The Assassin by Stephen Coonts Read Free Book Online Page B

passed out.
    Abdul-Zahra Mohammed didn’t feel the hand on his arm release him, nor did he feel himself fall to the stones of the street. Nor did he feel his heart stop when his chest filled up with blood.
    The man who had killed Mohammed walked on in the crowd, his brown eyes roving ceaselessly, taking in everything and everyone. He was in no hurry, merely moved with the crowd.
    He did hear the excited exclamations and shouts behind him as the crowd became aware of the body of Abdul-Zahra Mohammed lying in the street. He kept going.
    Five minutes after he knifed Mohammed, Ricky Stroud, former master sergeant, U.S. Army Special Forces, now just plain Mr. Stroud, walked out of the Old Quarter. He hailed a taxi and told the driver in perfect Arabic to take him to the bus terminal.
    Sitting in the taxi, he realized the sleeves of his robe were spotted with blood. A spray of red droplets, hardly noticeable … yet the cab-driver was looking, glancing in his rearview mirror.
    He shouldn’t have pulled the knife out for a second thrust. That had been a mistake; he realized that now as he looked at the tiny red stains on the dirty white robe. Ricky Stroud hadn’t been sure of the placement of the first thrust, so he had surrendered to temptation and tried to improve his chances of killing Abdul-Zahra Mohammed. He and his three comrades had worked for two months to set up that fleeting opportunity in the street, and he wasn’t willing to take the chance that Mohammed would survive. So he jerked the knife free and put the second thrust dead center in Mohammed’s back, just to the right of the backbone, between the ribs, and gave the blade a savage twist to cut and tear tissue, speeding the loss of blood.
    “You pays your money and takes your chances,” he said silently to himself, and forgot about it.
    At the bus terminal he paid the cabbie and disappeared into the crowd, went into the station and out a side entrance and kept going. He walked for a mile, hailed another cab, then another, and finally arrived at the safe house where he was staying.
    There was another man there, also former Special Forces. His name was Nate Allen.
    “Get him?”
    ‘Yep. And I got photos of the two guys who left the tea joint before he did. I think I recognized one of them.” He held out his digital camera.
    Oh, yeah,” Allen said when he looked at the shots. “I recognize this second dude. He’s a bomb maker.”
    “Got some blood on me,” Ricky Stroud said. He sighed and pulled off the robe.
    “How’d you do that?”
    “Pulled it out and stabbed him again, just to be sure.”
    “Get another robe and let’s clear this joint,” Nate Allen said. He picked up his pistol, checked the safety and rammed it between his belt and his belly.
    “I wasn’t followed. I’m sure.”
    “People saw you. Get a new robe on and let’s get the hell outta Dodge.”
    Both men pulled on robes, made sure their headpieces were properly in place and took a last glance around the room. There were fingerprints, but nothing else. The place was as spotless as careful men could keep it.
    Allen jerked his head toward the door, so Ricky Stroud put his ear against it and listened intently. His eyes went to Allen, who had his hand on the pistol under his robe. He shook his head, then pulled the door open.
    As the door opened, a man in the hallway rammed a knife into Ricky’s belly, doubling him up.
    Nate Allen didn’t hesitate. He jerked the pistol free, grabbed it with both hands and opened up across the doubled-over Ricky Stroud, who was sinking toward the floor. He kept his shots low, waist high, gunning the figure coming through the door and moving the muzzle right and left, firing through the thin wall in a deafening fusillade. The .45 slugs weren’t full-metal-jacket hardball military slugs; they were made of hardened lead so they expanded when they struck flesh. Nate fired the whole magazine, eight shots, as fast as he could pull the trigger.
    He ejected