Without remorse - Tom Clancy [326]
He crossed the street briskly, for the first time breaking his cover in public, such as it was, weighing risks and finding the balance evenly set on madness. But then, the whole enterprise had been mad from the start, hadn't it? First he did his best to check out the street level for people. Finding none, Kelly took the Ka-Bar from his sheath and started attacking the caulking around the full-length glass pane in the old wooden door. Perhaps burglars just weren't patient, he thought, or maybe just dumb - or smarter than he was being at the moment, Kelly told himself, using both hands to strip the caulking away. It took six endless minutes, all of it under a streetlight not ten feet away, before he was able to lower the glass, cutting himself twice in the process. Kelly swore quietly, looking at the deep cut on his left hand. Then he stepped sideways through the opening and headed for the back of the building. Some mom-and-pop store, he thought, abandoned or something, probably because the neighborhood itself was dying. Well, it could have been worse. The floor was dusty but uncluttered. There were stairs in the back. Kelly could hear noise upstairs, and he went up, his .45 leading the way.
'It's been a nice party, honey, but it's over now,' a male voice said. Kelly heard the rough humor in it, followed by a female whimper.
'Please ... you don't mean you're ...'
'Sorry, honey, but that's just the way things are,' another voice said. 'I'll do the front.'
Kelly eased down the corridor. Again the floor was unobstructed, just dirty. The wooden floor was old, but had been recent -
- It creaked -
'What's that?'
Kelly froze for the briefest moment, but there was neither time nor a place to hide, and he darted the last fifteen feet, then dived in low and rolled to unmask his pistol.
There were two men, both in their twenties, just shapes, really, as his mind filtered out the irrelevancies and concentrated on what mattered now: size, distance, movement. One was reaching for a gun as Kelly rolled, and even got his gun out of his belt and coming around before two rounds entered his chest and another his head. Kelly brought his weapon around even before the body fell.
'Jesus Christ! Okay! Okay!' A small chrome revolver dropped to the floor There was a loud scream from the front of the building, which Kelly ignored as he got back to his feet, his automatic locked on the second man as though connected by a steel rod.
'They're gonna kill us.' It was a surprisingly mousy voice, frightened but slow from whatever she was using.
'How many?' Kelly snapped at her.
'Just these two, they're going to -'
'I don't think so,' Kelly told her, standing. 'Which one are you?'
'Paula.' He was covering his target.
'Where are Maria and Roberta?'
'They're in the front room,' Paula told him, still too disoriented to wonder how he knew the names. The other man spoke for her.
'Passed out, pal, okay?' Let's talk, the man's eyes tried to say.
'Who are you?' There was just something about a .45 that made people talk, Kelly thought, not knowing what his eyes looked like behind the sights.
'Frank Molinari.' An accent, and the realization that Kelly wasn't a policeman.
'Where from, Frank? - You stay put!' Kelly told Paula with a pointed left hand. He kept the gun level, eyes sweeping around, ears searching for a danger sound.
'Philly. Hey, man, we can talk, okay?' He was shaking, eyes flickering down to the gun he'd just dropped, wondering what the hell was happening.
Why was somebody from Philadelphia doing Henry's dirty work? Kelly's mind raced. Two of the men at the lab had sounded the same way. Tony Piaggi. Sure, the mob connection, and Philadelphia ...
'Ever been to Pittsburgh, Frank?' Somehow the question just popped out.
Molinari took his best guess. It was not a good one. 'How did you know that? Who you working for?'