Louis glared at his partner, then looked to Ben. “Please don’t worry about us. We’re still very grateful for your support during this trip. A little turbulence is no issue for us. Our concern is for you.”
Ben smiled. “We’ve made it this far. A few more days, and we’ll be back in the states.”
There was a sharp rap on the door, and Evelyn opened it. “Ben. We need you.”
He read the tension in her eyes and stood as he looked at Louis. “More turbulence ahead.”
Ben quickly joined Evelyn, and they took the elevator up to their floor and rushed to his room. He was starting to get worried.
The moment his door closed, he reached out and held her shoulder. “What’s going on?”
“I received word from the General of another Russian hit team on its way to Berlin. The intel he received said it was a two-person team. This time they’re both from a secret program much like the one which produced Liliya and Tatiana.” Her blue eyes were wide and worried.
“Where’s our team?” he asked.
“Tatiana doesn’t trust the timing of the report. She believes they’re already here, so she went hunting. Liliya tried to talk her out of it, though she also agreed the report was likely late. She’s doing a sweep of the area as well. I’m your primary security at this moment. You need to follow my directions.” Her blue eyes locked on his dark ones.
“We’re not going to stay here and endanger Louis and his team, right?” Ben asked.
“The General is scrambling a team of local resources to take us to a safe house until our flight. He’s already got people guarding the jet,” Evelyn replied. “We stay until they get here. Ten minutes ago, the General said they were thirty minutes out.”
Ben walked further into the room and sat on the sofa. He wasn’t keen on the wait-and-see approach.
Ten minutes later, there was a sequenced knock on the door.
“Tatiana,” Evelyn said and rushed to the door. A quick peek through the peephole, and she pulled the door open, skipping back from it in case she needed space to react. She stopped a few feet into the room and watched the brunette assassin slip inside and lock up.
When she turned back to face Evelyn, Ben was surprised by the hate in her eyes. “I told you! I told you your sources are incompetent. I found the assassins. They were in position to kill Ben as he left the hotel. Now they are dead.”
She looked at Ben. “You know nothing. The only way to stop killers is to kill them first. But you must kill them at the source. Cut the head from the beast, then you stop them from thinking of new ways to kill you!”
“What are you talking about?” Ben asked as he was getting concerned about how wound up she was becoming.
“Sergey Zhdankov. We must kill him. Now!” she shouted as her hand went to her hip.
Evelyn drew her combat blade. “Stand down, Tatiana! We have our orders.”
Tatiana finally focused on the Sergeant. “Orders? Empty words from your incompetent leaders who would have gotten us all killed. They are idiots and don’t understand how this must be done.”
Ben stood and moved closer. “If we kill him, they’ll just assign another agent who will send out more assassins.”
“Then you kill the ones who assign the agents. This isn’t complicated. You just need the will to do it right. I can kill them.”
“No,” Ben said.
“YOU ARE WEAK!” Tatiana screamed and lunged forward, knife in her hand.
Evelyn caught the assassin’s blade against her own and drove her knee into Tatiana’s side, knocking her back. The Russian beauty wheezed but threw something at the Sergeant’s face. Evelyn tried to slap it away, but it exploded in her face, and the Sergeant was blinded by the small satchel of pepper and dust.
Tatiana went for the kill.
Ben had a split second to reach out, grab the Sergeant and pull her back from the knife aimed at her throat. He closed his fist on her uniform and tugged her back with all his strength as he swung forward as the counterweight for her movement.
Tatiana adjusted her grip on the knife to extend its reach, but the blade missed Evelyn’s throat. It slashed across the woman’s face instead, a long but shallow cut.
Ben was stunned by the violence and missed the shocked expression on Tatiana’s face as she tried to stop her slash.
When her hand struck Ben’s body with a deep thump, he lost his grip on the Sergeant’s uniform, and she tumbled to the floor, hitting her head against the floor hard.
Ben blinked at the look of horror on Tatiana’s face then he looked down to see the hilt of her knife sticking out of his abdomen. He didn’t feel any pain, but he was aware of a deep pressure.
“Fuck!” he grunted. His legs suddenly gave, and he went down on his knees. That hurt, then the pressure he’d felt exploded into agony. He tried to lean away from it, but he just ended up on his back.
