Black Flagged Redux

by Steven Konkoly

  “Get her to her feet,” Miljan said.

  She heard a sharp crack, and the wire suddenly loosened. Jessica opened her eyes and saw that everything had changed. Miljan’s light blue shirt was covered with bright red splatter and dark bits of tissue. Shock was plastered on his brutal face. She noticed that his right arm hung precariously by a few strands of exposed ligament below the elbow. Jessica understood what had just happened. A bullet had passed through her strangler’s head and hit Miljan’s forearm. The room froze, until her knife clattered against the marble floor, released from Miljan’s useless grip. Without warning, she sprang forward with a single focus. Survival.

  **

  Jeffrey Munoz tossed the van keys in front of the empty ice bucket next to the coffee maker and heaved his black backpack onto the bed. Melendez tossed the oversized blue gym bag on the other bed and headed for the bathroom. He unzipped the backpack and removed a pair of binoculars and a spotting scope, placing them on the small table pushed in front of the balcony sliders. He opened the balcony door and pulled the curtains all the way to the side, opening the room to a wide view of the city, which was mostly blocked by a high-rise apartment building. He moved the table directly in front of the opening and plucked a small tripod from one of the suitcases jammed against the corner wall. Once unfolded, he attached the 15X spotting scope to the tripod and placed it on the table.

  The Petroviches’ apartment sat on the eleventh floor of the high-rise in front of the Bianca Hotel and occupied the right front corner of the building. From their surveillance nest on the fourteenth floor, they could see into most of the apartment, although they had trouble seeing the back of the kitchen or the foyer. The apartment consisted of a combined kitchen-living area, and a dining nook space that occupied two thirds of the space directly in front of them. The entire front held ceiling to floor glass and several sliding doors that led to a balcony connecting the living areas with the bedroom, which comprised the remaining third of the apartment. A small white table and two chairs sat on the balcony in front of the living area.

  Munoz situated the tripod on the table and angled it slightly downward before staring through the eyepiece, roughly guessing that it was aimed into the apartment. He was slightly off, and the bottom of the patio table filled his view. He gently corrected the scope until it was centered on the open patio door. What he saw froze him momentarily. He shot up from the scope and snatched his backpack from the bed, moving rapidly toward the door.

  “Melendez!”

  “What!” he heard from the bathroom, followed by a flush.

  “They’ve got Jessica! Get on the gun and engage targets immediately! Don’t wait for me! Channel eight on comms!”

  Munoz had already slammed the hotel room door shut by the time Melendez charged out of the bathroom. He sprinted down the hallway to the elevator. If the elevator car was near his floor, it would ultimately be quicker than taking the stairs. It would give him time to attach a suppressor to the Steyr TMP machine pistol buried in his backpack. He glanced at the illuminated numbers above the elevator doors. Sixteen and five. He hit the “down” button, and stared at the numbers, ready to hit the stairs. The sixteen changed to fifteen. Fucking beautiful.

  He reached into the backpack for the compact radio and headset, figuring that if he put this on first, people would be less likely to question his counterfeit Buenos Aires Police credentials and the evil-looking submachine gun that he would be readying in the elevator. The door opened, yielding an empty elevator. He jumped inside and jammed the button to close the door. He prayed that it went straight to the parking garage.

  **

  The hotel door slammed shut and a blanket of panic settled over Melendez. He had no idea what was happening, and for the first time since he joined the Black Flag program, he was on his own. What the fuck had happened? Munoz had told him to start shooting and bolted through the door. That was it. While he tried to process the confusion, he shifted into autopilot and started mechanically running through his mental checklist. It was his best defense against the stress that had suddenly engulfed their situation. He didn’t spend any time thinking about what he might see when he put his eyes to the scope. Right now, he needed to put rounds downrange as quickly as possible. Munoz’s voice left little confusion about that fact.

