Assassin's Silence: A David Slaton Novel Read Online Free Page A

well-coordinated. Certainly disciplined. In sum, they were very much like him.
    They were assassins.
    Slaton found himself under a stone arch and surrounded by high walls. He had no weapon with which to respond. With his closest pursuer a mere thirty yards away, he saw only one viable option. He scrambled up the ladder.
    He was halfway up when the first shots rang out, followed by shouting all around. The wooden rung near his head shattered, and Slaton bypassed the step and vaulted upward, launching himself the last few feet onto the top of the arch. A kick sent the ladder tumbling sideways to the ground. It gave them a way up, of course, but hopefully bought precious seconds.
    More shots echoed, and bullets chipped stone all around him. The arch was three feet wide, enough to cover him shoulder to shoulder if he hugged close and kept his face planted. But he had to move. They would soon find elevation, better angles that would leave him exposed. The rooftop behind him was blocked by a knee wall, but straight ahead the arch blended perfectly into a flat roof. Slaton fast-crawled on his elbows and knees, bullets pinging into the stone on either side. Then the first impact—a vicious bite in one thigh.
    He kept moving.
    Reaching the relative safety of the roof, he rolled until his attackers no longer had line of sight, then rose to a crouch and ran. His right thigh hurt like hell. He dashed right, paralleling Triq San Pawl, as the gunfire gave way to shouted commands—he didn’t understand the words, but the accent was distinctly eastern European. Slaton kept to the center of the roof for cover and at the first side street encountered a ten-foot chasm. He jumped across in full stride and landed in a heap, gravel grinding into his hands and arms. He scrambled to his feet and a shot rang out, the round pinging into a water tank to his right. Slaton glanced back and saw the crew-cut soldier—he had climbed the ladder and was giving chase. The others were likely below, moving by his instructions. The high ground that had briefly protected Slaton would quickly become a snare, limiting his avenues of escape.
    But he was not without advantages. Slaton knew a great deal about rooftops, as all men with his training did. He was also on familiar terrain, and no amount of reconnaissance on their part could match the local knowledge he’d acquired by living and working in these neighborhoods for nearly a year. He found the place he wanted, a raised stairwell shaft with a crumbling stone exterior—the very façade he had been hired to repair last October. Slaton knew the door would be open because he had personally removed the old rusted lock, and the owner, who enjoyed stargazing with his mistress, had insisted he not replace it.
    Slaton burst inside and slammed the door shut behind him. The stairwell beckoned, but he paused and studied his surroundings. Over his head a pair of thick wooden beams supported the vaulted tile roof, and the doorjamb was sided by a vertical series of cavities where he’d removed the ancient hinges of the original door. Slaton put a foot into the first notch, testing. He gripped a higher one with his hand, and lifted himself up. Seconds later he was perched high in the rafters.
    It took ten seconds.
    Slaton heard a one-sided conversation, this time in hushed, heavily accented English. “No contact. Do we pull back yet?” A pause, followed by more words that were indecipherable. The man outside was talking over a tactical comm unit.
    The door flew open under a heavy boot, and Slaton watched the crew-cut soldier edge inside. He cleared the space expertly from the threshold, the muzzle of his weapon methodically sweeping left and right. But not up.
    Slaton dropped like an anvil, his knee aimed at the man’s head.
    His adversary reacted, but too late as Slaton’s two-hundred-plus pounds crashed down mercilessly. Both men tumbled onto the stairs, a rolling mix of arms and legs that came to a hard end at the