Point of Contact

Jack spun into his fighting stance, desperately trying to remember what Amador had taught him— Stupid! He told himself. If it isn’t in your muscle memory now, don’t even try. John Clark had taught him that in real close-quarters combat, there’s no time for thinking — only instinct, drilled into him by hours and hours of practice. Jack had that in spades. He glanced at the karambit again, trying to shut his brain off.

At least he has only one knife, he thought.

Until Cigar Man pulled out another.

Fuck. Me.

He heard Amador’s voice in his head. When faced by a man who knows how to use two knives — RUN LIKE HELL!

But Jack couldn’t run.

He still had a job to do.

Cigar Man grinned, sensing an easy kill, even if the American was five inches taller. The man slid forward on his feet, gliding like a dancer.

Jack backed up, feeling the ground with his boots, hoping not to trip over one of the three bodies he’d put on the floor—

Too late.

Jack began to tumble backward on the corpse of the first man, and Cigar saw his chance, lowering his blades and charging.

But Jack saw his chance, too, as he regained his balance. He raised the wrench behind his ear and threw it as hard as he could. The heavy chunk of steel crashed into Cigar’s chest. He oomphed a blast of smoky air, stunned, dropping his knives. Before the blades hit the ground, Jack was on him, wrapping his arms around the man’s throat. He didn’t want to kill this one — he needed answers. But the old fighter wasn’t finished. He blasted his two forearms up and between Jack’s, breaking his grip. Then Cigar Man smashed his forehead forward, catching Jack on the chin.

The head butt felt like a gunshot against Jack’s jaw, and white stars exploded in his eyes. In the hyper slo-mo of his adrenaline rush, Jack heard his wrench clatter on the concrete, and even smelled the cigar stink on the man’s breath.

Cigar Man’s head butt missed its mark. Jack was staggered, yet still in the fight.

The man lunged at him now, hands extended, reaching for Jack’s throat. But Jack seized Cigar Man’s wrists and dropped, pulling the man’s hands against his chest and rolling onto his own back, shoving his boots into the man’s crotch and thrusting his legs straight up, catapulting the man up and over until Jack let go. The weight of both their bodies and the centrifugal force launched the smaller man through the air, smashing him against the sharp steel corner of the electric lift table, snapping his spine.

Jack leaped to his feet. The first thing he did was check his body armor — the three-hundred-page Dalfan product catalog he had secured with duct tape inside his waistband. The blade that struck his gut penetrated a good half-inch. He thought about pulling out the paper armor but changed his mind.

The night wasn’t over yet.

Jack checked Cigar Man’s pulse, but his lifeless eyes were confirmation enough. Jack cursed. How could he find out who these jerkwads were?

He rifled through the pockets of all four men quickly, keeping his head on a swivel and his ears sharp to make sure he wouldn’t get ambushed again. The search yielded nothing, not even pocket litter. More proof they were pros.

Jack’s only recourse was to snap photos of each of them with his iPhone, then grab fingerprints, using a military-grade phone app that Gavin had installed on every Campus smartphone. “Just in case,” he’d said at the time.

Jack scanned the area again. Still safe. He knew pros wouldn’t leave behind what he was looking for, but he needed to take an extra few minutes to check out what he could. He felt the pressure of the clock. No way these guys were working alone; their buddies could be just outside the door. Worse, the cops might show up. How would he explain four dead bodies?

Jack wasn’t a sociopath, but he didn’t feel bad about killing men who tried to kill him without provocation. That might not matter to the Singapore justice system, and he had little interest in finding out.

Jack picked the bloody crescent wrench up off the floor and wiped it on the shirt of the youngest killer, then pocketed it. No point in leaving evidence behind. He thought about trying to hide the bodies or even burning the place down to cover his tracks. He glanced up at the rafters and saw only two cameras pointing in his direction, both disabled. Yeah, they were pros, all right, and not any more interested in leaving evidence behind than he was.

“Thanks for the assist, assholes.”

No point in adding arson and evidence tampering to any future charges. He told himself that, more than likely, whoever sent these guys were more interested in recovering their bodies than he was. Four dead men would lead to a lot of questions, some of which would lead back to their handlers.