The Assassin's Prayer Read online

  Frank popped the last piece of croissant into his mouth and chewed it slowly, thoughtfully, as if the act of mastication would give him the wisdom to know what to do with this unexpected turn of events. “All right,” he said at last, “bring him in and let’s hear what he has to say.”

  “You got it.” Silas turned and walked away. He never once looked at Kain.

  Frank poured himself a glass of orange juice while looking across the table at Kain. “You’re going to hate him forever, aren’t you?” It wasn’t really a question.

  “He deserves it.”

  “Yeah, I suppose he does.” Frank abruptly changed subjects. “Are you armed?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good. Whoever this guy is, he’s not leaving here alive.”

  “Thought you wanted Rene Perelli.”

  “Her messenger will do for now.”

  Silas returned with the stranger in tow and Kain gave him the once-over. Crew-cut hair atop a rugged, angular face with dark, hawk-like eyes and a nose that had been broken more than once. The man’s lips were thin and curved with cruel arrogance. He had linebacker shoulders over a narrow waist and his arms were crisscrossed with scars, mostly old, but some fairly recent. This guy had gone a few rounds with the Reaper. Probably one of the mercs behind last night’s arms shipment ambush, if Kain had to guess.

  Frank gave no indication of what he thought of the man. He simply gestured toward the carafe of orange juice. “Care for a drink?”

  The stranger glanced at Kain, sizing him up with a piercing gaze, then looked back at Frank. “I’ll pass. This isn’t a social visit. I have a message from Rene Perelli.”

  “And you are?”

  “Jack Robbins.”

  “I’ve heard of you,” Kain said. “You’re a merc. Supposedly one of the best. And one of the most expensive.”

  Robbins smiled, but there was no humor in it. More like a death’s head rictus. “You get what you pay for.”

  Frank tapped his finger against the side of his glass. “Did Rene Perelli pay you enough to have your guts carved out with a spoon? Because that’s what’s about to happen to you.”

  Robbins’ smile stayed pasted in place. “No, it’s not.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Actually, yeah, I am.”

  “And what makes you so sure?”

  “There’s a sniper in the lighthouse,” Robbins said. “Right now he’s watching us through the crosshairs. Anything happens to me, he puts a bullet in you.”

  Frank glanced at the lighthouse in the distance, just visible over the top of his privacy wall. “That’s three-quarters of a mile away.”

  “My guy can shoot the nuts off a gnat from a mile out. Your nuts are presumably much larger and therefore easier to hit.”

  “What if I don’t believe you?” Frank snapped. Being challenged put him in a foul mood, so right now an alligator with a cattle prod rammed up its rectum was probably friendlier than Frank Giadello.

  Robbins held up his right hand and mimicked pulling a trigger with his index finger.

  A few seconds later the carafe of orange juice exploded from the impact of the sniper’s bullet.

  To his credit, Frank never even flinched, even when glass shards peppered his robe and citrus liquid spattered his face. But his eyes smoldered with anger.

  Robbins lowered his hand. “Satisfied?”

  Frank spoke to Kain while keeping his enraged eyes fixed on Robbins. “Kain, what do you think?”

  Kain shrugged. “I think you probably want to rethink that whole carving his guts out with a spoon idea.”

  “You also want to pay attention,” Robbins said. “Because if we’re done with all the blowhard bullshit, all I came here to do was give you a message. Once I’ve delivered that message and heard your answer, I’ll be on my way and the crosshairs will be off your dick. There really is no need for all this hostility.”

  “No need for hostility?” Frank snarled. “Are you kidding me? You killed my men, stole my guns, walk into my home and put a bullet in my breakfast and then have the audacity to tell me there’s no need for hostility? Who the hell do you think you are?”

  “I’m a mercenary,” Robbins replied. “And this is just business. I was hired to take down your van, hijack the guns, and deliver a message to you in person. So that’s what I did and that’s what I’m doing. Nothing personal or hostile about it. It’s just a job.”

  Frank glared across the table at Robbins, tapping the side of his glass, one finger at a time, then sighed in exasperation and growled, “Fine, let’s hear the message.”

