Hitman Damnation

SEVEN



… just as the Learjet jerked hard, continuing its plummet toward the sea.

Agent 47 broke out of his reverie and returned to the here and now. He was still strapped to the seat in the plane’s cabin, utterly helpless. He considered opening the emergency hatch and jumping out right before the aircraft hit the water. Would he survive? Possibly. It was worth a try. He had the life vest. If the fall didn’t kill him, he could inflate the vest in the water. Better than sitting there with a useless seat belt across his waist.

He unbuckled it and stood. The assassin clutched the back of the seats as he made his way to the door, located just behind the cockpit. The plane lunged brutally, throwing 47 to the floor. He pulled himself up to continue what might be his final act, but then he remembered the briefcase. If he was going to die, he wanted to perish with his beloved tools of the trade. The hitman retraced his steps, clumsily moving through the cabin as the jet jerked and tilted erratically. When he reached his seat, 47 leaned over and grabbed the case with his adopted insignia, similar to a fleur-de-lis, stamped on the outside.

Back to the door.

He didn’t dare look out the window as he moved. How many seconds did he have left? A minute or two? Less?

It took a near-superhuman effort to reach the hatch. The instructions for emergency opening were printed on the interior. It wasn’t rocket science. Push this lever and pull that one.

So do it. What are you waiting for?

Push. Pull.

The hatch broke away from the fuselage and soared into space. A huge gush of wet air nearly sucked Agent 47 out with it, but he held on to a safety handle on the side and braced himself with his shoes against the frame.

Now he could see the well of death below. A thousand feet? Less? With the storm battering the doorway, it was difficult to know for certain.

But it was obvious he had only a few seconds left.

Jump!

If he was going to do it, he had to do it now.

Jump!

Agent 47 thrust himself through the hatchway and was hit with a sledgehammer of rain and wind. For a moment he didn’t think he was falling; he was aware only of being suspended in the maelstrom. Incongruously, he sensed that he was still clutching the briefcase in one hand. The assassin thought he saw the jet veer off into the darkness above and beyond him, but he wasn’t sure. He was blind and deaf from the raging hell around him.

For no logical reason, he started to count to himself.

One … two …

Was he even moving? Was the frenetic, cold whirlwind spinning him around and around?

Three … four …

The noise was unbearable. It was as if he were inside the roars of a thousand beasts.

Five … six … sev—

A wall of freeze slammed into his body, and the cacophony abruptly ended. The powerful wind ceased and was replaced by an envelope of frigid liquid.

For a moment he might have lost consciousness. He wasn’t sure.

Relax. Don’t fight it. Go limp.

Years of training had conditioned Agent 47 to completely surrender to the sea. To fight it would be disastrous. The only way to surface and catch the precious oxygen above was to become a lifeless, weightless particle of ocean trash.

And it worked.

Agent 47’s bald head broke the surface, and he gasped for breath. It was only then that he kicked and moved his arms in an effort to tread. The ocean was indeed rough and extremely dangerous.

Incredibly, he still gripped the briefcase. It was as if the thing was in actuality an outgrowth of his arm.

The life jacket!

He had almost forgotten it.

With his free hand, he pulled the tube up and into his mouth. Blowing was extremely difficult. It was hard enough to breathe normally in such conditions, and yet he managed to do it. It took an eternity, but slowly the vest inflated and did its job to keep the assassin afloat.

Completely spent, Agent 47 allowed the roiling waves to carry him wherever they might, yielding to a blanket of black unawareness.


Voices and noises murkily drifted in and out of his brain. As his eyelids blinked open, blurry bright lights pierced his retinas like spears. He felt the urge to cough, but the effort was a gurgling gasp. Hands were on him, pushing, pulling …

He heard the distinct words, “He’s alive!”

And then he sank back into a cocoon of nothingness.

* * *

When next he opened his eyes, his vision was less blurry. The bright lights were still above him, and he realized he was no longer floating helplessly in the ocean. However, the rocking sensation of being tossed around by the waves was still present.

Agent 47 lay in a bed. He was dressed in a hospital gown and was covered with warm sheets and blankets. An IV was attached to the back of his right hand. A drip on a stand stood next to the bed. Turning his head, he saw a nurse with her back to him.

He coughed, but it came out in an unintelligible croak.

She turned. Dark hair, in her thirties. “Oh, you’re awake! I’ll get the doctor.”

Where am I?

