The Colonel's Mistake by Dan Mayland Read Free Book Online Page B

Mark blocked him silently with his hand.
    He reminded himself that the carnage at the Trudeau House almost certainly hadn’t been inflicted by one person. Which meant the guy who’d just taken a shot at him was probably part of a team.
    A few seconds later the door handle moved almost imperceptibly, as someone gently tried to twist it open. But Mark had locked the door behind him before entering the apartment, and now the lock engaged. He put a finger to his lips and gestured to the rear bedroom.
    When he and Decker were behind the bedroom door, Mark whispered, “Your gun.”
    “Screw that. I’m the protection.”
    “That closet,” said Mark, pointing. “The wall inside it abuts the next apartment. Cut a hole and crawl through it. I’ll watch the door. Your gun. Now.”
    Decker handed it over. Seconds later, there was a screeching sound as he used his knife to saw through the drywall.
    From the crack he’d left in the open bedroom door, Mark had a clear view of Peters’s front door. He kept Decker’s pistol trained on it.
    “I’m good, boss. Going through,” whispered Decker from the closet.
    Then the front door popped open. A guy with a crowbar was pushed aside by two clean-shaven men who charged into the apartment with silenced assault rifles.
    Mark scurried cockroach-like into the closet. Decker was already through the hole in the wall, on his belly in the bedroom of the adjacent apartment. They crawled on their knees through the kitchen and out into the common hall. At the end of the hall was a stairwell, which they descended four steps at a time.
    “What are we talking for exits?” called Decker, in a loud whisper.
    Mark pictured the building in his head. “A main one in the front, a small one in back, and a main one on the west side. East side, nothing.”
    When they got to the second floor of the building, they tried doors to apartments on the east side until they found one that was open.
    Decker ran past a woman holding a crying baby. As she screamed at him to get out, he raced to the open balcony and vaulted over the edge without even pausing. Mark followed in Decker’s footsteps, but when he got to the balcony himself, he hesitated. The drop was about fifteen feet.
    “Lower yourself over the side.” Decker was standing unhurt on the pavement. A few pedestrians had stopped to gawk. “Relax as you fall, keep your knees bent, and roll on the ground if you need to.”
    “Yeah, that’ll work,” said Mark, but he jumped anyway. Instead of rolling he hit with a sack-of-potatoes thud and wound up twisting his ankle. Decker pulled him up and they started to run.

Before the latest oil boom, Fountains Square had been where the prostitutes hung out, but now it was just an extension of the Nizami Street shopping bonanza. Well-tended flower gardens lay planted around the central fountains.
    Mark stopped short in the center of the square. Bent over and panting, he rested his hands on his knees. A veiled woman in a black skin-tight T-shirt, skin-tight jeans, and high heels bumped into him. Mark eyed her—she was chatting on a cell phone, which made him suspicious, but decided he was just being paranoid.
    His ankle was killing him and sweat dripped off his forehead. He noticed Decker, who had stopped beside him, wasn’t even breathing hard.
    “I think we’re clear,” said Decker.
    Mark wondered—had the shooter been waiting for them specifically, or had he just been watching the apartment to see who showed up? Because if the whole thing had been a chance encounter, then Mark figured he could risk going back to his apartment, back to his life. But if he’d been specifically marked, if they knew he was the former chief of station/Azerbaijan and had been helping Daria…
    “You want to tell me what that was all about?” said Decker.
    “I don’t know.”
    Decker had been out on the balcony too, completely exposed, standing directly to his right. Had the shooter simply flipped a coin when deciding who