  “Perelli says you can have the guns back … for three hundred thousand. Says it can’t replace the husband you took from her, but it’s a start.”

  Kain did some quick mental math. The arms shipment had been both large quantity and high quality, military surplus stolen from a base up near the Canadian border, with a street value somewhere around half a million. Rene Perelli was allowing Frank some latitude, permitting him to still turn a profit, but teaching him a tough lesson at the same time. Kain had a hard time reconciling this cunning crime queen with the weak, whimpering widow who had wept on the couch as he executed her husband.

  Frank looked like he had just been sodomized and wasn’t enjoying the sensation. “Let me get this straight—she wants me to buy back my own guns? Is she out of her damn mind? I’ll bury her next to her dead husband before I pay her a single dime.”

  “So your answer is no?”

  “Damn straight it’s no. Tell Rene Perelli she can kiss my ass. If I want my merchandise back, I’ll take it back, not buy it. Silas, get this piece of shit out of my sight.”

  “I’ll convey your message to Ms. Perelli.”

  “You do that.”

  Kain watched with hooded eyes as Silas escorted the mercenary away, then turned to Frank. “Thought he wasn’t leaving here alive.”

  “That was before his sniper aimed a bullet at my balls,” Frank said. “Nothing like a little testicular harassment to make you adjust your plans.”

  “So what’s the plan now?”

  “I want you to follow him and the first chance you get, you take him out. But before you do, I want you to find out where my guns are. Got it?”

  Kain rose to his feet. “Yeah, I got it.” Something deep down inside soured and curdled as he realized he was about to get blood on his hands yet again.

  ******

  The late morning traffic on the Long Island Expressway was a total nightmare. Trying to tail Robbins’ nondescript gray Chevy Blazer in the tangled bumper-to-bumper mess of taillights, exhaust smoke, and angry horns was putting Kain’s skills to the test. He lost the Blazer a few times, but always managed to regain it, and finally the vehicular congestion began to thin out. He stayed back about a quarter-mile, just barely keeping the Blazer in sight, letting cars pass and fill in the gap between him and Robbins. Now all he had to do was sit back, hit the cruise control, and wait for the mercenary to make a pit stop. There was no sign of the mystery sniper.

  Three hours later, Kain was starting to think that Robbins must have the world’s biggest bladder. The merc passed one rest area after another with no indication of stopping. Kain’s own bladder was beginning to beg for relief.

  Finally, traveling I-87 between Poughkeepsie and Albany, Robbins pulled off into a rest area. “About time,” Kain muttered, following the Blazer. He swung the Jeep into a spot at the opposite end of the parking lot and gave Robbins a sixty-second head start before making his way inside.

  The men’s bathroom was down a short corridor, past the vending machines and a large map on the wall with a big YOU ARE HERE caption on it. As Kain approached the bathroom door, a man came out, nearly colliding with him. Kain’s muscles tensed, but the guy wasn’t Robbins, just some traveler finished taking a leak.

  “Whoa! Sorry about that,” the stranger said. “Guess I need to slow down.” He smiled and nodded an apology.

  Kain gave a slight nod
back. “No problem.”

  When the man was gone, Kain drew his silenced Colt .45 from beneath his duster and went through the door in a rush. Robbins was a professional and Kain’s best chance of success was to catch him off guard, not saunter in like he was out for a Sunday stroll.

  Robbins was washing his hands at the sink. The merc’s head jerked up at Kain’s sudden intrusion. Recognition instantly flared in his eyes and he went for his gun. He was fast, but not fast enough. Before he could clear leather, Kain rammed the Colt into his stomach. “Take your hand away from your gun,” he said.

  Robbins hesitated, just as Kain had expected him to. The merc was calculating the odds, running the numbers in his mind. Kain would have done the same thing if the situation was reversed. It would have taken him about two seconds to realize any play was suicide. It took Robbins three. The mercenary let his hand drop to his side.

  “Good boy,” Kain said. “Now let’s go into one of the stalls and have a little chat. Keep your hands where I can see them.” He backed Robbins into the nearest stall, maintaining constant pressure with the .45. If given even the thinnest sliver of a chance, Robbins would make a play that could turn things into a clusterfuck.

