4.
Sienna Nealon
“Augustus?” I called again, hoping to hear his familiar voice crackle through the radio line. In its place I heard nothing but gunfire from the kitchen as the bad guys opened up on both Reed and the corner where I’d just popped my head out.
Kat was down.
Augustus was out.
Reed was pinned.
My little op had gone so far south that it was about to cross the Drake Passage.
This shit was just unacceptable.
“Keep your head down, Reed!” I shouted, not caring who heard as I pushed Wolfe and Gavrikov to the forefront of my mind. I launched myself into flight into the main hallway, my gun raised and ready. My opponent was ready, too, facing me from the living room arch where he’d gunned down Augustus, his weapon pointing almost right at me—
I shot at him and he shot at me. I did a sideways barrel roll in midair, some serious John Woo-type shit, unconcerned with gravity or a landing because I didn’t have to be. I watched his shots go streaking past, ready to paint my face if I’d been just a little slower.
I hit the wall sideways and upside down, using the bounce as an opportunity to go lower as I worked my way back across the archway toward cover again, spinning and firing like—like—
You know, honestly, I can’t think of anything I’ve ever seen in any action movie where someone did what I did. It was like rolling on the ground to put out a fire on myself, except without the fire, or the ground, and with shots flying all around me as I stayed head on with my opponent and gave him the smallest possible target to shoot at—basically just my face and shoulders.
I returned fire, the wild thumping of my heart and the insane movement making my aim beyond crappy. I blasted the wall to his right, destroying the patterned wallpaper with my shots. Some streamed past him into the living room behind, leaving their own marks on the far wall. My foe was dodging hard, lunging to my left with pretty damned good speed, and I couldn’t decide whether he was a human with incredible training or whether he was a meta of some sort—it was pretty close to the line and damned impressive either way because he was keeping his head about him like few I’d ever faced.
I heard his shots lance into the wall as I dodged back into the dining room, escaping a shot to the face by a matter of inches. This guy was good.
No, wait. His team was good.
This guy was great.
I didn’t have much time to feel a grudging respect since I was busy not getting shot in the head, but it was there, burgeoning in the back of my mind as I ejected my near-empty mag from my HK MP5 and slapped a new one in. I checked to make sure it was snug and then readied myself for my next move.
I needed to get to Reed, because he and I were the only ones left in this fight, and me trying to take on this enemy alone meant leaving my brother to get shot all to hell by superior numbers. That was bad, and I didn’t need any more guilt in my life, so I bolted for the door to my right that led to the kitchen, and flung myself sideways again, spinning through the air.
I counted eight men with guns in the other room, and they opened up as soon as they saw me launch into motion. I didn’t want to hold out too long, because dodging shots was guaranteed to end in … well, in my end, before too much longer. I hosed them down with my fresh mag as I entered the room, firing, and had the satisfaction of seeing four of them go down under my fire and a fifth get doused by Reed with a double tap to the face as I landed behind the kitchen island next to my brother.
“Oh, what a lovely day,” Reed said tightly as I glided down next to him. The rattle of gunfire against the other side of the island was gnawing at my consciousness, a grim awareness settling in that bullets could rip right through the wood partition between us and danger at any time.
“You’ve been watching too much Mad Max,” I said, listening to the fire die down a little. Some of them had to be reloading, and I dodged out and fired quickly, pegging one of them in the gut and disappearing behind the island again as a dozen rounds flew past in the space I’d just occupied. I kept an eye on the door I had just come through, figuring it was even odds whether my opponent from the living room decided to flank us or join his mates. “Two more behind us and one in the living room that could come either way.”
“That the one that got Augustus?” Reed said with nervous tension.
I didn’t look at him as I answered. “Yep,” I said tonelessly.
“We still haven’t cleared the upstairs,” he said, like I’d forgotten.
“I’ll just nuke the house, we’ll call it good,” I said.
“And if there are hostages?” Reed looked at me in disbelief. “Civilians?”
“Then it’ll be a PR nightmare, of course, but at least I won’t be in charge of cleanup.”
Reed gave me one of his patented big brother looks, unamused at my little joke. “That’s just what we need right now. Like the Federal Government isn’t looking at us suspiciously as it is.”
That was a fair point, though I wouldn’t have admitted it to my brother. Feeding him in that way was dangerous, because he already thought he was right all the time as it was. No one likes a know-it-all. “Let’s save the debate for another time,” I said, since we had at least three guys with guns in the vicinity with hostile intent and two of our team were already down. There’d be plenty of time later to dwell on the fact that the government had filled my old job about two seconds after I left with some mysterious new head of a task force that had been absorbed into the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.
And trust me, I was spending some time dwelling on that. Had been for weeks. Stewing, even.
The sharp rat-a-tat of fire behind me jerked me out of that rabbit hole before I could go too deep down it, and I raised my gun. I had at least fifteen rounds left, which was enough to deal with these three chuckleheads if I could get a clear line of fire. “Go on three,” I said to Reed, and he nodded. “One—”
And we went, because the whole three thing was just a distraction. The guys shooting at us were just a few feet away, after all; they could hear us. I flew out in a spin again, and I saw the nearest bad guy’s eyes widen as I planted a round between them—pop pop!—and he was out. I turned my weapon toward the other in time to see him train fire on Reed. I heard Reed grunt and heard the wet slap of rounds hitting my brother, then fired as I stabilized in my arc of flight long enough to draw a bead. Splat, I nailed the guy in the side of the head and liquid splattered everywhere.
“Now for the—” I spun, my legs twisting as I came back to the ground in time to see the last enemy—my worthy foe from the living room—come around the corner. He was firing at me and I was forced to pirouette, his shots racing by me as I did my best impersonation of a paper cutout turned sideways while I raised my gun. I fired the HK one-handed and blasted him across the chest, halting him before he could nail me with a shot.
I grinned at him, watched his face go slack in disbelief. He had a strong chin, and wide eyes, and he forced a smile as he looked down. My eyes followed him, and I saw the grenade clutched in his hand, pin pulled.
I didn’t even have time to summon Gavrikov to the fore of my mind before it went off in his hand, the explosion blotting out my vision.