by Alex Mersey
- 19 -
Sean
They’d broken into three teams, hoping to swarm the compound with stealth and the element of surprise. Quietly disable and disarm as many soldiers as possible before they had to start killing.
That plan lasted all of five minutes.
The place was too well lit, not overly bright but the hazy glow emanated from the walls of glass and cast too much damn light everywhere. Samson had gone over a section of the wall hidden in overhanging branches, dropped right on top of the lone guard patrolling the walkway. By the time Sean followed over with Jackson and the rest of his team, the guard had been subdued and stuffed behind a bush.
Right about then, that’s when the plan went to shit.
Shots sounded from across the compound. One of the other teams had taken fire, or opened fire. And then the night air resounded as the two sides engaged and the battle was out in the open.
Sean paused.
Did they need backup?
He made a lightning fast decision and kept going.
There were two known locations where the townsfolk were being held. He would take the one they’d observed earlier in the day. Beth and Clint were going for the other. Cassie and the bulk of Clint’s men made up the third team. They’d be getting into position at the main entrance round about now, scattered high in trees surrounding the perimeter, penetrating inside if possible.
The goal was simple, the priorities non-negotiable. Rescue their people, get them to safety. Of course, they’d been on a clock, had ten minutes to reach their destination and plant the C4. The detonations were supposed to go off like a damn synchronized work of art.
They hadn’t expected to get everyone over the wall without fighting their way through Silvers and soldiers, but they’d hoped to give themselves a decent head start. That wasn’t going to happen anymore, but Sean wasn’t ready to change the plan.
The gunfire from the east wing came in static bursts now, as if the two parties were playing hide and hunt. Sean slowed as he reached the corner to peek around into the courtyard, slammed back again as soon as he saw them. Too late. The pair of soldiers were on high alert, weapons ready, gazes pouncing on imagined shadows and he’d just given them the real thing.
A shout went out, following by the stomp of boots on gravel.
Sean held up two fingers to indicate the number of men he’d seen and brought his rifle up, planted his feet firmly on the ground. His breath cramped in his throat as Samson and another man, Hal, crowded around him. He didn’t have the time, or skill with the M4, to ensure he didn’t deliver a fatal wound.
In those seconds, as the crunch of footfalls rapidly approached, Sean accepted the kind of man he was about to become. A killer. His hand was still unsteady, but he knew he wouldn’t hesitate. Too many people depended on him, those at his back, those he’d come to take home.
“Now!” Samson whisper-yelled and charged.
Shit.
Sean sprang into action, taking the corner wide to avoid opening fire on Samson’s back. The two soldiers backpedaled, one got off the first round and Sean reacted, squeezed the trigger and the carbine climbed with the three-shot burst. He didn’t see where he’d hit, just heard the grunted Oomph as the man spun away on his way down. Samson had thrown himself into a roll, did some fancy shooting as he came out of it. Shots came from Sean’s left, drummed against his ear, and the second soldier’s entire body seemed to vibrate like an electric ragdoll as the double volley pummeled him to the ground.
In the stillness that came after, the silence thundered. Then it shattered, the stillness, the silence, as gunfire erupted from other parts of the building. Sean couldn’t be sure, but he guessed it was Cassie doing her job, keeping the concentration of soldiers by the main entrance too busy to interfere in the rescue operation. Drawing in the Silvers. She had two self-proclaimed snipers on her team. The men had boasted they could shoot a pea out of its pod at fifty meters. Shooting an eyeball out of its socket would be a piece of cake. He only hoped they were half as good as they claimed. If there was a front line in this war, that was it.
He lowered his rifle and shifted to face off with Samson. “Next time, you wait on my order.”
The moonlight and greenish hue glowing from the windows illuminated the beefy man’s smirk. “There wouldn’t be a next time if I waited for you to get that knot out your panties.”
Sean ignored that, not about to get into a match of ball-crushing. “Do you understand the mission?”