  “So what’s the plan?” Robbins asked once they were in the stall and Kain had secured the door. “Blow my brains out and flush them down the crapper?”

  “The only thing I want in the crapper is your gun. Take it out—slowly—and toss it in.”

  Robbins didn’t even hesitate this time. He took out his gun, an expensive Kimber Stainless Pro Raptor, and dropped it in the toilet. Water splashed as the gun sank to the bottom of the porcelain bowl. Robbins’ eyes were hot coals of hate. “Do you have any idea how much that gun costs?”

  “Pretty sure you can afford another one with what Perelli is paying you.”

  “Don’t play me for a fool. You have no intention of letting me walk out of here alive.”

  “Why don’t you just have a seat and we’ll see how it goes.”

  “You’ve got the gun, so right now you’re the boss.” Robbins reached behind him to lower the seat.

  “Leave it up.” Forcing Robbins to sit on the toilet without the benefit of the seat would keep the mercenary’s center of gravity lower, making it more difficult for Robbins to launch himself into some kind of half-assed heroic play.

  Robbins obeyed, but Kain caught the foxlike cunning in the man’s eyes. Robbins might be a cool-cat mercenary, but he would never cut it at the poker table. His eyes gave up too much information. Robbins’ intent to try some sort of counterattack was as obvious as a neon sign glowing in the dead of night. Kain knew he could not afford to let his guard down.

  Neither could he afford to spend much time on this interrogation. This was a fairly remote stretch of I-87, but it was still a public rest area and it would only be a short time before somebody came in to use the facilities. Kain had to rip the answers out of Robbins fast.

  “Listen,” he said to the mercenary. “I’m in a bit of a rush, so I’m going to skip the foreplay and get right down to the dirty stuff. I want you to tell me where you took Frank Giadello’s guns.”

  “What you want really doesn’t mean jack to me, because you’ve forgotten one very important piece of information.”

  “And what would that be?”

  Robbins smiled nastily. “I’m not alone.” His eyes shifted to the stall door.

  Kain reacted instantly. He dropped to the floor a fraction of a second before autofire knocked on the door. The bullets blew through and punched into the wall just above Robbins’ head. Dust and debris exploded into the air.

  Kain hit the ground and rolled onto his back with the kind of snake-strike speed that comes from a whole lot of years spent in the killing game. He saw a pair of rubber-soled boots under the stall door and wasted no time putting a bullet into the gunman’s ankle. The guy yelled in pain and toppled to the floor, landing with a hard thud on his left shoulder.

  Kain took one nanosecond to register the man’s face. It was the stranger who had almost bumped into him outside the bathroom. Another nanosecond and Kain knew he was engaged in a firefight with the mystery sniper, who still clutched the Micro-Uzi he had used to spray the stall door. One more nanosecond and Kain realized this rest area had been a prearranged rendezvous point.

  And then there were no more nanoseconds to spare. The sniper was lifting the Micro-Uzi back into play. Robbins was lurching off the toilet. Kain was pinned down flat on his back with a threat in front and a threat behind.

  Robbins might get his gun out of the toilet in another second or two, but the sniper had his gun out right now. That made the sniper the primary threat.

  Kain canceled that threat by hammering a .45 slug right between the sniper’s eyes and out the back of his skull. The mini-Uzi tumbled from lifeless fingers as chunks of bone and brains splattered the far wall.

  One down, one to go.

  Kain immediately turned his attention to Robbins. The mercenary had his Kimber out, dripping with water, and nearly had it leveled at Kain’s head.

  No time to use his gun. Kain kicked Robbins in the left kneecap. The merc’s body jerked and buckled from the crippling blow. Robbins managed to pull the trigger, but he was off balance. The bullet banged off the tile a couple inches from Kain’s face.

  Kain tried to get his own gun into play, but the narrow confines of the stall were making it tough to maneuver. As he thrust the Colt toward Robbins, the merc chopped down with the Kimber, pistol-whipping the .45 right out of Kain’s hand. It bounced off the rim of the toilet and skidded under the divider into the next stall.