  He yanked the black RPA Rangemaster Standby 7.62mm sniper rifle out of the bag and grabbed the nylon ammunition pouch containing four additional ten-round magazines. While passing the second bed, he reached into Munoz’s backpack and retrieved the other radio set. He threw this onto the table and shoved the spotting scope out of the way. After rapidly unfolding the rifle’s stock and securing it into his shoulder, he opened both lens caps on the Schmidt and Bender 3–12 x 50 scope and extended the bipod. Finally, he rested the rifle on the table and canted it toward the eleventh floor of Jessica’s building, methodically searching for the targets Munoz had assured him would appear.

  The variable power scope had been set for 8X magnification and required no elevation adjustment in this case. The distance from the end of the rifle’s barrel to the apartment was seventy-three meters, a calculation he had digitally assessed on their first day in the room with a laser rangefinder. At such short range, only a serious wind would affect his bullet. All of the flags on nearby balconies stood motionless.

  As he settled into the scope, he detached the magazine already inserted into the rifle and replaced it with a different one from the small nylon pouch. The rounds in the new magazine were specialized bonded core bullets, specifically designed for shooting through glass obstacles. The only downside to the 180-grain bullet was that it would pass through its target, even after penetrating glass. At less than 100 meters, the bullet would strike its target at 2,600 feet per second and could easily kill someone in an adjacent room after passing through a human target.

  He removed his hand from the rifle and switched the radio on, removing the headset from the compact unit. He glanced over to confirm that the orange LED read “8.” Back on the scope, he continued to breathe slowly and searched for targets.

  The scope’s wide field of vision gave him a view of the entire room, which allowed him to immediately assess the situation. He could see Jessica on her knees behind a man that was actively struggling to keep her down. The man’s hands were visible on both sides of his hips, tightly gripping and pulling backward. He was clearly strangling her. Three more men stood in the room, and he made quick mental notes to help prioritize his shots. The man close to the front window, on the far right, cradled an automatic shotgun in his arms. The man facing him, directly in front of Jessica’s attacker, pulled a knife from behind his back. His face looked bloodied. The guy to his immediate left stood with his arms folded, laughing. Strangler, Shotgun, Knife, Chuckles…in that order.

  He pulled the bolt back and chambered a round, steadying the scope at the highest point on the back of Strangler’s neck. He started to depress the trigger, watching the crosshairs drift ever so slightly with his shallow breath. He found the drift’s natural rhythm and removed a little more pressure. Any additional pressure would fire the weapon. As the scope’s center dot eased into place on a point directly aligned with the man’s spine, he barely activated the muscles in his finger, and the rifle kicked into his shoulder. He vaguely heard the glass shatter on Jessica’s balcony, before reloading another round. He was in a different world right now, where all of his attention was focused on the mechanics of shooting. The fear and panic that had tried to overtake him less than a minute ago had vanished, replaced by an eerie, detached calm.

  **

  The man to Miljan’s left started to reach behind his back. Jessica instantly closed the gap and executed a hinged high kick to his throat, sending him back against the foyer wall next to the hallway closet. Both of his hands instinctively reached for his own neck. The rest of her body hinged with the kick toward the floor, allowing her to grab the knife. From the downward position, she placed the serrated knife behind Miljan’s kn
ee and reversed the hinge, using most of the momentum to sever the hamstrings of his right leg. Miljan screamed and collapsed, falling into the crook of Jessica’s knife arm. Bracing him against her body and keeping him upright, she slashed the blade viciously across his neck, feeling the knife’s serrations tear through the tracheal cartilage. At the same time, she reached her left hand toward the small of his back and found the handle of a pistol.

  As the knife came free and her slashing arm swung outward, she continued to spin into a stance facing the man she had just kicked. He had begun to gain some sense, but both of his hands were still occupied with his rapidly swelling neck. At point blank range, Jessica fired the semiautomatic handgun several times into the man. Her final shot sprayed brains and other dark matter against the closet door.

  She ducked and spun, aiming the pistol with her off hand at the next target she could find. She didn’t have much time to process the scene. The strangler’s body lay face down in a massive crimson pool, centered on what remained of his head. Josif stood in the doorway with his mouth and eyes wide open, a pistol held limply in his right hand. Her main problem appeared to be the man aiming a Saiga semiautomatic shotgun at her head.

