Rescue

  RESCUE

  A Codename: Hammett Thriller

  J.A. Konrath

  About RESCUE

  Her codename is Hammett. She assassinates targets for a secret government agency.

  But sometimes work becomes personal.

  His name is Tequila. He's a leg breaker for the mob, currently retired.

  But sometimes retirement doesn't stick.

  They say that no one knows what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. They also say that bad attracts bad.

  Hammett and Tequila are about to find out if those old sayings are true.

  ROME

  December 2008

  Tequila

  The man named Tequila was finishing a plate of pancetta at a wine and cheese shop on Via dei Querceti—pancetta marbled with salty lard that tasted like bacon-flavored butter—just eating and watching the gentle snowfall through the storefront window, when a government assassin walked past.

  Her short bangs were dyed from the last time he'd seen her. They were now a dirty blonde, and liberally speckled with snow. She wore oversized sunglasses, also snow-dotted, and the hood on her parka was up. The chinos she wore were nondescript, loose, hiding her athletic figure.

  She was no doubt trying for incognito. But Tequila knew her profile intimately well. Her cheekbones. Her jawline. The curve of her neck.

  This wasn't a woman you easily forgot.

  The last time he'd seen her was in Wisconsin. People had died. Lots of people.

  It could have been a coincidence they were both in Rome at the same time. But Tequila hadn't gotten to be as old as he was because he believed in coincidences. So he immediately acknowledged the threat, left a five euro note on his table, tugged on his wool bomber jacket, and walked out of the shop with his senses on full alert.

  She continued up the street, her pace brisk. He paused. The distinctive tread of her combat boots in the fresh snow made her easy to tail. But this woman was smart, smart as anyone he'd ever known, and she could have been leaving the trail on purpose.

  Wanting him to follow.

  He considered walking in the opposite direction. Leaving Italy. Renting a car with his fake ID and driving to the airport in Geneva, taking the next flight back to Chicago. But he had a reason to be in Rome. And Tequila wasn't one to back down from a fight, no matter how dangerous the opponent.

  In a holster against the small of his back nestled a compact Sig Sauer 1911, nickel-plated and dehorned, seven .45 ACP rounds in the magazine and one in the spout, cocked and locked. In his right cowboy boot, a .357 COP derringer; an exotic gun that had four barrels and a nasty kick. In his left cowboy boot was a seven inch Due Buoi stiletto. He'd bought the switchblade from a street vendor in Piazza Navona two days ago. The guns, he'd FedExed to his hotel before arriving a week prior. Tequila wasn't in Europe on a job, but he never went anywhere without weapons. Old habits.

  He dug his hand into the back of his jeans, moved the Sig to his front jacket pocket, and did a quick scan of his surroundings. Some cars. Some people. No apparent threats, other than the female assassin who'd just walked by.

  Tequila followed her, keeping twenty yards back, sorting through the possible scenarios.

  She either knew he was following, or she didn't.

  If she didn't, it wouldn't be easy to sneak up on her. This woman had training, and her training was extensive.

  If she was attempting to lead him into some sort of trap, she was either underestimating him, or fully prepared for anything he could throw at her.

  Tequila doubted she underestimated anything. If she'd come in peace, she would have walked into the cheese shop with empty hands. So this was either a crazy coincidence, or a sincere effort to do him harm.

  Or maybe there was another option. Maybe she was in Rome for the same reason he was. A tantalizing possibility. After all, they were in the same profession, sort of, so perhaps they had similar tastes. Similar obsessions.

  But the likeliest scenario loomed largest in his head; she was there to kill him.

  She turned west on Via Labacana, and Tequila walked to the other side of the street and crossed there, in case she was waiting for him around the corner.

  She wasn't. Her gait remained steady. Brisk but unhurried. This woman had a sense of purpose, knew where she was going.

  He kept pace, hand on his .45, envisioning the move he'd have to make if she came at him. He was almost thirty yards back, the four inch barrel on his Sig not ideal at this range, but he'd be able to pull off a headshot without needing all eight rounds. Tequila imagined the motion.

