EIGHT
The sleeping guard at the front door woke up, but he did so far too late to make a play for his weapon. Court was on him before he could make a sound, covering his mouth and knocking him off the chair. Together they went down to the stones; Court lay on him with all his weight, pressing his free hand down onto the younger man’s mouth.
The guard fought back, but he was saddled by surprise, panic, and his disadvantaged position, so his defense was weak and only lasted an instant. Court forced the Dermojet against the man’s neck, pressed the trigger, and a full dose of propofol fired through the Venezuelan’s skin and directly into his bloodstream.
It was a fast-acting sedative, one of the CIA’s best drugs for taking down an opponent in a nonlethal manner.
The man continued to struggle, but for only a few seconds. Then the movement stopped abruptly, and the man went limp under Court, his head lolling to the side.
Court sat up on his rear now and grabbed at his sore shoulder, certain he’d probably already popped a stitch or two, even though falling on top of some sleeping jackass was hardly a real fight.
Shit, he told himself. It’s gonna be a rough night.
He pulled himself to his feet and headed for the front door. He found it unlocked, and this would have made his ingress a breeze except for the fact that the door hung awkwardly on its hinges, and the bottom dragged across the threshold. He stopped as soon as the volume of the scraping grew, and he squeezed himself inside and gently shut the door behind him.
Court drew the Glock and moved with it at the ready now, through a low-lit foyer with worn hardwood floors. There was light coming out of a room on his left, so he headed that way, but found the going difficult due to the creaky boards under his feet. This home looked pretty nice on the outside, Court had thought, and it was spacious and elegant, but he could tell the old place was practically held together with baling wire.
The music wafted down from upstairs, and he prayed it covered all the sounds the house made to announce his arrival.
He approached the room with the light, ignoring the stairs up to the second floor for now. With dexterity learned through training and application, he holstered the larger pistol and drew the smaller Walther .22, which he aimed at the light as he advanced.
At this stage, Court was not hunting for Drummond; he was hunting for Drummond’s security. The CIA had just made multiple attempts to track this wanted man, so as far as Court was concerned, there was no way this place wouldn’t be crawling with bodyguards.
And in the kitchen he found what he was looking for. A pair of young men, facing away, both dressed in polo shirts and black tactical pants. One wore a pistol in a shoulder holster, and the other had a Micro Uzi with its stock folded, slung around his neck and hanging across his back.
Both men stood at a counter, spoons in hand, eating ice cream out of a cardboard carton.
Idiots, he thought. For the first time this evening, Court liked his chances at getting through this mission without popping all his stitches.
Court moved closer, along the wall, his .22 caliber pistol in one hand and the stainless steel Dermojet in the other.
Finally, one of the two bodyguards took his last bite of dulce de leche, put his spoon on the counter, and turned around. To his credit, he didn’t move or make a sound when he saw the man in tiger camo pointing the suppressed pistol at him. Instead he just reached out to his partner, squeezed him on his arm to get his attention, then raised his hands in the air.
The second man turned around, saw the threat, and began to lower his hands to his Uzi. Court did not fire, he only lifted his weapon higher, pointing it right between the man’s eyes, and he shook his head once.
The second bodyguard took his hands away from the Micro Uzi hanging against his torso, and he, too, raised his hands slowly.
Court stepped a little closer, but only so he could keep his voice down. In Spanish he said, “Quisia dormir, o quisiara morir?” Would you like to sleep, or would you like to die?
The men looked at each other, and then the man with the pistol croaked out the Spanish word for “sleep.” “Dormir,” he said, but he didn’t seem particularly thrilled about it.
“Bueno,” Court replied, and then he held up the syringe in his left hand. “Una vez para tu amigo, una vez para usted. Haz lo.” One time for your friend, one time for you. Do it.
Court tossed it underhanded, and the bodyguard caught it.
The Venezuelan understood that Court was ordering him to inject his partner with a shot of the medicine and then to inject himself. He was reluctant, and Court could empathize, but when Court shifted his pistol back to the man holding the syringe, the bodyguard nodded. He looked at the jetted tip, then back up to the stranger.
“Que es?” What is it?
Court’s Spanish was good, but not great. “Solo dormir, amigo. Media hora, nada mas.” Only sleep, friend. A half hour, no more.
Neither man looked convinced, but they both seemed to recognize that their options were nonexistent. The man with the pistol injected the man with the Uzi in the arm, then closed his eyes and stabbed himself in the right triceps, dropping the syringe on the floor afterwards in a weak show of defiance.
Once done, they both looked at Court, unsure of what to do now.
“Sientase en el piso.” Sit on the floor. The men quickly complied. Court listened to the classical music coming from upstairs as he stood there for a moment. Both of the guards seemed to feel the drug at the same time, and in less than fifteen seconds they were both lying on the floor by the kitchen sink, unconscious.
Court disarmed the pair, then left them there with their ice cream and their dreams, and he made his way into the large foyer of the home. He was about to stick their weapons in a closet, but he decided against opening the door, worried that the hinges might be as rusty and loud as the ones at the front door. He slung the Micro Uzi; shoved the pistol, an HK VP9, into a dump pouch on his hip, then climbed a staircase to the second floor. As he’d imagined, the steps protested each footfall, and he could only hope the symphony playing upstairs would mask his approach.
He started down a dark and narrow hall in the direction the music seemed to be coming from. He made it only a few steps when a woman stepped out of a bathroom on his right.
She stopped when she saw the man with the gun in the dim hall in front of her.
She was small, attractive, and she wore a white blouse and a dark-colored skirt. She didn’t appear to be armed, but she also didn’t look to Court like a girlfriend, some sort of attendant for Drummond, or anything of the like. Her intelligent, calculating eyes, even in this shocking moment for her, tipped him off that she was something else.
Not a bodyguard . . . No, she was a spook.
He advanced on her, placed his hand over her mouth, and, pulling her skirt up to her hip, injected her in her right thigh. Her stifled screams were muffled even more when Court pushed her backwards into the bathroom and kicked the door shut with the heel of his boot. She was a fighter, and she pushed back, but he kept her mouth covered and held her up against the wall.
She went limp in his arms finally, and he laid her gently on the broken tile next to the tub. He found no weapons on her, so he left her there and turned again for the hallway.
There were only a few minutes left in Schubert’s fourth movement, and Clark Drummond told himself he’d finally go to bed when it was over. He was focused on the music now, fixated even, until he felt a presence directly behind him, standing over him as he sat in the leather chair. He assumed it was Alejandra because the security men from SEBIN wouldn’t dare disturb him this late at night.
He was about to speak to her, to invite her to join him for the rousing Allegro vivace, when he was tapped gently on the top of his head with a metal object.
He rose, drink in hand, then turned back in the direction of the door.
And stood face-to-face with an armed man in tiger camouflage. Panic welled inside him and he dropped his glass, shattering it on the hardwood.
“Who . . . are . . . you?”
“I’m that thing you’ve been telling yourself could never happen.”