by Ryan Schow
He walked over, stood next to her, and said, “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” she mumbled. “Just…that smell.”
“I know. It’s pretty bad.”
Kofi joined them, handed Cira the small Glock 43, and said, “You have two rounds, that’s it. Your job is to defend Fadey and the car.”
“I don’t need you telling me what to do,” she snapped. “I’m spearheading this thing. And two rounds? Two whole rounds?”
He held up his hands in mock surrender, then said, “Well, we’re going into the shit while you’ll be sitting here trying not to fall asleep.”
“Knock it off,” Atlas said.
Cira racked the slide, frowned when it seemed to speed bump on something, then gave Kofi a suspicious look. “Am I going to have an issue with this?”
“It fires fine,” he said, waving a hand. “It’s old but reliable.”
She held Kofi’s eyes, almost against his will. She seemed as worried about the Ukrainian’s competence in the matter of guns as she was worried about the weapon itself. Finally, she broke her stare.
To Atlas, she said, “I have my phone on, so call if you need me.” She turned to Kofi one last time. “If I have to fire this weapon and it doesn’t work, if I’m not dead, then Kofi, I will personally shoot you in the gut. But with an actual gun that works.”
The man stiffened, but Atlas smiled. There was so much he didn’t know about Cira, so much he found himself wanting to explore about her. Not now, though…later. If they survived.
“The gun works fine,” he said again, less certain, but only because the potentially homicidal Cira had just replaced the normally snarky, uptight Cira.
“Let’s hope for your little tummy’s sake it does,” Atlas said with a grin.
When they were ready to go, the three of them slipped into the shadows, kept close to the fencing, moved quietly but with surety of foot. He didn’t know the backgrounds of the two people with him, but he trusted Kiera, and Kofi hadn’t let him down yet. He also trusted Leopold, so far, so he had to think the man had a hand in vetting the two of them. When he was the joint SWAT commander, he’d known the details of every man and woman in his charge, their personalities, their families. So far, knowing exactly squat about these two wasn’t encouraging. He didn’t know what drove them, what fears they had, what their faults were. He also didn’t know what would happen if they broke. Atlas was determined to succeed, but if he didn’t, he was going to ride that hard edge into hell.
At the darkest section of Dasha’s wall, Atlas told Kiera to get on his shoulders and take a look. She hopped on his back, then crawled up onto his shoulders like a freaking spider monkey. While she was up there, he wondered how she was going to report what she saw if she didn’t speak. As she shifted on his shoulders, he trusted she had that worked out. A moment later, she tapped his head. He let her down. She jumped up and grabbed the wall, then pulled herself up and over.
“So we’re going now?” Kofi asked.
Atlas flashed him a look, shrugged his shoulders. In response to them both, he hopped over the wall and quietly dropped down on the other side. He landed in the dirt behind a long decorative hedge riding the border of the stucco wall. Ducking down, he held his position in the shadows, behind the manicured brush in between two shade trees with uplighting. Glancing over at Kiera, he saw her eyes on the targets: two men who weren’t paying much attention to the perimeter. Kofi dropped down next to them, as stealthy as a toddler falling off a fence. Kiera looked at him and punched his shoulder. Kofi’s eyes went wide.
With two raised fingers and eyes on the targets, she alerted him to the guards on the second-story balcony. Both men were smoking. One of them was blowing smoke rings into the dark Odessa night, while the other was hypnotized by his cell phone. His backlit face was a perfect target, if only Atlas had a rifle rather than a semi-auto shotgun and a suppressed XD. At that distance, he worried about accuracy, but he also worried about the suppressor. Would it be a spit or a lightly muffled bark? He didn’t know. Ammo was light and he wasn’t going to waste a round to answer that question.
Kiera glanced over at him, gave him a nod, then pushed through a break in the hedge and crept forward. Kofi stuck to her heels; Atlas had their six. Kiera crossed the yard, low and quick. He and Kofi kept up, crouched as well, moving like a whisper. They slipped into the shadows of the house. Kiera motioned that she was going around one side and that Atlas should take the other. He nodded, thinking the same thing. She broke off, which was no surprise. Kofi following her instead of Atlas, however, sort of pissed him off. Then again, Kofi was smart. He’d be safer with her than with him, as evidenced by the ass-kicking he’d taken from her at Oleg’s place back in Saint Petersburg.
