The Rogue Agent (The Agent Series) Read online

  Would have been more aware of their surroundings and less focused on the target ahead of them.

  By the way these men moved from their vehicle—the quickness with which they strode toward the stoop stairs in a tight formation—there hadn’t been any doubt in Hammerton’s mind of their intentions.

  This was an ambush.

  Abduction or assassination, but that didn’t matter at this point.

  What mattered to Hammerton was the level of professionalism these men did or didn’t possess.

  How well trained and well armed they were, and which of the many possible mistakes that could be made they’d make first.

  There was of course only one way to find that out.

  In the end, as was often the case, it was sheer luck that had allowed Hammerton to get the drop on them.

  It was his job to do so—to blindside those who sought to blindside the person he’d been assigned to protect.

  Exiting the watch car, Hammerton had gone to work.

  Four

  An arguing couple a half block down the sidewalk had caught the driver’s attention, allowing Hammerton to approach the Ford undetected.

  The steady rain helped with that, too, covering the sound of his boots on the pavement as he closed the distance.

  Within a few fast seconds he was just three feet away from his first target.

  A suppressor attached to his SIG, Hammerton put a single round through the man’s left ear.

  Moving around the front of the Ford, he kept his eyes fixed on the three-man hit team.

  The first man had reached the stoop, climbed its five steps, and was entering the street door of Ballentine’s building.

  As a ploy to lower Ballentine’s guard and throw off anyone who might be watching, he was holding a grocery bag to his chest with one arm and moving as if in a rush to catch the interior foyer door with his free hand before it swung closed.

  None of the men had turned back, which told Hammerton that the metallic clack of the pistol’s slide racking had been absorbed by the rain and hadn’t alerted them to his presence.

  Still, he wasn’t in position yet, and at any moment, one of them could simply glance back over his shoulder, eliminating the crucial element of surprise.

  Reaching the stoop, Hammerton watched as the other two men entered the street door. Ballentine turned back to hold the foyer door open for the man with the grocery bag.

  As if that man belonged there, he thanked Ballentine, then turned and placed his back against the door to hold it for his two friends.

  Ballentine continued on his way, starting up the stairs.

  He’d gone only a few steps up when the lead man placed his bag on the floor and reached into his raincoat, producing a short-barreled carbine suspended from his neck by a sling. Pulling the stock tight against his shoulder, the man began to raise the muzzle upward.

  The other two men removed pistols from their waistbands.

  One blocked the doorway, facing forward, while the other began to turn to cover the street door.

  Hammerton was inside the foyer and just feet from the turning man.

  His SIG was raised, the man already in his sights.

  Without hesitation, he put a round through the man’s neck, severing his spine.

  The man dropped to the floor.

  Hammerton stepped over the body and quickly closed the distance to the next man, who had heard the commotion behind him and was turning.

  Hammerton immediately shifted to close-quarter tactics.

  Instead of his arm outstretched in a two-hand grip, he lowered his weapon to his side, bracing his forearm horizontally along the natural notch of his hip bone, and used his free hand to grab the man’s weapon by its barrel.

  Hammerton didn’t struggle for control of the weapon, simply redirected it long enough to square his body with his target’s and unleash a double-tap into his center mass.

  The second man fell, giving Hammerton a clear view of the final man—the man armed with the short-barreled carbine.

  Ballentine had bolted at some point, was halfway up the stairs as the final man took aim.

  Hammerton was out of time, so he simply shifted his weight to his left leg and twisted his torso to the right as he brought his SIG to his solar plexus, gripping it again with both hands.

  He squeezed off another single shot, but not before the man pulled the trigger.

  The carbine had been set on full auto. Bright orange lit the stairwell, and in the enclosed space, the painfully loud burst of multiple rounds carried shockwaves that were palpable.

  Hammerton’s single round—a clean shot through the spine—dropped the man, but his finger did not immediately release its grip on the trigger and the weapon continued to fire.

  Hammerton counted a total of seven shots in that burst.

  It wasn’t until the man was motionless on the floor, the rifle clutched in his dead hand finally silent, that Hammerton moved to stand over him.

  He recognized the weapon as a KRISS Vector SBR—a modern-day equivalent to the Thompson submachine gun.

  He kicked the weapon clear of the man’s hand and as a precaution put a second round into the back of his head, then looked up at Ballentine, who was lying on his side halfway up the stairs, grasping his left shoulder with his right hand.

  A pistol lay a few steps down from his feet.

  “Fuck,” Hammerton whispered.

  He climbed the stairs two steps at a time, reached Ballentine, and knelt beside him, examining the wound.

  They were lucky; only one round had actually struck, leaving a flesh wound that was far from fatal.

  Hammerton’s concern switched instantly from tending to the wounded man to extracting him from the scene.

  No doubt others—many others, both inside this building and out—had heard the unusual sound of automatic gunfire.

  “Get up,” Hammerton said.

  “I think I’ve been shot.”