The assassin studied his surroundings. It was no ordinary hospital room. Too small. The windows were round. Portholes.

He was on a boat.

No wonder he still felt the rocking of the sea.

A black man in a white lab coat entered the cabin, followed by the nurse. He was in his fifties, wore glasses, and had a kind face.

“Good morning,” he said in a British accent. “I’m Dr. Chalmers. How are you feeling?”

Agent 47 didn’t answer.

“You’ve had a rough time. You were lucky we were nearby. We picked you up out of the water. You’d almost drowned.”

Again, the hitman said nothing.

“Don’t worry. You’re going to be fine. You have a strong constitution.”

47 already knew that.

“We’re giving you some fluids through an IV. You were dehydrated. Kind of ironic, isn’t it? Being dehydrated in the middle of the ocean?”

The assassin didn’t respond.

The doctor indicated the stethoscope around his neck. “May I check your vitals?” Not waiting for an answer, the man leaned in to listen to 47 breathe. The assassin didn’t protest.

“Your lungs are clear.” The doctor nodded to the nurse, who wrapped a cuff around 47’s left arm to take his blood pressure. She pumped it up and then let it deflate.

“One eighteen over seventy-eight,” she said.

“That’s very good,” the doctor commented. “I’ll bet you’re thirsty and hungry. Nurse Parkins here will get you some juice and something to eat. Get some rest. You’ve had a rough time.”

The nurse quickly left the cabin. The doctor waited for 47 to say something; when the patient didn’t, the man turned to leave. He paused at the curved hatch, turned, and replied to the unasked question.

“All will be explained shortly.”

And then he left.

It was only then that Agent 47 noticed the embossed insignia on the IV drip bag. It was triangular; a skull and crossbones topped by a crown was inside the pyramid, the Latin phrase Merces Letifer scrolled across the bottom.

“Lethal trade.”

The emblem of the ICA.

The Agency.


After a meal of scrambled eggs, toast, and orange juice, Agent 47 felt his strength returning. He wanted to jump out of bed and find out what was going on. Given that he was on a ship, he figured it was the Jean Danjou II, the Agency’s superyacht. What else could it be?

The prospect that the ICA had found him was disturbing. 47 had wanted to remain hidden. The assassin had hoped that, if he ever decided to reconnect with the Agency, it would be on his terms.

The familiar unpleasant fireball of anxiety suddenly grew in his chest. How long had it been since he’d taken an oxycodone pill? The withdrawal symptoms would soon hit him full force. Where was his briefcase? His clothes? His painkillers?

Before he could attempt to get out of bed, an attractive Asian woman, wearing a business suit and carrying a notepad, entered the cabin.

“Good morning, Agent 47,” she said without a trace of an accent. “My name is Jade. I’m a senior assistant to the management team of ICA. I take it you’ve already discerned that’s who we are?”

47 stared at her for several seconds and then nodded.

“I suppose you have a lot of questions. Mr. Travis will be here shortly to talk to you. He will be your new handler.”

The assassin spoke for the first time since he’d been revived. “I don’t work for the Agency anymore.”

Jade acknowledged the remark with a bow of her head. “Mr. Travis will speak to you about that. In the meantime, I am authorized to tell you that you are on the Jean Danjou II, and we were—”

“I know that.”

“—we were sailing in the Atlantic, quite near the Caribbean. We have been searching for you for many months. Your last employer, the man you knew as Roget, alerted us—for a price—that his plane was leaving Jamaica with you on it.”

“There was no pilot aboard.”

“We had Roget install the remote so we could land the aircraft safely on the water. Unfortunately, the storm hit and an engine failed. Apparently you damaged the remote-control box, and we were unable to help you. Luckily, we were in your vicinity when the jet went down, but it still took us several hours to find you. You are a very lucky man.”

Was she telling the truth? Agent 47 supposed that it sounded plausible. He also knew that the Agency was capable of elaborate deceptions.

A middle-aged man in a suit appeared in the hatchway. He wore glasses, had a mustache, and was a bit overweight.

“How’s the patient?” he asked.

“Dr. Chalmers says he’s doing very well,” Jade answered. “Agent 47, this is Benjamin Travis.”

The man approached the bed and held out his hand. The hitman ignored it, so Travis shrugged. “I can imagine how you feel. Hiding from the Agency for a year and suddenly finding yourself on our ship. I’ll bet you think you were set up.”

