47- Diana Fleeing Agents

  A movement on one of the camera monitors caught her attention. Someone had come out of the elevator on her floor. No—two someones. They paused for a moment as the stairwell door opened and two more men came into view. They were dressed in suits and appeared to be ordinary businessmen, until one of them dropped a large bag on the floor and opened it.

  “Diana?” 47 asked. “Are you there?”

  “Hold on a second, 47,” she snapped.

  One of the men pulled out four Kevlar vests, which the quartet began to don.

  No!

  The Agency had found her.

  No time to lose. She immediately severed the satellite link, pulled the plug on her laptop, and rose from the desk.

 The men on the monitor armed themselves with assault rifles, M16s from the look of them.

  Diana quickly grabbed her laptop and small traveling bag, which was packed and ready to go. She moved to the fire-escape window, opened it, and tossed the computer outside. The machine fell six floors and smashed to pieces on the ground below. She glanced back at the monitors on the desk and saw that the men were creeping quietly toward her room. Diana then tossed her bag out the window and watched it drop to the pavement. No damage; there was nothing inside but clothes, passports, and money.

  As the men kicked in the hotel-room door, Diana was already out on the fire-escape landing. The tall redhead, dressed in an expensive Versace suit, scampered in her bare feet down the metal stairs toward the street below. She heard shouts above her.

  Faster!

  She took three steps at a time. When she got to the first-floor landing, one of the men shouted, “There she is!” Diana took hold of the railing, deftly catapulted her body over it, and dropped twenty feet to the ground. She landed hard on the soles of her feet, winced with the pain, and kept moving.

  That’s when the gunfire began.

  She grabbed her bag, rounded the corner of the hotel, and ran into the traffic on the street. Drivers slammed on the brakes and honked horns. Bullets whizzed past her, dotting the pavement in her wake. By the time she was on the other side of Rue Froissart, the men were in hot pursuit down the fire escape.

  Diana ducked into the Metro entrance at the corner, practically flew down the steps, and reached the platform as the train pulled in to the station. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. She climbed aboard the train, pushed her way through the crowd of passengers, found a seat, and collapsed into it. The doors closed and she was away. Opening her bag, she found the Prada heels and put them on. Now she was just another ordinary classy Parisienne commuting through the busy city. She was confident that the Agency would not be able to trace her movements once she got to her destination. The route was secure and airtight. Perhaps fate really was on her side.

- Hitman: Damnation, Prologue