“Don’t use unnecessary force.” Samson and his smirk gazed at the two fallen bodies. “Nah, don’t see anything here that didn’t need doing.”
Maybe he was right, but they’d never know now.
Sean collected the assault rifles from the dead soldiers, his mind weighted with regret. Now we’re killing our own.
“Jackson!” he called, turned as the long-haired kid came running up with the bag of C4. He was possibly a couple years older than Beth, but Sean couldn’t help thinking of him as a kid, although that may change after tonight.
Sean took the bag of explosives. In exchange, he bundled the spare rifles into Jackson’s arms. “Hold onto those.”
“Spread out,” he shouted to the rest of the team as he cut a direct path across the courtyard. “I want every alcove covered. Watch the shadows. And someone keep an eye on the roof. Samson, you’re with me.”
The reception room holding their people prisoner faced onto the courtyard with a bank of large windows and French doors. The green glow originating from within lit the room in stark relief compared to the inky darkness on his side. He saw inside before they saw out. They’d barricaded off a large corner of the expansive room.
He caught glimpses of movement behind the sofas, tables and chairs stacked on top of each other as he shoved the bag at Samson’s chest. “You know what to do.”
“Aye, aye,” the man mocked. Thank God he grew serious and ducked toward the low base of the window frame to find nooks and cracks to press in the explosive putty.
“You trust him with that?” Jackson asked, tagging close to Sean.
“He’s the only one with demolition experience.”
“That’s what he said,” Jackson muttered. “He also said Samson’s the name written on his birth certificate.”
Sean stopped listening. He put a hand to the glass, pressed closer so they could see his face. Someone finally recognized him and three women crept out from behind the barricade, one of them Lynn.
But Sean had seen something else and the bottom fell out of his stomach. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. The smoky obsidian fencing covered the windows, the walls, the ceiling. The room was a cage.
We have to try.
He raised the butt of his carbine, hammered on the shatterproof glass, took out some of his frustration until it slowly gave in to a web of cracks that fractured Lynn’s image as she came to a stop a few feet back.
He gave one last blow and a part of the glass broke loose, folded away like a damp sheet.
“Thank goodness,” Lynn exclaimed, her voice thin and breathless. She rushed forward to push her arms through the bars. “You don’t know how good it is to see you. We had no idea who was attacking. Williams was here, do you know that?”
Sean nodded. “We lost touch with him, though. “ He took Lynn’s hands in his, took a precious moment to meet her strained gaze. “Johnnie?”
“I’ve got him,” she said. “Alli’s here, too. Beth?”
“She’s with us,” Sean told her. “So is Clint and about thirty of his men. Lynn, listen to me, we’re going to blast these windows out. Get everyone behind the sofas, keep low and cover your ears.”
She nodded. “There are Silvers here.”
“Yeah, I know.”
A little further down, Jackson had his face squashed to the glass. “I don’t see Jake.”
“They’re keeping the guys somewhere else,” one of the other women pushing around Lynn told him.
“Is he okay?”
“I don’t know, Jackson, we haven’t seen them since we got here.”
Lynn pulled the other two women away with her to the far end of the room, shouting both instructions and promises of getting out of here. Sean wished he shared her optimism.
He told Samson to fold some of the plastic explosive onto the fencing, into the creases of the diamond pattern. For all the good it would do. He had a very bad feeling about this.
Samson wired the C4 and put some distance between him and the impending boom.
“Take cover,” Sean called out. He made sure the room’s occupants were tucked away as safely as possible, then dragged Jackson back with him into a slice of black shadows between the buildings.
“Fire in the hole,” Samson shouted.
“Really?” Jackson snorted. “Bet he’s been waiting all his life to say—”
The series of mini-blasts swallowed Jackson’s words, swallowed the gunfire clattering from other parts of the building, swallowed the whole damn night.
