Asher's War (Asher Benson #3)

by Jason Brant

  “Manning.” Tate stopped in front of a staircase with a glowing EXIT sign above it. “Radio in when you’re in position. Don’t fuck this up.”

  Bree paused long enough to look all of us in the eyes. “I’ve got your backs.”

  Then she ran through the door and disappeared up the staircase.

  “I want you in the middle.” Tate turned his gaze on me. He wasn’t breathing hard, but sweat glistened under his eyes. “If you so much as point that rifle anywhere near my back, I’ll—”

  “Yeah, yeah.” I gestured toward the other side of the garage. “Let’s get this over with. I’ve got a thirty pack of swill with my name on it in my room.”

  “Quiet.” Huxx held a fist up. “Hear that?”

  The quiet pops of distant gunfire reached us.

  “Shit.” Briggs adjusted his vest. “Any chance that’s just rioters and not Smith’s men?”

  “Give me a second.” I closed my eyes.

  After two deep breaths, I lowered my mental defenses.

  A flood of thoughts and foreign voices washed over me. I fought against a tidal wave of anger and fear, searching for the distinct impressions of Smith’s goons.

  Every time I’d encountered them, their presence had been obvious because they were blank spots in an otherwise painted canvas. Their minds were voids of nothingness that I couldn’t penetrate.

  While their ability to fight off my telepathy kept me from gathering any kind of useful information from them, it also allowed me to know when they were present. In crowds as large as the one surrounding us, I would have never been able to unearth their locations if they were like everyone else. It would have been the equivalent of finding a needle in a haystack. As it stood, they were closer to a metal pipe in said haystack. I just had to dig around a little bit to find it.

  My eyes popped open. “There are five of them in the building ahead.”

  Huxx, Briggs, and Tate gaped at me.

  “Bullshit.” Tate stepped forward. “I told you not to bring that—”

  “You can argue with me later.” I pointed at the building. “Those gunshots are coming from someone.”

  “Where are you?” Drew asked. “It’s taking you too long to get to the other side of the garage.”

  Tate watched me a moment before using his microphone. “Exiting the garage now. Manning is on her way to the roof.”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Remember, the objectives are the woman and the silver object that is probably a flash drive.” Tate jammed the butt of his shotgun against his shoulder again. “If we can snag one of these bastards safely, we’ll do it, but don’t stick your necks out for it.”

  “Let’s have some fun,” Briggs said.

  We ran to the other end of the garage and plunged into the street.

  22 – Shot Through the Hart

  Hart managed to drop the car into gear before he slumped forward into the wheel. His eyes remained open, though they stared sightlessly into the dash.

  The car rolled forward at a snail’s pace, veering slightly to the right.

  “Joe!” Penn managed to lift his head from the rest.

  Lethargic hands stretched out to his partner, touched his shoulders.

  Christie reached for the door handle and found there wasn’t one in the back of the squad car. Panicked, she threw her shoulder against the door.

  It didn’t budge.

  “Let me out!” she pleaded.

  Penn started, as if he’d forgotten she was even in the car with him. His head moved slowly around until he looked at her. “They’re dead.”

  “I’m sorry.” Christie leaned toward the metal mesh that separated the front and back seats. “But you have to get me out of here. I can’t open the door.”

  The gunfire that had peppered the car had ceased.

  Steam rose from under the hood, which had dozens of bullet holes punched in it.

  Cracks stretched across the windshield.

  Penn blinked slowly. Turning around in his seat, he opened his door. He tumbled out and disappeared below Christie’s line of sight. She slid across the seat to his side of the car and sat up as high as she could. Part of Penn’s body was visible as he tried to roll over on the pavement. He got to his hands and knees.

  Blood covered his torso and left arm, turning his shirt into a sticky mess.

  The car continued to roll along.

  Christie’s door moved even with Penn just as he managed to get to his knees. He reached out and grabbed the handle.

  Gunfire came from the apartment building again.

  Thunks resonated from the hood of the trunk behind Christie. Her window shattered. Bullets tore through the seat inches from her left arm. She threw herself flat against the door, pleaded with Penn.

  “Get me out of here!”

  Penn’s eyes narrowed as he fumbled with the handle using his good hand. He focused as it moved past him, his arm stretching to its full length as he held onto the handle.

  And then the door popped open and Christie spilled out. She landed on her shoulder, tiny pebbles jabbing into her skin. She didn’t notice the pain, just rolled to her stomach and pushed herself up.

  The car rolled past Penn, leaving him exposed.

  Christie reached for him.

  “Run,” he whispered.

  Two bullets punched into his chest, and he crumpled to his back.

  His dead gaze stared at the sky.

  Christie stared at him in horror. She couldn’t believe that everything she’d experienced today could possibly be real.

  Another bullet slammed into the rear bumper of the squad car beside Christie. The sound of it punching through the metal startled her. She scooted backward on her hands and knees, staying behind the car. Keeping the vehicle placed between her and the apartment building, she didn’t dare peek over the top.

  The gunfire stopped after a few more seconds, and silence fell over the parking lot. Even the people protesting in the next street had grown momentarily quiet.

