by Jason Brant
I frowned. “No. There are too many people around us.”
“Convenient. You know where the hostiles are, but not the target.” Tate hit the mic. “Manning, keep on an eye on the top level. We’re moving up.”
“Roger.”
Even though I wanted to slap Tate for his little dig, I almost chuckled at all the mixed-up lingo everyone used. We’d worked in too many branches of the military and law enforcement to all be on the same page. If we ever worked more missions together, we’d have to unify the way we communicated.
Tate led us back to the stairwell, and we reformed before heading up three more flights.
The presence of frightened tenants on each floor bombarded against my defenses. I had a lot of stamina, but I wasn’t sure how long I could keep my physical exertion at a high level while also protecting my mind. It felt as if I were in the middle of a football stadium and everyone in the stands was shouting at me.
Tate stopped outside the entrance to the fourth floor. He looked back at me.
I nodded, held three fingers up.
We moved through the door single file before splitting to each side of the hallway as we entered. I went down the left side with Tate. We made it halfway down the hall when we spotted an open door on the right side.
And then I got shot in the chest.
25 – Bureaucratic Incompetence
Drew paced the length of the room behind Nami. She pattered away at a keyboard, cursing under her breath. Nelson sat beside her, watching the screen she worked on.
“You think Smith is causing the interference?” Drew asked.
“Possible.” Nelson didn’t take his eyes from the screen. “But his reach would have to be much longer than we could have ever imagined.”
“If not him, then what?” Drew continued walking back and forth at a rapid pace. “We were told we’d have access to that drone and now it’s gone.”
“It could be bureaucratic incompetence. Maybe the Pentagon decided they needed it more than we did. The nation’s capitol is in the middle of a massive riot, after all.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“I’m not sure what he has to do with it.”
Drew stopped for a moment and stared at the back of Nelson’s head. He’d never heard the man crack a joke before, let alone at such an inappropriate time. Perhaps he’d spent too much time around Ash.
Their entire operation, their first operation, was rapidly turning into an unmitigated disaster. The plan had been to assemble a team, spend a few weeks getting them trained and prepared, and then quietly go after Smith. They didn’t want him to know what they were up to. Instead, they’d slapped everyone together and sent them out into the middle of a riot. And then they’d lost their eye in the sky.
Drew hated everything about it. He’d spent too much time researching the members he’d recruited for the Psych Ward. The weeks he’d used to gather information could have been spent training.
“Bunch of dick lickers.” Nami slammed her tiny fist on the desk. “No one is telling me shit. They don’t know why the drone flew away and cut off its video feed. Or at least that’s what they’re telling me.”
Nelson had attempted to reach President Thomas, but his call had been refused. The disorder in D.C. and the immense media scrutiny over the attack in the subway had Thomas’ full attention. And judging from what Nelson had said earlier, the Psych Ward was already on the president’s hit list.
“We should pull them out.” Drew stepped beside Nelson. “They’re at a huge disadvantage because of the protests.”
Nelson cocked an eyebrow, but said nothing.
“If the crowds start attacking them, our guys aren’t going to fight back. They won’t kill innocent civilians. But Smith’s men will. Jesus, what if they use that weapon they had on the subway? They could turn hundreds of people into savages in a matter of seconds. And then what? We lose all of our people? We lose Ash?”
“We have our orders, Detective.”
“Our orders are to destroy everything we’ve built in our first goddamn mission?”
“We’re to stop Smith at all costs. Immediately. Everything else is secondary. If we don’t stop him here, then we’ll be shut down anyway and all will be lost.”
Drew wanted to punch Nelson.
The man was casually describing the death of his best friend as if he were just a tool at the government’s disposal. Nelson might not care if Asher died, but Drew sure as hell did.
“Screw that.” Drew leaned over the desk and grabbed the microphone on it.
He decided to order them to abort the mission and beat feet out of there. That would be the end of his career. It might land him in prison. He didn’t care.
But he didn’t get the words out.
Tate’s voice came over the speakers in the room.
“Benson is down! We’re under heavy fire!”
26 – Ouchie
I collapsed to my back, the wind knocked out of me. My lungs refused to cooperate. Not even a sip of air could get in.
Agony erupted throughout my torso.
It felt as if a bus had hit me.
Paralysis froze my arms and legs.
I could blink. And groan. That was about it.
The thousands of voices around us bombarded me at once. A mountainous wave of noise washed over my mind, drowning out my own thoughts. I couldn’t focus, couldn’t think amidst the turbulent sea.
Tate slid in front of the door and ducked down on the other side of the frame. He pumped a handful of shells through the drywall beside him as he continued to move down the hall.
Huxx and Briggs unloaded into the wall I’d been shot through.
The roar of the guns reverberated through the building.
Smoke filled the cramped space.
Whoever was in the apartment returned fire in short bursts.
Tate shouted something I couldn’t hear over the bedlam around us.
