Bull's Eye Sniper Chronicles Collection (The Second Cycle of the Betrayed Series)

by McCray, Carolyn

  Pushing the suction cup against the glass, he then used the diamond point to cut through the window, creating a perfect hole. He handed Malvern the spotter’s scope as he assembled his rifle. In truth, he really didn’t need a spotter. Sure there were factors like the dust and the wind, however the buildings were so close, he could make the shots with his eyes closed. But being a spotter gave Malvern purpose and when you were injured in enemy territory you needed purpose.

  “You have a plan, right?” the colonel asked.

  “Not a very elegant one, but a plan, yes,” Davidson replied. “Stark, anything on Baasha?”

  “Sorry, no. He is still in the wind.”

  “Do you have your telemetry back?” Davidson asked as he scanned the windows across the street.

  “Only thermal which isn’t helping with a bunch of full offices.”

  “Well,” Davidson said, “Let me see if I can’t help with that.”

  He pulled the trigger, shooting high up on the top window. He figured if Baasha was going to launch the Sarin he would do so from a top floor. The Righteous leader might go to the roof, but he would not risk being spotted by satellite. He would have no way of knowing that they were cut off at the moment, so upper floor offices were probably his best bet at spreading the Sarin as far as possible on the wind.

  The window across the way shattered, startling the office workers, but none seemed panicked. China hadn’t had its 9/11 yet. They still felt invincible. The workers probably thought it was from the dust storm.

  Davidson fired again, this time hitting a phone, kicking it high into the air. There was no mistake that shot wasn’t the dust storm. He didn’t need to hear the screams to know the room was now properly panicked. The workers ran out of the office, fleeing down the hallway.

  He took several more shots in various offices, rousting those workers. Davidson watched as panic spread through the building, causing a full-scale evacuation.

  “Thermal should be clearing up soon,” Davidson informed Stark.

  “I’ve got one figure climbing the stairs,” Stark stated.

  “That would be Levont. Baasha doesn’t move so quickly and probably has an armed guard or three.”

  “I’ll be looking for it,” Stark said as Davidson moved on to the next building. His goal was to clear out the entire seven within the next ten minutes. At the least it would give Stark a chance to try and identify Baasha and where he was holed up.

  Then and only then could they take him down for good.

  * * *

  Bunny held her gun up, her finger laying next to the trigger against the cool metal. Several workers had run past her. Clearly Davidson had created some kind of diversion to clear the buildings. She took another step up, approaching the twelfth floor landing.

  Channeling every ounce of training that Davidson had provided her, she checked through the glass window, then snapped the door open, bursting through, checking her corners. Nothing. Another empty floor.

  Thank goodness. While she was painstakingly checking each floor her mind was spinning like crazy. How would Baasha choose his building?

  “Stark?” Bunny asked into her mic.

  “At your disposal,” Stark answered promptly.

  “What are the names of the buildings?” Baasha was a religious zealot and religious zealots put a lot of meaning into everything. Especially names.

  “Most are named for the corporation that built them, others have been named for the architect. A few by public sentiment.”

  “Run through a few,” Bunny asked, going back out into the stairwell and heading to the thirteenth floor.

  “Sinochem, COFOC limited, China National Bank,” Stark listed off. Then came the one that stopped Bunny’s heart. “Beipan Zhi.”

  “Are you sure about that?” she asked, her heart now racing.

  “Yes,” Stark said. “Why?”

  “Because the translation of Beipan Zhi is betrayer,” Bunny explained.

  “Why would a company name themselves that?” Stark asked.

  “It is probably an old family name, besides we’ve got an American company named Janus. Based off an old Roman god who is half logical and good, the other half chaotic and evil. What’s up with that?”

  “No idea,” Stark responded as sirens sounded in the distance. Beijing’s response to a flying car landing downtown Bunny supposed.

  “Which building is Beipan?” she asked as the sirens got louder and louder.

  * * *

  Stark gulped before he answered. “The one you are in.”

  Why did it have to be Bunny? Why not Levont or Prenner?

  “Heading over,” Levont announced, but he was way up on the twentieth floor and the elevators were shut down.

  “On my way,” Prenner stated, but again the man was at least ten minutes away from backing Bunny up.

  “You should wait for them,” Stark instructed Bunny.

  “Negative. If anything I need to head straight to the top floor,” Bunny stated. To be so beautiful and so brave at the same time. And here he was shaking in his boots half the world away.

  “Bunny, you don’t have to do this. I can shoot out all the windows and find him,” Davidson said.

  Yes, that sounded like a great idea, only Bunny shot it down.

  “Negative. Heading up now,” Bunny replied.

  Stark stared at the thermal imaging. Sure enough in the Beipan building there was one slow moving thermal image surrounded by three others. They were on the nineteenth floor, north east corner. He almost didn’t want to say anything, but in the end he knew he needed to.

  “Baasha looks like he is on the twentieth floor. Take the stairwell to your right.”

  He watched Bunny’s thermal image move in the direction he instructed, then head up, faster and with more assurance than she had previously moved.

  Stark’s mother patted his hand. “She’s a smart girl. She’ll get through this.”

