The Diaries - 01 (52 page)

In his bag,
outside, were two flash-bangs, just like the one that had killed the kids in Crete.
 
He’d made a conscious decision not to hang
one off his belt before he came in, and now he regretted it.
 
Again, that hot dry day—the day of a thousand
nightmares—was back to haunt him again.
 
If Nicky was in this bathroom, as Gage suspected, the concussion grenade
was all that was needed.

Gage repositioned
the Auto Mag, silently cursing himself.
 
With several deep, silent breaths, he forced himself to focus.
 
To be ready.
 
He eyed the opening to the bathroom.

There appeared to
be no windows inside, so the entrance was very dark.
 
Gage used his hand to reach around the
corner, gently feeling the wall until he found the light switch, half expecting
to lose his hand in the process.
 
He
found it, flipping it on without incident.
 
With a final steadying breath, he spun into the opening with the pistol
in front of him, instantly seeing Nicky Arnaud flattened against the far wall.

While Gage had
felt Nicky Arnaud could possibly be hiding in the bathroom, he hadn’t counted
on the mobster’s readiness.

The high boss of
the Glaives was aiming a gleaming pistol at Gage, holding it with both hands.

 
 
***

 
It was the American Jean had warned him about!
 
The supposed fucking CIA man who wanted Leon
and no one else.
 
Nicky knew it the
second he saw the camouflage shirt.
 
The
dark beard threw him a tad, but it was him.
 
It had to be.
 
He’d come to finish
the job.

That lying sonofabitch Jean
Jenois
.

The Frenchman had chosen
not to take a shot at the intruder’s hand as it moved over the wall, feeling
for the light.
 
With the glow bleeding in
from the bedroom, the wall was but a shadow and he would have most likely
missed.
 
Aiming his nickel-plated
Steyr
.40 at the doorway, Nicky didn’t expect the American
to wheel into the bathroom like a SWAT leader.
 
Adjusting his aim, he jerked the curved trigger of the Austrian pistol.
 
And just as Nicky unleashed a round from his
pistol, his own eyes instinctively clinched shut when he saw the American’s
pistol flash.

 
 
***

Gage attempted to
aim at Nicky, yanking a shot off before he was able to wheel around to the left.
 
His brain instinctively knew if he didn’t get
out of the way—lightning fast—he would not live to shoot again.
 
Even someone as highly trained as Gage
Hartline misses sometimes, especially when an opponent has the benefit of
superior positioning.

As he spun away,
he was aware that Nicky had fired too.

Gage fell backward
into the room, feeling a searing pain in his right side as he scrambled back
into a firing position.
 
He knew he had
been hit, but he also knew that making noise was the surest path to death, so
he forced himself to be silent as he inched backward to the far side of the
room.
 
Leaving a thin trail of blood, he
finally reached the wall, chancing a quick glance down at his camouflage
over-shirt; the blood appeared to be coming from an area below his
ribcage.
 
When Gage had pushed himself
across the floor, he had felt the click-clack of a broken rib along with the accompanying
pain.
 
Broken ribs he could live
with—Gage just hoped no organs had been irreparably damaged.

But, Gage reminded
himself, self-preservation was
not
why he had come here.
 
He inventoried his
mind and body.
 
It was impossible to tell
if he was fatally wounded, but for now he was alive, and felt he would be for
at least a few more minutes, especially judging by the slow trickle of blood
emanating from his body.

Plenty of time to
end it.

Gage concentrated
on taking small breaths as he leveled the pistol at the doorway.
 
He wanted Nicky to think he was dead and, in
his confidence, show himself.

 
 
***

After his eyes
adjusted, Nicky Arnaud congratulated himself for firing even with the blinding shock
of the white light.
 
He stood still,
allowing his heart rate to stabilize. There was a massive hole in the tile to
his left, a wisp of smoke floating out.
 
The American’s pistol was an absolute hand-cannon.
 
Had the massive bullet struck him, even
grazed him, he would likely be dead from blood loss.
 

And what balls on this fucker
, thought
Nicky,
coming to my home for revenge
.
 
An honorable opponent would have met him on
the street somewhere.
 
As Nicky cursed the
cowardly American inwardly, he reminded himself that he would most likely have
to bring some of his men in for full-time security.
 
He’d resisted doing it for years.
 
As much as he hated people, especially those
he knew, it was inevitable that something like this would happen again.

In Nicky’s mind,
this was already over.

Wiping sweat and
condensation from his face, he stepped from the empty whirlpool tub, listening
for any sound.
 
There was none, and
hadn’t been for several minutes.
 
Then
again, his ears were still ringing from the booming of the shots in the
enclosed tile space.
 
This Hartline
, Nicky thought, calming
himself,
he’s surely dead, or has to be at
least unconscious.
 
He’d seen him
spin and fall, had seen the spray of blood.

Other than his
ringing ears, and the television, an eerie sense of isolation descended on
Nicky.
 
The adrenaline left his veins;
his skin became cool and clammy.
 
He felt
as if he were ten years old again.
 
Afraid of night spirits and the dreaded Boogeyman lurking under his
bed.
 
His mind began to race until
another critical thought pushed everything else away.

Where the hell is Marcel?
 

Unsure of his plan,
feeling his hands begin to tremble, Nicky did the first thing that came to
mind.
 
He used his cell phone.
 
He held the pistol toward the doorway while
using his left hand to press redial.
 
Phone
pressed to sweaty ear, waiting.
 

