PLEDGE OF HONOR: A Mark Cole Thriller (17 page)

4

Cole looked down at his wild boar stew, forked some into his mouth, and then allowed his peripheral vision to once again take in the table across to his left.

He and Morgan were eating lunch in Café Corse, a traditional Corsican restaurant in Marseille’s Old Port district, just a block or two south of the Quai de Rive Neuve and its views from the harbor out across the Mediterranean.

Ortoli had assured him that the restaurant was a regular haunt of Benedettu Agostini, the man who had supposedly been the main point of contact between the Corsican mafia and Javid Khan. Ortoli claimed he had only been the money man, and had merely been the conduit for the funds; it was Agostini that involved himself with the details.

Benedettu was the oldest son of Antone Agostini, the head of Marseille’s Agostini Family, which was one of the region’s most feared crime organizations. Similar in organization to the Sicilian Mafia but far more secretive and tightly-knit, not a great deal was known about the Corsican mob as a whole; it became well-known back in the 1970s for its heroin trading links to the United States which had been labeled the ‘French Connection’, but since then it had managed to keep its secrets intact.

What
was
known was that it was highly organized, quick to use violence, and had its fingers in a whole host of pies – money laundering, racketeering, drugs and arms trafficking, extortion, prostitution, loan sharking and contract killing were just some of the Agostini Family’s specialties.

Antone was still the titular head of the family, but much of the day-to-day running of the clan had now been devolved to his son.

Cole could only hope that Ortoli was right, and Benedettu would have some further information on the deal that had been made with Khan.

A quick check of Ortoli’s cell had given him Agostini’s number, and a quick call to Michiko had confirmed the cell phone’s location. When she’d first checked, the phone – and presumably the man himself – was in a large townhouse over to the east of the city in La Tirone.

Cole considered driving over there, but Michiko placed twelve other cells in the immediate vicinity and Cole decided that the risk was probably just too high there. Instead, he decided to take Ortoli at his word, set up shop inside Café Corse nice and early, and wait for his man there; and updates from Michiko, who was tracking the movement of his cell phone, had soon indicated that Agostini was en route as promised.

The restaurant was small, with just a dozen tables set up for no more than forty diners, and Cole considered this to be both an advantage and a disadvantage. It would restrict his own movements, and ensure that he was noted by the bodyguards; but on the other hand, it made it natural for him to be sitting so close to Agostini, who had turned up just ten minutes after Cole and Morgan. In a larger venue, it would have been more difficult to ensure he was nearby, and if Cole had forced the issue it would have been obvious.

As it was, Agostini and his entourage, when they’d arrived, had been shown to three tables that had been reserved for them, just a single table away. They were up against the far wall, Agostini in the corner for both privacy and security.

He was a more handsome man by far than Ortoli, with unlined Mediterranean good looks more usually found in television soap opera stars than in violent gangsters. His file said he was sixty-one, but he looked twenty years younger. Like Ortoli, he looked like he worked out too, his athletic body covered by an expensive, well-tailored suit.

Across from him sat a younger man that – from the pictures that Michiko had been able to drag out of the French National Police files at such short notice – seemed to be his brother, Saveriu Agostini. To Saveriu’s right was an older man who Cole recognized from the files as Matteu Mariani, supposedly a lawyer and a key adviser to the Agostini regime.

The fourth man on that table was unknown, but from his posture and body language, Cole pegged him as a bodyguard. Presumably a trusted man, as he was seated at the table where business would surely be discussed over cannelloni and Corsican wine.

The other two tables – one behind the older Agostini, the other positioned obliquely between the senior table and Cole’s – were filled with lower-ranking gunmen, bodyguards for the top boys. Cole could see that they were all armed, and wasn’t too happy about his chances at the moment.

There would doubtlessly be others outside too, including a driver in a car with the engine running in case the Agostinis needed to make a quick exit.

Cole and Morgan had discussed her waiting outside in order to feed him information about who was out there, but in the end it was decided that the street was too small and she would be spotted too easily. It also made Cole’s presence in the restaurant less threatening; the gunmen may well have approached him if he’d been there himself, whereas a couple having lunch together was much less suspicious.

The only trouble was, Cole was still struggling to come up with a viable plan for actually getting his hands on Agostini.

He’d already checked out the restroom, just in case it was possible to follow the man in there, knock him out and drag him out through a window. But the restroom’s windows were tiny, and there was no other way out; the door also led directly into the restaurant itself, which would mean Cole dragging the man’s unconscious body back toward all his armed friends.

The other option would be to ambush Agostini in the restroom and then put a gun to his head, holding him hostage, and bluff his way out of the restaurant.

