Hitman's Creed - 52

 

The drive to the lab was uneventful. When they arrived Glenn handed the professor over to the real security people who stood at the front entrance. Then he drove the car to the side of the building, parked and got out. Two minutes later he was back inside the building although no one was aware of it thanks to the back door access card that had been sent to him along with the ID.

He paused just long enough to secure the door so that no one else could use it and to orient himself. Then he moved stealthily down the hallway. When he passed a door marked 'Janitor' he took off his jacket and left it inside the closet.

Now all that was left to do was find his target. He was more than certain that the man was somewhere in the building.

The professor, one of the foremost experts in his field Glenn had found out from his hacker, was at the lab to meet with the director and his people. That meant they were probably in a conference room. To take the professor out in a public venue in front of his colleagues would tickle the fancy of Glenn's target.

Glenn knew there were three conference rooms on the second floor of the lab so he made his way up there using the fire stairwell. A long hallway greeted him, several doors flanking it on either side. He was about to check out the room behind the first door when he saw another at the far end of the hall open. Quickly he moved back to the stairwell, leaving the door open just enough to watch. His target stepped out of the room, all of his concentration on the elevator doors at the moment.

'You're slipping, you didn't make certain there wasn't anyone else here,' Glenn thought as he freed his gun from its holster. He could see, as his target finally turned slightly then to check the hall, that the man held a pistol by his side.

The ding of the elevator announced its arrival. The man raised his pistol. The elevator doors began to slide open. Glenn stepped silently into the hall and fired. His target swung around from the impact of the bullet, saw Glenn, and shot at him. Glenn flinched as the bullet dug into his side and fired again. The target fell forward onto his knees just as two security guards stepped off the elevator, their guns drawn. They were beside the man seconds later, one of them kicking his gun away while the other ordered him not to move.

Glenn snorted softly, closing the stairwell door on the scene. The only moving the target would be doing was to collapse the rest of the way onto the carpeted floor. A bullet to the heart did that to people. Glenn pressed his hand to his side as he ran down the stairs, feeling dampness where the bullet had grazed him. By the time he reached the basement of the lab, alarms were sounding. He raced to the exit, hit the panic bar to open the door, and sped up the short flight of stairs that led to the side of the building where he'd left the car.

Twenty minutes later he stood in the bathroom of his hotel room while he assessed the damage to his side then bandaged it. "Twenty to one," he grumbled as he put on a clean shirt, "I'll get a 'Job well done' and a new assignment as soon as I get back." Now he had only one decision to make, was he going directly back or would he make a brief side trip first. Taking a coin from his pocket, he flipped it, caught it, and nodded.