47- Kitchen Kills

  Agent 47 had to accept the fact that he’d been caught. She was going to march him out into the corridor, where the security detail stood at attention. The woman headed for the door and looked back at him. “Well? Are you coming, Mr. Duncan? If that is your real name?”

  He had no choice. The assassin grabbed a china plate and held it behind his back as he followed her. She led him out into the corridor and then called to the two beefy men outside the boardroom. Three of the Cypriot hired guns stood nearby.

  “Gentlemen, I think you need to speak to this man,” she announced. But as she turned to indicate “John Duncan,” the waiter smashed the plate on top of the woman’s head. He knew it wouldn’t kill her, but it did the job of knocking her out. Her body crumbled into a pile of arms and legs.

  “Holy shit!” one of the guards managed to cough as he drew a handgun from inside his jacket. He was the fastest of the five men. By the time the other four registered what they had just witnessed, 47 had removed the three steak knives from his pocket. Like a circus performer throwing blades at an associate strapped to a spinning wheel, the hitman snapped the utensils at the first, second, and third man.

  Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!

  Each knife neatly penetrated the soft bull’s-eye between each man’s Adam’s apple and the top of his sternum. The guard who had successfully drawn a gun dropped it and fell against the wall. The other two spun around in a macabre and slightly humorous dance before they, too, collapsed.

  Three down, two to go.

  Best to change tactics. It kept opponents guessing.

  Agent 47 pulled the three forks from his pocket, positioned two in his right hand and one in his left, prongs out, and charged the two men. Being inexperienced work-for-hire employees of the Cyprus A-1 Security Company, neither had thought quickly enough to draw a gun or even put up defensive fists.

  The hitman simultaneously buried two forks in the soft tissue on the underside of the first man’s lower jaw and the other fork in the second man’s Adam’s apple. Knowing that the latter fellow would most likely scream in pain, 47 immediately bent his arm and elbowed the man hard in the stomach, knocking the breath out of him. The guard leaned forward, providing 47 with the opportunity to clasp his fists together and clobber the guy on the back of the head. He was dead before he hit the floor.

  The man with the forks in his jaw struggled to pull them out, but 47 had submerged the utensils so deeply that the task was impossible. He fell to his knees and looked at 47 in shock and horror. The hitman held the man’s head steady with his left hand and grabbed the forks’ handles with his right.

  Another shove did the trick.

  Only then did the world’s greatest assassin take a look behind him to confirm that no one had seen the act. It had been messy but silent. He would have liked to see Charlie Wilkins’s face when the meeting was over and his cabal of criminal financiers stepped out of the boardroom to find a slaughterhouse in the corridor.

- Hitman: Damnation, chapter 28