Heart of the Assassin Read Online Free Page A

intercepted them, whipped them back, the tips of his beard smoldering, pinpricks of red light surrounding his face as the flail rose and fell. Police joined in, pushing the girls back into the flames.
    Rakkim worked his way around to the opposite side of the building, the east side where the smoke was thickest. No crowd here, no security cameras, just a few women huddled in the shadows, wailing and fingering prayer beads, and two burly policemen, their eyes watering from the smoke. An eight-foot chain-link fence surrounded this side of the madrassa, the links glowing in the heat.
    A blond girl stumbled out of one of the lower windows, her nightgown smoldering. She sprang onto the fence, but fell back, hands scorched. She spit on her palms, started climbing again, ignoring the pain, her bare legs golden in the firelight. She had almost made it to the top when one of the cops ambled over, zapped her with his stun-stick. She fell back inside the fence, twitching.
    Rakkim killed the cop with a single blow to the base of his skull, dropped him like a bag of wet cement. The other cop charged, but Rakkim dodged the stun-stick, crushed the man's windpipe with a thrust of his hand and kept moving. Rakkim walked into the oily black smoke, slashed the fence with his Fedayeen knife, the carbon-polymer blade slicing through the metal links as though they were cobwebs. Rakkim slipped through the gap, grabbed the blond girl and carried her through, the girl clutching at his chest, still dazed. She smelled of smoke and pine tar soap. Rakkim set the blond girl down, then rushed back for the others, who were staggering out of the madrassa.
    He gathered up three of them like a bouquet of flowers, brought them through the fence. Women beckoned from the shadows, and the girls ran to them, disappeared into the night. He was going back for the others when the madrassa groaned as though it were alive, one whole side erupting in a ball of blue fire.
    Face stinging, Rakkim ran forward, snatched the remaining two girls off the ground. He looked behind him, saw more girls stumbling down the stairs, fire everywhere, and then the whole madrassa collapsed--sparks erupted like fireflies rising up into the night, followed by a wall of heat that blistered the back of his neck. He turned as he fell, protected the girls from the worst of it, then passed them on to the women...who took care not to touch him, this man who was not part of their family. He watched them go. The women would hide the girls as best they could, but it wouldn't be enough. Rakkim hadn't really saved them, merely postponed their fate. The girls were still breathing, but they were already dead, condemned by the imam's decree.
    He glimpsed the crescent moon low over the city, bloodred through the haze, which probably meant something, but he didn't know what, or care, either. Omens, signs and portents...that was for weaklings looking for some sort of edge. Like Allah was signaling his intentions in code, with only the initiated privy to his will. No...God didn't play games. He wasn't a co-conspirator. God either hit you hard and fast, and that was that, or he sat back and watched things spool out, laughing all the way.
    Rakkim dragged the bodies of the two dead policemen to the gutter, pushed them into the sewer below. Then he circled the site, knife nestled in his hand, rage in his heart. He eased through the crowd, barely stirring their awareness, until he stood beside Imam Jenkins, stood right there on his left side, a half step behind. A blind spot.
    Jenkins watched the burning madrassa as Rakkim stepped forward, his knife cutting through the coarse material of Jenkins's robe, sliding just under the imam's armpit. A gentle stroke would sever the man's brachial artery, bleed him out onto the cobblestones in a gush. Rakkim felt the imam shiver against the blade, but the man didn't shout for help or try to escape.
    "The molten torments of hell await the one who harms a servant of Allah,"