six o’clock. Not wanting to make the same error, Clark, Adara, and Ding focused their attention forward with intersecting fields of fire. Midas kept an eye downhill with the MP7.

They found three dead sentries by the time they reached the tree line at the top of the hill — but they’d yet to hear a single shot.

* * *

Da Rocha pounded the arm of his lounge chair hard enough to spill his beer. “This cannot be right. The product is where it is supposed to be.”

Lucile lounged at the edge of the pool. “What? Have they forgotten to pay you?”

“They paid me yesterday.” He ran a hand through his hair and then checked a different account. Perhaps he’d checked the wrong one. “Half of it, anyway. I should have gotten the balance today, but now even the first payment has disappeared.”

“Odd,” Lucile said. “How did they access your accounts?”

Da Rocha heard a muffled grunt and looked over his shoulder to find that Ramirez was no longer at his post. His stomach sank and he found himself overwhelmed with a feeling he’d not had since working the docks. Someone was out in the trees. Someone dangerous.

Lucile felt it, too, and hopped out of the pool, streaming a trail of water as she padded quickly to her folded towel, where she’d left her Beretta. Pistol in hand, she pointed to the far end of the house without speaking and melted into the evening air to see what had happened to Ramirez.

Da Rocha had no weapon. That’s what he hired guards for. Feigning disinterest but half expecting a bullet to scream in and blow his head off, he walked nonchalantly until he was five or six feet from the patio door. A single bullet thwacked off the wall in front of him, chipping a perfect half-moon from the white stucco. Another zinged off the pavement, narrowly missing his heel. He heard the staccato cracks of supersonic bullets but no boom from the ignition. They must have been using suppressors.

He didn’t wait around to figure it out but ducked his head and ran.

* * *

Lucille Fournier tasted blood, as she always did when she was about to spill some. The toe of a leather shoe protruded around the corner, revealing the presence of a man, hiding there to ambush her. She smiled, the pink tip of her tongue moistening her lips, tasting the air, serpentlike. She would have just shot through the wall, but da Rocha believed in solid, near-soundproof houses, and like many of the interior walls, this one was painted concrete. With the Beretta aimed in with both hands, she began to sidestep, cutting the pie, planning to shoot the first bit of the man that she saw and then take care of the rest of the bits as they presented themselves. She’d made it almost all the way around when she realized it was just an empty shoe. Clenching her teeth, she spun too late, catching a powerful fist that slammed her against the wall and sent a shower of lights exploding behind her eyes. She attempted to bring up the Beretta, but her attacker struck her in the forearm with some sort of truncheon. He kicked the gun away when it hit the floor.

Two more rapid blows to the face left her staggered and dazed. She had to use the wall to keep her feet. Her vision was fogged, but she could just make out the Russian with the odd haircut standing in front of her, smirking.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk, Ms. Fournier,” he said, a pained expression on his face. “You make things so complicated. Internal piston ammunition, sophisticated shellfish toxins… People are not so hard to kill.”

As if to prove his point, the Russian raised his pistol and shot her just below the nose. If she’d had any thoughts of arguing, she left them on the concrete wall behind her, along with her teeth.

* * *

Clark shot the first Russian twice as he turned the corner by the pool. “Splash one,” he said. He kicked the man’s suppressed Glock into the deep end of the pool and continued forward. A deafening boom to his right told him Chavez’s Tac-14 had spoken. Another Russian staggered backward from behind one of the villa’s winged buttresses. Clark and Adara both shot the third Russian as he came out of a bedroom, unaware that the previous gunfire had been at, not from, his comrades. Adara shot the fourth Russian as he was drawing a bead on da Rocha, who wore a bizarre-looking swimsuit that looked like he’d made it from matador pants. The arms dealer was now sprinting as fast as his legs could carry him down the gravel lane toward the main road.