Swords of Exodus [Dead Six 02] Read Online Free PDF Page A

I had seen how real evil operated, and I was employee of the month.
    I hate what I’ve become .
    Concentrate on escaping. Be bitter later. I yanked the waiter’s sash, opened my coat, undid my tie, and tried to look casual, sloppy. Just a guy wrapping up a night on the town and taking home a professional girl. I grabbed Katarina around the waist—her abdominal muscles were hard as rock—and held her close. “Look like we’re guests leaving the party.” She held out the other 9mm.
    “Take this.”
    “Why?”
    “Where am I supposed to conceal a full-size pistol in this thing?” she growled, gesturing at her dress.
    True enough. She couldn’t hide most of herself in it. I took the gun and shoved it into the front of my pants and made sure the cummerbund hid it. I didn’t like carrying a cocked and locked handgun over my manhood, but didn’t have time to think of a better spot.
    First floor . The elevator clanked to a stop and the doors hissed open. Katarina giggled loudly and snuggled up; she was a superb actress. I did the half-drunk wobble out onto the linoleum. This was the service entrance, and guests shouldn’t be coming down this way, but it was a heck of a party upstairs, and what happens in Kuala Lumpur, stays in Kuala Lumpur.
    A few workers noticed us, but the place was swamped tonight. What was another drunk and his harlot? An older woman behind some sort of registration desk was wearing a traditional headscarf, and she shook her head sadly at the sight. She was old enough to have watched her traditional backwater country super-modernize, and all of the ancillary moral decay that came with it.
    “Excuse me, sir. You should not be in this area,” she said politely.
    I waved my hand in her general direction. “We’re leaving,” I said dismissively, playing the lost rich guy. Katarina giggled again. The woman frowned, apparently deciding that she needed to notify somebody of lost guests, and lifted her phone. She jiggled the receiver a few times when she didn’t get a dial tone. Way to go, Reaper . We continued down the hall.
    The area terminated in some doors and a loading dock. Several workers were moving in cartons of food and booze from a truck. Carl would pick us up on the other side.
    Katarina’s nails sank into my arm. I froze. Several men were entering, squeezing around the delivery truck. They had the look of toughs, not dressed for a quality event. The guy in the lead was still wearing his sunglasses at close to midnight, was plainly hurried, and was talking into a cell phone. Can’t jam everything, damn it .
    He saw me as I saw him, across twenty feet of concrete and harsh fluorescent light, and he knew that these were the people who had just shot his boss in the face. His hand moved in a blur as he shouted to the other pirates.
    Katarina had her arm around me, and her hand was only inches from the Hi-Power in the back of my waistband. I felt it leave as she dove to the side. I drew the second gun as I went the other way.
    It was on .
    The gun in my hand was a worn old military model. I punched the gun straight out, shifting focus from the pirate to the rudimentary front sight. I fired twice as I moved against the wall. Now I was crouching, moving forward into the loading area. I had to get out of that fatal funnel. Had to attack.
    Katarina had the same idea. There were multiple gunshots from her side. The lead pirate stumbled, dropped his cell phone, started to turn toward her, black gun coming up in his hand. I nailed him again, and then he was down. The workers were screaming, scattering, hitting the floor, or running.
    The other pirates were in a bad position, squeezing past the truck with no place to maneuver. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. I took the left. Katarina took the right. The wall behind me exploded into concrete fragments. The noise was deafening in the echoing space. A worker trapped in the crossfire spun, vegetables flying out of the cardboard box in his hands. A