  Drop to one knee, make yourself a smaller target.

  Clear the pocket. The dehorning job on the gun would limit snagging.

  Bring the left hand up to support the right as you thumb off the safety.

  Wind is about 8mph, coming in from the southeast. Adjust.

  Aim for the face in case she's wearing body armor.

  Squeeze until the target drops.

  After pulling off the maneuver in his head four times, he divided his attention between his target and his surroundings. Tequila wasn't eager to walk into a sniper's crosshairs, so he scanned apartment windows and rooftops, oncoming traffic both vehicular and pedestrian, doorways and any street features big enough to hide behind. Via Labacana had a sidewalk—most streets in Rome did not—and it was wide, with tram tracks running down the middle.

  As he searched for threats, he subconsciously noted the environment. Bright and garish modern brand trademarks fought with clunky, muted post-war construction, layered over antiquity. Graffiti was everywhere. It had the universal city smell; exhaust fumes and garbage and sewage, but the scents from restaurants and shops gave it a spicier European flair. There seemed to be just as many tourists as natives, Tequila differentiating between the groups by the clothes they wore and the way they carried themselves. Foreigners looked misplaced, both in dress and sense of purpose. Italians seemed to blend in with their surroundings, comfortable extensions of the environment.

  Tequila passed the Mercure Roma Centro Colosseo hotel, keeping close to the building, clearing the corner and doorway. The east side of the Colosseum loomed four hundred yards ahead, and Tequila watched the assassin lengthen her stride, heading toward it. Tequila was hesitant to match her speed; she might have been attempting to draw him out. But the temperature had risen, and the light snow was no longer sticking. If he lost sight of her, he couldn't rely on footprints.

  Once again, Tequila considered turning around, leaving Rome.

  Once again, he dismissed the idea, continuing to chase after one of the most dangerous people he'd ever met.

  He passed a park on his right, leafless trees jailed behind a black, wrought iron fence, and lost sight of his target as a tram passed between them. Tequila felt a spike of adrenaline raise the hair on his arms, and he skidded to a stop. His subconscious had noticed something.

  What was it?

  A shift of her weight. A change in her balance. Just before the tram came, the assassin's leading right leg had straightened out.

  She was going to turn around. Then she was going to shoot.

  Tequila dropped a shoulder and rolled right, the Sig coming cleanly out of his pocket, his stomach smacking the street and his arms out ahead of him in a sniper position just as the tram passed.

  The woman fired three shots where Tequila had been standing a moment ago. She had a subcompact, from the distance it looked like a Glock, from the sound either 9mm or .40.

  Tequila squeezed the trigger of his own weapon, the bullet hitting low, straight into her chest. She spun, turned.

  He elevated the barrel a fraction and fired again, winging her shoulder.

  She ran.

  He follow
ed, so focused on his target that he only saw the Fiat coming at him at the last possible second.

  Tequila had always wanted the chance to jump over a speeding car. He wondered if he had it in him.

  He didn't.

  He popped up to his feet and launched himself at the vehicle, doing an aerial cartwheel over the hood, tucking his head, but his shoulder slammed into the windshield and spun him, making Tequila stagger on the landing.

  He let momentum take him, completing a round-off, then performing a dive roll over a gawking tourist. Regaining his balance, he watched the killer sprint toward the Colosseum, one arm behind her, firing without looking.

  The shots came surprisingly close, one of them tugging the collar of Tequila's jacket. It was the most impressive blind firing he'd ever seen, and instinct told him to dive for the ground. He resisted instinct, instead leaping to the left just as the asphalt at his feet kicked up with gunfire.

  Had he dove, he would have been dead.

  She was good.

  In full stride Tequila extended the Sig and fired again, aiming for the back of her head. She jumped, both shots hitting between her shoulder blades, and then she was scrambling up the iron bars blocking one of the access arches. She scurried to the top like a squirrel, then dropped inside the Colosseum and dashed into the darkness.