As he worked his way around the house alone, he raised his weapon, kept close to the walls, and tac-walked through the shadows. At the back of the house, near the gate, a man was reclining in an old chair, asleep as far as Atlas could tell. The closed eyes and heavy breathing were the giveaways. Reputation could act as a strong deterrent, but it could also weaken an overconfident security force. Dasha’s reputation apparently did both.
He slid his tactical blade out of the sheath, closed in on the slumbering man, then drove the knife into his throat. Wasting no time, he squeezed a quarter turn out of the knife, leading with the cutting edge, then punched it out hard, creating a flood of gore that shot out all over the white fence, rather than on him.
The man’s mouth hung open, his eyes wide, barely a sound coming from his mouth. He finally slumped over, dead. Atlas kept him from falling off the chair and into the fence. When he balanced the dead body properly, he wiped his blade on the man’s shirt, sheathed it, then searched him for weapons. He found a pistol, checked the mag’s weight, and smiled, thinking he had a full stack. He quietly chambered a round.
Sliding it in the back of his pants, happy to have a secondary weapon with a full mag, even if it was uncomfortable as hell, he told himself to keep moving. He felt over the top of the fence for a latch, released it, then pushed the bloodstained gate forward and slipped in through the gap. The deep shadows were comforting. He moved through them, creeping along the side of the house until—in the backyard—he saw a shooter quietly retreat into his field of fire. Was he getting a bead on Kiera? Kofi? Was he taking cover? The man’s gun hand was extended out. Atlas raised the suppressed XD, squeezed the trigger. The man’s head rocked sideways, his body falling over.
Knowing it was on, he moved quickly toward the downed body, but then he saw the leg and the elbow of another shooter trying to slice in on him. Whoever was out there knew he was coming. Obviously. Did they know they were being flanked? He fired a round into the man’s elbow. He howled, stepped backwards, the big joint destroyed. Atlas moved quickly, putting a round in the man’s face.
He sank into the wall again, squeezed his shoulder in, pulled the XD9 close to his chest. He broke his grip but kept his finger on the trigger. He eased into the cut, inch by inch. On the other side of the pool, he watched Kiera step out of the shadows. If she was moving free, she’d cleared the area. He relaxed some, moved into the backyard, and checked the up angles in a quick, thorough glance. The three of them congregated in the heaviest shadows.
“I’m going to double back, take out the guys on the balcony,” he whispered. There was no disagreement in hers or Kofi’s eyes. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
She gave a scant but affirmative nod, then slipped back into the shadows with Kofi following her lead. Atlas backtracked, moved past the corpse in the chair, worked his way into the front yard, the circular driveway clear.
Aiming long, he inched backwards until his target came into view—the backlit head of the internet-surfing guard on the second-story balcony. Morons, he thought. Atlas risked being seen by one man so he could go for the other, the one who had been blowing smoke rings earlier.
When his head came into view, Atlas let out his air, secured his grip, squeezed the trigger once (h
it his target), then slid left a hair and squeezed it again (target two neutralized). The spit in the can was getting louder, but his aim was true. For now, he was in control of the situation. Hopefully, the three of them could retain said control long enough to cycle through those clowns and send Dasha back to hell where he came from.
Monitoring his heart rate, stabilizing his breath, he returned to the backyard, started across the patio, then pulled back as the patio slider opened. He heard a man’s voice telling some of the girls they could go swimming.
Four girls walked out into the backyard, took off their clothes, and jumped in the pool wearing their underwear and bras. They seemed happy to be in the pool, but not a single one of them looked like she was truly happy.
What a strange thing.
Across the yard, he put eyes on Kiera and Kofi. From deep in the shadows, he held up a hand, telling them to hold. People started shooting at them moments later.
