Oath of Office

Both Gaspard’s men wore loose short-sleeve shirts over T-shirts, untucked and open in front, perfect for breaking up the print of a concealed pistol. The bald man fell behind a step, protecting the laptop computer. Flat Nose put a hand behind his back, walking faster now, less than twenty feet from Jack.

Clark’s voice crackled in Jack’s earbuds. The comms net was good for about eight hundred meters but got spotty after that. A kilometer away and inside the hotel, the beginning of his message was garbled. “…your guy… leaving us. Possib… return… second location…”

Ryan was too close to respond now, too focused on the closing threat in front of him. Even if da Rocha ran straight to his room it would take him eight to ten minutes.

Whatever this was, it would be over long before that.

* * *

“Ding,” Clark said, “you and Caruso head to the Alfonso.” He watched da Rocha and Lucile Fournier leave the Russians’ hotel room on the screen of Adara’s iPad.

Chavez came back immediately, his voice unsteady from running down the stairs at La Giralda. “On the way.”

All of them had heard that Jack had seen someone coming out of da Rocha’s suite, presumably one of Hugo Gaspard’s bodyguards still out to avenge the death of their boss.

“Adara and I will stay here on station,” Clark said. “Ding, they’re out of comms range over there. Call me on my cell with a sitrep when you get there.”

“Roger that.” Chavez trotting now. “We should be ahead of them. We’re zigzagging southbound on the Plaza del Triunfo and then Miguel Mañara instead of going straight down Constitución.”

“The equipment?” Clark asked. The briefcase with the laser and receiving mic was purposely made of nondescript leather, but running with any kind of case was sure to arouse unwanted suspicion from police.

“Left it on the third floor, north corner behind the reliquary,” Caruso said.

The fact that the long-distance listening device was an expensive piece of equipment was not the issue. Tech like that was sure to make the news if it was found, and Clark didn’t want to spook the Russians if he could help it.

“On my way to pick it up,” Adara said. Retrieval of sensitive equipment often fell to her. Sexist though it was, getting past lonely security guards could be a little easier for a pretty woman.

Clark remained in the hotel room, watching the iPad. Where others might wear a trail in the carpet pacing to bleed off nervous energy, he sat motionless on the edge of his chair, hands on his knees, leaning forward slightly as if ready to pounce. A dozen different orders that he could give his guys ran through his head, things he would do, methods he would employ if he were in their shoes. But he held his tongue and listened. These guys were good. Trust came easy. Patience was an entirely different matter.

* * *

Most of the fights Jack had been involved in lasted just a few seconds — a couple went a bit longer. Six minutes — forget about it. Adara, the CrossFit diva of the team, had them doing “Fight Gone Bad” routines over the past couple of years. These killer cardio sessions consisted of three five-minute sets of assorted jumping, lifting, and throwing that were supposed to mimic the overall body workout of an actual fight. But even those dizzying, vomit-inducing routines lacked the shot of adrenaline and fear that went with facing another guy whose primary aim was to stab you in the liver.

Jack began to cheat his line to the right as he neared Hugo Gaspard’s men. The chime of the arriving elevator drew their attention down the hall. Midas barked something unintelligible, forcing them to split their focus and giving Jack the opportunity to close the distance between himself and Flat Nose, colliding with the big man’s chest before he could bring his arm around with the pistol. The Japanese called it butsukari—crashing in.

Jack squatted low the instant before he hit the Frenchman, keeping his body centered and pushing upward to drive the point of his shoulder into the other man’s solar plexus. The second man probably had a gun as well, but Jack used Flat Nose as a shield just in case that one decided to drop the laptop and engage.

A couple of inches shorter than Jack, Flat Nose had him by twenty pounds — and very little of it was fat. The Frenchman stumbled backward, but only a half-step, like a tree shaken by the ax blow, but certainly nowhere close to felled.

His hand already in position, Ryan slammed a hammer fist to the other man’s groin, this time driving him against the wall and pinning the gun hand there momentarily — long enough at least to give the guy with the laptop a side kick to the knee when he made a halfhearted advance.

Midas barreled by at that same moment, performing his own version of butsukari, and plowed into the guy with the laptop to smear him down the wall.