White stepped over the second shooter and walked to the first man he had shot. He was still alive, but not for long. White picked up the man’s pistol and tucked it in his waistband. He opened the door, which had closed behind the men, and stepped into the hallway. His pistol at the high ready, he scanned for additional threats. Three people were out of their rooms, probably wondering what the commotion was all about. One lady was wearing a white hotel bathrobe and holding a glass of white wine in her hand. A few doors farther down the corridor, a man was holding a woman in his arms. White retreated to the relative safety of Veronica’s room and closed the door.
“XJD-31, this is Vigil-One. Shots fired. I have two suspects down in Flower’s room,” he said.
“XJD-31 copies. We heard everything. Help is on the way.”
White looked at the first shooter. At least one of his rounds had hit the assailant in the lungs. The man was coughing up bright red blood. He looked up at White and tried to say something. White reholstered his pistol, grabbed the man’s wrist, and rolled him to his stomach. White drilled his knee into the injured man’s back and handcuffed him. The shooter yelled out in pain.
White went to the door, wanting to keep an eye on the hallway to ensure a position of dominance. His hand was just inches from the door handle when he heard the locking mechanism whirl.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Ritz-Carlton
San Francisco, California
Van Heerden hugged the wall as soon as he heard the two double taps. He thought about racing down the hall to Hammond’s room to help his men, but the hotel room door had probably closed on its own, costing him the element of surprise. He would need to be very careful and time his entry perfectly. He kept his silenced pistol close to his leg as he cautiously continued down the corridor.
To his immediate left, a door suddenly opened. He brought his pistol up, aiming it directly at a woman’s head. Right behind her, dressed in a white T-shirt and blue jeans, was a man holding two glasses of red wine. He looked at Van Heerden, his face frozen in shock. Van Heerden’s pistol bucked once. Without so much as letting out a cry, the man fell backward, toppling to the floor. The woman opened her mouth to scream, but Van Heerden knocked her out cold by slamming his pistol hard against the side of her head. He caught her with his left arm as she fell. To his right, a few doors down the corridor, another woman exited her room. She didn’t look in his direction. She was wearing a bathrobe and holding a glass of white wine. Her hair was wet, as if she had just come out of the shower. Van Heerden was about to step inside the room when he saw a man wearing a tuxedo briefly peek into the hallway. As far as Van Heerden could tell, the man had come out of Hammond’s room. Was he the missing bodyguard? Van Heerden thought so, helped by the fact that the man was wielding a pistol. The woman in the white bathrobe shrieked at the sight of the gun and scurried inside her hotel room, slamming the door behind her.
Van Heerden looked at the woman in his arms. He thought about killing her, but somehow it felt wrong. He didn’t mind killing when needed, but there were grounds for mercy here. She was no longer a threat to him. He carried her into the room and laid her down on the bed.
“Albert, from Barry,” came from his man in the lobby.
“Go for Albert.”
“The agent just took off at a sprint toward the staircase,” Barry said.
That was to be expected. Surely the bodyguard in Hammond’s room had sounded the alarm. Knowing that his window of opportunity was fast closing, Van Heerden moved into action.
“If you can do it safely and without being seen, take him down in the staircase,” he ordered.
“On my way,” Barry replied.
“Then I want you to exfil,” Van Heerden said.
It took a second more than it should have for his man to reply. “What about Chuck and Daniel?”
“Status unknown. Just do what you’re told. Albert out.”
Van Heerden walked purposefully toward Hammond’s room, his pistol at his side. He stopped a few feet away from Hammond’s door and listened. Someone yelled. Could one of his men still be alive?
There was no way for Van Heerden to slip silently into the room. The door was the sort that was impossible to open quietly. The locking mechanism was going to emit a humming sound as soon as he slid the key card in and out.
Van Heerden swore silently. If he entered the room, his chances of a clean escape were almost nonexistent. Still, there was a possibility he could redeem himself in the eyes of his employers if he killed Hammond. But the real reason Van Heerden had already decided to go in had zilch to do with what his employer wanted or didn’t want. Like him, Chuck and Daniel were former Recces. That no person made it on their own through selection had been hammered into them since their first day of training. They were a team. They won together, or they failed together. Van Heerden wasn’t about to leave anyone behind.