Pain was filling Ben’s world, threatening to spiral down a dark tunnel.
Fuck.
-=-
“WHY? WHY DID YOU MAKE ME DO THAT?” Tatiana screamed at him, but he didn’t respond.
“NOOO!”
Tatiana spun and caught Liliya’s blade against her remaining knife, but Liliya slashed her arm with her own second.
The brunette was at a disadvantage since her primary weapon was still sticking out of Ben’s body. Still, she knew she was a superior blade fighter to Liliya.
Except the blonde was fighting with a vicious ferocity Tatiana had never experienced. Her stabs and slashes were more aggressive than before, and Tatiana leaped back as she felt a sharp bite against her cheek.
That sent a spike of fear through the woman. They’d had an unspoken rule for sparring. Due to the agonizing pain of the surgeries they’d gone through to improve their looks, their faces were never to be targeted. Now, she knew Liliya would kill her without hesitation.
“You killed two of the three assassins so you could do the dirty work yourself?” Liliya spat as she backed Tatiana toward the bed.
This confused the brunette. “Three? There were two.”
“Newsstand. The third killed the old man running it.”
Tatiana momentarily froze as she recalled the younger man behind the counter after killing the two in the building across the street. Shit.
Liliya used that moment of distraction to launch another attack, and Tatiana took two more shallow cuts before she threw a pillow from the bed to block her opponent’s sight and launched her own attack. Her ankle caught Ben’s, and she fell but turned it into a roll that got her past Liliya.
“Fuck!” Ben gasped as the collision sent more pain through his body.
“Hang in there, Ben. I will get you medical help once I kill this traitorous bitch!” Liliya snapped.
Tatiana could see Liliya was prepared to kill her. “I never meant–”
“Spare me your scorpion lies! You wanted to kill him yourself, so they’d take you back!” Liliya snarled.
Tatiana shook her head. “no….” Then she spun and fled from the room, knocking Ed down in the hallway.
She looked at the simple man as he stared at her in surprise. She saw recrimination in his eyes. Opening up her stride, she raced away down the hall.
She would fix this. She would show them.
-=-
From the floor of the hallway, Ed watched Liliya begin to run toward him.
“No! Get an ambulance for Ben!” Evelyn called out from somewhere inside. She sounded like she was desperate and in pain, so Ed got up and rushed into the room.
Liliya huffed in frustration but spun to get to the phone. She dialed, then forced the handset into Ed’s hand as he approached, staring at Ben and the Sergeant on the floor.
“Get ambulances for Ben and the Sergeant,” she ordered, then fled from the room, pulling the door closed behind her.
Ed passed the message to the front desk clerk and the room number and was told they were on their way. He knelt next to Ben, who was resting on the floor with a grimace on his face.
“Was this how you got all the other scars?” Ed asked Ben.
Ben looked blearily at the big man. “Something along these lines, yes.” He glanced over at the Sergeant, whose face was covered in blood. “Are you still with us, Evelyn?”
“Mmph.”
Ben looked to Ed. “Get a clean pillowcase and cover her wound.”
Ed moved to do that, and once he had the white fabric soaking up the blood, there was a deep thumping at the door.
“Get it,” Evelyn mumbled.
Ed hustled over to the door. “Who is it?”
“General Davis sent us.”
Ed looked back and saw the Sergeant giving him a thumbs up, so he opened the door.
The moment the men in the hall spotted Ben and the Sergeant on the floor, they surged into the room, dragging Ed with them, two pinning him to the wall with his arms behind his back.
Their leader knelt next to Ben and took in the knife hilt sticking out of him. “Wizard is down! We need a medic, now!”
“I called for ambulances!” Ed called out.
“Ed’s wiff us,” Ben mumbled, beginning to feel the room slip out from under him.
“Hang in there, Wizard! Medics are inbound.”
“Who are you?” one of the soldiers holding Ed to the wall asked.
“Ed Walters. I-I’m a friend of Ben’s. We’re building his Foundation Headquarters,” he said. The two turned him around, and he looked at them with wide eyes. Both had thick beards and wore tactical uniforms with no military insignia but many pockets. Ed was a little dazzled by how many pockets they had.
“Did you see what happened?” one asked, then stood aside as paramedics rushed into the room with a stretcher.