  Tequila headed for an adjacent arch, legs pumping hard, feeling the crosshairs all over him like crawling spiders. Unlike his opponent, Tequila wasn't wearing body armor, and she was no doubt aiming at him at that very moment. But he had a different skillset than she, and a silver medal in gymnastics to prove it. It's tough to shoot something in motion without leading the target, and when the target was a jumping bean it was next to impossible.

  Tequila eyed a guy selling pizza from a cart and altered direction while thumbing on his safety.

  Just like the Olympics. Except there's no mat, no audience, no judges, and I'm a lot older than I used to be.

  He did a one-handed cartwheel, twisted into a series of single-hand backflips, and with sufficient momentum leapt onto the food cart, vaguely aware of the sound of gunfire and the sensation of bullets zipping past. Tequila sprang off the cart, tucking and rolling in the air, somersaulting to the top of the gate and sticking to it like he'd been welded there. He swung a leg over, dropped to the other side. When Tequila hit the ground he had his COP .357 in his left hand, the Sig in his right, and moved in a crouch through the shadows.

  People noises ahead, and light. Tequila used darkness and millennia-old stone as cover, keeping low, eyes in constant motion, fingers on the triggers and pointed at the ground. Even on a cold, winter day, the Amphitheatrum Flavium had accumulated tourists. Tequila had planned to visit the Colosseo after lunch, and knew much about it from books and the Internet. According to history, the tiered seating could accommodate over eighty thousand spectators. Besides showcasing ritual executions, gladiatorial combat, and wild beasts, the amphitheater could be flooded with five feet of water, and ships engaged in mock battles known as navalia proelia. Beneath the arena floor was the hypogeum; a labyrinth of interconnected tunnels where underground shafts and lifts would introduce scenery and animals to the arena through trap doors.

  A marvel of engineering, so onlookers could be entertained by violence and death.

  Not much had changed in two thousand years.

  Tequila worked his way toward the crowd, jamming the guns in his pockets, scanning for threats. He made his way through ancient brick arches and columns, the stone under his feet worn uneven from untold millions of shuffling feet. The place reeked of history, and when he made his way onto the rebuilt floor of the arena—a section that jutted out fifty feet over the hypogeum—he cast his eyes out to the vast amphitheater around him and couldn't help but imagine the thunderous screams of crowds, the hot sand beneath his feet, the air thick with the stink of blood.

  And then he caught some quick peripheral movement from the right, a figure in the stands leaning over the edge, and he tucked and rolled as bullets chipped the concrete where he'd been standing. Tourists began to shout and point, and Tequila came up in full sprint with guns in hands, heading for the railing at the end of the walkway, and leaping over it—

  —airborne.

  Temporarily beating the force of gravity, Tequila chanced a look beneath him as his arms and legs pinwheeled. The hypogeum—the hidden basement of the Colosseum—had been ravaged by the centuries, only a few dozen walls and columns remaining of the section that once bore the weight of the arena floor. He quickly focused ahead and landed on a brick wall little more than a foot wide, doing a shoulder roll, popping onto the balls of his feet and maintaining his balance. He ran across the wall's top as bullets tore past him. The stone was crumbly, uneven, and slipping meant a fall of several yards. But he adjusted his center mass, feeling every divot and bump through the soles of his boots, correcting tiny errors as he made them. He bolted toward his target, watching as she dropped an empty mag and reached into a pocket for a spare.

  Then Tequila was jumping again, vaulting another railing, dropping from above like a bird of prey, knee raised and pointed to bear down on his attacker.

  She swung her pistol, connecting hard with his thigh, but his weight and momentum carried them both to the ground. She managed to twist away before he landed on her, and she locked Tequila's right hand under her armpit and began to snap her shoulder back into his face, spine to his chest, her butt to his groin.