I finally managed to force a gulp of air in and the feeling of drowning slightly abated. I focused all of my willpower on walling off my mind again. My ability to think slowly swam up from the depths of my consciousness. Movement returned to my extremities, and I struggled to a seated position against the wall.
The fabric of my vest had a hole in it.
I ripped the vest open and looked at my body armor, praying it hadn’t penetrated.
My whole torso hurt so severely I was convinced they’d hit me with a high-powered round that had penetrated the armor. The location of the shot could have killed me.
But it hadn’t. The bulletproof vest had stopped the round. I wasn’t bleeding out. My lung hadn’t collapsed from a puncture. My liver would still be functional. Thank you, Jesus.
The shot had just kicked my ass and knocked me down.
Maybe broken a few ribs.
Nothing I couldn’t handle.
“Ash?” Drew roared in my ear. “Ash!”
There wasn’t any time for a chat.
I grabbed my rifle, which hung from the clip on my chest, and raised it. More holes punched in the wall opposite, just a few inches above my head. The rifle bucked against my shoulder as I put round after round through the wall. The gun clicked empty a few seconds later.
I popped the mag.
Jammed a new one home.
The gunfire coming from the other room had ceased after I stopped shooting.
A fresh wave of hell coursed through my chest as I rolled to my side and got up. Huxx and Briggs stood a few feet away, guns trained at the destroyed wall. Tate communicated with Drew, telling him I wasn’t dead. A ringing in my ears dampened everything else around me. We’d fired a lot of rounds in a very tight space.
Tenants in the other rooms on our floor were losing their minds in their apartments. Their panic hammered on me. I doubled my mental defenses off as I took a staggering step forward.
My legs felt like rubber.
“I’m good,” I croaked.
Tate inspected me from head to toe in a flash,
and then turned his attention to the door. He inched toward it.
And then an explosion knocked all of us back a step.
A deafening roar blasted through the entire floor.
It took me back to the day in Iraq when all of my problems had begun. The intense flashback threatened to consume me emotionally, but I shoved it aside as I staggered into the wall behind me.
For a moment, I thought they’d thrown a grenade at us, but the shot-up wall in front of us remained intact. The explosion had come from inside the apartment.
Tate lunged forward and disappeared inside the door. The explosion had knocked me off guard, but Tate had much more experience in those kinds of situations and he used the distraction to his advantage.
Huxx was hot on his heels. Briggs glanced at me, his eyebrows arched in a you-good? expression.
I nodded I was before following him inside.
Smoke filled the tiny apartment.
Debris littered the floor of the living room we stepped into. Chunks of drywall were everywhere. A television and couch were torn to pieces, their innards scattered about.
We were the only people in there.
A smoking hole cut through a wall to the right.
Tate ran over and placed his back against the wall beside it. He tentatively glanced through the hole. Soot and drywall dust covered his mask as he took another peek, this one longer.
From where I stood, I could see through the hole a bit. A bed, the comforter disheveled and covered in wood and plaster, was visible on the other side of the wall.
The bastards had blown their way through to the next apartment. We thought we had them cornered in Christie Tolbert’s apartment, but they had other plans. And explosives, apparently.
Tate lunged through the hole in the wall.
Knowing Smith’s men had to get to the stairwell to escape, I ran back to the entrance of Tolbert’s apartment. I stuck my head out and checked the hallway only to have three bullets whiz by my face.
They were so close I actually heard them slice through the air.
I jerked my head back, cursing myself for almost getting my beautiful mug shot off.
But I had spotted all three of them running down the hallway toward the stairwell. The man in the back was shuffling backward, his rifle aimed in our direction. He’d popped off a three-round burst when he saw me.
The son of a bitch in front wore a black suit. I knew who that was. He and I had a score to settle. A lot of scores to settle. My knee still hurt at the end of a long day from when he’d stomped on it.
They had me pinned down. If I jumped out, there was no chance I could get a shot off before he put me down. But I couldn’t let them simply run away from us.
“Sit rep?” Nelson called in my ear.
Even in the midst of the gunfight, I questioned why he’d taken over the comm line from Drew. Was my friend so caught up in losing the officers and thinking I’d been killed that he couldn’t continue operating the communications equipment?
I grabbed the mic, said, “We’re in a world of shit. Three of them are on foot, heading for the stairs.” I remembered Bree had a good angle. “Manning, watch the landing. Take a shot if you’ve got it.”
“On it,” she answered.
Nelson asked, “Do you have the device? What about Christie Tolbert?”
“Negative on both.”
“Smith’s men aren’t the primary objective. Get the device.”
That was easy for him to say—they hadn’t just put a pill in his chest and knocked him on his ass. I considered going after them anyway. Nelson thought the device would be our best bet in fighting Smith, but I figured differently.
Given time, I knew I could eventually pry some information out of one of their heads. Assuming they would even allow themselves to be captured. Or that they even knew anything of consequence.
