Why they were to do this particular job this way, Stone didn’t know, nor did he care. He just knew it was time consuming and he already was bored.
He’d brought three of his team here today. They were to be already in place by now, upstairs at the penthouse. He’d not received any distress calls or alarms via his receiver, so he could only assume things were going as planned.
Despite the ease of this mission so far, Stone had a bad vibe that had covered him since awakening this morning. Perhaps it had been the dream from the night before—the dream about the bird—the bird that rose from the ashes.
The Phoenix…
The elevator doors opened with a quiet shush. The music inside was subdued and barely audible. Stepping in, he hesitated before using the key that would allow him access to the private floor. Two large men moved into the elevator next, standing on each side of him. It was obvious they were strapped. Stone could smell a gun. It was one of his senses: sight, hearing, taste, touch, and metal detection.
They were clearly Tripoli’s strongmen—hoods, shields. These men worked for Tripoli. Standing around six four or five, they looked like wrestlers from late-night American television.
Who are they trying to fool, pretending to need this elevator for purposes other than mayhem? Stone thought now while examining his ambushers. Big and Dumb, that’s who they are. Probably by name, Stone mentally concluded.
The men spoke to each other in Italian, nevertheless, Stone understood what was being said. “How should we kill him?” one asked.
“Does it matter? He is a little niggah. We shall simply snap him like hard bread.”
They laughed.
Not this day, Stone thought.
There was going to be violence here.
Stone yawned. He was getting tired of all this shit. All he wanted was to go home. He wished this was going to be his last assignment. He was through with all this. Right now, he wanted to be sitting out on his deck, watching his double drifting by on a plastic pool toy. He could see it in his mind’s eye. He always saw himself as if on the outside looking in. Despite the found thought, he knew he had no such deck, and that pool was only an American suburbia dream he’d had. He dreamed of going to America and starting a life there, a life that nobody would ever know about.
“It’s such a nice month to go to America, don’cha think?” he asked them in English, working hard to disguise his accent. He’d been working on an American accent for months. He yawned again, waiting for the men to decide how to proceed.
Using the key finally, the elevator bypassed floors eighteen and nineteen, and opened on the penthouse floor. The three of them stood in the elevator as if not sure who would come clean with the true intention of this meeting.
“You guys are really boring me. I’m ready to get the hell outta here,” Stone said, again in English, after a few more moments of listening to their foreign exchange. “Oh, and I got your ‘kill the nigga’…okay?” he said to them now in their own dialect.
Thinking their words had been covert and not understood, the larger of the two men abruptly stopped speaking, seemingly shocked at the young man’s boldness. “Oh, you do?” he asked in broken English.
Stone saw himself in the man’s eyes.
A kid, dressed in this fancy suit and expensive shoes. No doubt resembling a boy playing dress up in his rich daddy’s clothes. No respect for authority. Vain, beautiful, and more importantly…dangerous.
The large men, who had apparently known his purpose and followed him into this elevator to kill him, smiled wickedly while opening their jackets, exposing weapons as if to say, “We got you covered.” Stone simply nodded, smiling in return, and opened his jacket, showing the men he was unarmed.
“So, let’s not,” he said, answering their unasked request for a showdown, and pushing the elevator door button as if deciding to cancel his visit to the penthouse floor.
“You guys wanna dance? I can visit your boss later,” Stone added, continuing in Italian.
The men laughed, as if eager to get the chance to beat up on this haughty “assassin,” maybe even put a bullet in the back of his head.
Suddenly, right before the doors closed, they parted slightly and then ripped open as Malik, a member of his team, burst through, tossing Stone a larger weapon than the one he had concealed for emergencies.
Never travel alone…
Stone grabbed the man’s arm and slammed the cold steel of the 9 mm against the larger man’s head. He could feel the tension in his body increase.
The other man, the smaller of the two, rolled around the floor of the elevator, nursing two bullet wounds in each leg from Malik’s silencer. Amid his pain, he stared upward at Stone’s barrel of silent death pointed at the larger man’s head.
Stone looked down at him. He wanted to feel pity, but he felt nothing. His heart again had shut down. It was a sensation he always felt at moments like this. This was too easy. These guys are really just too dense, Stone thought then, hoping he wouldn’t have to kill the two of them. He hated killing ignorant animals. But then again, if he didn’t kill them, he’d have to take them home. The thought caused a wicked chuckle to leave his lips.
Malik reached into the elevator, grabbing the larger man from Stone’s grasp and placing him in front of him as a shield, while the other man lay there watching them, apparently waiting to see if either would twitch so he might have a chance to reach his concealed weapon. He went for it, thinking he saw that chance.
No such luck.
Doesn’t he know?
The Phoenix team never flinches.
The seconds ticked.
Turning his attention on him, Stone’s weapon whispered the sound of the bullet leaving the silencer. Stone leaned closer to the now dead man on the floor, as if making sure he was really dead. He lay on his back, no longer holding his leg. He was dead.
“Hello, anybody home?” he asked in Arabic. “Nope, his lights are out,” Stone then said to Malik, filled with jest.
“Come on, man,” Malik whispered anxiously, still holding the other man in front of him. “Quit fooling around. You are always fooling around,” he fussed at Stone’s untimely joking. Malik was from the serious land of South Africa and joking around was not what he liked to do while working.
He had a very serious nature even when not working, in Stone’s opinion. “Yeah. Yeah. You’re always so serious, Malik. You need to loosen up,” Stone responded quietly. “You only live once. You need to break some rules every now and then,” he added.
Mistaking the brief conversation between Malik and Stone as a break in concentration, the man Malik was holding as a shield slowly reached into the back of his jacket for his gun. He was going to shoot one of them, either Malik or Stone. That was sure, and surely a bad move.
Stone noticed his subtle movement. He shot him without hesitation. Again he thought about dumb animals, how they attacked out of fear only to meet the hunter’s bullet. Stone hated when dumb animals were killed.
Malik scowled as blood spattered on his handsome face. Stone raised an eyebrow, shrugging helplessly as he handed him a hanky from his breast pocket.
“Enough of your shenanigans,” Malik growled, his frustration directed at Stone while snatching the hanky from him and wiping the blood away.
This brought an elongated chuckle from Stone as the blood only smeared along Malik’s cheek.
Seconds were ticking…
Down the short hall, they dashed now. Time was running out, for surely those inside sensed the invasion. Any