The Man of Bronze Read Online Free PDF Page A

to get away from the body, I moved soundlessly toward the Russian’s room.
    The Russian had given up playing possum . . . probably when he felt the muzzle of an Uzi pressed against his skull. At that point, however, the gunman and the Mafioso reached an impasse; the Pole clearly didn’t speak Russian, and the Russian showed no sign of speaking Polish. The gunman was now trying English, which didn’t strike a chord either. Globalization has a long way to go in the criminal world.
    I took all this in with a quick peek around the doorframe. The men were too busy to notice. I might have walked in and rendered the gunman unconscious without too much trouble . . . except for the pistol he held pressed against the Russian’s head. The safety was off, and the man’s finger was on the trigger. Whatever I did to knock him out—whether a nerve strike, a sleeper hold, or a plain old punch to the jaw—I couldn’t be certain his hand wouldn’t clench by pure reflex and fire off a round. Not only would that alert his companions on the ground floor, it would probably kill the Russian.
    I couldn’t allow that. Much as I suspected the Russian belonged to the Mafia, I didn’t know for certain. Even if he did, he might not have blood on his hands: a bookie or a fence, deserving jail but not a bullet to the brain.
    So I waited . . . hoping the gunman wouldn’t shoot the Russian out of pique at the failure to communicate. It was touch and go for a few seconds; but at last the Pole must have realized the Russian wasn’t part of the mission at hand. The invaders wanted Reuben Baptiste, not some Moscow Mafioso with a broken leg. “You’re wasting my time,” the gunman said. He flicked on the Uzi’s safety and pistol-whipped the Russian hard across the face. The Russian fell back, blood gushing from his nose. At least he wouldn’t have to fake unconsciousness anymore.
    Angrily, the gunman came stomping out of the room. As he reached the doorway, he snapped, “Have you finished with that whore yet?” He turned toward the spot where he’d last seen his partner and me.
    That’s when I hit him with a ridge hand across the throat—a clothesline maneuver into which I put all my strength.
    If that first strike didn’t collapse his windpipe, my second one did. I was in no mood to be gentle.
    I stashed the corpses under the unconscious Russian’s bed, leaving the first man wrapped in the sheet to avoid any pool of blood. Lady Macbeth asked, “. . . who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?” . . . but that proves Lady M. was an amateur when it came to violence. Dead bodies can spill
prodigious
quantities of blood. In a cheaply constructed place like Jacek’s, one must store corpses carefully to avoid leaks seeping through the floor and out the ceiling below. Blood dripping from the rafters may delight splatterpunk movie audiences, but it’s undesirable when one wants to be stealthy.
    As I was hiding the dead men, I searched them. They’d brought precious little equipment with them: no standard mercenary gear like walkie-talkies or night-vision goggles. Not even an electric torch. They must have expected this mission to be a complete cakewalk. All they carried were weapons, which I took for myself—not just the Uzis but also a Kaybar commando knife in a sheath, which I slid onto my belt.
    To my deep unease, one of the men also possessed a glittering grenade of a type I didn’t recognize. It was the size of my fist but spherical with a polished exterior that looked like sterling silver. There were two press buttons, one on either end. Presumably, one triggered the grenade by pressing both buttons simultaneously; but I couldn’t guess what happened after that. Did it explode? Was it a stun grenade, designed not to kill but to bang out a concussion wave strong enough to knock victims senseless? Could it contain noxious gas, and, if so, would the contents be simple tear gas or something more