Death Mask. Alex Archer
blew, and the men turned their faces away to protect their eyes as the glass shattered.
The window blew inward, showering the three men deadlocked in a late-night meeting in the Rojo International offices with deadly rain that cut through their designer threads as if they were paper.
Less than a minute had passed since the team had rolled out of the helicopter. Fifty-five seconds, to be precise.
All six team members swung inside the gaping wound in the side of the skyscraper before the last glass fragments had started their downward spiral to the street below.
A hail of gunfire tore into the ceiling, meant purely to terrify.
It had the desired effect.
A second volley of gunfire had two of the suits dancing in jerky rhythm as their bodies were riddled with bullets. Blood spattered the wall behind them, leaving silhouettes of the dying clearly visible.
The third man sat motionless in the midst of the carnage. Well, not quite motionless, the team leader realized, seeing the man’s eyes dart to the Mark Rothko painting on the wall that had caught some of the blood spray. The arc of red was incongruous with the blocks of color. The man seemed more concerned about the damage to his painting than he was about the two men bleeding out on the expensive silk rug.
He said nothing.
The boardroom door burst open and another man—broad, burly and dead before he took his first step inside the room—managed a single shot before a hail of bullets took him down. The bullets cut through his torso, the impact driving him back through the doorway.
“Two more,” the leader said, motioning left and right for two of his men to go on the hunt while the other three followed him.
The man at the table didn’t so much as flinch as cable ties were slipped around his wrists and cinched so tightly they drew blood. He looked up at the security camera high in the corner of the room, making sure it saw everything. The red light winked back. It was recording.
“You,” the leader said to one of his men, who crossed the room quickly and blacked out the lens with spray paint.
Ninety seconds had passed since the helicopter had touched down.
Everything was on schedule. Clockwork precision. The silent alarm would have been tripped the second the window shattered. Police response times were fast when it was big money they were protecting, but there was no sign of any kind of armed response yet. The leader had it timed to two minutes twenty-five for the first siren. Anything after that was sloppy, and he wasn’t about to let sloppiness carry the day. He’d planned for two twenty-five; he’d stick with the plan. More gunfire ripped through the office, followed by the crash of furniture being tipped over.
There was a single shot after that, then silence.
The two men sent on patrol returned to the boardroom as a harness was being strapped to their target’s chest. One of them gave a single nod, confirming that everything had been taken care of.
No one had imagined an “unbreakable” window on the thirty-second floor posed a substantial security risk. Not the architects. Not the men who had taken up residence in the high castle of Rojo International’s offices. And most importantly, not the man being strapped into the harness by his team.
“Move,” the team’s Number Two barked, hauling their captive to his feet.
The man resisted, but that only resulted in pain as Number Two delivered a punishing blow to his gut that doubled him up, and as his head came down, a crunching right uppercut that sent him staggering sideways. “Move,” Number Two repeated, and this time the man did as he was told.
“You are going to pay for this,” he snarled. Rather than another blow, his defiance was paid back with silence—a wad of tissues forced into his mouth and a strip of gaffer tape slapped across it. Number Two dragged him to the window and stood only inches from the edge, grabbing a fistful of his hair and forcing him to look down.
The drop was dizzying.
“A spectacular view, I’m sure you’ll agree, Mr. Braden?” the team leader said, bracing himself against the window frame. “An entire city quite literally at your feet. Look at it. Drink it in. It could well be the last thing you ever see. I’d hate for you to forget it.”
* * *
GARIN BRADEN WASN’T used to people treating him like this. He wasn’t a victim. He’d lived his entire long life by one simple credo: “Do unto others before they can do unto you.” A man didn’t get to Garin’s age by being a victim. He pushed back against the hand on his head, but the man didn’t relinquish his grip. Garin felt the air rush into his face. It was all too easy to imagine the sidewalk rushing toward him. He swallowed. He wasn’t in control. He didn’t like that. He tried to run through his options, but with the harness pinning his arms, and the assassin’s fingers tangled in his hair, there was little he could do. Sadly, learning how to fly wasn’t possible, though it was looking increasingly like a necessity. Lacking wings, Garin felt hands on the center of his spine and then he was kicking against nothing, falling.
For a second—the silence between terrified heartbeats—he was suspended in the air thirty-two stories above the Madrid streets before the line hooked through his harness snapped taut and stopped his plunging descent. And then he was rising as he was hoisted toward the roof.
Less than a minute later, a battered and bloody Garin Braden was secure in the helicopter, the last of the team clambering in to join him; another thirty seconds and they were airborne.
They were more than half a mile away before they heard the sirens of the first responders.
All the money in the world hadn’t been able to keep Garin Braden safe.
The clock was ticking.
24:00—Madrid
The drumming vibration of her cell phone on the nightstand dragged Annja Creed out of sleep. For a moment the noise had been part of the surreal landscape of her imagination, but as she opened her eyes she completely forgot what she’d been dreaming. Annja had been in Valencia for a week working on a piece on gargoyles for Chasing History’s Monsters, and now she was in Madrid, recharging her batteries. There was nothing like the mix of modernity and history as a backdrop for a little R & R. She looked at the alarm clock and saw it was ungodly early, for a vacation day. Who in their right mind would be calling? Then she realized it was probably Doug Morrell, completely forgetting she’d booked the next few days off. Her producer could be a pain when she was overseas, always wanting an update, querying her expense claim or just reminding her the show needed to be sexy. That was the nature of the beast, after all. Sexy television. Sexy history. Sexy monsters. Sexy claims of links between the two. She’d just turned the latest segment in. Doug could wait. She rolled over and closed her eyes again, but a second and a third call came in quick succession.
She gave in and picked up.
“What do you want, Doug? It’s the middle of the night.”
That wasn’t quite true. The morning sun filtered through the too-thin hotel curtains, picking out the cigarette-smoke discolorations on the fabric.
It wasn’t Doug. “Check your email. Click on the link. I will wait,” the voice said. She couldn’t place it.
“Who is this?” Annja heard another voice in the background but couldn’t catch what was being said. The line went dead. She checked her recent calls, but the number had been blocked. Annja pushed the covers back and sat up. It was almost seven, and the cleaners were already moving around outside her room, no doubt wishing she’d go down for breakfast so they could do their jobs.
She got out of bed reluctantly and headed through to the bathroom. She’d check her email, but not before taking a hot shower to help wake her up.
When she emerged, one towel wrapped around