But this wouldn’t be a guaranteed success either; it wasn’t even very likely that the man’s bodyguards would allow their boss to use the restroom when someone else was already there. Gangland assassinations were a constant fear for these people, and they had developed practices to avoid them at all costs.

Cole scanned the room again, taking in the details once more.

There were nine gunmen in the restaurant, not including the two brothers and the lawyer who were probably also armed, nor the unknown quantity of other guards outside.

He was armed now though, both with the FN Five-seveN, and a Glock 17 he’d taken from Ortoli’s bathrobe. He’d considered letting Morgan have one of the pieces, but had thought better of it; he’d have to give her a bit of coaching first, and there’d been no time.

The FN held twenty rounds, the Glock seventeen; that made thirty-seven rounds for the nine bodyguards inside.

Was it doable?

He considered the matter as he ate the stew – which was actually quite delicious – and made small-talk with Morgan.

It
was
doable, he decided in the end –
if
he shifted a few more pieces around the chessboard to put things a little more in his favor.

Just twenty minutes later – just when Agostini and his men were tucking into dishes of pasta, meatballs, salmon and roasted lamb – it happened.

‘Pig!’ Morgan said with utter disgust, rearing up out of her seat and jerking her wine glass toward Cole, the contents showering his face and clothes. Without another word – and with everyone in the restaurant watching her – she turned and stormed out of the front door without another word.

Cole had known that the outburst, combined with Morgan’s almost supernatural beauty, would distract every single man in the room; and her figure would continue to distract them as she left, their eyes drawn to her legs, her ass.

As she left, Cole started to wipe himself down with a large napkin. The men turned back to him; some offered him their condolences, either in French or in broken English, while others were still watching wistfully after Morgan.

Cole nodded and thanked them as he continued wiping himself, then heard Morgan’s voice coming through the earpiece he’d placed in his right ear – on the opposite side to the gangsters – before Morgan’s outburst.

‘Three cars,’ she said, ‘right outside, a driver in each, nobody else.’

Cole didn’t reply, just stood, the napkin at his waist. ‘I suppose I’d better go and get cleaned up,’ he said sheepishly, to general grunts of amusement, before turning toward the restroom.

He moved away past the table, maneuvering between his own and that of the bodyguards, controlling his breathing as he went, preparing himself for the split-second timing that was going to be necessary to make this thing work.

Then he was past the tables, the bodyguards behind him at one table, the other two tables now at an open angle to him.

He noticed that they were no longer interested in him, just a man whose girlfriend had thrown a drink over him who was headed to the restroom to dry himself off.

It was the last mistake that some of them would ever make.

He span back round to the table he’d just passed and kicked out toward the back of the first man’s chair, jamming him forward at an angle so that he was trapped against the table
and
the man next to him. The force of the kick also pushed the table up against the two men on the other side, ensuring that – for a vital second or two at least – all the gunmen at the first table would be unable to react.

At the same time, he whipped the napkin away from his lap and his other hand came up firing the FN, two shots each to the men sat at the second table of bodyguards. They all struck heads or chests, blood spraying over the café walls even as Cole drew the second pistol and aimed it at the first table. Keeping the FN pointed at Agostini’s group, he opened fire with the Glock, taking out the gunmen just as they had recovered their equilibrium from the kick and were getting their own weapons out.

Again, Cole gave them two shots each; not so accurate this time due to their heightened awareness and their rapid movement, but still hitting heads, necks, chests, faces. It wasn’t perfect, but the damage was done – eight men down in under five seconds, and the remaining bodyguard at the head table was only just getting his weapon out.

It wasn’t the pistol Cole had seen concealed under his jacket though; instead, it was a KRISS Vector submachine gun – a wicked little weapon capable of firing the powerful .45 ACP cartridge at a rate of 1200 rounds a minute.

But Cole had the drop on him, and his finger depressed the trigger.

The shot went high though, and Cole felt a massive impact striking his body; caught off-guard, he was taken to the floor and saw that the short, barrel-chested restaurant owner was on top of him, fists flailing. Cole processed the fact that the man must have tackled him full-force, loyal to his customers, perhaps even connected to them in some way.

Cole’s knee came up into the man’s groin, and then he kicked him upwards; but as the owner’s form emerged from between the tables, the Vector opened fire, cutting the small man to ribbons, spinning him around in a ballet of bullets and blood.

Cole crawled through the narrow gaps between the other tables, the sounds of gunfire mixing with the terrified screams of customers and staff as they tried to flee the little restaurant before they, too, were killed in the crossfire.

Cole, head pressed to the floor as the Vector ripped its .45 rounds across the café, saw legs shuffling toward the exit from Agostini’s table and knew that the bodyguard was leading his bosses out of there.

