A look of alarm seized Marie’s face suddenly. As Cade started to mouth a question, she touched “3” to activate the screen and speaker phone. Sounds poured forth of voices shouting indistinctly, some seeming to be barking commands, others yelling warnings; confused scuffling and banging; then a torrent of what could only be gunfire.
“What in hell—” Cade began, swinging his legs down off the bed.
Len’s face filled the screen, twisted by fear and desperation. “Kes, get out! It’s a bust! They’re already coming in here! We’ve got—” Half his head erupted in an explosion of flesh and gore. He vanished to be replaced by a brief image of a black-hooded figure holding a gun in one hand and gesturing to somebody with the other, then disappearing off-screen.
“Jesus Christ!” Cade cried.
“State Security. Freeze right there!” Cade looked around at where the voice had come from. Rebecca had come out of the bathroom, clasping an automatic in a two-handed grip. He gaped, paralyzed. But she made the mistake of swinging the weapon from him to Marie and back again to cover both of them. As the muzzle moved away, Marie swept her arm up, throwing the contents of her coffee cup into Rebecca’s face, then almost in the same movement bunched herself to go in low under it, crashing her shoulder into Rebecca’s midriff with her full weight and momentum behind it. The action was instant, reflexive—before Cade had even tuned in to what was happening. The sound of an explosion followed by more shooting came from the phone’s speaker.
The bullet went into the wall a foot away from Cade. Rebecca was hurled backward, going down and cracking her head on the drawer unit by the wall, which had the snack leftovers on top. Marie pulled Rebecca’s head up by the hair, thudded it back against the floor, then used her knee to pin the arm holding the gun and twisted it from Rebecca’s grasp. Rebecca made a V with the fingers of one hand and jabbed upward viciously, aiming at Marie’s eyes, but Marie deflected it, then struck sideways at Rebecca’s head with the gun, left then right, and then again—pure survival instinct reacting to lethal danger. Cade looked on, horrified, as blood welled from a gash on Rebecca’s temple and ran down her face, mingling with the coffee that Marie had thrown. Marie stood up, breathing shakily. But Rebecca was still not out, nor was she finished. She sat up and lunged for the gun, but was too groggy to judge the distance. Marie shot her twice in the center of the forehead.
Cade was still too shocked to have moved. Marie killed the phone and stood looking uncertainly around the room, thinking to herself furiously. “Len must have carried something back. . . .” She went around to the other bed and picked up her coat, still lying where Len’s had been, and began searching rapidly through the folds and pockets. Cade rose in a daze, looked disbelievingly at the body crumpled on the floor while he picked his way past it, and moved over to see what Marie was doing. She turned back the collar and held the coat up to reveal a black, rectangular object, about the size of a printed-circuit chip, attached underneath. She pulled it off, and making a sign for Cade not to say anything, went over to the closet beside the bathroom, where Cade had hung his jacket. A quick check found an identical device under one of the lapels. How or when Rebecca had put it there, he had no idea. Marie thrust the jacket at him to put on, handed him the automatic, and then as an afterthought went into the bathroom and added several extra ammunition clips that she found in Rebecca’s toilet bag. As Cade pocketed them, Marie put her hand to her ear and made the motions of using a phone. Cade took his unit out and showed it to her questioningly. She shook her head and pointed at the bed. He tossed the phone down, and then after taking a last look back at the body, turned to follow Marie out the door.