Page 99 of Filthy Little Fix

"Which one?" I whisper.

He raises a trembling hand and points to the left door.

"Are you sure, Sal? If you're wrong, I'll cut out your tongue and leave you to bleed out here."

"I'm sure. It leads to the secondary storage wing," he stammers.

Two guards at the end of that hall, near the next junction. Stationary. Talking.

I make a hand signal to the team. Two targets. Me and Luca.

We move. Their discipline is a joke. Their backs are to the corridor, one of them laughing at something. Complacent.

I make no sound. I approach my target from behind. I clamp my hand over his mouth, muffling any sound of surprise as I sink a combat knife into his kidney, once, and then into the side of his neck. I let his body convulse for a second before it goes limp. I lay him on the ground without a sound. The blood stains my fingers.

Beside me, Luca does the same to the other. Two dull thuds on the floor. It's over.

Sal, who was forced to watch, gags into his hand. Luca pulls him along by the collar, not caring about his obvious struggle not to vomit.

We keep moving forward. Sal points us to the final room: a reinforced metal door in the middle of a hallway. Four guards.

Two are posted like statues, flanking the reinforced metal door in the middle of the hall. Impossible to get behind them. Further ahead, at the end of the dead-end corridor, a third guard watches the entire hall. The fourth, and most dangerous, is a patrolman who paces back and forth too close to our position, impatient, breaking discipline.

My blood boils. They are protecting the man who's in there sotheycan hurt him.

Their formation is defensive. Suicidal for a frontal assault. Attacking one alerts the others.

I turn to Sal. I grab the front of his shirt and pull him close, far enough from the corridor that the guards won't hear the communication.

"You're going to walk to that intersection," I order Sal. "Does the patrolling guard know you?"

"Y-yes, that's Misha..." he stammers.

"Good," I cut him off. "You're going to call Misha over. Discreetly. You'll go with him down the north corridor. You'll say you have something urgent to show him, away from the main door." I squeeze tighter. "If he doesn't follow you, you die here. If you scream, you die. If they suspect something and shoot you, we'll use you as a shield. Do you understand your options?"

He nods frantically with tears in his eyes.

I let him go. "Go."

Sal stumbles forward, straightening his rumpled clothes, trying to look minimally normal. He hides his broken finger inhis sleeve and walks. He reaches the intersection, stops, and looks at the patrolman.

"Misha," he calls out. "I need to talk to you."

The patrolman stops. He sees Sal and frowns. Sal gestures with his head toward the north corridor.

"It's important. About the Volkovs."

It works. The curiosity and urgency of the nameVolkovis the perfect bait, paired with the obvious, latent fear on Sal's face. It looks like he's about to report an invasion. Misha starts walking towards Sal. The guard on the right of the door hesitates for a second, looks at his partner, and then decides to follow Misha to see what's happening.

Perfect. Their formation is broken. Sal turns north, with two guards now having their backs to us, who have taken cover behind stacked crates. The other two remain at their posts, but their attention is divided, looking to where their partners have gone.

It's the window of opportunity.

I give the signal.

Yury and Abram have a clean line of sight to the backs of the two guards who followed Sal. Two silenced pistols fire as one. The two men fall forward, dead before they hit the ground.

At the exact instant of the shots, Luca and I run the meters that separate us from the main door. I reach the guard on the left before he can properly aim his weapon. I push the muzzle upwards and slice his throat. He doesn't have time to process. Beside me, Luca reaches his target and neutralizes him with the same efficiency.