The Hostage (Presidential Agent 2)

There was a face at the window, and it looked as if whoever stood there was trying to break the window with something.

The last thing Jean-Paul Lorimer, Ph.D., saw in this world, before two 9mm bullets struck him in the mouth and forehead, was the breaking glass of the window and an orange flash. Castillo reacted to the sound of the breaking glass and the burst of submachine fire instinctively. He dropped to the ground, scurried behind the desk, and reached for the Beretta he was carrying in the small of his back.

What the fuck?

This desk is going to be about as much protection against a 9mm as a Kleenex.

There was the sound of more firing outside. He recognized the characteristic chatter of a Car 4. More than one Car 4. And then the sharper crack of a 7.62.

Didn't I hear a 7.62 just before the goddamn submachine gun went off?

He saw a cord running across the floor to the desk.

If they can't see you, they can't shoot you.

Unless they spray the room with a submachine gun.

What the hell!

He jerked on the cord and a lamp on Lorimer's desk crashed to the floor. But didn't go out.

Sonofabitch!

There was the sound of another 7.62mm round going off, and of voices shouting something unintelligible, and then several more bursts from Car 4s.

Castillo reeled in the lamp, finally found the switch, and turned it off. The room was now dark.

Castillo got to his knees, then took a running dive from behind the desk toward the corner. No one shot at him. He found the wall with his hands and pushed himself into the corner. He waited for a moment to give his eyes a chance to adjust to the darkness. To turn the lamp off, he had had to find the switch, which was a push device in the bulb socket, which meant that he'd had the light from a clear-glass sixty-watt bulb right in his eyes.

Finally, he could make out the outline of the windows, and raised the Beretta in both hands to aim at it.

"Alfredo?" he called.

"I'm hit," Munz called back. "I don't know how bad. I have Lorimer's brains all over me."

There was another burst of Car 4 fire, this one farther away.

And then Sergeant Kensington's voice. "Anybody alive in there?"

"Only the good guys," Castillo called back.

There was the sound of a door being kicked open. And then a hand holding a flashlight appeared in the door and the ligh

t swept the room.

Then Kensington came into the room with Corporal Lester Bradley on his heels, sniper rifle at the ready.

"Get that goddamn light out of my eyes," Castillo ordered. "There's a lamp on the floor behind the desk."

Kensington found the light and turned it on, and then walked to where Castillo was getting to his feet. He waited until Castillo was fully up, then said, "These cocksuckers, whoever the fuck they were, got past Kranz. Can you believe that?"

"Is he all right?"

"They garroted him, Major," Kensington said.

"Oh, shit!"

Castillo walked to the desk again, looked at the exploded head of Jean-Paul Lorimer, and then at the blood oozing from the chest of El Coronel Alfredo Munz, and said, "Oh, shit!" again. [FOUR] Estancia Shangri-La Tacuarembo Province Republica Oriental del Uruguay 2225 31 July 2005 "You're going to be all right, Colonel," Sergeant Robert Kensington said to Munz, who rested just about where he had fallen behind Lorimer's desk. "There's some muscle damage that's going to take some time to heal, and you're going to hurt like hell for a long time every time you move-for that matter, breathe. I can take the bullet out now, if you'd like."