  The squad car rocked as it bumped into a parked Silverado. It stopped then, the front bumper wedged against the rear panel of the truck. The engine wheezed and billowed steam. One of the tires was punctured and flat.

  Christie leaned against the rear wheel and squeezed her eyes shut. Tears ran down her cheeks. “Someone, please help me!”

  23 – Go Time

  Bree took the stairs two at a time. Her legs strained under the weight of all the gear, ammunition, and her rifle, but she pushed herself to climb even faster.

  She had to go up three flights in the amount of time it took the guys to reach the other side of the garage. Judging from the aggression of the rioters outside, she figured her partners would need all the cover they could get.

  The din from the crowd in the streets quieted as she sprinted up the steps. Their rowdy protests were barely audible above the footfalls from her combat boots and her heavy breathing.

  “Where are you?” Drew asked in her ear. “It’s taking you too long to come out the other side of the garage.”

  Tate responded. “Exiting the garage now. Manning is on her way to the roof.”

  “Affirmative.”

  You’ve got this, Bree thought. This is what you’ve been training your whole life for.

  During her time with SWAT, she’d encountered some heavy situations. The nervous energy that flowed through her during standoffs and drug raids had been closer to a high for Bree than stress. She’d known she was an adrenaline junky even before she’d ever heard of the phrase.

  But this was different.

  The men in her group had done things she couldn’t even dream of. And now, just hours after being picked up while at a gun range, she was storming the streets of Washington, D.C. like some kind of vigilante.

  She reached the top of the stairs and burst through the door leading to the roof.

  The crack of rifles immediately reached her ears.

  Shit! she thought. I’m too late.

  B
ree sprinted across the top of the garage and weaved through the dozen cars parked sporadically around. When she reached a three-foot ledge that surrounded the roof, she glanced over the top and spotted the apartment building across the street.

  Even more protestors filled the street between the garage and the building.

  Things were getting ridiculously messy for their first operation. They hadn’t even trained together for the simplest of missions, let alone for one with so many complications.

  With a practiced grace, Bree lifted her rifle onto the ledge with one hand and deployed the bipod with the other. She placed the legs of the stand on the top of the concrete ledge.

  As fast as she could, Bree adjusted the scope on top of the rifle, shortening the zoom distance because the building wasn’t far away.

  She looked through the scope and fine-tuned the focus.

  Everything was in place.

  “I’m in position,” she said into her mic.

  Then she took a deep breath and watched the exit of the parking garage below her. The rest of her squad would enter the street from that spot.

  “Exiting the building,” Tate replied.

  They appeared a moment later, moving in a tight line with Tate in the lead.

  Several of the protestors walking down the middle of the road spotted the armed men coming and backed away. They shoved each other aside as they tried to move out of Tate’s path.

  Through the scope, Bree saw Asher glance up at her and wave.

  “He’s a freaking lunatic,” she mumbled.

  A tall, lanky man approached the group as they neared the entrance to the apartment building. Tate backed him off by shoving the barrel of his shotgun in the man’s face. He threw his hands up and backed away in a hurry.

  They paused in front of the door. Tate kept his attention straight ahead. The rest of them turned and watched the crowd, ensuring no one snuck up on them.

  “Entering the building,” Tate said.

  “Be careful,” Drew replied.

  Bree said a small prayer as her team disappeared through the front door.

  24 – Asshole Down

  Tate plunged through the door and angled to the left, checking the corner. Huxx went right. I walked fast to the far end of a small lobby and stopped beside a wall of post office boxes. Briggs brought up the rear. He pulled the door shut behind us and flipped the lock into place.

  No residents or militants were visible from our vantage point.

  I glanced down a dark hallway and spotted holes peppered through the walls.

  “Firefight.” I motioned at the carnage.

  Some blood trailed down to a door at the far end of the hall.

  Drew said, “We’ve got some activity out back. Looks like the officers I sent to pick up the witness are under attack. Get moving!”

  I let my consciousness wander out again. Four men were on the floor above us. Another was higher up. I didn’t sense any of them were outside engaging the cops. They must have been shooting from inside the building.

  “We’ve got five homeboys above us, four of them on the second floor.”

  “Oh, really?” Tate grunted. “So we just ignore the bullet holes and blood leading us down the hall and follow your bullshit upstairs?”

  “Yup.”

  Two of the men above us were walking from the back of the building to the front. They’d be directly above us in a few seconds.

  I grabbed the mic by my ear. “Manning, does the stairwell have any windows?”

  There was a small pause, then Manning said, “Yes. Looks like each landing has a window looking into the street.”

  “Keep an eye on the second floor. You should see two men appear in the landing in a second or two.” I let go of the mic and watched Tate with a smirk on my face.

  “We don’t have time for this.” He gestured down the hall. “Get ready to—”

  “Got ‘em. Two hostiles in suits with... looks like M16s. They’re moving up to the next floor.”

  Tate faced me. “Nice guess.”

  “Sure it was.”

  “Okay, we’re going to the second floor—two-by-two formation.” Tate looked at Huxx. “You Navy boys use that?”

  “We invented it.” Huxx moved to the stairs, stopped on the right side. “Ready.”