If any of them could help me find Smith, it was the Man in Black. I stood there for a moment, conflicted over whether to follow orders or to race down the hall and bounce their heads off the stairs a few times until they talked.
Over the comm system, Huxx said, “I’ve got a destroyed computer here. Looks like they smashed it on purpose. Should I grab it?”
“Fuck yeah,” Nami said in the background. It sounded as if she wasn’t in front of the microphone, but had shouted over Nelson’s shoulder. “Grab that shit!”
I chanced a peek down the hall again. The men were gone, the door at the end still swinging shut behind them.
Tate exploded from the next apartment down and looked both ways. “Damn!”
“No shot.” Manning breathed heavily. “They’re heading down to the next floor.”
From inside the apartment behind me, I heard Huxx and Briggs tearing through the living room. I turned around, saw them flipping over the furniture and kicking pillows out of the way.
Huxx said, “I don’t see a thumb drive, but it could be anywhere. Either those men have it or it’s hidden somewhere. We could spend all afternoon searching this place. We need to find the woman so she can tell us where it is.”
“Let’s move.” Tate stayed in the hall, his eyes fixed on the door. He pulled shotgun shells from a pocket on his vest and fed them into his shotgun. When it was full, he racked one into the chamber.
The four of us reconvened in the hall and sprinted for the stairwell.
27 – Handy
Bree only caught flashes of the besuited men as they ran past the windows in the stairwell. The timing for an accurate shot was too small. By the time she saw them, she couldn’t squeeze a round off in time to hit a target.
Even as the crowd underneath her grew more intense, their volume escalating to a dull roar, Bree heard the explosion that rocked the apartment building across the street. It had silenced the protestors for a moment before infuriating them even more. They were incensed over the lack of security they perceived in the country, so gunshots and explosions only amplified their rage.
Bree aimed her rifle to the front door, hoping Smith’s men would exit the building there rather than going out back. She would have them dead to rights if they did.
She waited. Three seconds went by. Then five.
The front door burst open and three men in suits spilled out. The one in front wore black, the other two gray.
Each held a rifle.
They slid to an abrupt halt when they saw the large gathering of protestors in front of them. The street had filled while they’d been shooting the building up. They aimed at the people, but didn’t shoot. With a crowd that large, the men wouldn’t have enough bullets to put more than a dent in it.
Bree aimed at the man in black, figuring him to be the leader. She sighted his chest.
Her finger hovered over the trigger.
She called to Tate, “I’ve got them out front. Should I engage?”
“Fire away!” Tate huffed.
Bree’s finger pulled the trigger back.
She paused when she saw one of the men in gray fish an object from his pocket.
The man held it up.
It was the device they’d used in the subway that morning. She sucked in a harsh breath when she thought of what an insane crowd the size of the one below her could do to the city. It would make Arthur’s Creek look like a day in the park.
She adjusted her crosshairs, aimed at the man in gray.
As she watched, all three of them jammed earbuds in.
Bree held steady for a moment, struggling with what she should do. If she shot the man with the device, one of the others might be able to pick it up and activate it before she could chamber another round and fire again. She was fast, damn fast, but she didn’t want to risk it.
Instead, she moved the rifle left and up, sighting the small object in the man’s hand.
She squeezed the trigger.
Felt the rifle buck against her shoulder.
Heard the bark of the gun.
She looked through the scope, praying her aim was true.
It
was.
The device was gone, blown to pieces by the high-velocity round.
So was most of the man’s hand.
A bloody stump with bits of flesh and bone jutting in random directions remained where his hand had been. He gaped at it in shock. Blood spurted from the exposed end of his wrist.
The man in black’s head snapped around as he searched for the shooter. He locked eyes on Bree as she worked the action of her rifle.
He raised his own, loosed a volley of rounds in her direction.
Chucks of concrete chipped away from the small wall in front of her. Dust puffed around her rifle and scope. She ignored the incoming fire as best she could as she moved the crosshair in his direction.
The other man in gray followed his lead and shot at Bree. The combined gunfire was too much, so she dropped down behind the wall.
“Damn!” She grabbed the mic. “One of them is wounded. The others are firing at me! Can’t get another shot off.”
No one responded.
The gunfire chipping away at the railing behind her stopped.
Bree scooted along the wall, staying under the edge. She moved in a hunkered-down stance for fifteen meters, and then glanced over the top. All three of the men were gone.
The crowd surged toward the open front door.
“They’re inside,” Bree said into the comms unit. “The rioters might be following. Get out of there!”
28 – Trapped
How long Christie stayed behind the wheel of the cruiser, she didn’t know. The gunfire peppering the car had abated a few minutes ago, and she considered running for it. But then she heard more and decided to stay put.
The officers who weren’t shielded by the car had died immediately. She didn’t dare stick her head out while those men were there. The last few shots hadn’t punched through the car as best she could tell though. Were they shooting at something else?
Fear petrified her.
She sat on her butt, back against the filthy wheel, and wept.