They seemed to be alone in the place.
"Kirsten, you here?" Nimec called again.
Still no answer.
Noriko tapped his arm. "Look," she said, pointing straight across the living room.
The back door was wide open.
Nimec's eyes flicked between her and Osmar.
"Come on," he said, and rushed toward the door.
The two intruders paused in the hall and exchanged glances. Confused, frightened staffers poured from doorways on either side of them. Not a word was spoken. They could see that the greatest commotion was down the left bend of the corridor, and knew the bodies of the guards had been discovered. Their original intention had been to walk out the main entrance, and they would have to gamble on still being able to leave that way in the disturbance. It would be dangerous, but any attempt to leave the building through emergency exits would trip sensors that would likely pinpoint the specific door being opened. And they had no illusions about having eliminated the threat from security. The men at the surveillance monitors would not have been the sole members of the plainclothes team on premises. And there was the uniformed guard at the door.
The intruders could only keep their fingers crossed that he'd be sufficiently distracted for them to slip past. Otherwise, they'd have to kill him, too.
They moved forward through the scared, noisy people in the corridor, and were nearly at the checkpoint where they'd had to leave their guns when an alarm sounded, a loud on-and-off noise that grated on the eardrums. The guard at the door seemed to be tracking them with his eyes as they approached.
"We're going out to radio for assistance," the one who'd called himself Lombardi said. His hand was in his jacket pocket.
The guard looked at him.
"I'm sorry," he said. "The building's been sealed."
"Don't insult me," Lomardi said. "We have a job to do."
He started to move forward, Samford walking beside him. The alarm grated on and on.
The guard clamped a hand around Lombardi's arm.
"You need to call somebody, we have phones in here," he said. "But nobody's leaving."
Lombardi smiled. His hand was still in his jacket.
"Don't bet on it," he said, and squeezed the trigger of the pistol he'd taken from the guards in the monitor room.
Hit at point-blank range, the security guard catapulted backward off his feet, a cloud of blood exploding from his chest. Lombardi pumped two more bullets into him as he dropped to the ground, finishing him.
He turned to his companion and waved him along. He was aware of screams, pale faces, racing feet behind them on the concrete floor.
They hastened toward the door, and got as far as the archway of the weapons detector when someone behind them shouted out an order to halt. They kept walking.
"I said freeze!" the voice repeated. "This is your final warning!"
Without turning, they quickened their pace.
A gunshot fired out from behind them. Lombardi whirled and saw a plainclothes guard in the center of the corridor, both hands around a gun, his knees bent in a shooter's stance. Lombardi returned fire, missed, heard a thud-thud-thud from the suited guard's gun, and then was slapped across the middle by something he didn't see. He looked down at himself, his eyes wide with shock, and had just enough time to glimpse the bloody amalgam of flesh and shredded clothing that had replaced his stomach before he crumpled in a dying heap.
The other intruder reached for his own gun, but before he'd gotten it out of his pocket saw two more plainclothesmen emerge from the branching corridors at his rear. They all had their weapons drawn, and had triangulated their aim to put him in a perfect crossfire.
"Hold it!" he said. Dropping the gun to the floor, kicking it away from him, and slowly raising his hands above his head. "Don't shoot, okay? Okay?"
Their guns extended, the Sword ops moved in and took him.
Swinging around the grille of a car, Kirsten tore into the aisle and ran like hell, making for the driveway in a wild headlong dash.
She heard overlapping footsteps behind her, close, close, and pushed herself to move even faster, her legs pumping, arms working at her sides like pistons—
And then, suddenly, one of her pursuers sprang from behind a parked car several yards in front of her.
Between her and the driveway.
His right eye was bloodshot and swollen, and there was a thin line of blood trickling down his cheek from its lower lid.
It was the man she'd grappled with in the apartment. He had some kind of gun in his hand — a submachine gun, she thought, though she was hardly an expert — and was holding it out at her.
"No more shit from you," he said in Bahasa.
She halted, glanced over her shoulder.
Two more of the men who'd come for her were walking quickly up the aisle in her direction, their firearms held downward, flat against their legs. The fourth stalker had emerged near the spot where she'd been hiding.
"Just come on over here, I won't hurt you," said the one blocking her path to the driveway. He motioned with his gun. "Let's go."
Kirsten didn't budge, and was amazed to realize she was shaking her head in the negative.
He shrugged, holding his weapon steady. She could hear the other three coming close behind her.
"You want to wrestle some, more, we wrestle," he said, and took a step forward.
"Hold it right there! Bayaso reya/"
The voice echoing through the court stopped all four of the men in their tracks. An expression of stunned surprise on his features, the one in front of Kirsten abruptly looked around for its source.
"Drop the gun!" the voice said in Bahasa.
Still looking from side to side, the man blocking the driveway moved the gun off of Kirsten, but didn't lower it.
Kirsten heard a crack like the sound of a detonating firecracker. And then a blossom of crimson appeared in the middle of the man's rib cage and he pitched facedown to the asphalt, his submachine gun clattering from his grasp.
"I hope the rest of you are smarter," the voice said. "It's finished."
Kirsten turned her head, saw one of the gunmen behind her start to raise his weapon, instantly heard two more sharp cracks — only now coming from a different part of the court. The man screamed and fell over clutching his knees, blood spraying out from between his fingers.
The remaining pair of men tossed down their weapons and started to run, scrambling out of the aisle, and then bolting wildly toward the driveway exit. No one tried to stop them.
Her eyes wide and staring, Kirsten looked uncomprehendingly around the court, and all at once saw a brown-skinned Malay spring to his feet behind the tail of a car, several aisles down and directly across from where the first stalker had fallen dead. An instant later two more people appeared near the one who'd been shot in the knees — a white man with close-cropped hair and an Oriental woman.
The man with the short hair holstered his gun beneath his jacket and approached her.
"Kirsten, it's okay, you're safe," he said in a calm, level voice. "I'm Pete Nimec."
She started to say something in response, but her throat had closed up, and her teeth were chattering too violently.
Instead, she strode over to him, put her face against his shoulder, put her arms around him, and started crying.
Noriko had gone to wait in the apartment with Kirsten while Nimec and Osmar took care of business in the parking court.
"Mr. Nimec," Osmar said. "There is something I must show you."
"Right."
Nimec finished flex-cuffing the wounded man, folded a blanket he'd gotten from the apartment under his head, then went over to Osmar.