  “Get up. I need you to walk.”

  “Jesus. How bad is it?”

  “Get up, come on. We need to get out of here.”

  Ballentine looked at his bloodied hand. “Oh shit, I’m bleeding.”

  Hammerton lost his patience, grabbed the kid by his belt, and yanked him to his feet. He maintained his firm hold as he half pulled, half guided the kid down the stairs, letting go only long enough to retrieve the dropped pistol and tuck it securely into his waistband.

  At the bottom of the stairs, the kid stumbled and began to fall, but Hammerton yanked him to his feet and kept him moving.

  Facing the foyer door, which was propped open by the body of the second man, Hammerton let go of the kid and, resuming his Weaver stance, scanned what he could see of the street.

  “Stay right behind me,” he ordered, then stepped over the fallen men and moved through the narrow foyer to the street door.

  There he paused, his SIG still raised, and scanned the area—the vehicles parked along the curbs, the dozen stoops to his right and left, then those across the street.

  He saw no overt threats, but he also saw a number of places in which covert ones could find easy cover.

  But there was no staying where they were; stationary targets quickly drew fire.

  Lowering his hands, he concealed his firearm inside his open jacket and led Ballentine down the stairs and past the Ford with the dead man slumped behind the wheel.

  Less than a minute after the ambush had begun, Hammerton was speeding away in his watch car, Ballentine stretched out on the backseat, bleeding.

  Hammerton was back at his post by the locked office door.

  His ears were still ringing.

  Ballentine had smoked the cigarette down and was working on his second. After a moment, he spoke. “Who were they?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I mean, how did they find me? I did everything I was told.”

  “Everything isn’t always enough.”

  Ballentine was quiet for a moment more. “Thanks,�
�� he said finally. “For doing what you did back there.”

  “It’s my job.”

  “How’d you get so good at it?”

  “It’s interesting that you think I’m good at it, considering you got shot.”

  “It could have been a lot worse. It would have been a lot worse.” Ballentine shook his head. “I let them in, like an idiot. Then I just froze.”

  Hammerton thought about letting the kid off the hook, telling him that everyone panics the first time they come under fire, that no amount of training can prepare a man to face down a muzzle aimed right at him.

  But it suited Hammerton to have the kid scared and humbled, so he said nothing.

  Luck was on his side tonight, because before the kid could ask him anything else, Hammerton’s cell phone vibrated.

  He looked at the display. “He’s here.”

  “Who?”

  “Your own personal Jesus Christ.”

  Hammerton stepped to the kid and bent to help him up.

  “What the fuck does that mean?” the kid said.

  Hammerton ignored the question. “C’mon, get up. We need to move.”

  Five

  Hammerton sat in the van’s driver seat while Cahill examined Ballentine in the back.

  The renovated warehouse had a loading dock, but the bay was an open one, no overhead door, so Hammerton was keeping a close watch on the activity on the street outside.

  The rain kept pedestrians off the sidewalk, and this part of DUMBO was relatively quiet at night, so vehicle traffic was minimal.

  His SIG, reloaded, lay within quick reach on the passenger seat beside him.

  The back of the van was crowded with the kind of gear one would expect of a general contractor: power tools secured to one wall, a row of toolboxes for hand tools placed beneath them, and a two-foot-tall wooden chest fitted with a latch and padlock running along the other wall.

  The chest hid a state-of-the-art stretcher, but that wasn’t needed because Ballentine was able to sit up.

  He’d insisted on it, in fact.

  He was facing Cahill, who was seated on an overturned milk crate.

  The drawers of the metal toolboxes contained everything Cahill would need to patch a person up, or, in more desperate situations, keep him or her alive during the two-hour journey to Connecticut.

  Cahill had decided to clean and close Ballentine’s wound before proceeding with the exfil.

  For that, the van needed to be stationary, and though this was a risk, it was a calculated one. If there had been a breach and someone knew of the location of this safe house, then certainly that someone would have arrived by now.

  Cahill prided himself on his newfound set of skills, worked them with great care. And despite the fact that all gunshot wounds initially reminded him of Erica, focusing on this task eased his troubled mind—for a while, anyway.

  Each person he aided felt a little like redemption.

  Cahill injected Ballentine first with four hundred milligrams Ciprofloxacin to prevent infection, then followed that with a shot of Novocain, after which he threaded a surgical needle with a 2-0 nylon suture and began to stitch the wound closed.

  He spoke to Ballentine during the procedure, informing him of each step he was about to take prior to taking it.

  It wasn’t until Cahill was a few stitches from finishing that the kid spoke. “You’re Cahill, aren’t you? Charlie Cahill. Right?”

  Cahill continued stitching. “It doesn’t matter who I am.”

  “It does to me.”

  “Why?”

  “You knew my brother. In Afghanistan. Frank Ballentine. He was one of your recon marines.”