Chapter Thirty-Three
ATLAS HARGROVE
The second the gunfire started, Kiera scrambled around the side of the house, chased there by a hail of bullets. Where Kiera went one way, Kofi went the other. The Ukrainian had no choice but to dive into the pool with the girls. Where the girls were scrambling to get out of the pool and out of the line of fire, Kofi was taking a deep breath and hoping to stay under long enough for Kiera and Atlas to neutralize the threat. He was suddenly hyperaware of his team, himself, this situation. Kiera was okay, but Kofi was taking some big risks. The second he came up for air, he was as good as dead.
The girls ran inside, but one of the shooters broke the barrier of the house, leading with his barrel. He had his weapon trained on Kofi’s location. Atlas was snugged tight against the house, his profile minimal, his eyes on the prize. Timing Kofi’s need for air and this guy’s willingness to make the rest of his body seen, Atlas had no problem toeing that line. Thirty seconds passed. Then forty. The instant the side of the shooter’s face appeared, Atlas put a bullet right through it.
Kofi came up for air, prompting a barrage of gunfire. The water all around him jumped, forcing him back under. If he was smart, he’d swim to the edge nearest the house for protection.
Amidst the noise and chaos, Atlas backed up quickly, tucked around the side of the house so as not to get stuck in Kiera’s crossfire. Kofi held his position. If these Ukrainian jackoffs wanted the pretty boy in the pool dead, they’d have to come out and get him. But no one advanced their position. The standoff was firm.
Atlas being the number one guy on SWAT back when he was with the Vacaville PD, he moved down the line, stayed out of the cut as long as he could. He moved around a decorative box planter with fancy rocks and exotic plants, afraid he’d be hit, but no one saw him.
When he was comfortably in place, he dug into the side. Kiera closed in on the open slider with him, giving him a nod he didn’t disagree with.
The porch lights suddenly came on, exposing them both. Kiera reached up with her Glock, smashed out the light above her, then fired two rounds into the house. A shooter swept the front of the open slider. He avoided Kiera’s line of fire, but he put himself right in Atlas’s sights. Atlas took the shot, dropped the shooter.
He then reached down into the box planter behind him, blindly fished out a fist-sized decorative rock, then in Belarusian—and loud enough for the remaining shooters to hear—he said, “Grenade,” to Kiera.
He tossed the heavy rock inside the dark house, then heard the mad scramble of three or four sets of feet. Atlas rushed inside, going left; Kiera flowed in on his five, breaking right. Behind him, he heard Kofi drag his waterlogged body out of the pool, now out of the line of fire.
When they were inside, Kiera found the lights, flipped them on exposing four soft targets. She took out three before he could take out his second. His first thought was, impressive. His second thought was, freaking showoff.
She narrowed her eyes at him, but then he shot the guy who appeared in the hallway behind her, not ten feet away. The shooter had drawn down on Kiera when Atlas put a bullet in his head. Kiera spun around, saw the dead guy, realized what had happened. Atlas grinned. He had one up on her now. Kofi slipped inside, snatched up a weapon sitting on the floor next to one of the corpses.
“Kofi, your boots!” Atlas hissed at the squelching sounds coming from his waterlogged boots. “Take them off, strip these men of their weapons, and make sure they’re dead. Kiera, let’s go.”
She was already on the move.
He started after her when the lights went dark, forcing himself to pause and duck down. Who killed the lights? And why hadn’t he memorized the layout ahead of him already? He was suddenly handicapped in enemy territory with a new team, one who sounded like wet farts when he walked, the other who didn’t communicate with words and was therefore completely useless in the dark.
He heard a sudden burst of noise; turning in the darkness, he was tackled from the left, his body folding sideways before crashing hard on the polished marble floor. Somewhere along the way, he lost his gun. A rain of terror hit him in the form of big pummeling fists powered by boisterous, hostile grunts. Whoever this was, he was officially trying to beat Atlas to death. If he didn’t slow this maniac’s roll, the heathen was bound to succeed.
Atlas took five more blistering shots—including one to the side of the head that really rattled him—while struggling to get his knife free. Once he cleared the sheath, Atlas started sticking this beast’s side. He took three more glancing blows before the man realized what happened and sat up.