He waited until they were at the door and then – calculating their relative positions from below by the shoes they wore, processing where their bodies would be – he jumped back to his feet and started shooting again.

But he only managed one hit – catching Saveriu in the shoulder – before two men stormed through into the restaurant to cover the chiefs’ exit, their own submachine guns erupting across the half-destroyed restaurant, catching the few poor unfortunates who had still not made it out of there and adding their bodies to the fatalities.

Cole dived back to the glass-covered, blood-soaked carpet as the rounds flew high over his head. He figured it must be two of the drivers, one having stayed back to spirit Agostini, his injured brother and Mariani out of there while they kept the assassin – Cole – pinned down back in the restaurant.

But as their magazines emptied and – even above the screams of the injured and the nearly-dead – he heard the telltale dead-man’s click, Cole shot back up to his feet, taking out both men with headshots from across the restaurant.

Their heads snapped back with the force of the rounds, brains blown straight out the rear of their skulls into the street beyond.

Cole was already moving, desperate to get to Agostini before the driver could get him out of there.

But as Cole reached the doorway, there was a colossal noise from outside, the horrific sound of metal on metal as if there had been some sort of gigantic crash.

Taking a deep breath, his hand went to the door and pushed it open, guns at the ready and wondering just what the hell he was going to find out there.

5

Cole burst out of the doorway, body low to the ground and both pistols raised, and scanned the narrow street before him.

He saw Agostini, his brother and the lawyer in the back of a black Mercedes sedan parked right outside, the bodyguard in the front passenger seat; saw also the rental hatchback they’d hired from the airport, its hood crumpled in half from being crashed into the right rear wing of the sedan. Morgan was behind the wheel, her face set, determined not to let the bastards get away.

And then the bodyguard opened fire on the rental, the Vector spraying the hatchback, shattering the windshield and forcing Morgan to slide deep under the dashboard for cover.

Cole shot at the tires, but they held; probably armored, perhaps like the rest of the car. He immediately switched to firing at the driver, but his rounds bounced off the bullet-resistant glass. The bodyguard’s window was open, but he was on the other side; Cole started running to get around the vehicle, but it was too late; the driver jerked the car backward, dislodging Morgan’s hatchback, and accelerated off down the street.

Cole didn’t even bother firing after the sedan, instead rushed toward the rental to give chase. Morgan had reappeared, and was starting the engine; but it only caught for a fraction of a second, and then died. She tried again, and it died once more.

Cole wasn’t surprised; Morgan had rammed a cheap rental engine-first into the rear of an armored sedan. She was never going to have won that particular battle.

Oblivious to the chaos in the street – the screams of terror, frightened citizens running this way and that – he turned back to the sedan, its horn blaring as it tried to force its way west down the narrow Rue Sainte. And then, just one block later, he saw it take a right turn, disappearing from view north on Rue Fort Notre Dame.

He processed his option in seconds and then, without a word to Morgan who was still trying to start the stricken rental car, he pocketed the FN even as he whipped the Glock into the face of a passing cyclist.

‘Me donner la bicyclette!’ Cole screamed at the man. ‘Maintenant!’

Give me the bicycle! Now!

The man responded instantly, hands up in the air as he backed up off the bike.

Cole kicked his leg over and a moment later he was off and flying, pocketing the second pistol as he went.

Agostini had gone straight then right, but Cole saw a flight of stone steps almost immediately opposite that led down to the Rue de la Paix Marcel Paul, another narrow street that ran parallel to Rue Fort Notre Dame, and accelerated hard toward it.

Pedestrians – already shell-shocked – screamed again as they saw him coming, diving out of the way as he blasted off the top step and sailed through the air to the first landing, the suspension doing its best to absorb the impact; and then he raced forward until he was shooting off the next set of steps; reached the second landing, accelerated and jumped again, this time hitting the street proper and using the momentum to propel the bicycle forward as fast as it would go, legs pumping as hard as he could possibly manage.

The street opened out into a busy square, full of stalls and tented outdoor cafés. He was forced to weave the bike in and out of the crowds of people, hoping that nobody would try and stop him. But it was no good; he was trying to look through the crowd to Rue Fort Notre Dame beyond hoping to get a glimpse of Agostini’s sedan, but there were too many people in the way.

Without slowing down, Cole pulled out the Glock – the louder of the two pistols – and, maneuvering the bike with one hand, he pumped three shots into the air with the other.

The reaction was instantaneous, people suddenly desperate to get out of the way of this maniac on a bike; and within seconds, the view towards the street on the western side of the square was clear. Cole continued racing across the paved square at an angle, relieved to see the sedan still on Notre Dame – just visible at the top of another set of stairs – traveling slow due to the snarling traffic; and then it was out of sight again, and Cole cut north on Place aux Huiles, sure now that Agostini was headed toward Quai de Rive Neuve, the road that bordered the old harbor on its southern side.

