Wild Cards V by George R. R. Martin Read Free Book Online

fresh, clean feeling that he lost himself in. All too soon, however, Covello’s brightly lit private helipad was below him. As he settled down as gently as a feather, a guard carrying an assault rifle waved at him. Brennan sighed. He shook the clean feeling of the night sky from his brain. It was time to get back to work.
    The guard sauntered casually toward the chopper. Brennan waited until he was half a dozen steps away, then he leaned out the cockpit window and shot him in the head with his silenced Browning. No one saw him enter the mansion through the door in the roof, no one saw him flit from room to room, as quiet and purposeful as a haunting spirit.
    He found Covello in a library that had rows and rows of unread books that had been bought by the mansion’s interior decorator because of their matched bindings. The don, whom Brennan recognized from his photo in Fadeout’s dossier, was shooting pool with his consuláre while a man who was obviously a bodyguard watched silently.
    Covello missed an easy cushion shot, swore to himself, then looked up. He frowned at Brennan. “Who the hell are you?”
    Brennan said nothing. He raised his gun and shot the astonished bodyguard. Covello started to scream in a curiously high-pitched, womanish voice, and the consuláre swung at Brennan with his poolstick. Brennan ducked out of the way and put three slugs in the consuláre’s chest, blowing him over the pool table. He shot the don in the back as he was running for the door.
    Covello was still breathing as Brennan stood over him. There was a pleading look in his eyes and he tried to speak. Brennan wanted to finish him with a shot to the head, but couldn’t. He had orders.
    He pulled a small black nylon sack from his back pocket, and a knife, much longer and heavier than the one he usually carried, from the belt sheath at the small of his back.
    He was on the clock now. Covello’s screams had certainly aroused the household, and he had little time before more goons would arrive. He bent down. The dying don closed his eyes in unutterable horror at the sight of the knife in Brennan’s hands.
    The man wasn’t his enemy, but neither would his death be a great loss to society. Still, as he cut through Covello’s throat, leaning hard on the blade to sever the spinal cord, Brennan couldn’t help but feel that he deserved a cleaner death. That no one deserved a death like this.
    He lifted Covello’s head by his oiled hair and dropped it in the nylon bag. Moving quickly, he went back through the corridors that led to the roof and waiting chopper. He moved quickly and quietly, but he was seen.
    A Mafia soldier let out a wild burst of gunfire and shouted to his companions. The burst didn’t come close to hitting Brennan, but he knew now they were on his trail. He moved faster, running down corridors and up stairs. Once he blundered into a group of men. He had no idea who they were, and they looked surprised and not a little bewildered at the commotion. He emptied the Browning’s clip at them as he charged, and they scattered without offering resistence as the sounds of pursuit drew closer and closer.
    He spoke aloud to unseen listeners without breaking stride. “I’ve got the package and I’m coming home. I need backup.” He reached into his vest pocket, dropped something to the carpet, and ran on.
    A fluttering sheet of delicate paper, intricately folded into a small, complicated shape, fell from his hand. He didn’t look back, but he heard the challenging roar of a big cat, terribly loud in the close confines of the corridor, reverberate and echo endlessly as it mixed with the sounds of gunfire and the screams of terrified men.
    The route he flew to the small Suffolk County airport was on no authorized flight plan, and the flight itself was not as exhilarating with the stained and leaking black bag keeping him company on the copilot’s seat.
    Fadeout and