“Where’s Diana?” 47 asked.

Travis and Jade exchanged a look, and then he continued. “I’ll get to that. I want to assure you that what Jade told you is true. Yes, we wanted to find you. Yes, we would have paid a lot of money to get you back, and we did. Yes, Roget worked for us, in a way. As an informer and sometimes contractor. I’m sorry the flight didn’t go as we planned.”

“Where’s Diana?” the hitman asked again, with a little more insistence in his voice.

“Very well.” Travis took a chair and sat in it. Jade continued to stand. “Diana Burnwood betrayed the Agency. She irreparably damaged the organization by compromising a classified project that top management was working on. And … she abandoned you during a crucial mission. The Himalayan assignment would not have gone wrong had she not bailed. She left you in a vulnerable position. I suppose you remember that?”

He did. Agent 47’s eyes narrowed as he searched Travis’s face for artifice.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I can’t go into the classified details, but suffice it to say that she meant for you to die. Diana felt you were the only one who might possibly be sent to come after her when we discovered her betrayal. And she’s right. As soon as we find out where she’s hiding, we will send you after her. After all, you know her better than anyone.”

“I don’t work for the Agency anymore.”

“I was hoping we could discuss that.”

“I don’t work for the Agency anymore.”

“Hear me out, 47. Will you do that?”

The assassin kept silent.

“We know you’ve been working freelance. We know you’re being paid much less than what you’re worth. It’s beneath you, 47. You were the Agency’s greatest asset. We want you back. We’re prepared to double your fees.”

“I don’t care about the money.”

“We know you don’t. You never have. But you care about your reputation. You care about the quality of your work. You care about what you do best.”

“I am nowhere near one hundred percent operational.”

“We think you are,” Travis said. “The fact that you survived that jump from the plane and the subsequent hours in the sea proves that you are. Did you know you were floating in impossibly rough waters for seven hours before we picked you up? That’s extraordinary. Any other human being, even one with your, uh, special genetic structure, would never have endured the ordeal. You did, 47. We’re all astonished and … humbled.”

47 didn’t respond.

“Look, why don’t you rest? Think about it overnight. You’ve been through a tough twenty-four hours. But, frankly, we need you. There’s a pressing assignment that is quite suited to you. We don’t need the verification, but you could prove to yourself that you’re, as you call it, one hundred percent operational. And don’t you want to get back at Burnwood? She abandoned you, left you like a piece of meat for dogs to devour.”

The assassin didn’t know what to think about Diana. All the facts weren’t in. But Travis was right. If she had indeed intentionally caused the Himalayan task to fail, then she deserved every bit of his … attention.

“What’s the assignment?” he asked.

Travis stood. “It may very well be the most difficult mission of your career. Consider it a challenge. But why don’t you rest for a day? We can talk about it tomorrow. It can wait that long.” He pointed to two different call buttons on 47’s bed. “If you need anything, press one of those buttons. The red one is for the nurse. The blue one is for us.”

“Where are my things? Did you recover my briefcase?”

Travis grinned. “It’s unbelievable, 47. Even in your unconscious state, being tossed around like flotsam on that rough sea, you held on to that damned briefcase. We have it.” He nodded to a locker on the other side of the cabin. “It’s all there. Your clothes, everything. We dry-cleaned your suit. It’s fresh and like new, hanging right in there. We opened the briefcase to check on your weapons, and they’re fine. You’ll want to clean them, oil them, do all the things you do to get them back to shipshape condition, but, miraculously, all of your stuff survived with you. You’re one in a million, 47. The Agency will be very grateful, and make it worth your while, if you decide to rejoin us.”

With that, the man jerked his head at Jade, and the two left the room.

47 waited a few minutes and then threw back the sheets. He swung his legs around and put his bare feet on the floor. He grabbed the IV pole, which was on wheels, and dragged it across the floor as he unsteadily walked to the locker. He opened it, revealing the black suit hanging in pristine condition. The briefcase sat on the locker bottom. 47 pulled it out and took it back to the bed. He opened it, examined the two Silverballers, and then felt for the hidden latch that unlocked the hidden compartment beneath the handguns. His various passports, currency from several countries, and Fiberwire were all there.

As well as his painkillers.

47 opened the pill bottle, took two tablets, and downed them with the remains of his juice.

He carefully put everything in place, shut the case in the locker, and went back to bed.

Sleep came quickly. The figure of Death mercifully stayed away.