Wired - Douglas E. Richards [95]
She glanced down at her chest and stifled a gasp. The locket was gone!
Her eyes widened.
The guard named Jim, stationed between his two colleagues, peered at Desh uncomfortably. “What’s wrong with you?” he demanded.
“Don’t know,” uttered Desh feebly. “Gonna vomit,” he whispered. “Bathroom. Please.”
“It’s a trick,” said the guard closest to Desh. “It has to be.”
“Brilliant conclusion,” said Kira mockingly, rolling her eyes. “Can’t you tell when someone’s feverish? How the hell could it be a trick?” She shook her head in disgust. “Look at him! You can’t fake that.”
Desh moved his head forward and swallowed hard several times, as if fighting a gag reflex.
“In another few minutes he’ll be covered in vomit!” pressed Kira. “Are you prepared to live with that smell all night? You think your psychotic boss will be happy about this when he returns?”
Jim frowned miserably. “Ken,” he said, nodding at the guard closest to Desh, “cut him loose. And get him to a toilet.”
Ken hesitated.
“Hurry!” barked Jim.
Desh moaned as Ken approached, pulling a combat knife from his belt. The other two guards raised their guns and trained them steadily on Desh, as Ken reached behind him and cut through the tough plastic of his restraint, which fell to the ground, and returned the knife to his belt.
Desh grunted in pain as he rose unsteadily to his feet, hunched over and clutching at his stomach. He glanced at the other two guards. Ken began escorting him to the stairs. When Desh was halfway there, he bent over and made a loud, throaty, heaving sound, as though a week’s worth of stomach contents were erupting from his throat.
The guards all glanced away, just for a moment, in disgust.
Desh moved! He snatched Ken’s knife with a speed and precision that could never be equaled by a normal man and flicked it toward the guard farthest from him with a smooth, practiced motion. The knife buried itself deep in the guard’s chest. The instant Desh released the knife he spun Ken to his right and into the path of the tranquilizer dart that Jim had sent racing toward him. Desh threw his human shield forward and into Jim in front of him, who shoved the dead weight of his tranquilized colleague violently to the concrete floor. As he did so, Desh was on him immediately, landing a vicious kick to his arm and sending his gun flying. The guard attempted a knifehand strike to Desh’s throat in combination with a palmhand blow to his nose, but Desh blocked both attempts easily. He had read the guard’s body language so precisely he knew the man’s intentions before he had begun to move.
Desh now read Jim’s defensive posture, and spotting an opening, wheeled around and landed a roundhouse kick on the guard’s chest, exploding him back against the staircase. Even as the kick was landing Desh calculated the exact distance to the staircase and the exact speed and force he would need to exert to achieve his goal. As the man’s head cracked against the staircase, he crumpled to the ground, unconscious, and Desh knew his calculations had been perfect.
Desh snatched Jim’s tranquilizer gun from the floor, stepped over Ken’s body, and crouched low under the open staircase. As he had expected, the guard who had remained upstairs bolted through the door to the basement and down several stairs holding an automatic rifle out in front of him. So much for non-lethal force, thought Desh.
The man expertly covered the staircase and entire basement with his gun. He took in the sight of Kira, still bound, and four bodies sprawled on the floor, but could detect no other movement, which he immediately realized suggested his adversary was hidden under the staircase.
His realization came far too late.
Desh casually sent a dart at point blank range through the opening between two stairs and into the guard’s leg. He collapsed