by Michael Todd
“It’s that fucking driver at the compound,” he muttered belligerently as he crawled to where Jessica currently sheltered. “I knew there was something off about that guy. He made me way too quickly. It takes one to know one, they always say, and in this case, they’re fucking right.”
“What driver?” she asked and winced and covered her ears as another volley of gunfire roared in the other room. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“This is my fucking fault,” Anja said through the earpiece. “I put the algorithm to only notify me for security people, but I never thought to put it in for drivers. I don’t know how Carlson knew about the loophole—or if he even did—but I should have kept a watch on the elevator. This is on me.”
“The both of you, shut up!” Jeremiah yelled over the ringing in his ears. “Anja, this is not the time for a fucking pity party. You find me a way out of this fucking penthouse right now, damn it!”
“On it,” she snapped.
“As for you.” Savage rounded on Jessica. He still shouted but only to keep his voice loud since he couldn’t hear much of anything over the sound of gunfire in the penthouse. “You need to get into the bedroom, get under the bed, and cover your head with your arms. Do you understand? Nod!”
She nodded like he told her to. There was a tone in his voice that immediately cut through the panic that threatened to rush through her body. She certainly didn’t feel calm, but she now had a definite purpose. Something she could direct her attention to so that she didn’t succumb to the desperate need to scream her head off.
“I’ll cover you, but you need to be quick, all right?” He looked unnaturally calm—far calmer than Jessica felt as she watched all hell break loose in the room. The men remained protected and covered for one another with precise barrages that allowed them to move in closer without putting any of them in danger. Soon, the wall that formed a barrier against their bullets wouldn’t be enough.
“When I say move, you move. Got it?” Savage said and she nodded again before she eased toward the wall. The bedroom was across the open door through which the men would enter, and that would leave her vulnerable to their fire for a second. She paused and prepared herself. Savage’s arm dropped onto her shoulder and she realized how close she was to the doorway.
“Move—now!” he roared and thrust out from cover with his pistol ready. She wondered if he had anything to shoot at or if he simply covered for her as she scrambled across the aperture, keeping herself low as she made the most of the distraction he provided. One of their attackers was caught out in the open and immediately dropped when two slugs plowed into his torso. She didn’t have the time to see if he was dead or if he perhaps wore some kind of body armor, but after what felt like the longest second of her life, she was clear of the door.
“Bedroom. Go now!” Jeremiah commanded and shoved the file into her hands with enough force to make her stumble for a couple of steps. Thankfully, they were steps in the right direction, and she pushed into a sprint toward the bedroom.
She caught movement out of the corner of her eye and realized a second too late that the massive windows that she’d so admired for their fantastic view of the city also provided the gunmen an unexpected advantage. The corner of the building created an L-shaped apartment. The windows in both the living room and bedroom were comprised of massive plate-glass panes—enough to give the shooters a clear view of her through the empty outside space.
One of them had noted it, seen her flight, and raised his weapon. She screamed as the glass showered around her when the slugs shattered the transparent barrier. It wasn’t an easy shot, she realized, not with two heavily reinforced windows between her and them and a fair amount of wind between. Somehow, though, the man behind the gun didn’t mind that he had to spray and pray that one of the bullets would find her. She sprawled full length on the plush carpet and examined herself frantically. Aside from a couple of cuts and abrasion from the glass, she was thankfully intact.
“Fuck!” Savage bellowed over the intermittent gunfire. She looked back to check that he was all right. He did the same and held her gaze for a moment, his expression grim. “Stay down and crawl to the bedroom! Keep going. You’re doing great.”
She wasn’t sure how she knew that he really didn’t mean the compliment. Still, she didn’t have time to wonder what he was up to. He spun back to the corner, his pistol gripped in both hands, and immediately opened fire. She heard no screams of pain or thuds, which told her clearly that things weren’t exactly going their way.
Why had she done this? Why had she been stupid enough to think that she could actually be a part of this? Admittedly, Savage would have still been stuck in this situation, but he wouldn’t have had to bother with keeping her safe. He could have simply barreled through them and not even had to kill everyone to get free and clear. All he had to do was reach a public place and they wouldn’t be able to continue their attack.
From the lobby, he could probably escape and vanish like Batman or some stupid spy in those stupid thrillers she loved reading. Jessica breathed deep and looked around once she reached the bedroom. He still held his ground and quickly changed the magazine in his pistol before he resumed his barrage. The hammering her eardrums took as each of the unsuppressed shots exploded through them made her want to curl up, cover her ears, and pretend this was all nothing more than a bad dream.
She could do that…once she reached the bed. Focused again, she remained on her stomach and shuffled as quickly as she could while she ignored the fact that the cuts on her arms and legs left a trail on the carpet behind her.
What the hell did she know about spycraft? She shouldn’t have come. What did she know about breaking and entering? He had let her come because she had insisted. And, stupidly, she’d done that because she had some insane romantic thought that she could actually be useful. The reality was that she was in the way, though, and had to be saved over and over again. She didn’t belong there. Someone like her would be far more useful in a lab somewhere—or maybe helping their benevolent overlords, as Savage had called them, to track down where all the lab materials had been taken. Somewhere safe, in other words.
