Mirage

“Tell her to get into the pool and stay there,” Juan said, still speaking Russian.

The Chinese girl must have understood the language because she rose from her chaise and jumped awkwardly into the azure water, her eyes like saucers and her pretty face ashen with fear.

Kenin regained some of his lost composure, his eyes hardened, and though his hands were still up, they were no longer comically stretched to their limit as they’d been seconds earlier. He demanded with hauteur, “Who are you?”

“The best man at Yuri Borodin’s wedding. And right now I am begging you to give me an excuse to put a bullet between your eyes.”

Understanding dawned on the rogue admiral. “You’re the Chairman. You are Juan Cabrillo.”

Juan saw motion out of the corner of his eye and reacted on pure instinct. He triggered off a half dozen rounds so fast, it was as though the FN were an automatic weapon. He glanced left and saw Kenin’s butler stagger out from behind a big rubber tree. Five of the six shots had hit him center mass, blood stained his white jacket. A MAC-10 machine pistol fell from his nerveless fingers as he pitched face-first onto the tile decking.

Kenin used the momentary distraction and took off ru

Cabrillo still closed the gap. Kenin wore open-toed moccasins under his linen slacks and they slapped with each stride. Juan was readying himself to tackle Kenin from behind when the Russian stopped ten feet shy of the elevator vestibule, turned, and threw the punch he’d trained his entire life to throw.

Juan too had stopped short and reared back slightly but still took the most brutal punch he’d ever felt. Kenin knew his opponent was going down, though he hadn’t yet fallen. Kenin had broken his wrist throwing that punch, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that he was about to escape. It didn’t register that the man who had somehow breached his security swung the big pistol up just enough that when he triggered off a round, it took off the Russian’s pinkie finger at the first knuckle.

Kenin clutched at his bloody hand when this newfound and sharper pain exploded over the pain of his cracked forearm. Blood sprayed the wall behind him while the severed digit landed in a flower bed to their right.

“Next one’s in your heart,” Juan snarled. He was still woozy from the hit but recovering fast. He waved the gun to indicate he wanted Kenin to return to the pool.

The girl remained in the shallow end, clutching the edge, leaving only her dark eyes showing.

Cabrillo tossed a towel to Kenin to staunch the bleeding and closed up the Russian’s laptop. He also pocketed a pair of cell phones from the table where Kenin had been sitting. Juan found another in the girl’s wicker bag. There would be no useful intel on it, so, with an apologetic shrug to the girl, he flipped her phone into the water.

“Let’s go,” Juan ordered. He and Kenin returned to the elevator. As a precaution against being overcome by the gas he’d earlier dispensed, Juan pulled a pair of filter masks from his equipment pouch and fitted one over his nose and mouth and threw the other to the Russian.

The elevator doors were open.

“Sit in the corner on your hands.” He waited to push the button to the thirty-ninth floor until Kenin was in the correct position.

Juan had him stay there for most of the trip, getting him to his feet just as the elevator car slowed. Cabrillo pulled him up by his injured right arm. Kenin sucked in air through his teeth from the pain.

The elevator dinged open. The Chairman studied the room beyond Kenin’s shoulder, the barrel of his FN Five-seveN pushed into the Russian’s spine. There were three guards dressed in matching uniforms. These were tier two protection, not the elites who had been upstairs. Two of them were huddled over a chessboard while the third had his feet on his desk and his nose buried in a magazine. Beyond them were plate-glass windows and the beautiful cityscape.

This floor must have been ventilated with the rest of the tower because these men were conscious. Juan pulled off his mask and bellowed in Russian, “On your feet!”

The three men turned and saw their boss and assumed he had issued the order. They leapt guiltily and stood at attention. It was only then that Juan revealed himself. One man stupidly reached for his holstered pistol. Cabrillo couldn’t afford to take chances now and put two in the overzealous guard’s head.

The remaining guards threw their hands into the air and started begging for their lives. Juan had them give their pistols the old two-fingered toss and then ordered them to cuff each other to the desk with the plastic zip ties they carried.

He used one of the ties to secure his prisoner’s hands as well.

Cabrillo was just pushing Kenin toward the door that would lead them out of this office when all hell broke loose. The door exploded off its hinges, and Chinese men in uniforms, like the one Eddie had described seeing in the lobby, came pouring through. They were armed but also very poorly trained, for when they saw Juan’s pistol, they started firing like madmen. The windows behind Juan cascaded earthward after being ripped to shards by countless bullets. Kenin took a barrage of shots, his body jerked back by the impact. He lurched drunkenly as Juan dropped low. Kenin rolled over Cabrillo’s back as the momentum thrust him through the gaping window frame. They were forty stories above the street, and Juan just managed to see the shock and rage in Kenin’s eyes before gravity pulled him from view.

Yuri would have loved the irony that the evil and malignant man who had ordered his arrest had died at the hands of his own inept guards. This wasn’t exactly the revenge Juan had envisioned, but it was satisfying all the same.

Cabrillo returned fire. He still had more than twenty rounds in the Five-seveN, and he laid down a covering barrage that let him retreat to the elevator. He hit the button and changed out the spent magazine. This new one was his only spare. He could hear bullets impacting the outer door as he was lifted clear. The laptop had been hit in a corner, but it looked like nothing vital had been destroyed.

The guards who’d rushed in must have been stationed outside the main elevators on thirty-nine. They were the ca

Juan resettled his mask and rode up one level. The door opened to a utilitarian space. The luxury apartment would be upstairs. This area was for the guards and staff. A small side table was against the wall opposite the elevator. Juan dragged it over so it prevented the doors from closing to keep the men downstairs from using it. They wouldn’t have access to this floor via the emergency stairs, but they would have them guarded so no one could come down. Juan was, essentially, trapped.

But had he been Pytor Kenin, he would have a third way, a secret way, out of the penthouse. He searched quickly. He found a few more guards and staff members unconscious in their rooms. And then he found the escape shaft he was sure Kenin would have installed. It was in a specially made phone-booth-sized room. The ceiling was open so he could see into the top floor of the penthouse. Looking down, he saw nothing but a black abyss.

But right in front of him was a fabric escape tube with an i