Rebirth (John Taylor #1)

Chapter 6

The two goons were running pretty fast towards the front of the building. They weren't just checking hotels, not with the way they were moving. Odds were they knew exactly where we were, which was a problem all by itself, but one I would have to deal with later rather than sooner.

"Shit," I said out loud. "They found us."

Renata looked terrified again. Filling in the blanks on what she said happened to the girls Yuri didn't want any more, I couldn't even began to imagine what he would do to someone who openly betrayed him. From her look, it seemed Renata could imagine it.

But first they would have to get hold of her, and I was pretty set on that not happening.

"Go into the bathroom, and lie down in the bath tub," I told her. "Leave the door to the bathroom open."

She started to get up when her brain finally processed the words and she stopped.

"The bath tub?" she asked.

"Yes. It's strong enough that, if there is a stray bullet, the tub has a good chance of stopping it. Best we can hope for at the moment."

She turned and headed to the bathroom while I was working on the plan that had popped into my head. It was a little 'out there,' but it was all I could think of.

Going to the window, I pulled it open. There wasn't a fire escape, which actually worked in my favor. I pulled the bed spread off the bed and grabbed the thin sheet underneath and the one tucked into the bed. I tied the two sheets together and Twisted it into a rope I tied one end to the foot of the bed, and the other to a lamp. Once it was tied off, I tossed the lamp out the open window. Thankfully, it was heavy enough that it pulled the sheet taut, with the lamp hanging about four feet below the open window.

Anyone who gave it a moment's thought would realize that the bed sheets weren't nearly long enough for someone to climb to the ground on. Hell, this kind of thing would never work in reality, but you saw it all the time on the movies and TV. I was hoping these guys had watched some of those shows, and would be fooled by it. I didn't need the ruse to hold up. Any distraction would give me a slight edge, which I needed as there were two of them.

I turned on the lights in the interior of the room and shut off the lights by the door and in the bathroom. This should be enough for them to focus on what was straight in front of them, and not clear the rooms as a professional would. Groups like this had sometimes brought in ex-military types, before. If that was the case, and they were disciplined, then I was in trouble. No one with training would continue into the room without clearing potential danger areas first.

I moved back into the restroom, and stood next to the tub that hid Renata. I had the gun I had taken off the fallen Marshal in my hands. If they arrived in less than twenty seconds, then they knew exactly what room I was in. That didn't mean someone at the Marshal's office tipped them off, they could have gotten the info from the front desk clerk. Of course, how fast they found us didn't let the Marshal's service off the hook, either.

My thoughts were interrupted by a splintering sound as the door to the room exploded inward, courtesy of the boot that followed it through into the room. I pulled up my gun and waited. The first hint that they were looking my way, I was going to open up. That, however, was a 'worst case' scenario, as it would leave the other guy alive, and me boxed in, in a small room. If that happened, my chances of making it out of this alive dropped dramatically.

"Oni vyshli okno," the first guy said as he rushed past the bathroom door.

In Special Forces, communication with locals is a big thing, and we usually learn the language of an area where we are going to be deployed. I had learned passable Russian for my deployment there, but that was more than eight years ago. Language, especially one you are not fully fluent in, is either used or lost.