Viper: A Thriller (8 page)

___

From her observation post, the Viper heard
every word spoken in Muňoz’s suite, which was wired for sound. She swore
out loud. Then she grabbed her cell phone and hit a number programmed into the
speed dial. It rang twice before a male voice answered in Spanish. She cut him
off and ordered, “Move in now. I want the American alive if possible. If not,
make him suffer.” She ended the call and rolled her chair across the carpet to
the bi-pod-mounted VSS sniper rifle positioned on the table near the sliding glass
doors, the tip of the suppressor pointing through the drawn shades. She leaned
into the scope. She had partial line of sight right into Muňoz’s suite
from here. Her own suite was on the thirty-fifth floor of the twin parallel
tower, and allowed her to see a little less than halfway into the target area.
Carnivore and Muňoz were presently out of sight, but she had caught a
brief glimpse of the American’s back earlier when he searched the suite. She
grew anxious, eager to match a face with the voice.

___

“How
many are coming?”Avery thought it couldn’t be more than three or four
shooters—not that that was by any means a small number—but Muňoz didn’t
provide an answer. “How many, goddamn it?”

“I don’t know! I am not a part of this, I swear! They
trapped me. This was the only I could save my family.”

“How did you know to ask for Carnivore?”

“I never heard that name before. She prepared the
message.”

“Who?”

“Please, listen to me. I have to tell you something
important.”

“I’m all ears in the ten seconds we’ve got left before
someone knocks that door down, so start fucking talking, and you better make it
interesting.”

“If you make it out of this, tell Daniel that the
Viper has hijacked Plan Estragos. I have access to General Flores’ files. I saw
it for myself. They caught me, interrogated me, and threatened my family. I had
to do this. I am so sorry.”

“Made you do what?”

“She made me bring Carnivore here,” Muňoz said.
“Tell Daniel the Viper is taking Plan Estragos to the United States.”

“And what the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Avery
shook his head. “It doesn’t work that way. Either we make it out of here or
we’re both dead. We’re in this together.”

There were voices on the other side of the door
speaking Spanish.

“They’re here,” Avery said quietly.

Someone tried pushing on the door and worked the
handle.

“I was supposed to leave the door ajar,” Muňoz
said. “They will know that something is wrong.”

Avery’s finger tightened around the trigger. He
focused on his breathing, in and out, keeping a steady flow of oxygen to his
blood. “You got a weapon?”

“It’s in the bedroom.”

“Get it!”

Muňoz scrambled across the floor.

A second later, Avery heard glass crack behind him,
followed by a grunt from Muňoz and then something heavy hitting the floor.
He started to turn his head to look, but then a new sound demanded his
attention.

“Are you in there, Avery?”

Avery relaxed and eased up on the trigger at the sound
of Castillo’s voice coming from the hallway on the other side of the door.

But the relief lasted only a second.

Fuck
. This
was worse than he’d thought.

“Who else do you have out there, Jon?”

In response, a double burst of automatic fire blasted
the lock and drilled through the door, pelting the fridge directly on the other
side. Avery recognized the sharp clattering sound of an Uzi. This was followed
by a shout in Spanish and then the sound of the door being kicked in, but the
door stopped short after barely a foot, banging against the back of the fridge,
which was six feet in front of Avery.

 Going in from the hallway, the door opened to the
left side, so the assaulters would have to squeeze through on their right,
Avery’s left. They’d have to either push the fridge over or squeeze through the
narrow gap in the doorway one at a time. Either way, it slowed them down, and
presented Avery a small advantage.

A shadow spilled into the room and splayed over the
floor off the left side of the fridge. 

Avery held his aim to what he thought would be about
chest level. He saw the barrel of an FMK-3, a small, Argentinean-made
submachine gun, poke around from behind the fridge. The FMK-3 was quickly
followed by a man with Latin complexion, compact, muscular build, and gang
tattoos adorning his arms and neck.

Avery sighted on him center mass and tapped the
trigger twice.

The intruder grunted in surprise when the first bullet
struck his sternum and tunneled through his chest. The second bullet laid him
out on the floor with blood pooling beneath his body. As he moaned and squirmed
on the carpet, bleeding out, Avery lowered his aim several degrees and put the kill
shot through the back of the man’s skull.

Avery raised his aim, waiting for the next target to
appear.

He saw another shadow come across the floor, heard the
heavy breathing, but the intruder, stopping in the doorway before the corpse of
his partner, became cautious and didn’t advance into the suite beyond the cover
of the fridge. Instead the shadow lingered in place and lifted an arm up,
seemed to reach for something.

Then Avery caught a glimpse of the hand making an
overhand pitch past the fridge, launching a grenade into the kitchen.

The Arges HG86 mini-grenade, the size of a tennis
ball, bounced against the wall and hit the floor where it rolled further into
the suite. It was followed by a second and—Avery’s eyes widened—a third grenade.

The second grenade landed past the island, rendering
the sturdy slab of granite useless as possible cover. Avery pivoted on the
balls of his feet and took off. He sprinted out of the kitchen, into the living
room, his eyes scanning for cover. He aimed for the square-shaped wooden table.
Its surface was about an inch thick and solid, and it was the sturdiest object
in sight.

Just beyond the table, Pablo Munoz was sprawled on the
floor, face down in a pool of blood, with the back of his head opened up. There
was a single hole through the glass of the terrace doors, with spider web
cracks around it.

Avery launched himself at the table, grabbed onto it,
and flipped it over onto its side. He threw his body behind the overturned
table, ducked, and folded into a tight ball. He tucked his head in, covered his
organs, and prepared to be ripped to pieces.

