He stepped back to the door.
A taxicab passed by in front of me.
Fifty yards away the guy pushed the door.
I waited until I judged his momentum was all set to move forward. Then I pulled the trigger and shot him in the back. Bull’s-eye. A slow bullet. A perceptible delay. Fire, hit. The SD is advertised as silent. It isn’t. It makes a sound. Louder than the polite lithe spit you would get in a movie. But not worse than the kind of thump you would get from dropping a phone book on a table from about a yard. Noticeable in any environment, but not remarkable in a city.
Fifty yards away the guy pitched forward and went down with his torso in the alley and his legs on the sidewalk. I put a second bullet into him for safety’s sake and let the gun fall against its strap and took the phone back out of my pocket.
I said, ‘You still there?’
She said, ‘We’re still counting.’
You’re one short, I thought.
I zipped my jacket. Started walking. I hugged the far side of Madison and overshot 58th by a couple of yards. I crossed the avenue and came around the corner with my shoulder tight against the frontage of the buildings. I needed to keep below her line of sight. I passed the first old building. Passed the second.
I said from forty feet below her, ‘I have to go now. I’m tired. Times Square, tomorrow morning at ten, OK?’
She answered from forty feet above me. She said, ‘OK, I’ll send someone.’
I clicked off and put the phone back in my pocket and dragged the dead guy all the way into the alley. I closed the door behind us, slowly and quietly.
THERE WAS A LIGHT IN THE ALLEY. A SINGLE DIM BULB, IN A dirty bulkhead fixture. I recognized the dead guy from the photographs in Springfield’s Homeland Security folder. He had been number seven of the original nineteen. I didn’t remember his name. I dragged him the length of the space. The floor was old concrete, worn to a shine. I searched him. Nothing in his pockets. No ID. No weapon. I left him by a small wheeled trash receptacle covered in baked-on grime so old it didn’t smell any more.
Then I found the inner door to the building, and unzipped my jacket, and waited. I wondered how long it would take for them to get worried about the missing guy. Less than five minutes, I figured. I wondered how many there would be in the search party. Just one, probably, but I hoped for more.
They waited seven minutes and sent two men. The inner door opened and the first guy stepped out. Number fourteen on Springfield’s list. He took a pace towards the alley door and the second guy stepped out after him. Number eight on Springfield’s list.
Then three things happened.
First, the first guy stopped. He saw that the alley door was closed. Which did not compute. It could not be opened from the outside without the key. Therefore the original searcher would have left it standing open while he prowled the sidewalk. But it was closed. Therefore the original searcher was already back inside.
The first guy turned around.
Second thing, the second guy also turned around. To close the inner door quietly and precisely. I let him get it done.
Then he raised his eyes and saw me.
The first guy saw me.
Third thing, I shot them both. Two three-round bursts, brief muted purring explosions each a quarter of a second long. I aimed for the base of their throats and let the muzzle climb stitch upward towards their chins. They were small men. Their necks were narrow and mostly full of arteries and spinal cords. Ideal targets. The noise of the gun was much louder in the roofed alley than it had been out in the open. Loud enough for me to worry about it. But the inner door was closed. And it was a stout piece of wood. Once upon a time it had been an outer door, before some earlier owner had sold his air rights.
The two guys went down.
My spent shell cases rattled away across the concrete.
I waited.
No immediate reaction.
Eight rounds gone. Twenty-two remaining. Seven men captured, three more down, three still walking and talking.
Plus the Hoths themselves.
I searched the new dead guys. No ID. No weapons. No keys, which meant the inner door wasn’t locked.
I left the two new bodies next to the first one, in the shadow of the trash can.
Then I waited. I didn’t expect anyone else to come through the door. Presumably the old Brits on the North West Frontier had eventually gotten wise about sending out rescue parties. Presumably the Red Army had. Presumably the Hoths knew their history. They ought to have. Svetlana had written some of it.
I waited.
The phone vibrated in my pocket.
I pulled it out and checked the window on the front.
