Silhouettes: A James Bond Story

Silhouettes Part 10

Bond heard the bullet tear apart the air beside his right ear-a sound like some great, furious hornet-but his attention was fixed on his target, the bearded American with the sleeve-tattoos from the bar last night. Only when he saw the man's head snap back with the impact of Bond's 9mm-short round and empty its contents in an abstract spray against the dingy wall behind him, did Bond react and re-engage his surroundings.

Movement blurred in his peripheral vision, and Bond spun to see a nearly-identical intruder behind him, one hand clasped over a spreading bloodstain on the chest of his shirt where the furious hornet landed. Shot through the lung, coughing blood, the second man swung a big automatic toward Bond in a fatally-long arc. Bond pivoted and fired from the hip, his shot blending into the louder boom of Indira's gun barking behind him. The intruder's chest shredded and he went down on the cheap, linoleum floor.

"You spoiled my shot," Indira said, rising from her shooter's crouch position. "I would have killed him with one round if I didn't have to aim around you."

"That's very much not the issue right now, Agent Manyam," Bond said as he looked over the second intruder. He wasn't one of the men from the bar, but he had the same carefully-cultivated aggressive look: beard, tattoos ringing steroid-enhanced biceps, tinted shooting glasses. He might have stepped off of any number of web sites hawking the latest tactical-gear. "The issue is that more are coming."

"You have a car? Mine's burned." Indira gathered up a small knapsack.

"Yes. Getting to it will be the problem." Bond holstered his PPK/s and scooped up the intruder's gun. It was a Heckler & Koch VP9-a chunky, polymer-framed semi-automatic pistol with a light trigger, but more critically, a 15-round magazine. Bond swore by his Walther, but if they had to shoot their way out of the tenement, he'd need all the firepower he could get.

"How many are there?"

"Half dozen, I'd guess. Possibly more. What are your egress routes?"

"Main entrance, stairwell, and fire escape. This one must have come in the fire escape," she cocked her head toward the man Bond killed.

"You didn't have sensors on the window?"

"I was distracted. I was waiting for you," Indira's eyes narrowed with simmering resentment.

"Well, you can thank me for saving your life later. We'll go down the way I came up: fire stairs."

"They'll have people posted in them by now if they're any good," Indira flattened against the doorframe.

"The confined space will eliminate any advantage they have." Bond pressed in beside her, suddenly aware of heat and scent of her body so close to his. He forced the thought away and distracted himself by poking his head out the doorway. It was only for a moment, but in that time he saw three large silhouettes against the sallow light of the hallway. Voices shouted. "That's a negative on Team Alpha! Targets are still active!"

"I'll cover," Bond said over his shoulder to Indira. "Don't wait for me, just run." Without waiting for an answer, he pivoted his upper body out the doorway and opened fire with the VP9. The gun spat hollow-point rounds in a long, staccato drumbeat, and Bond was satisfied to see the foremost man crumple under the impact. Behind him, the two others flattened against the walls and tried to draw a bead. One squeezed off a long, tearing burst from a Glock machine-pistol which chewed up the doorframe, but Bond had already thrown himself toward the fire doors. Indira popped into view from behind him, sliding the big pendent from around her neck along the floor toward the surviving assailants.

"Come on!" she shouted and dragged Bond through the fire doors. A moment later, in the stairwell, Bond saw the doorway filled with an intense, white light, more brilliant than a Search and Rescue helicopter's spotlight. Dimly, he made out agonized screams from the hallway.

"Our Quartermaster calls it The Dazzler," she said with a grin. "We told him he needs to come up with a better name. Something more sinister. Light of Justice or some such."

"My Quartermaster forgot to issue me one of those," Bond said ruefully.

"You couldn't pull off a gaudy choker. Not with that complexion."

Bond tried to think of a witty retort, but she was already sprinting down the stairs, taking steps two at a time. He followed, and they reached the parking garage landing in under a minute. The gunman assigned to cover Bond's car was distracted by something coming through his earpiece-shouts of rage and frustration from the temporarily-blinded team in the hallway, Bond reckoned-and he only barely had time to notice the two of them bursting out of the stairwell before Indira shot him once in the chest.

"I've got a back-up safehouse," she told Bond as they climbed into the Toyota.

"I know someplace better," he said and stepped on the accelerator.