Smith fired a round into his chest as he sprinted away from the warehouse and toward the water. The man went down hard but immediately started to get back to his feet. The body armor that was beneath his black sweater wasn’t as effective at stopping the close-range round that Smith pumped into his face when he ran past.

Another bolt released behind him and he instinctively went into a crouch, hearing it hiss by just to his right. Too close. It was another fifteen yards to the edge of the water and the chance of him making it alive was starting to look remote.

He abruptly cut left and sprinted toward an open fishing boat pulled halfway onto the sand, diving headfirst into it. The brief illusion of safety, though, exploded in the crack of shattering wood and a powerful impact to his right shoulder blade. There was a stainless steel cooler in front of him and he crawled behind it, aware of the strength draining from his limbs. As he rolled painfully onto his side, he heard the crossbow bolt jutting from his back scrape against the bottom of the boat.

A few lights had snapped on in the buildings around the shore, and the shadows were dissipating at about the same rate as the adrenaline that was keeping him going. He could hear cautious footsteps moving toward him in the sand and he unscrewed the suppressor from his gun, firing a few blind rounds in the general direction of his attackers.

The unsilenced Glock would be enough to wake the rest of the town, but probably not in time to scare off the men who were about to kill him. The water was clearly his best chance for survival.

The briefcase was too heavy to swim with so he pressed his thumb against a hidden screen behind the handle and was surprised when the locks actually popped open. Klein had redeemed himself.

Smith wasn’t sure what he was going to find, but a ziplock bag full of what looked like garbage wasn’t high on his list. An odd thing to die for, he mused as he stuffed the bag into a pocket in his cargo pants and fired a few more noisy rounds over the cooler.

The pain in his back was becoming debilitating and it took him more than five seconds to slither to the back of the boat. Gritting his teeth, he grabbed hold of the outboard motor and used the leverage to throw himself over the stern.