Mitchell nodded. ‘So be it.’
The two guards had made a mistake that so many made, supposed experts in close protection who used their weapons and physical prowess to intimidate instead of common sense and good training to control a situation. Their mistake was in keeping their weapons with range of Mitchell’s long arms and vice like grip, even though they were behind his shoulders and technically out of sight.
Mitchell whirled right as he dropped down into a crouch, his hands landing on the pistol barrel of the guard behind his right shoulder and twisting the weapon onto its side as he pulled it down. Mitchell twisted and grabbed the guard around the neck, putting his body between himself and the other two men in the room to foil their aim. The other guard tried to counter the movement and aiming for Mitchell’s head, moving to his left as Mitchell’s prisoner struggled.
Mitchell’s hand was still wrapped around the guard’s pistol as he slipped his finger over the guard’s trigger finger and pulled hard. The trigger closed and the gun fired as Wilms drew his pistol and rushed in.
The shot hit the second guard in the chest and he staggered to one side as Mitchell flicked his right boot out and it impacted Wilms in the stomach with enough force to fold the old man up, his pistol still in his hand. Wilms’ breath rushed from his lungs in a wheezing gale as he collapsed to his knees.
The fallen bodyguard tried to aim again, the 9mm in round in his chest not enough to stop him dead. Mitchell hurled the man in his grip toward his comrade and the bullets slammed into his body with a double thump that Mitchell felt in his own chest through the bullet-proof vest he wore as he threw the gunman to topple onto his companion. The guard’s weight slammed down to pin his companion on the floor and block his aim, his gun arm pinned pointing away from Mitchell.
Mitchell stepped forward and slammed his boot down on the guard’s face, a dull crunch echoing through the room as his skull was fractured. The other guard stared lifelessly into eternity as blood poured from his chest in copious floods across the carpet, one of the bullets having evidently pierced his heart.
Mitchell turned to see Wilms valiantly try to lift his pistol. He took a single pace and grabbed the weapon, wrenched it from Wilms’ grip and then stepped back. The whole event had taken seconds, but now both guards were neutralized and Mitchell held the only available weapon. He held one finger to his lips as he looked at Wilms and then beckoned him to follow, knowing for certain that the room would have been bugged and that support for Wilms would be here within moments.
Wilms, his guts convulsing, staggered to his feet as Mitchell pulled him along and out of the room. He closed the door to the room and dragged along Wilms behind him to room 37 and shoved him inside. The two young occupants were conscious now, their eyes wide with fear and their mouths silenced by gags as Mitchell stormed back in with Wilms and quietly closed and locked the door behind them.
‘You’ll never get away with this, Mitchell,’ Wilms spat above his pain.
Mitchell slid the pistol into the waistband of his pants and grabbed a plastic biro pen from a shelf as he strode toward Wilms. One thick hand grabbed Wilms’ collar as the other drove the pen into his body.
Mitchell knew all about pressure points, used to create excruciating pain with minimal effort. He clamped one giant had over Wilms’ face and drove the tip of the pen up under the old man’s ribs. Wilms’ face tightened and his eyes flew wide as he screamed in agony, the pen grinding against his innards without breaking the skin.
‘You’ll do what I say,’ Mitchell growled as he lifted Wilms off his feet and across to the window.
Outside the room, Mitchell heard the thunder of boots running down the corridor as MJ-12 bodyguards rushed to the room where the gunshots had been heard. Somewhere in the distance across the city, Mitchell could already hear wailing sirens closing in on the Upper East Side.
‘I can find you, anywhere,’ Mitchell went on, twisting the pen this way and that. ‘I can hunt you down and kill you at leisure, so don’t you ever tell me what to do again. Those days are over. You will gather Majestic Twelve here in the city with LeMay among them. He will be the patsy, the reason that MJ-12 is exposed to surveillance, not you. Do this and you will be immune to prosecution. Fail, and I will find you.’
Mitchell slammed Wilms’ head against the wall with enough force to knock him unconscious. Carefully, he laid the old man on the ground and then opened the window. Outside, the sirens were growing louder and he knew that the MJ-12 bodyguards would not linger and await the arrival of law enforcement that had most likely been called by the panicked owners of the hotel upon hearing gunshots upstairs. Mitchell pulled his cell phone from his pocket and took a single picture of Wilms lying on the floor at his feet.
Moments later, he heard the bodyguards leaving, hurrying down the corridor outside again to avoid being caught on the scene. As he had figured, they also used the stairwell. Mitchell glared at the two captives, both of them stricken with terror as he approached them and opened the man’s wallet, which had been left on the bedside table. He slid a credit card into the wallet and closed it again.
‘You’re in no danger and if you do as I say you’ll never see either of us again,’ he assured them both. ‘This man is an enemy of the state and highly dangerous. If he wakes up and is able to identify you, he will have you killed. On that card is an account containing fifty thousand dollars. It’s yours, if you check out of this hotel this very minute and say nothing to anybody about what’s happened.’ Mitchell leaned close to them as he loosened their bonds, his dark eyes burrowing into theirs as he drew the pistol from his waistband. ‘But if you fail to comply with my demands, guess who’ll you’ll be seeing again?’
The guy, faced with a dilemma, forced a look of heroic and reluctant defiance onto his face. The girl simply stared at the gun for a moment and then at the wallet, already spending the money inside it. Mitchell let them think about the gun for a moment longer, and then he stood up and moved to the open window. Room 37 faced to the north east, as opposed to the entrance to the hotel on the south west side. Mitchell climbed out of the window and hurried down the fire escape and onto an alley between the hotel and a small shopping mall.
Moments later, he vanished into the crowds heading north.
A swarm of police hazard lights flashed in the street as Lopez stood alongside the pool car with Vaughn and watched as two bodies were carried from the hotel in body bags.
‘We can’t walk in there with all of the police around,’ Lopez said into her cell phone as they watched from afar. ‘It looks like Mitchell met with this Wilms and then must have got bounced by MJ-12 agents or something. Both the agents are dead, Mitchell’s missing and they’re releasing the hotel’s residents one by one.’
Doug Jarvis’s reply came back over the line.
‘Police radio reports are suggesting an argument gone wrong between two men,’ he said. ‘Nobody’s mentioned anybody else in conjunction with the attacks matching Mitchell’s description.’
‘He’s gone,’ Lopez snarled as she clenched her fist in exasperation. ‘He must have fled before the uniforms arrived and somehow Wilms must also be gone, if he was here at all.’
She was about to curse again when her cell beeped and she looked at the screen. An image had appeared, that of an old man lying on a carpet, perhaps dead, perhaps unconscious. The message had been sent from Mitchell’s cell phone, the one handed to him by the DIA for tracking purposes. Beneath it was a message from Mitchell.