Hunting Zero (An Agent Zero Spy Thriller—Book #3)

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Panic seized Reid’s chest so tightly he staggered back a step, steadying himself against the wave of nausea that threatened to overtake him.

“What?” he heard himself whisper.

“Your daughters were never here in Croatia,” the assassin repeated. “Your eldest is very smart. I thought that she might find a way to leave you something. So I made sure that she heard ‘Dubrovnik.’ I found her message to you in the motel.” A smirk played on Rais’s lips. He was enjoying this, enjoying Reid’s shock and utter disbelief. “She led you here for me. I thought you might discover that before we landed, so there was a second plane in Nova Scotia. It departed ten minutes before your daughters arrived there, and it was bound for Dubrovnik. But the plane your daughters were on never came here. And so the authorities found nothing.”

Reid shook his head slowly, refusing to believe it. “But the cargo depot… the textile mill…”

“Oh, the traffickers do use this place,” Rais said casually. “But at my request they landed elsewhere. They are an unscrupulous group that had hoped to be Amun in the past. It was not difficult for me to convince them that Amun was still functioning underground, and that they could be welcomed into the fold.” He chuckled. “From what I hear, you took care of several of their members. Two birds with one stone, as they say. Perhaps if you survive—if you win this night—you can still find them.”

Reid’s lower lip trembled as a fresh wave of horror crashed down upon him. “You…” He struggled to form the words. “You gave my daughters… to them?”

Rais frowned. “Of course I did. Don’t you see? Not only will I not tell you where they are, but I don’t know where they are. What matters is that you are here, with me. I have destroyed your family. Now I will destroy you.”

Bile rose up in Reid’s throat. His legs felt weak. He knew this man was a psychopath, a murderer, even a monster—but he had underestimated the full lengths to which one person was willing to go for such a seemingly insane belief. Reid had believed that Maya’s message gave him an upper hand; that he was gaining on them. But he was merely being baited.

His girls could be anywhere. Finding them now would be an insurmountable task alone. He would have to contact the agency and turn himself in. Whatever it took.

But first, he had to deal with this animal, or else the specter of Amun would continue to haunt him to the ends of the earth.

Just let go, prodded the voice in his head. Let go of the wrath. Be the man you know you are. His life was not built on lies and murder, but that was all that Rais could understand. And because of that, Reid could always have the upper hand. He would not let his rage blindly control him.

He cleared his throat and kept the waver out of his voice as he said, “There’s one problem with your plan.” In his periphery he glanced down at the security guard’s body. “You haven’t destroyed anything. Not yet. My family is still out there, and I’m still breathing.”

The assassin’s smirk slackened, dragging his mouth into a frown.

“You have no love for anything or anyone,” Reid continued. “Your vendetta and your beliefs fuel your actions. They motivate and guide you to a meaningless end. But here’s the truth, Rais. You mean nothing to me. You’re just another insurgent, a part of the job. My daughters might have been instruments to your ends, but to me, they are the ends. They’re all that matters. I’m not going to waste my time on you. I’m going to go find my girls now.”

His heart racing in his chest, Reid turned around and walked away, noting and relishing the look of absolute astonishment on Rais’s usually passive face.

“No,” the assassin muttered.

Reid counted his paces.

“No!” Rais snarled. “I have come too far! You will not turn your back on me!”

He heard footfalls pounding the stone stairs. Coming up behind him, fast. He counted. Of course he knew he could not just walk away from Rais—but making the assassin believe he would, taunting him and diminishing his belief, was his bluff. He knew from experience how blind rage breeds carelessness.

All he needed was a moment of carelessness. A split-second of negligence, the slightest window of opportunity.

Reid took one more step and crouched on his right knee. He swung his hips and cantilevered his body, bringing his left leg up and around in a vicious roundhouse kick.

As Rais rushed up to angrily attack from behind, Reid’s heel connected with the side of the assassin’s face. He felt the sharp impact up his calf, resonating through to his hip. Rais’s head twisted first, his shoulders jerking wildly and his body following. He fell silently to the stone in a heap.