  Stark could only pray so.

  * * *

  Davidson shot again. He’d knocked out every window along the side facing him. No luck.

  He switched to thermal. Baasha was set up on the other side of the building.

  He abandoned the rifle that he had been shooting the windows out with and pulled out his “bunker buster” rocket launcher. He only had three shells so he had to make them count.

  The first hit the wall, exploding into a thousand shades of red and orange, but didn’t punch through. What was up with that? It was supposed to punch through a cement reinforced bunker. And it couldn’t go through a flimsy office building wall. He was going to have to complain to R&D about that.

  Which made the second round all the more important. He had to hit the wall in exactly the same spot as the first round to take advantage of the structural weakness.

  This time when the explosion cleared, he could see through into the hallway. Luckily the other wall was glass. He could see through to find Baasha and the others down on their knees.

  “I think they are putting together some kind of launcher.”

  “Probably to aerosolize the Sarin,” Stark reported.

  Davidson glanced between the bunker buster and his regular long-range rifle. Which to use? He had a lousy angle on the men. Plus at this distance, his shot might be thrown off by passing through the glass.

  The smart call was to use the bunker buster’s last round to clear out the glass wall on the other side and then try to find a precision shot.

  “We’ve got police coming your way,” Stark announced.

  Davidson looked down. The storm was letting up, allowing for an armed response. They didn’t have much time. The police were bearing down on their location.

  He couldn’t doubt himself any longer. He picked up the bunker buster and fired his third and final round. The glass shattered, scattering the men. At the least he’d bought Bunny a little more time.

  * * *

  She was panting and she couldn’t help it. She knew she had to get her breath under c
ontrol. Bunny gulped, holding in the air. Then she let it out controlled.

  “I don’t have a shot,” Davidson reported in her ear. She was only a few doors down from the office Baasha was hiding in.

  Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

  The echo of Davidson’s training repeated in her head over and over again. That hike up the stairs had really winded her. But this was it. She was going to make the entry. No Levont to shock and awe. No Prenner to back her up.

  Just Bunny, a semi-automatic weapon and her fear. Oh, and the police were starting to search each building, swarming the lobbies, searching for the gunmen that had invaded the financial district.

  Gripping the metal tightly she prepared to make the breach.

  “Don’t hesitate when you go in,” Levont said in her ear.

  “Keep moving forward, but don’t hesitate to move laterally to keep your profile lean,” Prenner advised.

  “Breathe, babe, breathe,” Davidson told her. Of course giving her the best advice, as always.

  She steadied her breathing, counting off in her head.

  Three.

  Two.

  One.

  Taking in all the advice, she burst into the room. Was it her gun firing or theirs? She wasn’t sure, but she kept going forward, ducking behind a partition, then moving out from the cover to advance.

  She’d seen the men do it a thousand times. Usually she was inside the pocket, protected from enemy fire. But this time she was right in harm’s way.

  Before she knew it, all three guards were down. She’d taken a bullet to the arm, it grazed her, but she barely noticed. This adrenaline high was all consuming.

  She could see her pulse in her vision her heart was hammering so hard.

  Then it was over. She took her finger off the trigger and the world fell quiet.

  It was just her and Baasha and of course the Sarin container he held in his hand.

  She wasn’t Davidson or even Prenner. There was no way she could take the shot without risking hitting that canister.

  Her hands began to shake. This wasn’t the first time she had shot a gun or killed someone, but this was the first time she was staring down someone, thinking about shooting them in cold blood. Then there was that whole Sarin gas thing.

  Bunny felt like she had every reason to be shaking.

  “What are you going to do, child?” Baasha asked, his damaged lips not allowing him to form the words properly. They sounded slurred like Baasha was sleepy, probably not the tone he wanted to take.

  She had an idea, taking a step forward she asked him, “You really don’t have any faith, do you?”

  Even with his mismatched eyes and squished nose, Baasha’s expression looked confused.

  “I am the Righteous. I am faith.”

  “Really?” Bunny said taking another step forward, backing Baasha up a step. “Because I have faith. I have faith if God wanted an apocalypse and second coming, he could do it without missing a beat.”

  “I am God’s sword,” Baasha said, trying to sound all sure of himself. However Bunny could see the corner of his lip quiver. Maybe in the heat of the moment Baasha thought he was God’s sword, but some doubt must have crept in, didn’t it?

  She had to believe it had and that she could use it.

  Bunny took another step forward. “You thought you’d cloned Christ but got that wrong, doesn’t that seem like a little bit of God’s stop sign for your plan?”

  “No,” Baasha hissed, clutching the Sarin gas canister to his chest. She hadn’t even noticed before that his fingers were webbed. What this guy had lived through.

  “I know and now you’ve doubled down on the crazy,” Bunny stated, edging forward again. “This won’t even start Armageddon. My people know about the Righteous. This story that the Russians did this isn’t going to hold up.”

  Baasha’s big eye rotated in his head. It was freaky, but Bunny couldn’t get distracted. She focused on his small cloudy eye.

  Another step forward. “This is over.”