The grenades kicked off, one after another, like loud
firecrackers, the noise amplified in the close confines of the suite. There was
the terrifying sound of shrapnel blasting into the ceiling above Avery and the
walls around him. The sliding glass doors shattered behind him. He felt the
heat of the blasts and smelled the burning sulfur stench of the smoke. The
table top shielded him from the tiny, jagged metal pellets cutting through the
air. Most of the fragments became embedded in the thick, solid wood in front of
him, while a few of the larger ones went right through. Avery felt the wood
splinter against his face, taking a couple through his cheek, and he felt
something hot and sharp go through his left shoulder, slicing through the meat
of the deltoid, and he cried out. Pieces of glass hit him and showered the
carpet around him.

And then quiet and calm settled over the smoky,
wrecked suite.

There was tonal ringing in Avery’s ears, and
everything sounded muffled, as if he had cotton stuffed into his ears. There
were frantic and frightened voices from the neighboring suite. A woman screamed
hysterically for help, and doors slammed and more voices shouted in the
hallway. The paper-thin walls were shredded.

As Avery bolted onto his feet, painfully lifting the
Glock two-handed and swinging it around over the top of the table toward the
entrance to the suite, to track the inevitable enemy entry, he heard the impact
of a shot bore through the underside of a table right where his head would have
been less than a second ago had he not been in the process of jumping up.

It came from behind him, but he hadn’t heard the
subsonic round whiz past his head. 

Fucking sniper!

Avery sidestepped away from the table and ran right. Every
muscle in his body tensed as he envisioned a set of crosshairs tracking him. As
he reached the bedroom, he just glimpsed through his left peripheral someone
entering the kitchen from behind the fridge.

Crossing the threshold into the bedroom, Avery saw
that instead of a solid exterior wall, there were more sliding glass doors for
terrace access, as well as conceivably providing the sniper line of sight into this
room as well.

Avery turned left, wanting to get as deep into the
room as possible and find cover on the floor behind the bed or in the bathroom,
but the sniper was ready for him, and he barely made it two steps.

He heard glass crack behind him and felt the blunt blow
strike him center in the back against his armored vest with the force of a
sledgehammer. His whole body reeled from the blow, the shockwaves seizing his
upper body. He staggered and fell over onto the carpet.

Pushing through the pain, he rolled to the right,
behind the queen bed and hopefully out of the sniper’s view. He tried to reach a
hand around his back, but he couldn’t reach the spot where he was hit. Despite
how badly it hurt, he didn’t think the bullet went through. If it had, it’d be
in his lungs or through his spine right now, and he wouldn’t be fumbling around
on the floor.

He rolled over and lay flat on his back, trying to
catch his breath.

___

Aguilar
stepped off the elevator onto the thirty-third floor. His first observation was
that Castillo didn’t man his post in the lounge area and was nowhere in sight,
but Aguilar also didn’t see a body, blood, or signs of a fight.

He advanced quickly down the hallway with his hands
tucked into his jacket pockets. His right hand held the SP-21 Barak with the
safety disengaged. Doors opened on either side of him, and guests poured out
and rushed past him. One man tried to stop Aguilar and tell him in Spanish that
there were gunshots and explosions and to turn around, but Aguilar ignored him,
his eyes scanning hands for weapons, and continued forward.

Nearing room 3314, Aguilar saw the lean, tough looking
Latin man standing in the open doorway, and caught a glimpse of the wrecked,
smoky room inside. Maneuvering around another group of hotel guests, Aguilar
saw the pistol the man held against the outside of his leg, and the tattoos
signifying his membership in Los Perros, a local street gang. The man’s eyes
locked onto Aguilar, instinctively recognizing a fellow predator when he saw
one, silently daring the Colombian to try something.

There were too many civilians present. Aguilar didn’t want
to risk engaging. He averted his gaze forward and continued walking, aware of
the gang member’s eyes on his back until he rounded the corner.

___

Avery
heard broken glass crunching beneath boots, followed by a broken lamp kicked
and sent rolling across the floor, stopping short against something solid. On
his back, Avery held onto the Glock, but he didn’t know what he was going to
do. He was in no shape to move quickly. That sniper would take him the minute
he lifted his head above the bed.

“Are you in here, Avery?” Jon Castillo’s voice called
out from the living room. He waited a couple seconds. “If you’re alive, then slide
your gun across the floor, put your hands in the air, and stand slowly up. I’m
supposed to take you alive. But if you don’t answer me, I can’t take the risk
that you’re not playing dead, so I’ll toss in another couple grenades. First
one goes right over the bed. Then I step in and toss the next into the
bathroom.”

Avery’s mind raced through his options.

He could either get shredded by the grenades or make a
move against Castillo and likely get his head blown off, either by the sniper
or by Castillo. He couldn’t place Castillo’s voice accurately enough to try
putting bullets through the wall dividing the bedroom from the living room. He
couldn’t hold out for Aguilar, who might be dead by now, for all he knew.

He heard the high pitched blare of sirens on the
street below. He estimated they had maybe five minutes at most before cops
swarmed the floor.

“This really isn’t necessary, Avery, but I can’t stand
around here all fucking day. Last chance.”

Avery set the Glock down and gave it a shove, sending
it skittering several feet across the carpet and into the center of the room.

Leading with his Uzi, Castillo entered the bedroom while
the Glock was still in motion. He came around the bed and stopped, towering
over Avery and pointing the Uzi at him. Castillo held up his free hand high to
signal the sniper through the terrace door.

“Get up,” he ordered Avery. “We have to get out of
here.”

Avery winced and gasped as he rolled over onto his
side like an old man. He maneuvered slowly onto all fours, reached out to hold
onto the bed for support, and worked his way onto his feet. He was barely able
to stand upright without gasping. The pain was excruciating.