He pumped his legs even harder, the crowds now separating easier as they saw he had a gun; he shot past the ramp to an underground garage, and could now see the harbor road up ahead. Without traffic, he thought he might even be able to reach it before Agostini did.

But what then?

Hell, he thought, he’d figure it out when he got there.

But only seconds later he
was
there, right on the busy waterfront; hundreds of yachts before him in the harbor, dirty white in the November gloom; hundreds of bars, cafés and restaurants lining the street to both the left and the right; pedestrians scattered everywhere, locals and tourists alike.

And then the armored Mercedes appeared there too, taking a right turn onto Rive Neuve just in front of him, literally a mere body length away.

The bodyguard, seated in the right-hand passenger seat, saw the approaching cyclist just instants later, and Cole observed the Vector coming out of the still-open window; but as in the restaurant, Cole had the drop on him, only this time he had no interference from other people and opened fire before the man had the chance to squeeze his own trigger.

The Glock’s 9mm rounds tore through the man’s neck and face, blasting blood, brain and tissue back out over the driver.

The driver lost concentration for a second as he reacted to the blood-spray hitting his face, and the car swerved slightly before he regained control; but by then, Cole’s bike had reached the sedan and smashed straight into the side of it, Cole throwing his body through the open window as the vehicle took off up the street, clawing his way through the small opening and into the interior of the car.

His hands went immediately for the wheel, leaning across the driver and jerking it to the left, forcing the car to cross the center of the road; then Cole caught sight of Agostini in the rearview mirror raising a gun toward him and let go of the wheel, dodging to one side. The driver corrected the car’s direction just before it would have hit an oncoming delivery van, at the same time as the shots from Agostini’s gun hit the windshield, the armored glass absorbing the force without shattering. But the spider-web cracks started to spread across the inside of the glass, and the driver was forced to carry on down the Rive Neuve partially blind to what was in front of him.

As the driver struggled to keep the car on the road, Cole whipped round in his seat and gripped hold of the barrel of Agostini’s pistol, smashing his own weapon across the man’s handsome face.

The lawyer was reacting, but not to attack Cole. Instead, he was fumbling with the door lock; and when he finally got it open, he threw himself out of the car, Agostini’s injured, bleeding and half-conscious brother Saveriu shouting obscenities after him as he hit the street.

The open door was ripped off its hinges moments later by a passing car, but the heavy sedan held its course, taking a curving left onto Quai des Belges. The large expanse of pedestrianized concrete that led to the harbor was a buzz of activity, the tented stalls of the city’s famous fish market teeming with people ensconced between the Grande Ombrière – a one thousand square meter rectangular canopy that, in fairer weather, would protect them from the sun – on the one side, and a one hundred-foot high fairground Ferris wheel on the other. But Cole had no time to take in the waterfront scenery, as he made another attempt to grab the wheel and force the car off the road. He could hear sirens in the distance now, and knew he didn’t have long left.

With Benedettu dazed from Cole’s pistol-whipping, it was his injured brother who leapt to the defense of the driver this time, leaning forward across the front seat and wrapping his good arm around Cole’s neck, pulling back hard and squeezing him up against the seat’s headrest.

The pain was intense, Saveriu’s forearm digging into Cole’s throat, and he was amazed at the man’s strength; but the younger Agostini had forgotten that Cole still had a gun, and instead of trying to break his grip, Cole simply put the barrel of the Glock backwards over his own shoulder and pulled the trigger.

Cole felt the blood hit the back of his head, and th
e
forearm released him instantly. He turned, and saw the shot had taken Saveriu straight through his own throat – a neat little hole at the front, the spinal cord blasted out of his neck at the back.

Benedettu Agostini, though dazed, received his brother’s body onto his lap, tears already at his eyes. Cole saw him start to move towards the front cabin, a murderous rage on his face, but Cole was already moving himself.

Impatient with his ongoing struggle with the driver, Cole raised the Glock and took the man out of the picture completely with a shot to the head. The side window was painted bright red with the man’s brain tissue, and the driver’s bodyweight collapsed across the steering wheel, taking the Mercedes once again across the center of the street; but when Cole tried to correct it and guide the car to a stop, Agostini finally reached him, hands raking Cole’s face, pulling his hair back and sinking his teeth right into the side of his neck.

Cole shouted out in pain as the teeth sunk in deep, and he felt the warm blood running freely down his neck as he tried to keep control of the car.

But it was too much, and he finally let go of the steering wheel to try and remove Agostini from him.

And that was the exact moment the sedan drifted once more to the left, straight into the path of an oncoming truck.