Somewhere that didn’t put her in a room being shot at and more of a burden than a help.
She continued to crawl and forced herself to keep moving even while the battle inched closer. Finally, she reached the bed—a massive, king-sized monstrosity that could have held fifteen people. There was more than enough room for her to hide under it, she realized, and eased herself into the space. On closer inspection, she noticed that the framing was all some kind of metal—maybe steel, maybe bronze—but hopefully something that would protect her from a hail of bullets that might make it through to the bedroom.
He was a quick thinker, that Jeremiah Savage. A bit of an asshole and someone who was annoyingly cool under fire, but he knew how to come up with solutions on the fly.
Jessica reached the dead center of the bed, give or take. She didn’t want to move anymore so she curled up and covered her ears as the gun battle continued. While she couldn’t tell if Savage was all right, at this point, part of her fought the need to curl up and stay there until it was all over. She wanted to be useful. It wouldn’t be now since she didn’t have a weapon of her own, but she could keep the file safe. That was her job. And if there was an opening that she could pull out of thin air, she would take it.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The practiced motions of a man who had been through this a hundred times before, and would likely do so again if he survived, could actually be felt. Muscle memories were the kind that never really went away. It was where the term “like riding a bike” came from. Sometimes, the things you learned simply came to you automatically. He no longer even had to think about it. Drop the empty mag, pull the new one from his pocket, and slap it in, and the slide would slip forward automatically to chamber a round. It all happened in less than a second before he resumed fire.
There was a problem, of co
urse. He’d only brought three magazines, and this was his last. Savage knew that planning for the worst-case scenarios was always the worst way to go about this kind of operation. He’d told himself that bringing more—like maybe the shotgun he’d bought from Max—would only be useful when the mission had already gone so pear-shaped that it didn’t really matter.
Well, things were definitely pear-shaped now, and they fucking mattered, and he really wished he’d brought something with more firepower than a Glock. He had nothing against it, but as of that moment, he merely tried to stay alive as bullets peppered across the wall he currently used for cover. He was really relieved that they hadn’t skimped and had used actual concrete instead of simply drywall. Then again, most buildings still needed actual walls, so maybe it wasn’t only luck.
He adjusted his grip on the pistol and whipped around the corner again as he tried to locate the position of the enemy. There had been seven of them at the beginning. One was wounded and two more were dead. He’d made sure of that. They didn’t wear any kind of body armor, thankfully. Then again, neither did he. He still had the other four to deal with, and a finite number of bullets with which to do so. Seventeen, to be exact.
Two of the men were exposed and moved in search of cover as they approached the door. Savage held his weapon steady and took his first shot. One dropped and clutched his throat and the second spun as the bullet caught him in the arm.
In that precise moment, the operative realized that he’d made a mistake—to put it bluntly, a big tactical boo-boo. He froze as one of the men emerged from cover. The attacker was too close for it to have been a coincidence. How had these guys decided which of them would die or be wounded so one would have the chance to get in close to their quarry?
The logic behind it was more than a little weird, he thought as the man launched himself forward, faster than he could turn his weapon on him. The aggressor didn’t bother to slow and, instead, lowered his head and careened his shoulder into Savage’s midsection in a powerful and painful tackle.
If this had been a football game, flags would have flown. Roughing the passer. Fifteen-yard penalty. First down. He really needed to watch the game again.
As they landed in a violent tangle of limbs, a twinge of pain skittered from his still recovering ribs as they were put under pressure again. The blow drove the breath out of him, and he struggled to bring his weapon to bear on the man who now lay on top of him. The whole damn adventure would enable the other dumbasses to close the distance as well, but that couldn’t really be the problem he had to focus on right away.
He realized that while he attempted to ready his Glock, his adversary did the same with his sub-machine gun. The weapon was a Mini-Uzi, by the looks of it, but with the modifications that transformed it into a small pistol that could shoot six hundred rounds a minute with more reliability over longer distances.
Not that accuracy was needed in that situation. Savage snatched at the man’s wrist to twist it up and away from his head. He gasped and cringed away from the heat from the muzzle as three rounds fired right beside his ear. The flash blinded him, and the sounds deafened his ears, but he struggled to bring himself back from it. His mind was stunned, but some deep instinctual drive forced himself to continue to raise his own weapon while he forced the gun in the man’s hand away from him.
His assailant grunted suddenly, and his body jerked. It seemed his comrades weren’t willing to wait for their man to move out of the way. They were there to kill the intruder and didn’t seem to care enough about one another to stop them from shooting anyone to get to him. He wasn’t sure if he should be flattered or horrified—or maybe some weird combination of both?
Pain seared in his right shoulder and he flinched instinctively. One of the team had managed to shoot around their dead comrade and actually hit him. It was a graze but damn, it was painful—painful enough to make him mad.
Savage realized that he’d fired his Glock at the man above him, and he had absolutely no idea how many bullets he still had in his weapon.
