Jack Preston shifted uncomfortably in his chair before nodding.
“Whoever this guy is – whoever these guys are – they’re unlike anything we’ve ever seen or gone up against.” Tom leaned forward and looked at Preston with a thin smile. “I don’t know who you sent to find these guys, but unless he’s one brilliant fucking agent, my guess is that he has no chance.”
Preston flipped the folder closed and leaned back in his chair. “And what do you suggest I do, Tom? Pull him out? Let these guys kill another Petronus employee and then walk off into the sunset? This is probably the only chance we’re going to get for Chrissake! I gave him the address nearly eight hours ago. He checked in from the Dongying train station over an hour ago. He’s already on-site.”
Tom nodded his head reluctantly. “Which is all the more reason to give your agent a heads-up. It wouldn’t hurt for him to take extra precautions, would it sir?”
“Perhaps,” Preston replied. “Assuming he hasn’t found them already.”
Tom stood up to leave. “Don’t take this the wrong way Director, but I hope for his sake he hasn’t. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some more letter reading to do.” He walked to the door, then turned and looked back at Preston sitting sullenly in his chair. “By the way, sir – do I know the agent you sent?”
Preston looked at him absently for a moment before giving him a smug smile. “I can’t say that you would, Tom.”
Tom nodded his head. “Right. Good afternoon, Director.”
Jack Preston waited patiently for Tom to walk out of his office before grabbing his cell phone and quickly dialing a number.
50.
Sergeant Kearney moved cautiously down the fifteenth floor corridor of building 847, the pistol in his right hand concealed under his tactical vest. Like the courtyard below, the building was eerily quiet; its tenant now absorbed by the surrounding factories. Reaching apartment 1556, the sergeant paused next to the open door and brought his handgun to his chest. He stood silently, listening intently for any noise within the dark interior. Hearing nothing, he stepped back, raised his handgun into position and stepped inside.
As a trained sniper with over forty successful special-ops missions under his belt and twenty-eight confirmed kills, Sergeant Kearney was familiar with nearly every form of tactical situation imaginable. His resume contained a wide range of expertly neutralized targets – a political figure enjoying his final course at a fine Italian restaurant, a vacationing drug czar playing on a jet-ski with his boyfriend in Thailand, a Congolese warlord raping a young girl in central Africa – all of them completed without so much as a scratch or a close call. The nearest he had ever come to a mission failure was an assignment two years earlier to neutralize an informant for a terrorist cell operating in the Philippines. The informant had been a beautiful twenty-something girl. Upon targeting her in his riflescope, Kearney had made a brief but nearly disastrous error – he’d looked at her as human. Had it been a short target window, he would have likely blown the mission. Luckily he’d had just enough time to regain his composure and complete the shot. Regardless of the diversity among them, the sergeant’s victims had one thing in common –
None of them had ever seen him coming.
But as he stepped inside the dark interior of apartment 1556 with his handgun raised in front of him, Sergeant Kearney suddenly realized with the certainty of gut instinct that his luck was about to change.
He had barely leveled his gun on a man seated in front of him when a piercing, high-pitched scream erupted from the nearby corner of the room. Kearney instinctively turned to his right, his eyes straining to see clearly in the dim light. A small black box that appeared to be a speaker stood on a table. Kearney began to move towards it when a sudden flicker of light coming from the seated man caught his attention. Unable to hear and barely able to see, the sergeant dropped to one knee and aimed his gun at the man’s chest. The muzzle of the handgun flashed to life as he placed four rounds through the man’s heart with lethal precision before rising to his feet and retreating backwards towards the safety of the door. Once there, he slowly swept the room with his handgun.
At that same moment, the high-pitched tone stopped.
Disoriented and nearly deaf from the noise, Kearney crouched in the entry of the apartment, watching intently for any other signs of movement. The body of the first target lay motionless next to him, a pool of dark blood collecting around the man’s ash-colored face. Even without clearly seeing the damage he’d inflicted, the sergeant knew the silhouetted man seated in front of him must also be dead.