  The shotgun erupted a fraction of a second after the wall behind him turned red. She felt a sharp stinging pain in her pistol hand and saw that Josif’s white coveralls were now stained by a bright red lateral slash. The man with the shotgun fell to his knees; a powerful fountain of blood sprayed from his neck onto the ceiling as his body continued down to the floor. Jessica’s left hand didn’t respond to the electrical impulses ordering it to fire the pistol at Josif, despite the fact that it was aimed directly at his chest. She didn’t waste any time trying to figure out why. In one easy motion, she threw her knife at Josif.

  Despite its undeniable usefulness as a hand-to-hand weapon, her Spider knife had been designed as a throwing weapon. She had special ordered a serrated set from the company and found that the serrations barely affected their ballistic performance. She could accurately place the knives in a six-inch diameter circle at thirty feet, and Josif stood well within that range. The knife buried itself in his upper right arm and prevented him from raising the pistol. She watched him dash to the right and disappear behind the wall.

  Both hands slick with blood, she pried the pistol from her damaged left hand and fired at the thin wall between the two rooms. The remaining several bullets in the gun formed a tight pattern on the wall, three feet above the floor, and two feet back from the doorway arch. If Josif had opted to hunch near the wall and wait for her to charge forward, he would have taken those bullets in the head or groin, depending on his choice of stance.

  She tossed the weapon back and dragged Miljan’s corpse into the foyer with her good hand. She could safely use the foyer wall as cover, since the dishwasher in the kitchen on the other side of the wall provided an additional layer of solid material. She turned Miljan over, looking for spare pistol magazines. Blood continued to pump out of his neck, connecting with the red tide expanding from the bullet riddled body slumped against the closet door.

  **

  Melendez chambered another round and started to center the scope’s crosshairs on the man who appeared in the bedroom doorway, but he disappeared from sight before he began to remove any slack from the trigger. He had planned to target the guy with the knife next, but could tell from the scope’s wide field of vision that Jessica had already turned that side of the room into a slaughterhouse. Several gunshots shattered the momentary calm, and he used the scope to scan the living area for more targets. Covered with blood, Jessica pulled one of the bodies behind the kitchen wall.

  He heard loud voices down on the street and rushed forward to investigate. He watched as five men sprinted into the building, followed by a single gunshot from below. Fuck, she was about to have more company, and he didn’t have any way to communicate with her. He got behind the rifle and found Jessica through the scope.

  She had just finished reloading a pistol, holding the weapon upside down between her knees. He could see that her left hand was a mess and wondered how she would chamber a round. Amazingly, she flipped the pistol between her knees with her good hand and pulled back the slide while keeping the weapon anchored between her legs. The pistol was up and aimed around the corner in a flash.

  He aimed the rifle back toward the window and looked for any shot that might have a chance of reaching the man he had seen in the bedroom doorway. He knew Jessica wouldn’t back down from the situation and feared the worst. There could be more than one more attacker in the bedroom, and she wouldn’t stand a chance bursting through the doorway. Even if she survived, she’d soon be up against five more men, unable to quickly reload her pistol.

  The bedroom’s windows were covered by thick shades that gave him nothing. He decided that he would fire blindly through the windows until she breached the doorway. It might distract whoever was left in the bedroom long enough for her to get the job done. If she survived, he might be able to keep the new arrivals pinned down long enough for Munoz to finish the job.

  He took his hand off the rifle and jabbed at the radio, putting it to his ear. “Munoz?”

  “Just hit the street. Tell me she’s still alive.”

  “Miraculously, but five men just hauled ass into the building. You’re about twenty seconds behind them. There’s one more confirmed target in the apartment, but I don’t have a shot.”

  “Do what you can until I get there,” Munoz said.

  “Understood,” he said and focused on the scope.

