The Spy Devils by Joe Goldberg (top rated books of all time .TXT) 📕

was a tall dresser—a place to hang clothes. Six feet from the foot of the bed was a wooden desk with a chair. The bathroom door was between the desk and the wall opposite the door, which had two windows that looked over Dilova Street.

Some hazy light of dawn crept into the room.

At the door, Tough Face stopped and held out his hand. Beast looked at him. Tough Face shook his hand.

“Ah, I get it.” Beast took his plastic key card from his front pocket with his right hand. When the man took it with a quick grab, Beast hooked his thumb in his nylon belt.

Tough Face grumbled something unintelligible, turned, and slid the key into the slot. A green light blinked as the latch clicked. The door swung into the room to the right. He put the card in the slot on the wall to the left. The lights kicked on. Beast felt Robot shove the gun in his back again.

This is it.

Beast moved his right hand to his buckle and, with a short unseen upward motion, grabbed the black rectangular buckle from the belt, exposing a four-inch blade. He thrust it into the kidney of Tough Face and twisted. The man screamed and tried to jerk away, but Beast grabbed the man’s jacket with his left hand and tossed Tough Face into the dresser to their left. Beast spun left and down with the momentum to get out of the line of Robot’s fire.

Robot hesitated for less than a second, but it was enough. Robot managed to fire off two rounds with a suppressed thwomp thwomp. He missed Beast. Two holes appeared in the far wall.

Beast reached up and grabbed the front of the man’s jacket with his left hand. With his right, he brought the razor-sharp knife up and, with all his strength, jammed it into the man’s groin. The razor-sharp blade easily cut into the soft tissue of the scrotum. Sliced through his testicles and punctured his penis like shish-kabob. He screamed and dropped his gun as his hands automatically reached to his damaged crotch.

Blood exploded onto the floor, covering Beast’s hand. Twisting the knife deeper into Robot, Beast launched into the howling man, driving him backward into the Serbian, pinning him against the wall. Beast landed two solid left hooks to the jaw of the Serbian before he could get his Glock aimed at Beast.

Beast jumped back into the room and landed on his back by the bed. The knife ripped out of Robot’s body, effectively castrating him. The dazed Serbian ricocheted off the wall and tripped over the crying Robot.

Beast heard a thwomp, and his right quad immediately started to burn. He looked to his right. Tough Face was kneeling four feet away in a small puddle of blood—his gun in his wavering hand pointed at Beast.

He hoped to find Robot’s dropped Glock, but he couldn’t see it. Beast instinctively tossed his knife at Tough Face. The metal buckle knife was coated with blood, causing his hand to slip off as he threw it. The blade struck Tough Face sideways in the forehead. It wasn’t lethal, but it was enough of a distraction.

Tough Face recoiled, sending his next shot into the ceiling. Beast rolled and jumped toward Tough Face as best he could through the pain in his leg. They smashed into the desk, and Beast dropped his weight on top of him. He reached for the gun, jerked it up, twisted, and pointed the end of the suppresser under Tough Face’s chin. Beast jammed his finger into the trigger guard and pressed.

Tough Face lost parts of his tough face as the 9mm bullet traveled through his chin, jaw, tongue, teeth, the roof of his mouth, nasal cavities, and left eye. It exited out his forehead, sending his head back with a violent jerk. Blood, bone, and tissue splattered over the wall and Beast’s face. He felt the bits of goo in his eyes and mouth and started to spit them out as he gripped the gun and rolled onto his side to face the door.

The Serbian had recovered and was stepping into the room over the moaning Robot. He turned and fired blindly in Beast’s direction. Beast felt pain in his left arm and shoulder. He grasped the handle of the Glock in his blood-soaked right hand. Through blurred vision and still spitting Tough Face’s face out of his mouth, he fired off four shots into the Serbian’s head and chest. He fell dead against the bed.

Beast pointed the gun into what was left of Tough Face’s skull and fired a safety shot. He saw the shape of Robot curled in a massive pool of blood by the door—dead. Beast pointed the weapon in his direction, then decided to save the round.

Beast sat sweating, bleeding, and sucking in air as he leaned against the desk. Setting his gun in his lap, he tried to wipe the debris from his eyes so he could see the damage caused by three 9mm rounds that ripped into his body. Then, he recognized the symptoms of shock. Dizzy. Sweating. Shallow breath. It was coming.

Confusion was another symptom of shock, and that is what he thought was happening when he saw another shape enter the room. A blonde-haired woman in a red dress? Did she pick up a gun? Is she pointing it at me? He was even more confused when he looked down and saw his chest exploding with a series of red holes. He looked up as his vision started to tunnel shades of gray around the edges.

The last confusing moment was when he thought he heard the word “devil” before everything faded to black.

42

A Proposal

Kyiv, Ukraine

At 6:00 a.m., Bridger backed the rusty Skoda into a parking space by a courtyard adjacent and northwest of the Ukraine Standard Bank. It gave them some level of invisibility from three directions protected by trees. A review of Google Earth indicated the space also gave Bridger,