Out Of Time. Cliff Ryder

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      If he moved quickly enough he might be able to assume a new disguise

      As he stepped through the doorway, he heard a shout from his right. He’d been spotted. He lunged for the door, but this time the effort proved too much. His left leg suddenly gave out and he tumbled to the side with a cry of pain. A shot rang out and something struck him hard on the shoulder, spinning him out of control.

      Alex managed to get his 9 mm out of the holster. He heard cursing and shouts, but for some reason the words wouldn’t register. He crashed into the wall and pain shot through his shoulder, already soaked in blood. He gritted his teeth and tried to stand, but his legs would not support him. He raised his gun, watching for movement.

      Two men appeared, crouching low and moving down opposite sides of the passageway. He took aim at the man on the left and fired, saw the round strike him mid-chest and blow him off his feet. Alex tried to roll to his right, but somewhere between his brain and his legs, the signal went haywire. What was supposed to be a smooth roll turned into a flop and he landed heavily as another searing pain brushed his temple.

      Everything went black.

      Out of Time

      Cliff Ryder

       www.mirabooks.co.uk

      Special thanks and acknowledgment to Garrett Dylan for his contribution to this work.

      Contents

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      Chapter 14

      Chapter 15

      Chapter 16

      Chapter 17

      Chapter 18

      Chapter 19

      Chapter 20

      Chapter 21

      Chapter 22

      Chapter 23

      Chapter 24

      Chapter 25

      Chapter 26

      Chapter 27

      Chapter 28

      Chapter 29

      Chapter 30

      Chapter 31

      Chapter 32

Out of Time

      1

      Alex Tempest leaned on a dirt-crusted stone wall, head lowered, trying to control his breathing and ignore the pain. His legs felt like gelatin and sent sharp, stabbing jolts of agony into his hips; his head spun with a sudden wave of nausea. Every muscle was bowstring tight and his heartbeat ragged—every sound brought a flinch and a shift of disoriented senses.

      The sun had begun to set over the Mexico City skyline, but the heat continued to roll off the streets in waves. On the floor of a villa just outside of town, Vincenzo Carrera lay dead in a pool of blood. His men hadn’t stopped to clear away the body, the blood or any of the evidence. They hadn’t even disposed of the kilo-sized bag of cocaine, blown to bits and strewed across the inlaid mosaic of Carrera’s garden. The powder floated about like fine drifts of snow. Carrera would never spend the money he’d expected to make on that sale. He would not make his reservations at La Villa Cordoba, nor his date with his wife and young daughter the following day at the beach.

      All that remained of Carrera was his well-oiled organization, designed to sell drugs and kill or destroy anything that got in its way. It wasn’t supposed to have mattered. In, remove the target and out. That was the plan. That was always the plan. Alex wasn’t known as “the Chameleon” without good reason. He had worked his way into incredibly tight spots, killed and disappeared countless times. This wasn’t even one of his more difficult assignments.

      But something had gone wrong. Something had been going wrong for some time, in fact, and though he’d tried to ignore it, it only grew worse as each day passed. This time it had nearly cost him both the success of his mission and his life.

      As he waited for the shadows to deepen and his legs to stop shaking, he went over the mission again, trying to see if there was anything he could have done differently, trying to see where he’d gone wrong. Somewhere there was an error, a stupid error and he hated stupidity almost as much as he hated the trembling in his normally steady hand.

      The earlier stages had gone exactly as he’d foreseen. It wasn’t his first trip to Mexico City and his old contacts were in place. He’d managed to infiltrate the lower levels of Carrera’s organization without incident, had marked his time and his place. It had taken two weeks of careful watching and listening to be certain he had it right.

      Carrera had been too arrogant to distance himself from his business and his organization was too dangerous to be left without close control. It had only been a matter of time until a deal went down and Alex was close enough to the center of the operation to pin it down. They weren’t secretive in their activities once inside the walls of Carrera’s villa. Whom did they have to fear? Enough of the local policia were on the take to ensure secure operations and no business ever took place on the streets or in an unsecured location. Again, what would be the purpose?

      Alex had slipped into the deep center of the garden shortly before the deal was set to go down, his tan skin darkened with a touch of makeup and his clothing already a perfect match to what the guards of the villa were wearing. There were five posts along the villa’s wall and he’d placed himself very near one of these. The guard hadn’t seen or heard him—he was searching for threats from outside the villa, not from within.

      Just before 5:00 p.m., he’d slipped up behind the guard, slit his throat and took his place, watching the streets beyond the walls carefully. He moved and acted exactly as the guard would have—a professional doing his job. There was no reason anyone would look at him twice and no one had. The damned plan was perfect.

      At five o’clock sharp, Carrera appeared in the garden. He sat where he sat every afternoon, and a young girl brought refreshments. He ate fruit, and he laughed with the two bodyguards who were never far from his side. They were short, squat men with dark hair, dark glasses and no smiles. They made a quick sweep of the garden. They glanced up at each guard post. They didn’t take any special notice of Alex. He paid no attention to them, willing them to see only what he wanted them to see—a guard on duty.

      At half past five, a long white sedan wound its way up the long driveway to the villa. It stopped just shy of the iron gates. Men poured out of twin guard shacks on either side of the gate, scanning the passengers, opening the trunk and searching quickly, checking the engine and sweeping beneath the undercarriage with mirrors. Slick, quick and efficient. Alex appreciated that—under other circumstances he might have admired it.

      The gates opened and the car slid in, moving at a leisurely pace. Alex watched, lost sight of the vehicle and turned his attention back to the streets. For the moment, his duty was to protect. He kept his rifle, a modified Russian SVN-98, with the barrel tipped toward the street, but low enough that anyone watching from beyond the