The Man Who Died Twice 2

Bond allowed himself a parting look at her svelte form before it was gone. She’d certainly have no problem finding another lover after him. The sight of her back—toned, supple, and delightfully curving with the twist of her hips—and then her bountiful ass, which swelled deliciously out from the narrowness of her waist, but not to excess… it swept with surprising delicacy down into her wondrous legs, themselves chiseled and slender, a marvel to be entangled with.

Bond counted himself fortunate that gaining access to this rooftop had become so delectable an affair. But now that this was accomplished, there was no time for nostalgia.

Still, there was no point in denying himself either. Bond continued to puff the cigar as he walked to the rooftop gazebo where he had put the finishing touches on his seduction of Estrella—the two of them lying coiled together, his fingers describing spirals in her luscious hip, her slowly tugging at his mask. Knowing that once it was gone, there’d be nothing to protect her from the kiss she was so anticipating.

Bond’s booted foot unthinkingly crushed his mask where he’d left it lying in the grass. He took off the topcoat, the gloves, the scarf. No longer a costumed reveler, now he was revealed in the sleek outfit of the assassin: black pants, a black turtleneck, and a brown shoulder holster to hold his Walther PPK. Under the shaded canopy of the pavilion, he popped his neck and pressed the call button on the dumbwaiter. Without a wall to be built into, it rose up like a monolith from the rooftop.

In moments, the dumbwaiter arrived with a champagne bottle in an ice bucket. Bond left that for Estrella. What he was after was Q-branch’s latest sniper rifle, an upgrade on the Walther WA2000 that could be folded up, stock and barrel, until it was a rectangle fitting into a ladies’ handbag.

Accurate to over a thousand meters, Q bragged. Although when the target was across the street, Bond figured his PPK could handle it. Not that he’d turn down the opportunity to play with a new toy…

Bond unfolded it and loaded it before picking up the earpiece that had come with it… tempted as he was to toss it into the ice bucket and insist he hadn’t been able to find it. Fitting it to his ear, Bond braced himself for—

“Thank you for joining us, 007.” Despite his dulcet tones, there was a thick streak of ire in M’s voice. “We were beginning to think you’d missed your alarm clock.”

“You didn’t start without me, did you?” Bond quipped, looking over the WA2000 to make sure it was in order. He didn’t trust all this folding and disassembling not to foul up its inner workings.

Q’s reedy voice broke into the channel. “You are in position? You were able to gain access?”

“I should say.”

“And the tranquilizer? You did give it to Miss Arjona?”

Bond allowed himself a tight smile, but didn’t dignify such an easy layup. “She’s feeling no pain.”

“You did give it to her, didn’t you? That tranq is a revolution in fast-acting sedation. It could make hand-to-hand combat a thing of the past.”

“There are some things, Q, that really don’t need fixing.”

M took over—Bond could just imagine the silencing look he was giving Q. “I’ll take it from your joviality that all’s proceeding as planned. See that it remains that way. And try to remember, we’re not just here to stop the cartels from getting their hands on military-grade hardware. We would also quite like to know who’s supplying them.”

“Quite hard to find that out if 007 leaves them in a condition anywhere near as bad as he reduces my equipment to,” Q groused.

Bond rolled his eyes. Sometimes, he thought the only reason there were so many people in the Oversight Center was to get a vicarious thrill over what he was doing on the ground. Or rather, twelve stories in the air. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a checkpoint to get to.”

Clutching the Walther to his chest, Bond took off at a run, made a jump, and easily cleared the five foot gap of an alleyway between the hotel and the neighboring building. He proceeded at a steady pace across the rooftop, rousting some pigeons before making the hop to the next building over. There, he crouched low, shielding himself from view with the waist-high parapet. It wouldn’t do to blow the mission because some cartel gunman looked out the window.

“Checkpoint reached,” Bond reported, back to the parapet as he worked at the Walther. “Ready to do some eavesdropping.”

