Silhouettes: A James Bond Story

Silhouettes Part 20

The blast of the three explosive coins Bond had taped to the back of the Omega's case and band had startled the monitors enough for him to sprint past them and vault through the shattered-out observation window into the room beyond. In the dim light, he could make out two prone bodies, stunned, immobile, their faces torn to scarlet ribbons by the broken glass. He recognized the one on the left and dropped the folding knife on the twitching body.

"Thanks for the loan," he said and picked up the vz 58. "I'll take this off your hands." He grabbed three magazines out of the pouch on Fussenegger's vest and stuffed them in the side pockets on his cargos. He made for the corridor, then noticed a locking system mounted in the room's wall. He wasn't positive, but he had a pretty good idea what it was for. He turned the system off and then darted into the corridor and tested the door to the lizard exhibit. It opened easily. Bond propped it open and headed down the corridor.

Behind him, he heard scrabbling on the tile floor and hissing. Looking back, he saw a pair of two-meter long monitors slither into the observation room and hiss with what Bond could only assume was utter delight.

He set up against a corner and leaned the upper half of his body out from behind the cover, the vz 58 held out in front of him.

"Breech! Breech! We got a breech!" Two guards were stationed at the end of the corridor and one was shouting into a headset while the other fell into a shooting crouch.

Too late, Bond pulled the trigger on his rifle reflexively, felt the little gun buck against the 5.56mm round's recoil and give a hellacious bark in the confined space. The shooter went down heavily and without grace. Bond sprayed fire at the second guard and put the man on the floor before he could even bring his gun to bear.

A door midway down the corridor flew open and automatic fire stuttered from the room beyond. Bond ducked back around the corner as small-arms rounds chewed up the wall where he had been hiding. He smelled plaster dust hot metal. A moment later the fire paused, and Bond strained his ringing ears to hear something, anything.

Footsteps. They were moving out of the room and rushing his position. It was potentially foolhardy, but also necessary. Hallways were a tactical nightmare hence their nickname in close quarters battle as "fatal funnels."

Without grenades, Bond didn't have any good options either, so he just darted out from behind cover, firing blindly. There were three of them this time. Two carried vz 58s like his, while the other had an MP5K submachine gun he held with two hands. All three wore uniform BDUs.

Bond saw it happen as if in slow motion: the one with the MP5K reacted first, bring his gun around to spray Bond with a lethal dose of 9mm fire while Bond's rifle was pointed at the lead man, the trigger breaking, the muzzle breathing fire, and the second man stepping out to get a clear shot, and with a suddenness and clarity he'd never experienced before, Bond knew he was dead.

The blur that was the second man coalesced into something tangible—a guard bringing his rife around the bare inches necessary for a headshot. And then he twitched and shuddered just as Bond heard the racking cough of the submachine gun.

Bond threw himself sideways as his gun finished its arc and lined up with the last man—who'd just accidentally killed his teammate. Bond pulled the trigger three times, watched the MP5K ripped from the man's hands and two blossoming bullet holes appear in his chest.

It took two seconds and by the end of it, three men were motionless on the ground.

Bond only had time to exhale when a huge shape exploded from the darkness of the doorway that had expelled the last three guards. Bond swung his gun around but something massive slammed into him, blotting out the light and pinning him to the wall. It took a second for his adrenaline-saturated brain to process the face he saw before him: Nikoli Butavsky. He tried to pull the gun around, but Butavsky had pinned the barrel to the wall with one massive forearm. A fist buried itself in Bond's stomach, driving the wind from him with a dull wheeze, and he slumped toward the floor.