While Ethan closed the hatch door, Blake glanced around, and saw what he was looking for. “There,” he said, pointing to a wall ladder on their left. “We’ll go up two floors; they shouldn’t expect us to head that way.”
They began to climb, Ethan in the lead. He made the journey faster than Blake, who had to crook his elbow onto each rung before hauling himself to the next. His wounded leg burned from the exertion.
Shouts in Russian filtered up from the elevator car. “They’re almost in,” Blake said, urging Ethan to move faster.
When they got to the sixth floor, Ethan climbed around carefully to the doorway side. He was sure-footed and made it there safely. Once in position, he began prying the doors apart. After a few moments, it seemed he was making no progress; each passing second felt like an eternity.
“Hurry up!” Blake said.
“It’s not as easy as it looks, pal,” Ethan grunted between breaths.
Finally, the doors began to give way enough for Ethan to put the whole force of his shoulders and legs behind the push. When he had enough room to squeeze through, he turned around. “Come on, get over here.”
From below, the elevator car’s hatch popped open, and Blake saw at least five Russians inside the box. “Shoot the cable — we can take them all out at once.”
Ethan aimed at the cable and fired until his clip was empty. The blasts bounced off the walls, and Blake’s ears began to ring. Only two shots hit the mark; one glanced harmlessly off the thick cord, the other made direct contact but yielded no result.
“Well, that didn’t work. What about that plan you had?” Ethan said.
“That was the plan!” Admittedly not the best he’d come up with, but he wasn’t about to say that to Ethan.
“What? Are you kidding me?”
Blake glanced down. One of the Russians was climbing through the hatch. Shit!
“Okay — I’m going to jump,” Blake said. “You need to catch me.”
Ethan looked like he wanted to argue, but he stowed his gun and held out his arms, bracing his legs for the catch.
Blake hooked his stump around the ladder so he could tap commands on the watch and mentally calculated how to make the jump.
He looked down again. The first Russian was standing on the top of the elevator car, raising his gun. A second was now emerging through the hatch.
Blake sprang forward. As his body passed the support cable of the elevator, he tapped the teleporting prong of his watch. Again he disappeared in a rush of air and a thunderous crack. Then he was back again, still soaring through the air, arms outstretched. Ethan almost missed catching him, having lost visual on his target in midair for that split second. Somehow he managed to grab Blake’s wrist with one hand and grip his jacket with the other, pulling him to safety.
A screeching noise blared from below. Blake looked down and saw that his plan had worked. The elevator careened down the shaft, carrying the Russian soldiers with it.
59
A Lifeless Orderly
Petrov Zolner sauntered down the hallway, his gas mask hanging from his hip and bouncing off his thigh with each step. He stopped to chisel another slanted gash into the barrel of his rifle.
Twenty-eight.
Killing had always been easy for Petrov. He’d been personally groomed by Der Attentäter, but he had a feeling that he enjoyed taking life more than his teacher. There was something almost romantic about being up close to his victim, watching the life drain from their eyes. It was always his preference to torture before the kill. When they lingered, fighting the clutches of death, the experience was even sweeter.
This time, orders were different. Playing with his prey wouldn’t be tolerated, but he hadn’t been told he couldn’t have a little fun along the way. He’d been instructed to lead the men in and out of the hospital, but that wasn’t his way. He cared little about giving orders; Petrov worked alone.
The metal taps on the heels of his boots clicked on the tile floor, a dead giveaway to his position, but a noise he savored. Like a clock ticking down. A white-coated doctor heard him coming and dashed out from his hiding spot, running down the corridor. He’d give the man three seconds. The time would be measured by three CLICKS.
One. Zolner’s slow, rhythmic step rang down the dark hallway. He’d always thought the clinking of his boots made such an ominous sound as he walked, and he reveled in the knowledge that it petrified his victims.
Two. Even now, as the doctor sprinted for safety, Zolner knew the sound of his approach sent fear running through the man’s body.
Three. He brought up his rifle in a fluid motion and released a single shot. The man gave a strangled cry and crumpled, skidding against the surface of the floor. The screech of flesh dragging against tile echoed in the hall as his body slid to a halt.
Zolner didn’t get his knife to add another notch into the barrel. Not yet. This man wasn’t dead. He hadn’t planned on a kill shot. His aim had been purposefully low, striking the man in the back. The thought that he might have paralyzed the doctor made his smile widen.
The clicking of his boots rebounded off the pale walls as he approached the fallen man. He was pulling himself along the ground, a red trail of blood standing out against the white floor behind him like a streaking comet in a dark sky.
Zolner tapped his foot against the wound in the man’s back, and the doctor let out a scream. In answer, Zolner kicked him onto his back and squatted down to get a closer look at the next tally mark on his gun.
“Do you have wife?” Zolner asked, eyeing the man as he spoke. His thick, harsh accent butchered each word he spoke
“Yes,” the man coughed. Blood coated his busted lips like garish clown makeup.
“Do you have children?”
The man nodded.
“Do you think my knowledge of this will spare your life?”
The doctor’s face filled with horror and he tried to slide farther away. “I don’t know.”
“It won’t. Today is the day your wife becomes widow and your children become orphans.”
The man began to cry, his lips opening in a grotesque circle, tongue arched in the back of his mouth. “Please, don’t.”
Zolner stood and inspected his prey with a pretend frown. Then he casually leveled his gun and fired twice. A spatter of blood hit his face and he wiped it away. He pulled the knife out again and cut another fine incision into the black rifle barrel.
Twenty-nine.
He blew the flakes of metal out of the newly formed gouge and strode casually down the next hall, on the hunt for number thirty.
He kicked in the first door he came to. It swung wide, hit the wall, and bounced back toward him. He stopped it with his foot and surveyed the room. A man lay in a hospital bed — in a coma, from the looks of it — with a tube threaded into one nostril.
Zolner snorted his disgust. This was not sport. He might as well kill a child as it slept.
As he exited the room, he heard a loud, crashing explosion over the sound of gunfire. Chatter came through his earpiece in Russian, “They’re on floor six!”
So they had come right to him, rather than going down. This was an unexpected but pleasant development. As luck would have it, he was on the sixth floor.
Zolner smiled and walked onward. The only thought on his mind now was: Thirty and thirty-one.