  Tequila brought up the .357, and she kicked straight up, catching him by surprise with both her strength and flexibility, snapping hard into his knuckles, knocking the gun from his hand. Then she dropped her Glock and both of her hands twisted at his Sig, followed by her mouth, teeth sinking into his wrist.

  He took the pain, unwilling to drop the weapon even as she grazed his bones, and then she switched tactics and brought both knees to her chest, making him carry her weight, her right hand reaching for an ankle holster.

  Tequila dropped the Sig, fell backward, and used both his hands and feet to flip her off him, sending her over the railing, into the hypogeum.

  He did a kip-up, turning just as she was swinging back over the rail, a foot coming at his face. Tequila deflected, looked for his guns, and then was on the defensive as she came at him with fast, hard muay thai strikes.

  Tequila held his ground, planting his feet, blocking the kicks and punches, waiting for an opening.

  "Tequila," she said, dancing to his right. "I thought it was you. But I didn't remember you being so short."

  He pivoted to follow her. "Hammett. Still a psycho, I see."

  "Takes one to know one."

  She threw a karate crane beak strike, followed it with a spinning back kick. Tequila blocked both, and would have the bruises to prove it if he lived long enough for them to form. Hammett was the most dangerous of a set of identical sisters trained by the US government as covert assassins. She was smart, strong, expert in a few dozen forms of armed and unarmed combat, and about fifteen pawns shy of a chess set. Her particular brand of crazy was tough to pin down, but Tequila didn't need to consult the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders to understand that Hammett was a fucking nutjob.

  Hammett went with karate again, a roundhouse kick with her left leg, followed immediately by one with the right. Tequila slipped the first and caught the second in his hands, pulling hard. If he brought the fight to the ground, he had the weight and strength advantage. Hammett didn't seem eager to grapple, because she hopped over her own captured leg and planted her foot on Tequila's cheek.

  He managed to hold on, and torqued his upper body, followed by his hips, tossing Hammett like a hammer. She connected with a brick wall, bounced off, and landed on all fours. Tequila did a quick roll to a knee, and executed a palm strike, giving her all he had, catching her in the cheek. Hammett rolled with it, came up on her knees.

  She shook her head, then touched her tongue to her bleeding lip. "What happened to the good old days when a ge
ntleman would never hit a lady?"

  "I'm no gentleman," he said. "And you're no lady."

  Hammett lifted her chin and affected a French accent. "I'll have you know, monsieur encule toi salaud, that I attended Institut Villa Pierrefeu, the most prestigious finishing school in Switzerland. My professor said I was the best student he ever taught."

  "I bet."

  "It's the absolute truth. He said it after I fucked him. And before I killed him."

  Hammett sprung from her crouched position, rushing at him low, her hands curved into claws. Tequila countered with a series of flairs; a famous floor exercise element where the gymnast walked on his hands while swinging out his legs like a helicopter. He knocked away her fists with his left foot, caught her in the head with his right, and then did a judo roll and landed with a knee in her back. Tequila reached for her chin, then pulled, extending her neck backward, trying to pull her head off.

  Hammett curled up like a pretzel and donkey-kicked him between his legs, hard enough that Tequila saw stars.

  Then she did it again, and he abandoned his hold and rolled away, cupping his groin. Like every nut shot, the pain built slowly, then hit a crescendo that brought tears to his eyes.

  "Finishing school my ass," he groaned.

  "Serves you right," she said after rolling to her feet. "By the way, the easier way to snap a neck is sideways. You should have twisted rather than pulled. But you're not trained for that, are you? You're just some old gym monkey who breaks legs for a living."

  He blinked away his blurry vision. "And you're a psychopathic military experiment gone horribly wrong."

  "Again with the psychopath taunt. Have you looked in the mirror, lately? You're not exactly the poster boy for empathy. Anyone who talks to you for thirty seconds knows you're dead inside. Like recognizes like. The only difference between you and me is you're twice my age, have half my skills, and your balls are swollen."

  "You talk a lot."

  "Also, you're stupid."