  Briggs slid behind him.

  Tate stepped to the left side and waited for me to fall in line with him.

  We took the steps quickly, aiming our weapons up the stairs as we went.

  I had already worked up a serious sweat inside my uniform. The weather had cooled dramatically over the past few weeks, but I had about four thousand layers of body armor and stylish paramilitary clothing covering every inch of my body. Sweat would have poured into my eyes if not for the mask sopping it up.

  Tate stopped at the next landing, glanced out the window. He asked Manning, “You got us?”

  “Affirmative. The hostiles are on the fourth floor now.”

  Tate hustled to the door. “Benson, are you telling me that there are two men still on this floor?”

  I quickly double-checked. The voids the men had for minds were still there. “Yup.”

  The way he hesitated before entering the second floor made it plainly obvious that he still didn’t believe me. I’d nailed the two men moving to the stairwell though, so he knew better than to ignore me again, even if he didn’t understand how I’d come up with that information.

  He thought I’d pulled it out of my ass. That was actually pretty close.

  We skirted down another dark hallway in the same two-by-two formation. No one came out to greet us. When we neared the end of the hall, Tate glanced back at me. I gestured to an apartment three doors down on the left. We continued in complete silence, our footfalls masked by the stained, worn-out carpet.

  “Officers down!” Drew shouted into our ears.

  I understood why he wanted us to move faster. Drew was a cop after all, and his brothers-in-blue were getting lit up by the sound of it. But we couldn’t rush in there and get our faces shot off. That wouldn’t help anyone.

  The door I’d pointed to was closed, but the wood around the handle and lock was splintered. A dirty boot print was visible beside the handle.

  I held up two fingers and pointed at the door to signal that both men were inside.

  Normally, we would have breached the apartment hard and fast. If a door was locked, there wasn’t any time to dick around. If we wanted the element of surprise, we wouldn’t have time to try to pick the lock or any of that spy-movie nonsense.

  But the door had already been compromised.

  So Tate put his left hand against the wood and eased it open. His right hand held the shotgun against his shoulder.

  The door opened to a dingy apartment. Clothes were scattered everywhere. Dust bunnies rested along the baseboard. Fist-sized holes were punched in random sections of the walls. Stains covered the lone couch that sat on the far side of a small living room.

  A dead body was sprawled across the floor in front of the couch, blood pooling under the torso.

  The apartment looked like the kind of place I’d spent the better part of the last decade living in. Minus the cooling body, of course.

  Tate went first, then Huxx, Briggs, and me.

  “Freeze!” Tate shouted as he rounded into the living room.

  Two men stood by a shattered window, aiming rifles at something outside. They both wore gray suits that I’d seen before. Why in the hell these guys always had on suits, I didn’t know. It was weird.

  The men didn’t freeze.

  Instead, they dove in different directions as they spun their weapons our way.

  Tate pumped two rounds into the bro on the left.

  Huxx and Briggs shot the shit out of the dude on the right.

  I didn’t even fire a shot. Hell, I barely got in the room before it was over.

  “That’s all of them in here,” I said.

  “You two search the other rooms,” Tate said, ign
oring me. “Uri Geller and I will check the bodies.”

  “Har-har.” I almost laughed. It was a decent joke, much to my surprise.

  Uri Geller was a dude in the seventies who got famous for bending spoons and other ‘miracles’.

  Huxx and Briggs disappeared into a kitchen.

  I moved to the body on the right and bent down to check the man’s pulse. That was when I saw the hole in his temple. Not much point in checking to see if he was alive when his brain was oozing onto the carpet.

  “Asshole down.” I looked to Tate.

  He shook his head as he bent over the other guy.

  I checked out the window they’d been standing in front of.

  A parking lot stretched behind the building. A police cruiser was idling against the side of a truck. Bullet holes riddled the entire car. They must have put two or three magazines into the damn thing.

  A body slumped over the wheel.

  Another was sprawled behind the trunk.

  And yet another lay facedown ten feet away.

  “Damn it. The officers are down. This place is going to get real hot, real fast.”

  Tate touched his mic. “Two hostiles down. Three cops are hit in the parking lot. Moving to the fourth floor to clear the rest. No sign of the woman.”

  “Hold,” Drew said in a sullen voice. “We’re having issues with the drone.”

  “Perfect.” Tate walked to the door and watched the hallway.

  Briggs and Huxx came back in.

  “Clear,” Huxx said. He gave me a suspicious glance. “How did you know?”

  I shrugged. We didn’t have time to get into another argument.

  “We’ve lost communication with the drone.” Drew sounded as if he wanted to punch faces. “You’re on your own until we can get it back online.”

  “Figures.” Tate turned to me. “So, Uri, can you tell us where the girl is?”

  I tried to find Christie Tolbert’s consciousness amidst the myriad of minds surrounding us and couldn’t. Too many frightened tenants filled the apartment building for me to pinpoint anyone other than Smith’s men. I might have found her on a normal day, but it would be impossible with the streets teeming with pissed-off rioters.

  Even if I had all morning to sift through the thoughts and emotions, I might not be able to pinpoint her. And for all we knew, she might have already fled the building when the firefight broke out.