Reid did not wait around to inspect the damage or even to see if Rais was still conscious. He tucked into a roll and came up on his knees next to the guard’s body. He did not expect a gun, but on the man’s belt was another weapon—a thin leather blackjack, about ten inches long, one end curving into a beaver-tail shape and weighed heavily with a disc of lead. A well-placed blow with the blackjack could crack a skull like a melon.

Reid rose quickly and spun, rearing back with the leather-wrapped weapon—but an arm shot forward and stopped his forearm. Reid blinked in bewilderment. He had put nearly his entire body weight into that kick, yet Rais was standing, his lips snarling in the moonlight. The left half of the assassin’s face was purple and slightly misshapen; he certainly had an orbital fracture, yet he had recovered as if nothing had happened.

He savagely twisted Reid’s arm to one side. The familiar sensation of Kent Steele reflexes kicked in and he jumped, both feet leaving the air as he somersaulted with his twisted arm to avoid it snapping. Then he lurched forward, bending his arm as his elbow connected with the broken side of Rais’s face.

The assassin staggered back two steps, but otherwise showed no reaction of pain or injury.

How? Reid wondered in frustration. How can he take hits like that and keep coming like nothing happened?

“Curious, isn’t it.” Rais grinned and wiped blood from his cheek. “Damaged nerves, courtesy of many previous encounters—including ours. It is not without its drawbacks, but is occasionally quite useful.”

Damaged nerves. Reid’s knowledge of the nervous system was admittedly limited, but if Rais could continue taking blows like that without feeling them, Reid would have to change his strategy. During their last encounter in Sion, he had stabbed the assassin half a dozen times in the back and chest—he could only hope the dead nerves did not extend to other parts of his body.

Rais reached into his jacket and produced a wickedly curved hunting knife, its blade razor sharp and glinting in the moonlight. Reid took an instinctive step back and tightened his grip on the blackjack.

“This knife killed the old man,” Rais told him. “And it was at your daughter’s throat. Yet I had the feeling it was not the first time she had a blade to her naked neck. It is no small wonder how you’ve come all this way and still cannot keep those close to you safe from—”

Reid leapt forward, his scorching anger rising up, getting the better of him. He swung the blackjack upward, but too wide; Rais skirted to one side and avoided it easily. But Reid did not let up. He swung the lead-laden weapon rapidly back and forth, arcing and coming close but missing by fractions of an inch each time.

A small voice at the back of his mind shouted a warning, told him that the assassin was getting inside his head, but he ignored it. The image of the glinting blade on either of his children’s throats was too much to keep him thinking straight. He did not even realize that he was shouting unintelligibly, grunting louder in frustration with each near miss. Rais danced left and right, waiting for an opening, an opportunity.

Wait. Watch him. He’s keeping his head turned. Reid feigned a swing and instead jumped backward two steps, breathing hard. The assassin seemed slightly winded as well, but he still wore his malicious grin—turned slightly to his left.

He’s keeping his right eye on me. Reid understood immediately. The roundhouse kick to the face must have detached his retina or otherwise caused some amount of damage to Rais’s left eye. He had to keep his head turned to see Reid attack from that side.

He circled slowly, like a shark, sidestepping to the left. As he did, Rais stepped in time to his right, keeping his head tilted further than he should have needed. For several seconds they circled, each waiting for the other to make a move.

Stay on his left. Reid moved steadily, refusing to make the move. His anger was still palpable, throbbing in his chest, every limb aching to take a shot, but his brain sent signals forcing them to hold. Wait. Watch. And then…

A shadow of agitation flickered across the assassin’s face. Rais swiped across from the right and Reid leaned away from it—but it was a false lead. Instead of swiping outward, Rais tossed the knife to his left hand and jabbed forward. Reid tried to counter his weight to the other side quickly enough to avoid it, but the thrust came faster.

The knife pierced his abdomen just a finger’s span to the right of his belly button. He twisted away before the curved tip penetrated more than an inch or two, but it was still plenty enough to send scorching pain throughout his torso.

He backpedaled several feet, taking small quick steps as he examined the wound with his fingertips. He refused to take his eyes off the assassin, but Rais held his ground, apparently relishing drawing blood.