  Jessica was tensed, and he could tell she was about to make a move. He placed the crosshairs in the center of one of the bedroom sliders and fired. He saw Jessica sprint toward the bedroom before she could have possibly heard the rifle shot. Melendez chambered another round and fired hastily into the ceiling to floor bedroom window farthest from the wall that separated the two rooms. It was up to Jessica at this point.

  **

  Goran Brujic ran up the stairs with his pistol drawn. He knew they would all be physically spent by the time they arrived on the eleventh floor, but he didn’t plan to take any chances with an elevator. He had no idea what had gone down in the apartment, but he was pretty sure that several rapid gunshots was not part of Josif’s plan. He had no intention to step out of the elevator into an ambush. They would catch their breath at the top of the stairs and move cautiously from there.

  He reached the door and kneeled beside it. Most of his team slid into place behind him with their pistols drawn while they waited for Jovan to move his oversized carcass up the stairs. The man was at least a half a floor behind them and carried a shortened pump action shotgun. As Jovan slammed into the concrete stairwell wall, out of breath, Goran opened the door slowly, peering into the elevator foyer. He didn’t see anything out of place and decided to move into the lobby with his gun aimed forward. A man and woman turned the corner and gasped at the sight of five armed men in the lobby. Goran pulled a counterfeit Buenos Aires police badge out of his back pocket and flashed it at the couple, signaling for them to go back to their apartment. The man tried to speak, but Goran put his finger to his lips and shook his head. Whether they believed the five Caucasian men were police officers didn’t matter. Goran heard a door slam and knew they wouldn’t be a problem.

  He peeked down the hallway leading to the Petroviches’ apartment and found it clear. Whatever had happened was confined to the apartment. He told the men to hurry and ran down the hall to the door. He pulled out one of several key cards that had been made for his team by the doorman this morning and waited for everyone to fall into place around the door. Once Jovan’s sweaty, heavily breathing body settled in, he inserted the card and removed it quickly. The light turned green, and he opened the door quietly, sliding into the room with the gun aimed forward.

  He edged down the foyer hallway, amazed by the amount of blood covering the floor. He saw two bodies, which he immediately recognized. Something had gone terribly wrong in he
re. He suddenly heard a desperate scream from deeper inside the apartment. He kept still, listening and scanning for clues. The scream was followed by sobbing and repeated begging, which ended in what sounded like a slap. He took a few more steps forward and froze. The sliding glass door in the middle of the living room lie shattered in pieces on the shiny marble floor and concrete balcony. Sniper? He wasn’t going to take any chances. He glanced around for a few seconds, seeing an opportunity that would buy him some time.

  **

  Melendez tried not to pay attention to what was happening in the bedroom. Jessica had plunged through the doorway opening and opened the shades less than a minute later. Behind the curtains, he saw the man in white coveralls strapped into some unusual contraption on the floor next to the bed. He watched, slightly confused, as she adjusted a camera that had been knocked down by their scuffle. What she did next made him uncomfortable and he was relieved to turn his attention back to the foyer. He loaded a new magazine into his rifle and settled in to wait.

  He heard a primal scream and expended considerable restraint from looking into the bedroom. He needed to focus on the impending arrival of the remaining attackers. A few seconds later, he saw light reflect off the marble floor in the dark recess of the foyer. Someone had opened the door, and he knew for a fact it wasn’t Munoz. Munoz had followed the Serbians up the stairwell, trailing them by five floors, careful not to alert them to his presence. He had just checked in with Melendez from the stairwell.

  From this angle, he couldn’t see more than a quarter of the way into the foyer, so he placed the crosshairs at the furthest point along the foyer floor and waited. A foot slowly appeared, followed by another, as his next target moved cautiously down the hallway. He sighted in on the man’s left knee and started to settle in for a shot. The man had stopped, which made his job easier. He started to apply pressure to the trigger, when the man suddenly bolted out of the foyer. His crosshairs found the man standing in front of an intact window, and suddenly, the view was obscured by a dark brown curtain. The curtain continued rapidly across the entire front of the living area, stopping a few feet from the wall separating the two rooms. Since he couldn’t shoot effectively, he grabbed the radio. Everything relied on Munoz.