Sean’s eyes had closed involuntarily and when he opened them again, the facing wall was gone and a large chunk of the ceiling. Protruding from the dust and destruction like a mockery of all that was good and holy, the Silver’s cage stood firm and solid.
Spluttered shouts and hacking coughs broke through the dampened buzz in his ears. Feeling more beaten down and trodden upon than the partially collapsed room, Sean pushed out from his sheltered position.
Samson stared at the detonator in his hands. “I should have used more C4.”
“That wouldn’t have made a difference,” Sean said as he strode past. And it would have defeated the objective, blowing everyone inside to smithereens.
As he approached, women and kids came crawling out like rats, rats drowned in the fall-out powder of white plaster as it settled. Some of the furniture had shaken loose, toppled from the barricade.
“Everyone okay?”
His shout was greeted with more coughing and non-committal calls as they searched themselves and others to make sure.
Lynn ran up to him. There were others, too, rushing up to the edge of the cage, fingers clawing at the fence links, as if hoping the blast had weakened the metal.
“Some cuts and bruises, but we’re okay,” Lynn said, her voice hoarse with the choking dust. “I told Alli to stay back with Johnnie.”
Her gaze swiveled around the room, front to back, ceiling to floor, then came back to him. Said nothing, just looked at him, her eyes hollowed out by the strain on her ashen face.
Acutely aware of the attention that blast would get, Sean wasted no time on empty reassurances. Where are the Silvers? “You need to get everyone back behind that barricade. This isn’t over.”
Not by a long shot.
She picked a piece of debris from her hair. Her hand came back with a bloody smear.
“Lynn,” he said urgently.
“I’m fine.” She gave a nod, straightened her shoulders. “Yeah, okay... Sean?”
He bent his head to look into her eyes, didn’t need to ask what was on her mind. “I’ll figure something out, Lynn. We’ll get you out.”
He didn’t know how, but it wasn’t a lie. Lynn and Johnnie, Allira and all the others, they weren’t going to live out the remainder of their lives inside this damn cage. That just wasn’t going to happen.
He yelled for Jackson and the spare rifles, quickly explained about the kill shot as he passed the weapons through to Lynn. Just in case.
Her mouth turned down, but she didn’t comment on the practical impossibility of making a shot like that. “Take care out there,” she said.
He gave a solemn nod, watched a moment as she gathered the other women and led them back to the barricade.
Then he called Samson over, looked from him to Jackson. “The two of you stay here. We can’t leave them unprotected.”
“I’m not a fucking babysitter,” Samson growled. “Wyatt, get your damn ass over here.”
Sean had no particular preference either way and didn’t argue. One gun was as good as any other. They left Wyatt and Jackson there and reassembled with the remainder of their team—Hal and the bull shaped John Hobbs.
“New strategy,” Sean told them without going into the reasons why. “We need to clear this building of enemy forces. Comb out and aim to wound where possible.”
“But don’t exert unnecessary energy to do so,” Samson said, spinning his own angle on their mission statement. He sent Sean a look. “You got a problem with that?”
“I don’t have a problem with that.” Sean adjusted his hold on the M4, put his finger within easy reach of the trigger. “Okay, let’s move out.”
The three men went one way and he went the other.
Samson changed course and filed into the alcove on his heels. “What are you, the lone ranger?”
“I have to let Cassie know the plan’s changed,” he said, pressing forward into the dark walkway between buildings. The rattle of gunfire from across the compound had continued pulsing in heavy streams, a good indication that Cassie and her team were holding down their end of the bargain. But now they needed more than a distraction, they needed Captain Davis’ unit out of action.
“Straight into the A-Fucking hot spot,” Samson remarked, sounding more amused than the situation called for. “Don’t worry, I’ve got your back.”
“I wasn’t worried,” Sean muttered.
They reached a steel-framed opaque door that would let them into one of the glass tunnels that connected the individual areas of the resort. Sean was prepared to blast his way inside, but the door was unlocked and opened when he tried the handle.