  Kain didn’t waste time going after it. He was prostrate and gun-less and facing an enemy who was upright and armed. His only chance to survive the next few seconds was to bring Robbins down to his level.

  So he reached up, grabbed a handful of Robbins’ balls, yanked down, and twisted viciously. Robbins snarled in pain and involuntarily hunched lower in an auto-response attempt to ease the pain and avoid having his nuts torn off. As he did so, Kain delivered a hard jackrabbit kick against the inside of the mercenary’s injured left knee. Between the ball-yank and the knee-kick, Robbins dropped to the floor.

  As Robbins crumpled, Kain used his free hand to chop the merc’s wrist, numbing nerves and sending the Kimber tumbling. His other hand continued to crush Robbins’ gonads.

  The merc managed to extricate himself from Kain’s clutches, but Kain was pretty sure it cost him at least one torn testicle. Both men scrambled to their knees and proceeded to trade punches, the blows short and sharp due to the close-quarter confines of the stall. Kain knew this would not be a long, drawn out battle. This was going to be a quick, nasty, down-and-dirty slugfest that would be over in less than a minute with one of them shaking hands with the devil at the gates of Hell.

  Kain took a rabbit punch to the kidney. Paid back the pain with a blow to Robbins’ solar plexus. Ducked the right elbow strike the merc whipped at his temple, then got caught by a left cross that clipped his chin. The blow didn’t really daze him, but he feigned injury and prayed to the gods of war that the mercenary took the bait.

  Robbins swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.

  Believing Kain to be vulnerable, the merc tried to seize the moment by spearing a set of stiff fingers at Kain’s seemingly exposed throat. Had they struck, they would have snap-crackle-crunched Kain’s Adam’s apple and left him choking on cartilage splinters. But Kain dodged the throat-jab, causing Robbins to miss his intended target. This left Robbins slightly off balance, his arm overextended. Kain grabbed the merc’s wrist with one hand, keeping the arm extended, and delivered a sharp, powerful blow with the heel of his other hand to Robbins’ elbow. The merc’s arm broke like a piece of balsa wood in the jaws of a Rottweiler, bone shards bulging in grotesque knots just beneath the surface of the skin.

  Still on his knees, Kain spun around behind Robbins, grabbed him by the back of the neck, and slammed his head down against the front e
dge of the toilet bowl. A large chunk of the bowl shattered and broke away, leaving behind a grin-shaped gap full of jagged porcelain teeth. The water sluiced out, soaking both men.

  The blow to the head would have knocked out the average man, but Robbins wasn’t average. While clearly dazed from having his skull used as a battering ram, he still managed to dig out a combat knife from wherever it had been hidden. With Kain still grasping the back of his neck, Robbins couldn’t turn his head to line up a target, so he just jabbed backward blindly.

  Kain dodged to the side without relinquishing his grip, narrowly avoiding being stabbed. He then drove Robbins’ head back down into the broken toilet. The jagged porcelain stumps smashed into the merc’s face and acted like saw blades, shearing through gums and palate and cutting open the corners of the mouth so that Robbins’ upper jaw and lower jaw were on opposite sides of the broken rim. The classic curb-stomp position.

  Kain climbed to his feet and stood over Robbins. In the movies, this was the climactic moment when the hero would spout off a witty one-liner before dispatching the villain. But this was not the movies and Kain knew he was no hero. So instead of wasting time coming up with a smartass comment, he just raised his boot and stomped down as hard as he could on the back of Robbins’ neck. The sharp porcelain stalagmites finished ripping through flesh and bone so that the merc’s body slumped to the floor, his lower jaw still attached. The upper jaw and the rest of his head tumbled into the empty toilet, splattering it with blood.

  Kain stood there for a moment, staring down at the gruesome sight as the combat adrenaline cooled in his veins, then reached down and retrieved his Colt before exiting the stall. He had to step over the corpse of the sniper, the punctured head haloed in crimson. He left the bodies—as well as the Kimber and the miniature Uzi—where they lay. This being a public spot, there was no chance for clean-up and sanitization. The next traveler who stopped to use the facilities was in for a shock. Public restrooms are notoriously filthy places, but nobody expects to find half a severed head staring up at them from the bottom of the bowl.