Not the best way to die, goddamn it.
Smyth flailed again, sensing another floor flashing by and that his increasing momentum meant this was his last chance. The ledge hit his hand, his fingers closed.
And slipped off!
Smyth screamed. Adrenalin smashed through him. Somehow, he bought a second chance; his fingers again closing around the ledge. By luck and good fortune his feet caught on one of the building’s aesthetic outcroppings, a protruding figure-eight design of bespoke blocks. Even then his momentum was enough to make his feet slip and his fingers almost break.
But he held on. Panting, shaking, face pressed into the rough brick, he held on. And looked up at the window, just above the ledge. Panic wanted to take control, but Smyth wouldn’t let it. He was a soldier, trained, honed. His friends were fighting for their lives. Mai hadn’t texted him back.
With so much to live for and debts to dead friends that still remained unpaid, Smyth reached out and hauled his body up through the turbulent air. He gained the ledge, used his weapon to smash the window, and hurled himself inside.
A second was all he allowed himself. Then, body purged of excess adrenalin, he calculated his floor and ran headlong for the lifts. As a reward for his bravery the car stopped at almost every floor on its way up, but soon Smyth was inside and heading back up to the top floor; praying he wasn’t too late; resisting the urge to check his messages. When the buzzer dinged, Smyth leveled his weapon and eased out into the corridor. The door to Hayden’s room lay on the floor, the frame busted open. Bodies lay all around.
Mercs were filing toward the open door; new groups that had infiltrated the hospital using different means. At least eight… nine… ten.
Smyth didn’t stand on ceremony. Without a word, he opened fire.
Kinimaka was unconscious. Mac was victorious. All the meaty colossus had to do was neutralize him. Instead, the merc chose to punch the Hawaiian’s face into a pulp and it was the constant, painful blows that actually brought Mano back to consciousness.
Shit, that hurts!
Kinimaka opened his eyes. Another blow crunched into his cheekbone. Mac was above him; eyes feral, lips split and bloody, spikes of wood still sticking out of his face. The great fist he raised blocked out everything else, like a deadly, hard-hitting eclipse. When it descended at speed, Kinimaka lowered his forehead, still receiving a dose of sickening pain but also dishing out more than a satisfying measure. Mac yelped.
Gunfire sounded through the half-demolished wall that led back to Hayden’s room.
Kinimaka firmed his resolve. This piece of shit might well be of tyrannosaur proportions, but it was still a piece of shit. He blocked the next blow with upraised arms then dodged the next, rolling to the side. Though his head still spun he managed to grab one of the cracked walling blocks and swing it in Mac’s direction.
Mac’s fist smashed into the lightweight block, breaking it apart. Another yelp issued from the beast. Kinimaka threw another and another, knowing Mac was too big to evade them. Next, he hefted a broken piece of two-by-four and swung that over and over at his assailant’s head, making the man duck and cover. The wood landed time and again on exposed knuckles and wrists, flaying skin and drawing blood.
“Guess what, Mac?” an exhausted Kinimaka said. “You’re about to lose for the first and last time.”
The same thought had obviously struck Mac too. He withstood two more blows then charged forward, yelling, a lumbering titan with no concept of how to lose. Kinimaka inched to the right, rumbling loudly with effort and still thwacking his opponent.
Mac ran harder.
Seeing only one chance, Kinimaka slipped to the side as Mac ran at him, then, gripping his opponents armored vest, he hurled the man even faster on his course, the power of his arms practically sending Mac airborne.
And straight into the room’s only window. Glass shattered, a thunderous fragmented explosion. Mac lurched to a stop half-inside, half-outside the window, bent at the waist. Kinimaka felt every urge to topple him over and out into the night, but couldn’t bring himself to do that. Instead, noting the sudden lack of movement and hearing the drip of blood, he left Mac alone and ran back toward Hayden’s room. Walls spun around him, his feet felt like they were inside flippers running across a pitching deck. His recently pounded face bones ached.
Ducking through the gap, he took blocks and timber with him, making the hole even larger. Back inside Hayden’s room the first thing he saw was her grateful eyes, her shaking hands lining up a Glock, and then mercenaries flying through the door to her room.
Only they weren’t running. They were stumbling, sprawling, collapsing in death spasms. Kinimaka stopped for a second, but one of the downed men began to move, prompting him to stomp over and put an end to such audacity. The Hawaiian stamped among them, dealing out punches and kicks and ensuring the wounded stayed down. At last Smyth put his head through the door, checking the scene.
Hayden breathed heavily. “Thank God. Now let’s get our asses out of here.”
But Smyth was staring over Kinimaka’s shoulder with growing horror. “What the hell is that?”
The Hawaiian whirled, already fearing the answer. Sure enough, Mac stood there, but he was a terrible, twisted version of the nightmare figure that had already beaten and bruised him. The crag-like visage was bleeding, lacerated flesh hanging loose. The jaw was broken, twisted to an uneven angle. Teeth were smashed. The three spines of wood had been driven even further into the bridge of his nose and now protruded like small, deadly horns.
“Oh shit.”
The monster charged, bellowing like resounding thunder. Death and hatred shone from those violence-crazed eyes. Smyth opened fire, pumping bullet after bullet into the oncoming mountain of flesh. Hayden fired too, emptying her Glock. At first the bullets had no effect but little by little they took their toll, slowing Mac down until he shambled to a bloody, heaving halt, right in front of Kinimaka.
The Hawaiian punched him square on the nose. Mac wavered, but he had experienced nothing yet. Kinimaka bent over as Mac fell, hefted the man’s weight over his shoulders, and then lifted his bulk into the air.
Mac bleated, never guessing such indignity existed.
Kinimaka staggered under the weight, but tensed and flexed every muscle before throwing Mac across the room. Airborne, Mac pinwheeled helplessly, arms flapping like a mad marionette’s. Gravity didn’t give him much of a flight, but when it brought him back down to earth it did so brutally. Mac thudded into the floor with a sound that made all three of them cringe. The walls shook. The room seemed to sway, but that could have been Kinimaka’s unsteadiness.
“Really?” Smyth stared around the room. “You spent all that time with that guy? What were you doing? The waltz?”
“Not now.” Kinimaka hurt in a thousand places.
“You wanna know what I’ve been through?”
“No.”
“Really? Well, I’ll tell you anyway. First, I scraped my friggin’ fingers raw on that—”
Kinimaka tuned him out as he scooped Hayden up and tried to figure out which exit might be clear and what they should do next. If safe houses were no longer safe, where could they possibly go next?
Somehow, the CIA houses in DC were fully compromised. Only two places we can go, he thought. One, the White House, is closed to us. The other… might not be.
A call to Robert Price should do the trick.