Nothing.
 

Again.
 

No answer.

Has this man already killed Marcel?
 
He couldn’t have…could he?

“Marcel!” Nicky yelled.
 
There was no answer.

“Marcel!”
he screamed, panicked.

Silence.

After what seemed a
lifetime, Nicky eased through the bathroom, the pistol aimed forward from his
waist.
 
When he was still just inside the
protection of the threshold, he could see the spatter of blood to the
right.
 
There was a small stain on the
carpet, stark red, followed by a trail leading out of his vision, toward the
far wall.
 
Has the sonofabitch crawled away?
 

Nicky listened intently.
 
He could only hear the blaring television: Gary
Lineker
, in his distinct Leicester dialect,
discussing the tattered pitch inside Newcastle’s St. James Stadium.

He stepped from
the bathroom, leading with his pistol like they always did in the movies.
 
He pivoted right, around the Picasso to see
the American propped against the wall, the huge handgun pointed right at him, steady
and level like the main gun on a battle tank.

This time it was
the American who was ready.

A flower of orange
flame erupted from the barrel of the man’s enormous pistol.
 
Nicky felt a violent pulsation as his own
pistol was jerked from his hand, thrown against the far wall with a loud
clatter.
 
He looked down, in sheer horror,
to see that the energy of the pistol being shot from his hand had claimed a
casualty: his index finger.
 
All that
remained was a bloody stub, moving up and down with what looked like two short
strands of spaghetti protruding from inside.

As he studied what
was left of his finger, Nicky was dropped by the next gunshot.

 
 
***

After shooting the
pistol away, Gage calmly lowered the heavy .44 to Nicky’s right knee.
 
It was an easy shot any amateur could have
made.
 
But Gage Hartline was no amateur,
and he nailed the frozen mobster square in the kneecap, satisfied as he watched
the man crumple to the ground after fragments of lead and bone ripped through
the back of his leg.
 
Bruno had loaded
his pistol with hollow-points: nasty bullets designed to rip and tear as they
passed through flesh and bone.
 
Nicky’s
fingers and knee stood no chance against the supersonic projectiles from the magnum.
 
The Frenchman screamed louder than any person
Gage had ever heard as he collapsed to the floor.

While allowing Nicky
to process what had just happened, Gage held the pistol steadily on him and
stood, wincing from the searing pain in his side.
 
He checked the empty hallway as he crossed
the room to stare at the writhing criminal.

Nicky had his chin
pressed down against his bare chest, drooling.
 
His eyes rotated between his roughly amputated finger and his nearly
severed leg, finally looking up to see the man who had defeated him.
 
The knee was blown almost in two, the lower leg
held on by sinewy tendons and a strand of ragged skin on each side of the
bullet’s carnage.
 
Nicky’s breathing was
labored as he surveyed the damage, but when he turned to Gage, his eyes were
defiant, burning rage and fury.

“
Baise
toi
!”

“Sorry, I don’t
understand much French,” Gage answered in English.

Nicky’s mouth
opened, his tongue moving up and down as if he needed moisture but wasn’t able
to provide it for himself.
 
Finally he
spoke in heavily accented English.
 
“You
will be hunted down and killed for this, you fucking inbreed.
 
My men will rip your balls off, one by one,
and feed them to you.”

Gage didn’t really
feel like talking because, what was the point?
 
Judge and jury, he raised the pistol, aiming it at Nicky’s face and said
these words:
 
“You killed the only person
I have ever truly loved, and you had no reason to do so.
 
None at all.
 
You could have killed me, fine.
 
But she was good and pure and you ripped that from her…and me.”
 
He collected himself before continuing, the
sides of his mouth curling upward.
 
“And
before I killed Luc and Bruno…they gave you up, told me everything, and you
know what?”
 
Gage’s mouth broke into a
full Jack-Nicholson-in-
The-Shining
maniacal smile.
 
“I didn’t even have to work
very hard, Nicky.
 
They were more than
happy to rat you out, ready to see you die, you slime.”

Nicky listened to this
with a stunned expression.
 
Just as Gage
finished, his eyes cut to his right.
 
Something caught his eye.

As he was about to
turn, Gage felt the icy hardness of a pistol pointed just above his left ear.
 
He instantly knew that the sound from the
television had provided someone, probably the man in the blue suit, plenty of ambient
cover-noise to sneak up behind him.
 
Colonel Hunter had drilled into Gage’s head, many times, that if you let
a situation get personal, then you let a situation get reckless.

Gage had indeed
let it get personal.
 
He had messed up.

***

Nicky could not
believe his luck.
 
Marcel held the pistol
tightly against the dead man standing’s head.
 
Nicky glanced at his finger and at his shattered knee.
 
He was certain he would lose the leg, limping
around for the remainder of his days on a prosthetic like some circus
sideshow.
 
Well, because of it, he
intended to make this American suffer unlike anyone ever had.
 
He’d read books on torture, enjoying it like
others might read a manual on gardening.
 
He pulled himself, with considerable pain, back against the wall and
propped himself on his elbows.
 
Before he
spoke, he grasped at his groin, soothing himself that he still had his
biroute
, the most
important piece of his body.

“Don’t kill him,
Marcel.
 
Not yet,” Nicky grunted as he propped
himself higher.
 
“I’ve got something very
special for this American coward.”

Marcel’s eyes were
boring into Gage’s head, only glancing at Nicky momentarily.