Enemy Agents Read Online Free PDF Page A

Thorpe caught the knife hand between his palms and twisted the thug’s wrist, freeing the knife. Thorpe grabbed it out of the air with his left hand. With the man’s arm raised and momentum carrying the thug forward, Thorpe’s instinct was to stab the knife into the attacker’s armpit, pushing as deep as he could. The leather softened the attack, but the man still screamed as the blade found flesh, and Thorpe scanned the room for Yankee and Morris. He saw the flame-necked goon to his right and turned toward him. That was all the opening Morris needed.
    The veteran assassin looped his favourite weapon—a steel guitar string—over Thorpe’s head and in an instant Thorpe was choking. The garrotte was too tight to get a hand under. He flailed at Morris, but Morris had turned his back to Thorpe’s and was using the leverage to yank on the wire with all his strength. The blood was cut off from Thorpe’s brain, he knew, and that meant unconsciousness in seconds. Fortunately, Yankee was just as violent and reckless and Thorpe had assumed. The young thug pulled a knife of his own and ran at Thorpe. With his vision narrowing, Thorpe managed to catch this blade as well, but instead of stealing it, he redirected the thug’s arm, guiding him to stab past Thorpe’s left side, burying the blade in Morris’
s
belly. The garrotte went slack and Thorpe fell to the floor, gasping. His eyes saw black and white static while his brain drank oxygen again, and he then realized that the thug still had the knife. All three thugs were recovering now, although Wife-Beater was breathing in harsh, rasping chokes and was in no condition to fight.
    Yankee came at him first, and in his barely-conscious state, all Thorpe could muster to defend himself was his watch. The thug kept his knife in his left hand now, but opted to start in on Thorpe with a punch. As the thug landed a harder-than-expected right cross, Thorpe rolled with the punch and raised his hands. The thug had leaned in with the punch, really committing to it as he also prepared to follow-up with the blade, and Thorpe turned the watch laser on just as the young man’s carotid artery passed by the 12 o’clock mark.
    The thug screamed. The laser cut flesh like a scalpel, leaving a very narrow slash across the vein. The blood seeped at first, but once the Yankee fan put his hand to his neck and depressed the skin, the artery opened up and hot burgundy blood painted his hand. Thorpe caught a deep breath, his own neck still screaming at him from Morris’s wire, and threw a shoulder into Leather Jacket’s leg. The big man fell, his weight threatening to crush Thorpe, but Thorpe rolled Leather over his shoulder in a comfortable Judo move. The same instant the big man’s head hit the concrete, Thorpe threw a hard left elbow into his temple. The big man’s eyes suddenly lost focus, then closed.
    When Thorpe looked at Wife-Beater, the thug was doubled-over, still fighting to breathe through a damaged windpipe. Thorpe turned his back to the thug and looked for Morris, but all he found was a rectangle of light: an open door, heading outside. Walking slowly, still catching his breath, Thorpe headed toward the door.
    The sound from behind Thorpe was one he had heard a thousand times and from many distances. It was a gun cocking. He turned in time to see that Wife-Beater had raised a semi-automatic handgun, held out sideways like in the movies. Thorpe faked to the right and the kid fired, missing by inches. Not one to waste an opportunity, Thorpe tackled the kid, pinning the gun between his own arm and body. Another shot went off, and the muzzle burned Thorpe’s arm, but the bullet had no hope of hitting him. As he overpowered the younger man, Thorpe’s lungs were burning. He could taste blood. He was getting old. Still, he took the thug, at least thirty years his junior, hard to the cement floor and landed a headbutt to the kid’s nose. The nose broke with a crunch followed by a weeping of