  Her words had the opposite effect however as he raised the Sarin canister above his head. “It is only beginning.”

  Then Baasha’s big eye exploded, spraying hot sticky blood across Bunny’s face. Davidson must have finally had his shot. Bunny dove forward, catching the Sarin canister before it hit the floor. She fell, the metal cylinder pressed against her breast.

  Had it cracked? Was the seal broken?

  Laying on the floor in the fetal position, she ignored the cries of her name from Davidson, Stark, Levont and Prenner. She took a breath, then another, than a third. No burning. No bleeding from the eyes. No skin rash.

  It must have held.

  “We are good,” Bunny announced amongst the tears. “The canister is intact.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Davidson snapped his rifle down. That had been close. That had not been his best shot, not by far. The wind had kicked up and he could only make out Baasha’s head tangentially.

  Bunny had done a good job of backing him up into the kill zone, but even at that he’d had to send a prayer along with the bullet.

  Banging at the door reminded him that while the world might be safe, they were not yet. The police had made it to the upper floors.

  “Lopez, a little extraction would be nice.”

  A helicopter rose up in front of them.

  “You rang?” Lopez said with a chuckle.

  Thank god the corporal was every bit as good as he thought he was. Davidson helped Malvern up as the police beat down the door. Bullets flew as he helped the colonel into the awaiting helicopter which wasn’t necessarily easy. The craft bucked in the wind as Lopez wrestled with the stick.

  He had to give it to Malvern. Even with a potentially busted ankle, the guy launched fearlessly off the ledge and threw himself into the chopper. Davidson slung his rifle and followed suit as the police made their approach.

  As soon as he hit the deck. Lopez took them up, straight up. The police’s bullets surged beneath them. Then he cranked the stick over, laying them out nearly horizontal as they sped over to the building.

  “Get up on the roof,” Lopez barked. “Can’t do that again.”

  “Copy that,” both Prenner and Levont replied.

  “Bunny?” Davidson asked when she didn’t respond. “Bunny!”

  “Yah,” she answered sounding way far off. “I’m… I’m going.”

  Delayed shock. He’d seen it a hundred times. But now was not the time to get your feet stuck in mud.

  “Run!” he shouted. He didn’t want to be mean at a time when she was so vulnerable, but her life depended on it.

  “Copy that,” she responded, much more crisp. She seemed to be regrouping.

  They swept over the left most building to find Levont waving them down. Lopez brought them in, but didn’t stop. He trusted Levont to make the jump and then they were out over the street which was beginning to fill with police and even a SWAT unit. They gathered Prenner in the same way, then headed to ground zero, Bunny’s building.

  She burst out of the door and raced to the center of the roof as Lopez sped over. Davidson put his hand out, grabbing hers, dragging her in as Lopez took off again. Sometimes he had faith in things that perhaps he shouldn’t.

  Bunny was in his arms, sobbing softly as he urged her deeper into the chopper so Levont could close the door, cutting their wind resistance. Lopez took advantage of every bit of power the chopper had to spare as they flew out and over Beijing that was now blanketed in a dull brown.

  “They’re putting everything up!” Stark shouted.

  “What do you mean by everything?” Lopez asked.

  “Everything. Fighter jets, helicopters. They are emptying both Beijing bases.”

  Davidson held onto Bunny even tighter as Lopez tipped the nose forward, really pushing the engines.

  They had to get to South Korea, like now.

  * * *

  Stark had to turn away from the monitors. It was too much to watch. Nearly th
e entirety of China’s Beijing Air Force was up in the sky, hunting the team. He couldn’t even count the enemy, that’s how bad it was and every second another plane or chopper was taking off.

  Lopez had a slim lead ahead of the choppers, but the jet fighters? They would intercept within minutes. The team was barely out of the city, let alone to the coast, let alone across the Yellow Sea to South Korea.

  Their only solace, if you could call it that was that the dust storm had moved out over the water. While they weren’t scrambling the jet’s back to base this time, they were having to be cautious, which of course, Lopez never was.

  It was surprisingly not much distance between China and North Korea. Some felt, especially those in South Korea, not enough distance.

  Lopez was already out over the Yellow Sea, streaking toward his goal. There were at least two dozen helicopters in pursuit, right on his tail. Several jets made passes but didn’t even bother to fire their missiles into the intense dust storm.

  It looked like not only was Lopez embracing the storm, but actually mirroring the storms trajectory, keeping him and his team, right in the center of it.

  “Weird, right?” His mother asked, pointing to the screen.

  Lopez and the storm were heading over several large cruise ships. If you weren’t familiar with the Far East, you wouldn’t know that the Yellow Sea was home to the largest density of cruise ships. There might be political tension between China and South Korea, however the tourist business was booming.

  Another reason why the jet fighters weren’t letting their missiles rip. If one missed the team’s helicopter then locked onto the heat of the cruise ship’s engines? Disaster. Or at the least a bigger disaster than the day had been for China. Shooting up their own cruise ship was not going to look good on CNN.

  Then one of the cruise ships lit up.

  “Sea to Air!” Stark yelled out. Guess those cruise ships weren’t just carrying passengers.

  * * *