Despite being winded and having half his face busted open, Atlas conjured up enough juice to keep after it. Another shot came in, this one with no stink on it. He took the blow on his cheekbone, grabbed the man’s arm, stabbed the inside of the bicep. The arm held, so he ripped it out and drove it in again. Half the man’s body collapsed. When his assailant was hunched over, when he could barely hold himself up, Atlas drove the knife into his eye, the thicker part of the blade wedging into the space between his upper and lower orbital.
That did the trick. Hand still on the blade, he flipped the guy over, laid him out on his back. By then, Atlas had blood in his eyes, mouth and nose. If he had hair instead of a shadow of stubble, that would have been soaked as well. That’s when the lights went back on. Glancing over, he saw Kiera standing at the end of the hallway. Behind her, there were two bodies on the floor, blood pooling around them. On a couch farther back, there were two creepy men curled up in fear with two young girls.
To these two creeps, Atlas said, “Get out!” in Belarusian. This from a guy hunched over a bloody body. Both men got up and ran out the front door. The girls scooted up against each other, holding each other for safety. “You too.” Both girls scrambled out the front door despite being dressed in scantily clad evening wear. When they were gone, he jerked the knife out, wiped it on the guy’s shirt, then slid it back in his sheath. Not two feet away, he saw his gun, grabbed that too.
Kiera cocked an eyebrow, then held up two fingers for her two guys. Atlas wiped blood off his head and pawed it out of his eyes. Looking down at his one guy, compared to her two, he couldn’t help his insecurity. She actually laughed at his inability to respond. She then gave him the slight tilt of the head—a “hurry up” gesture that got him moving. Behind him, Kofi went back to sticking the dead guys with his own blade, making sure there were no fakers looking to get the drop on them later.
When the lower floor was cleared (bedroom and bathroom doors shut, a blood-streaked slash across the doors’ white paint), they proceeded upstairs, guns extended long, their eyes tracking all the up angles. He didn’t like the logistics on this. They didn’t have the high ground, the layout, or any kind of threat assessment. On the upside, he and Kiera were proficient shooters, and so far these guys were proving to be nothing more than common thugs.
It also helped that they’d traded out their pistols for the AK-47 and the Beretta A300 semi-auto tactical shotgun with the extended tube. Despite his g
rowing confidence, his head was a throbbing wreck, his back still aching where—in the ground fight—the shotgun had been strapped to his back and had all but ground over his spine. Could he last another fistfight like that? He wasn’t sure. This was part of close-quarters battle, for sure, but he’d eaten a lot of punches and he felt things like his cheekbone and his eye beginning to swell.
Two men appeared; Kiera blew off the top of one man’s skull, advanced up the stairs in a burst of speed, then put three more rounds in his buddy. Covering the opposite angle, Atlas moved up the stairs, saw the two dead men, but no other threats. She moved past him; he secured her six. When the hallways were clear, the two of them worked their way to the back of the second floor, clearing the rooms as a two-man team.
The first room was full of the girls, nearly a dozen of them. They were huddled together in a mass, bunk beds lining three of the four walls of the large room. It was a center-fed doorway, and dangerous, but…
Atlas immediately grabbed his pistol and fired a round into the middle of the pack. The girls scattered quickly, half of them dancing with fear and anxiety, a couple of them screaming. They were stuck in a room with nowhere to hide. He didn’t sense any kind of threat from them. One look at Kiera told him she wasn’t worried either.
The dead man in the center of the room had been the threat and he was neutralized. Was he a john or a shooter? Atlas didn’t know. Regardless, he turned to Kiera, held up two fingers, and cracked a weary smile. She narrowed her eyes, shifted her jaw.
“Is everyone okay?” he asked the girls in Belarusian.
They all nodded slowly, scared, one of them having wet herself. A few of the younger ones started crying. At that moment, he was having flashbacks of Saint Petersburg, of not being able to save all the girls, and hoping he could produce a better outcome this time.
“Is there anyone else in the room with you?” he quickly and quietly asked. Several of them shook their heads no.