It’s shallow. His fingers came back slick and sticky. Bleeding badly, but shallow. The abdominal wall and subcutaneous layers are more than an inch thick. He didn’t puncture anything. Reid didn’t know if that was true or if it was something his mind was trained to tell himself to keep going—but it hardly mattered in the moment. This was a fight to the death.

Rais approached slowly, the knife loose in his grip. The bloody tip was pointed at Reid’s heart.

He’s going to fight dirty. You have to fight dirty too. Words he had once said to Maya flashed through his mind: Don’t fight fair. Do whatever you need to do. He had to do that now if he was ever going to see or speak to his daughters again.

Maneuver around him. Force him to turn his head.

Reid dropped the blackjack. It landed on the stone with a heavy thud. The pain in his abdomen was making his limbs weak, which would make his blows sluggish. Besides, he didn’t need it for what he was planning.

Rais paused, raising an eyebrow at the move. He kept the hunting knife in his loose grip, holding it with just his fingertips. Reid read the body language; the assassin was going to attempt a flick of a s***h at a soft part of his body. Likely his throat. If he was successful, it would be the end of their duel. There would be no coming back from that.

He gritted his teeth and let Rais get a bit closer. Then he lurched forward and feigned to the right. Rais turned his head, tracking the movement with the knife tip—and Reid crouched low, bounced off his foot, back to the left and into the assassin’s blind spot. He stuck out his elbow as he crossed in front and jammed it into Rais’s solar plexus. The younger man let out a surprised whoosh of breath as he doubled over, giving Reid the precious two seconds he needed to slump his shoulders and shrug out of his brown blazer.

As it slipped down the length of his forearms he grabbed the ends of both sleeves and spun around behind Rais, wrapping the blazer around the assassin’s body and yanking upward. Years-old training flooded flawlessly back into his muscle memory—he was using it as a kusari-fundo, a Japanese technique that utilized a length of chain, rope, or, in this case, a blazer.

He forced both of Rais’s arms up into the air at an awkward angle and twisted the sleeves around his throat, and then brought them together at the nape of his neck. Reid turned his body and dropped to one knee, at the same time pulling the gathered sleeves over his shoulder with his full weight behind the throw.

Rais’s entire body left the ground with a sharp gasp of shock. For a moment he was weightless, his head on Reid’s shoulder and his legs straight up in the air.

Then he came crashing down, flat on his stomach and face. The dull slap of flesh against stone was accompanied by a sharp crack of bone as something in his body gave to the unyielding surface.

Breathing hard, Reid reached to snatch up the hunting knife—or tried to. A hand grabbed at his wrist and yanked, sending him stumbling to regain his balance. Rais twisted and kicked at Reid in a blow that ordinarily would have merely glanced off of him, if not for its trajectory. His foot landed squarely on the abdominal stab wound.

He staggered again and cried out in pain as Rais scrambled to his feet and shrugged out of the tangled blazer. The assassin swung low, scooping the air with two fingers extended, as if he were swinging a bowling ball.

Both fingers found purchase in Reid’s open wound.

Reid’s mouth fell open in a wide, silent scream. No sound came; his breath caught in his throat with the inexorable pain. Rais’s index and middle finger dug deeper into him, holding firm like steel. Reid wrapped both hands around the assassin’s arm, trying in vain to pull free, but his limbs quickly drained of all strength.

Rais leaned into it, pushing forward, his bloody, pulpy mess of a face only inches from Reid’s. His wild green eyes were unyielding, his teeth gritted and lips pulled back in a snarl.

Reid reached for Rais’s throat, his face, anything to stop him, but he had no power left in his grip. All that was left was the pain, radiating from his core to every part of him.

In response, Rais swung his skull forward in a powerful headbutt. Reid couldn’t pull away, so instead he turned his head and the blow landed solidly across his cheek and jaw, sending his head lolling backward and reeling. He barely felt the fist that connected a moment later with the side of his face.

This is it. The last thing he would ever see was this maniacal fanatic’s bloody, snarling visage. Not his girls. There would be no saving them now. He had failed.