He turned the laser mic on, checked the bright dot on his palm, then took the sunglasses from the butt of the gun. Closing one eye with them on, he could now see through the tiny camera at the end of the Walther’s barrel. He aimed the Walther away, the laser mic dotting the next building over.

“Receiving transmission, loud and clear. Oh, that’s rather a nasty row they’re having in there. Rather like watching a telenovela, really.”

Bond pointed the rifle straight up. He checked his watch. “Let’s check in on the neighbors.”

Awkwardly holding the Walther up so that only the muzzle was over the top of the parapet, Bond quickly discovered that this was unworkable. He gave the parapet a nudge with his elbow and found the masonry very giving. With just a bit of a yank, he popped brick after brick out, until he had a nice little murder hole through which to point the Walther. He adopted a more natural, kneeling stance and trained the Walther through the nearly invisible part in the brickwork, now aiming at the window where his cartel friends were waiting for their contact.

Bond hoped that whoever’d worked on the walls hadn’t done the floors as well, or he’d be on the ground level far sooner than he’d like to be.

He closed his left eye. His right, looking through the sunglasses, showed him the telescopic view from the Walther’s camera. He’d rather look through a scope—but there was something to be said for innovation.

Zoomed in on the window, Bond saw the faint reflections of stilt-walkers parading below. And, through the glass, Armando Tiveria, high-ranking lieutenant in the Ramon Cartel. With him, two bodyguards. Tattooed, armed as heavily as decorum would allow. Street kids who’d risen into apex predators by being as strong and as merciless as evolution could make them. True products of the cartelocracy.

Bond shifted his gaze back to Armando. He was familiar with the man, but more by reputation than anything else. They’d been ships passing in the night—an arms meet here, a drug buy there. Nothing that would land him in MI-6’s crosshairs until now. And Bond tried not to kill people just for the sake of it. There was enough paperwork on the ones he was paid for.

He knew enough about Armando to know that nervousness wasn’t his style. But his nerves were firmly in evidence now. Anxiously he paced the room, seeming to debate with himself whether to visit the minibar again. Judging by the empty glass he clutched, it was an old argument.

“You sell your soul peddling poison and still have high blood pressure.” Bond clucked his tongue. “There’s a little justice for you.”

“A day late and a dollar short,” M remarked. “We’ll see if we can do better. Any sign of the contact?”

“Not unless he’s at the bottom of a bottle of tequila.” Armando had won another round of the ongoing argument against sobriety. Bond trained the reticule on his gulping throat. “If you want, I can reduce his blood pressure right now…”

“Careful, Bond, that’s reinforced glass,” Q broke in. “You’ve loaded the new anti-material bullets?”

“Roger,” Bond said curtly, hoping his shortness would remind Q of the circumstances.

It didn’t. “As you may have noticed, they’re designed with something of a drill-bit at the end. The aerodynamics of the bullet’s shape cause it to spiral, so that when it hits, it literally bores into the target.”

“One sympathizes.”

“It can only penetrate so far, but once it’s lodged in, the bullet’s explosive payload detonates, destroying the obstacle from the inside. It should take out the entire window—assuming standard conditions, of course.”

“Thank you, Q,” M broke in, “that will be all.”

“I did have to spend rather a lot of time in the wind tunnel, perfecting the design,” Q said defensively. “Although our findings on atmospheric conditions were inconclusive. Tell me, 007, is there a great deal of smog where you are?”

“Just hot air,” Bond replied.

“Oh, I thought the weather report predicted—”

“Someone’s at the door,” Bond interrupted, hearing the knock cut across the tautly staticked silence the laser mic was feeding him.

He watched through the camera-lens, slightly shifting the Walther’s aim to follow the action. As Armando straightened his clothes and fixed his hair, struggling to undo the stresses of the wait, one of his tattooed bodyguards went to unlock the door.

There were shocks too big to be just one shock. Seeing Mr. White after ten years was one such case.