The strange green light intensified as he stepped through the doorway, an optical flow that seemed to bleed out of thin air. Not thick like mist, not as unobtrusive as daylight either. Feeling exposed with the glass on either side and no shadows to hide in, he broke into a run down the tunnel. Where are the Silvers?
They came to a junction and Sean skidded left into a stonewalled passage with exposed oak ceiling beams, heading toward the clatter of automatic gunfire. They passed a couple of closed doors, heavy oak structures that blended into the décor. The passage sprouted once, twice, leading off into the low-lying sprawl of the resort. Sean kept left, sweeping his rifle from side to side with his searching gaze, left again and came face to face with a soldier stalking around the corner.
A fresh-faced youth with a buzz cut, soft chin and ruddy cheeks at odds with the fear missing in his eyes. His grasp fumbled on his weapon in the close quarters.
Sean raised his carbine, jammed the blunt end against the boy’s skull. No thinking required, all jerk reaction. The boy soldier crumpled soundlessly, rifle scattering across the flagstone floor.
“Not too slow on your feet,” Samson said, more surprised than impressed as he came to a running stop.
Sean swung his own rifle over his shoulder to free his hands. He patted down his cargo pants, found the pocket with the zip ties and made quick work of binding the boy’s hands behind his back.
Not quick enough. He was still bent double when the rat-a-tat-a-tat jerked his head up, Samson unloading on a shadow down the end of the passage.
Sean jumped over the fallen body, flattened himself to the wall.
“No hit!” Samson shouted, pressing forward but sticking close to the opposite wall.
Adrenaline wired Sean’s heart. Nerves sweated from his pores. He slung the M4 into his hands again, rock-steady, and started moving. The shadow had retreated—around a corner? A moment later the passage exploded in light and clatter. A bullet zipped past, the heat grazing his temple. The bastards—three of them—had come out from their hidey hole in a blaze of fire. Samson was all over it, his weapon switched to automatic.
Sean ducked, aimed in the general direction and opened fire. The three-round burst was a lame response. Fuck.
Plaster ripped away a hair’s breath from his thigh. His vision glazed, cleared, focused on the last man standing—when had the others gone dow
n? He charged the handle and fired and one of his three bullets hit the mark. The man flung backward, went down.
Sean kept one eye on that end of the passage, not trusting the small victory, but he caught the slumped figure out the corner of his eye and caution went out the window.
“Samson!” He scooted across the floor, came to a sliding halt in the pool of Samson’s blood.
The man groaned weakly, tried to gather himself up against the wall.
“Hey, take it easy.” Sean helped him move into a sitting position, his stomach turned inside out as he got a good look at the bloodied mess of Samson’s thigh. Blood dripped down his forehead. A ragged hole burnt out at his shoulder. “How many bullets did you take?”
How the hell are you still alive?
No smart comeback. Samson’s eyelids drooped, but still he’d managed to keep a hand on his rifle. He dragged the weapon across his lap. “I’m good.”
“Jesus,” Sean cursed as he stripped the belt from his cargo pants. “I’d hate to see you on a bad day.”
He took a knee before the man and tied the belt above the wound at his thigh, pulled it as tight as his strength allowed to slow the loss of blood.
Samson’s jaw squared as he bit down on the pain.
“Sorry,” Sean said, leaning back again.
“Go.” Samson peered at him from beneath those heavy lids. “I’ve got this passage covered.”
Sean swallowed a gruff laugh, but he unclipped a magazine from the man’s ammo belt and held it out. “You okay to reload?”
“Fuck you,” Samson said and took the magazine.
Sean gave a nod and straightened. As much as he hated leaving Samson like this, staying wouldn’t keep him alive. He broke into a jog past the bullet-ridden bodies sprawled on the floor, his pulse suddenly a hollow echo inside his chest as his gaze skimmed over a vaguely familiar face.
James Bressen.