Free Die Twice by Andrew Grant

sure the volume was set to maximum. Then fired off a text to the duty receptionist at the consulate.
    call back. this no. 2 mins
.
    Most of the pieces of leftover wood were too short to be of any use—five or six inches, at the most—but I did manage to uncoverone chunk that interested me. It was a hair short of three feet long. I extracted it from the pile and picked my way toward the apartment door, moving carefully to avoid the worst of the ill-fitting floorboards. I took my time, arriving silently with twenty seconds to spare. Just long enough to wedge the phone between the handle and the frame—tight, so its vibrations wouldn’t shake it loose—step to the side, and line up with my makeshift club.
    The phone rang, dead on cue. “Ride of the Valkyries” grated electronically from its tiny speaker. It was surprisingly loud. The hollow door buzzed and rattled in time with the vibrations. I tightened my grip on the wood. But no one emerged for me to hit.
    The snippet of music played for a second time. And a third. Until finally I heard movement from inside the apartment. Rapid footsteps. They approached the door. Stopped. Then bullets started to rip through the plywood surface.
    Three were at head height. Three at chest level. And three low down, skimming the ground.
    I heard a thud. Metal on wood. A magazine being changed. Then nothing for twenty seconds. Thirty. The person inside was patient. Armed. And with a choice of exits. I wanted to be sure they came out of mine. So I switched my grip on the wood and tossed it down the stairs, spinning it around and sending it cartwheeling off the treads.
    The footsteps started moving again. Faster than before. The door flew open. I dropped down to the floor, took all my weight on my hands and whipped my legs around in a wide arc, catching the guy emerging from the apartment just above his ankles. He went down, hard, losing his grip on his gun. I was up first, kicking it away and closing on him before he could get to his feet. He rolled onto his side, keeping his head off the ground, jabbing with his right leg, effectively fending me off. They were controlled kicks. Well aimed. Economical. Certainly not desperate lunges. He clearlyknew what he was doing. Overpowering him was going to take a while. It would be tiring, and hard to guarantee he’d be in a position to talk at the end of it. So I pulled out my Beretta and put a round through the floor on either side of his head. To warn him. I didn’t want him dead. I just had no desire to waste all my energy.
    And after that, he decided not to waste any more of his.
    In training, we’d learned to look for items that could be useful to us.
    In the field, we found the same thing applied to people.

SEVEN
    There are lots of ways to teach a person to navigate.
    The way our instructors did it was to show you a map. Give you an hour to memorize it. Make sure you didn’t have a compass. Then send you out into the Welsh countryside to find a specific place where they said another agent would be waiting.
    The exercise was designed to be realistic. The idea was to simulate your part in an emergency covert rendezvous. And it seemed simple enough, at the outset. You didn’t have far to travel. There was nothing heavy to carry. You didn’t have to steal anything or trick your way into anywhere secure. It was daylight. They even gave you a packed meal.
    Get there on time, you pass. If not, you fail.
    The truck dropped you off exactly where they promised. But that was the last thing to go as advertised. First, they changed the meeting point. Four times. Each time you reached what you thought was the correct spot, all you found was a concealed note containingnew coordinates. Each set was harder to find than the previous one. And on the third occasion, they added an extra piece of information. The “agent” had been delayed. She could be anything up to two hours late. And despite the sheets of icy rain that had begun to fall, you had no