Page 19

The adrenaline surged in Ice but he stood still. He didn’t understand the words but he understood the tone like it was a damn billboard.
Bull-neck grunted, took another puff from his cigarette, then tossed the butt onto the concrete floor and stood. He began to walk towards the closed bathroom door, and Ice knew he needed to move now or things could get very messy.
“Do not move, please,” came Frog-face’s voice from Ice’s left.
Ice very much moved, spinning around and drawing his weapon in one quick motion, firing twice at Frog-face while backpedaling and weaving.
Ice’s first bullet hit Frog-face in the shoulder, spinning the stocky man around and sending him staggering backwards. Ice went down into a crouch and turned to take out Bull-neck, but the guy had flipped over the metal table and was down behind it.
Ice fired twice into the steel, but for all the shortcomings of the safe-house Moses had decided not to skimp on the furniture. The bullets pounded into the steel tabletop, creating two massive dents but not breaking through the metal.
Ice fired one more shot into the table, then whipped his body around when a bullet shattered the floor-tile beside him.
Frog-face was still tottering on his feet, his white shirt streaked with hot red blood from his shoulder wound. He had drawn and was firing, but with his left hand, which made him miss badly.
Frog-face’s next three bullets smashed into the blackened windows, shattering the frosted glass. Ice fired two rapid shots, putting one into Frog-face’s center mass, right in the chest, the bullet shattering his sternum and smashing into the man’s heart.
Frog-face went down hard, dead before he hit the concrete.
Then everything went silent, nothing but the echoes of gunshots ricocheting off concrete walls.
The safe-house was clouded in gunsmoke, the air thick with the pungent scent of sulfur. Ice stayed low in a half-crouch, ready to move, gun aimed at the top of the turned-over table, waiting for just the speck of a shot.
But Bull-neck wasn’t going to stick his head up. Instead he stuck just his gun above the steel edge of the table, taking haphazard blind shots.
Ice stayed in position.
Took careful aim.
And shot the gun out of Bull-neck’s hand.
Then Ice pushed off the floor, charged the table, meeting Bull-neck just as the man emerged with a bewildered expression and a bloody right hand which was missing at least one finger and most of the thumb.
Ice hit Bull-neck full in the midsection with a heads-down charge, driving the man hard against the wall, cracking most of his ribs and breaking his spine. The man went limp against the wall, and Ice stepped back and let him fall on his face. He considered breaking the man’s neck to make sure, but snapping his spine seemed to have done the trick.
Quickly Ice patted the dead man down, finding nothing but a single key with the Royal Enfield insignia carved into the steel. He pocketed the key, then retrieved the man’s gun. It was a Sig Sauer 9mm, old model but in decent shape. Ice had to pull a severed index finger off the trigger.
It was only when Ice strode over to Frog-face to grab his gun too that he noticed the lavatory door was now open.
“Oh, hell,” came Indy O’Donnell’s voice. “What . . . what just . . . what . . .”
“We’re leaving, that’s what,” Ice snapped. “Move, Indy.”
He shoved the two new weapons into spare cargo sections of his pants, then grabbed Indy’s arm and dragged her towards the door. She stumbled as he pulled her, her attention fixated on the two dead bodies, Frog-face’s shirt now streaked red down the front from his destroyed heart, Bull-neck twisted in a grotesquely unnatural position, his bloody right hand splayed out not far from his severed finger and thumb like he was trying to put himself back together for the afterlife.
“Who . . . who are they?” she stammered as Ice slid the deadbolt off the front door and yanked it open. “I mean, whowerethey, I guess.”
Ice didn’t answer. Right now they needed to get the hell out of here. The only saving grace was that it was fully dark outside now and the traffic noise was still loud enough to have masked the sounds of Frog-face’s wild gunshots that smashed through the safe-house windows.
But those wild gunshots appeared to have hit something after all.
“Shit,” Ice muttered as he stared at the two bulletholes in his Jeep’s front grill. There was a rapidly expanding puddle of sludgy black oil beneath the engine block. “We need another ride.”
Ice glanced at the motorcycle, felt the key in his pocket. A bike wasn’t ideal if you had a prisoner, but it was the only thing available right now.
Ice didn’t waste time thinking too hard. He grabbed his duffel from the Jeep, unzipped it and pulled out one of the heavy-duty plastic ties that he always carried in case he needed to detain someone.
“Get on the bike behind me, Indy,” Ice commanded as he swung his leg over the leather seat and settled into position. “And bring your arms around.”