  Cahill disliked coincidences. Years ago, when he had learned that Frank Ballentine had been finally discharged, Cahill had recommended him to his handler, Sam Raveis, for contract work.

  And Raveis had sent James Carrington to recruit him.

  But here was Ballentine’s kid brother, also brought into the fold, and done so without Cahill’s knowledge—not that informing Cahill was required, though he would have expected to be consulted.

  Certain precautions were taken when bringing in family members.

  More than all that, though, here was Ballentine’s kid brother, shot by assailants who somehow knew what shouldn’t be known—the address of an operative’s apartment.

  But Cahill’s days as a special operator were behind him. He was support staff now—nothing more, nothing less. Exfils from New York City when required, field medicine when necessary.

  To ensure he never caused the loss of another life, Cahill followed orders and stuck to protocols as if they were commandments.

  The younger Ballentine had broken one of the more sacred of protocols by asking Cahill’s name, but there wasn’t anything Cahill could do about that other than to shut the kid down.

  “I need you to stop talking,” he said. “You’re going to sit back here, and I’m going to get you out. Are we clear?”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Out of the city. That’s all you need to know for now.”

  “For how long?”

  “I don’t know. But they’re going to want to debrief you, and someone’s going to keep an eye on your wound to make sure it’s healing right. Expect to be there for a few days, at the least.”

  “No.”

  “No what?”

  “I’m not leaving.”

  “It’s not your choice.”

  “The fuck it isn’t. And anyway, it’s not about choice. I can’t leave. Not without them.”

  “Who?”

  “Ula, my partner. If my cover is blown, hers could be, too. I leave, they’re in danger.”

  “They?”

  “She has a fifteen-year-old daughter.”

  Cahill leaned back, paused a moment, then looked toward Hammerton.

  Seated behind the wheel, Hammerton was watching them via the rearview mirror.

  He said nothing, and neither did Cahill.

  It was obvious to both men that the nature of the mission had now changed from simple exfil to rescue.

  Finally, Cahill let out a breath and faced Ballentine again. “Where are they?”

  “A motel. We needed a place for them to wait for me if something happened, and we needed to scramble. A safe place.”

  It took Cahill a moment to reply.

  He’d once thought the same thing—that a motel was the safest place for the woman he was determined to protect.

  The woman he loved.

  Erica.

  It had, of course, proved to be anything but safe.

  He didn’t need to check the rearview mirror to know that Hammerton was still watching for his reaction.

  Though Cahill did his best to keep his face void of expression, he had no doubt that the effort itself was visible to the man behind the wheel.

  The sight of a man about to come face-to-face with his past wasn’t easily mistaken. Or easily hidden.

  There wasn’t any time to waste.

  “What motel are they at?” he said.

  Six

  Brooklyn to the Bronx via the BQE was the fastest route, but it was also a zigzag—first north, then east, then west, then north again.

  Hammerton drove, pushing the speed limit as much as he dared.

  Ballentine was on the chest in the back, Cahill still seated across from him.

  In Ballentine’s hand was a smartphone. He had used it to text his partner a predetermined code, one that told her that he was on his way to get her and her daughter.

  Having such protocols in place was standard op procedure.

  Thirty minutes had passed since Ballentine had sent the coded message, however, and he had yet to receive a reply indicating receipt and compliance.

  Ballentine stared at the phone. Finally, the kid looked at Cahill. “Should I try again? It’s possible it didn’t go through, right? I mean, that happens.”

  “What’s your name?” Cahill said. “Your first name.”

/>   “Dante.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s your background?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What were you before this? Before signing on with Raveis?”

  Ballentine hesitated. “I was in school.”

  “School?”

  “Grad school.”

  “But before that?”

  “I’m not following.”

  “You served at some point, right?”

  “In the military? No.”

  Cahill shook his head. “Jesus.” To the best of his knowledge, only former military were recruited by Raveis to work as private contractors, and those recruits had almost exclusively been members of special forces units, those of either the United States or one of its allies.

  Cahill had been thinking up to this point that the kid was the exception to that rule—that rare recruit whose raw talent outweighed his having been a simple soldier or marine or seaman. But the kid’s apparent nervousness had told him that this wasn’t the case, and Cahill couldn’t help wondering what the hell a former grad student was doing in the field.

  Not just a grad student, but the younger brother of one of Cahill’s former recon marines.

  “You had your training, though, right?” Cahill said. “At one of Raveis’s compounds?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Raveis trained me privately. Off the grid.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  Cahill was about to ask him to elaborate on that but thought better of it. “You remember your training, though, right?”

  Ballentine nodded.

  “Then answer your own question,” Cahill said. “Should you send another message?”

  “No.”

  Cahill paused. “Listen, I’ll make it easier for you. Just do what I say from now on, okay? Everything I say, exactly as I say it. No questions, no hesitation, just immediate compliance and swift action. Understand?”

  Another nod. “Yeah.”

  “Good.” Cahill let out of breath. “So how is your brother anyway?”