Then again, there was a way to find out. The body was still in place on top of him as a meat shield. It wouldn’t last, of course, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t take advantage of the situation for as long as he could.
He adjusted his grip on his weapon, tried to aim around the heavy corpse, and pulled the trigger twice. One of the three men who pushed closer dropped with two bullets through the chest. His teammate behind tried to back away but lurched as one of the slugs exited his comrade and lodged in his stomach.
That was the end of the good news, the operative realized when his gun clicked empty.
The last man standing stared at him and actually seemed amused by the death of the men around them. Savage shoved aside his very dead human shield and scowled at his adversary as he scrambled to his feet.
“Empty?” the assassin asked mockingly, and his smile widened. He raised his weapon toward the ceiling and pulled the trigger a couple of times. The soft click went almost unheard over the way his ears were ringing. “Me too. In all honesty, I didn’t anticipate that you would put up this much of a fight. I assumed you were one of those CIA boys trained in Langley to be great at infiltration and deceit but not that great in a gun battle. Oh, well, I stand corrected.”
Savage narrowed his eyes. Most of the guns in the room were empty—or he assumed so, anyway, from the man’s lack of effort to retrieve any of them. The one in the hands of his now-dead meat shield certainly was. He took a moment to study his opponent, who definitely looked odd. He was tall and lean with an angular, asymmetrical look to his features. His hair was blonde, as was a hint of scruff on his cheek. The British accent was the real puzzler, though.
“Let me guess,” he said and held the man’s gaze while he inched his hand into his jacket toward the comfortable weight of his knife. “Former SAS turned bodyguard to the incredibly rich?”
“Right on the first half,” the man said. “My name is Linus, and for what it’s worth, I really do believe in what Carlson is doing. I’ve seen the world and didn’t much care for it. I think what the man is doing will work, mate. You should come aboard. Even if you don’t like his style, you have to admit that saving the world and being paid well for it is something to consider, wouldn’t you say?”
“Are we really having this conversation right now? With my ears still ringing from all the bullets that we’ve exchanged?” Savage slid his knife clear from the jacket with his right hand. He sighed. “Fine, if you really want my opinion, I’d say you’re as batshit crazy as your boss. Happy?”
“Let me guess, then,” Linus said with an easy smile. “Former…Navy SEAL, I think, brought in by an old friend in the military. You don’t much care about morality or boast about saving the planet. You talk a big game, but you’re not in it for the money, either. What you want out of this is a modicum of self-respect. You don’t feel you’ve earned it, but your friend has. You trust him to know right from wrong and you merely follow the path he’s laid out for you. All the while, you blindly hope it’s the right one.”
“Rangers, actually.” He shrugged, his tone almost bored. “The rest of it sounds about right, actually. Now, will you let me and my doctor leave here alive, or do we have to go through you?”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to try to go through me, mate.” The man’s smile didn’t falter as he withdrew a Bowie knife from his jacket. “But I have to warn you, I’m as tough as a four-pound steak.”
Well, that answered the question about whether that was actually a saying anywhere else but in the States. It wasn’t like he would ever ask it or really care about the answer, but it was never too late to learn about foreign cultures.
His adversary attacked. He was impossibly fast and timed his momentum for maximum impact. They collided and Savage barely managed to push the Bowie aside to avoid a blade in his ribcage, aimed for his heart or lung. He shuddered as the cold steel slipped under his suit jacket and sliced easily through his shirt to find the yiel
ding flesh of his arm.
“Fuck!” he roared and twisted his body to withdraw from the cutting edge of the weapon. He thrust his elbow into Linus’ jaw to force him a step back and brought his knee into his groin to hopefully end the fight in an abrupt, if dirty, way.
The man backed away another step and blocked the blow with his hands. The operative took advantage of the change in position and stabbed his knife toward his opponent’s neck. That blow was blocked too, but he grinned with a hint of satisfaction when the blade grazed his target’s cheek and drew blood.
Linus powered his knife in a thrust toward Savage’s gut and forced him to retreat and take another step to the side as the assassin pressed his advantage and tried to sweep his legs out from under him. The tactic was only partially successful, as Savage dropped away and stumbled into the bedroom. It was enough to give him space, though, and he rolled over his shoulder to push onto his feet again.
He grunted and the pain of the pressure on his battered ribcage made him roar in agony as he hauled himself upright. His lungs sucked air, and with each breath, they pushed against the aching bones. He needed to be careful. The pain distracted him, as did the impulse to keep his breathing light. His body needed the oxygen now more than ever. Blood seeped from the incision in his arm and the bullet wound in his shoulder. There were other cuts and scratches here and there, as well as a couple of bruises, but those would be the least of his concerns if he couldn’t stop the bleeding.
“I’m really glad you’re putting up a fight,” Linus taunted and chuckled with perverse mirth as he rolled his neck and followed him into the bedroom. “You have been a pain in my boss’ side for far too long, between you and me. I had hoped that you would live up to that kind of reputation and not merely be some lucky bloke with a gun. That would have been terrifying, really. It would undermine my abilities as a security specialist.”