Axel rolled until he was behind the cruiser, then pumped the shotgun and slung it across the hood of the vehicle to take another shot.

Whatever they’d all been doing inside the house, apparently time was up, and everyone but Kennedy came pouring out the front door, guns blazing. The cruiser was armored, but it wouldn’t shield him forever. Especially not if these assholes had the smart idea of just walking around it to get a clear shot.

He had to manage this situation carefully. If he was too hard to hit, they’d forget all about him and look for Fox. If he got killed, they’d… forget all about him and go look for Fox.

His resources were finite, and that was putting it mildly. Without any way of knowing when backup would arrive, he had to manage those resources with the utmost care. The Remington held seven cartridges, and he was down two already. Fox’s pistol would be his spare, but from then on he was reliant on wits alone.

Those wits weren’t to be underestimated. He wasn’t just a former soldier. He had Special Forces training and several years with the Green Berets under his belt. While it wasn’t knowledge he tended to need in the FBI, he knew everything from the fastest way to render a target unconscious to how best to snap their neck.

Kennedy’s people had guns, but they didn’t seem to have knowledge. They were firing wildly, and maybe only half the shots actually hit the cruiser, though the ballistic glass was still holding out.

His biggest problem was that they outnumbered him, and the only way to fix that was, well, pretty obvious.

Axel set the shotgun down and pulled out the pistol, then lay on his side so that he had line of sight under the cruiser. It wasn’t a tactic he wanted his enemy to be able to use themselves, so handing them this kind of information meant he had to act damn fast before someone got it into their heads that he also owned feet.

He wriggled until he could see as many shoes as he could, then he snapped off the entire magazine.

There were yelps. Yells. Howls.

Axel didn’t wait around. His position was compromised. He ditched the gun, snatched up the Remington, and bolted out from behind the cruiser toward the pickup truck.

Further away from Fox.

No time to think about that. In the shock of Axel’s attack, there was a lull in the barrage, and Fox’s voice could be heard from the other truck. Not loud enough to make out words, but sure as hell enough to tell anyone who cared to notice that he was in there.

Whoever was left standing opened fire again, and the sound of bullets hitting metal came from Fox’s direction.

Axel broke from his cover and ran directly at the nearest gunman, letting loose with the shotgun to keep him from returning fire effectively. He managed to blow an arm clean off, so that was a big help on that front.

Seven shots down.

He tossed the Remington aside and tore the AR-10 from the gunman’s remaining arm, then aimed a vicious kick to his knee which forced him to drop onto it.

Axel dropped with him, using him as a shield, aiming the AR-10 past his shoulder and picking off the target next in line.

Four were down now. Three of those still held their weapons. Five still stood.

His odds were looking up.

Axel dragged his screaming, uncooperative shield toward the house and took down another target as three more ran toward Fox’s truck.

“Shit,” he muttered.

His shield became a dead weight. Either the guy had taken a bullet or he’d passed out from blood loss. Either way, he was a lot harder to heft around now, so Axel ditched him and sprinted for the nearest fallen terrorist, firing toward the other three without aiming. It was suppressive fire at its worst, but it was better than none at all.

Axel dropped the AR-10 once it was empty, scooped another from the hands of the guy he’d run to, and kept on running.

Like sheep before a dog, those who could still move scattered in panic. Axel charged between the fallen and took their guns from them, slinging them toward the cruiser. They’d have to crawl over there with broken, bleeding feet if they wanted them back.

Four targets remaining.

Axel zigzagged his way toward the house’s front door. Kennedy was still in there and his thugs would either want to protect him, or Axel would get to him and arrest his ass. Either way it ought to pull those four away from Fox again.

The good news was that he got their attention. Bad news was that their attention came with bullets, and Axel was way out in the open, so he threw himself prone to minimize his profile and picked off another target once he was down.

There was no way that one would be able to pick his gun up again.

Three targets left.

Two of them had chosen to hide behind the truck Fox was in. The third was crouched down in front of it, so Axel took aim and blew his knee out.

The guy screamed and clutched at his leg as though putting hands over the wound could keep his blood from spewing all over the ground, but it wasn’t having any effect.

The truck rocked a little, then the alarm went off. Its lights flashed, and the horn sounded every other second.

Axel frowned. The alarm obviously wasn’t armed when Fox broke into the truck or it would have gone off sooner, and since Fox was unquestionably a genius, the only logical explanation was that Fox had set it off intentionally.

Fox must have come up with a plan, but so far all Axel could figure was that plan involved attracting the attention of everyone within half a mile, and Fox was the one carrying a Glock with a single bullet in the chamber so it had better be a damn good plan.

Axel ducked into the house through the open door and swept the dark interior with the rifle he’d stolen, but there was no sign of Kennedy. The back door was wide open still, and dust floated lazily in shafts of light from the holes in the walls.

He clenched his jaw and reached up to drag the black plastic lining from the nearest window, tearing a hole in it that he could pop up and aim through if the glass was clean enough, but before he could check everything went horribly wrong.

He couldn’t tell whether he felt the vibrations in the floor before or after. He’d heard stories of how firemen would act on instinct in a backdraft and maybe that was what took over right now: pure, unadulterated instinct. Axel threw himself back, away from the window.

The ground shook as an earth-shattering BOOM blew the side of the house in. Heat and light flared. Wind rushed over his head. He landed on his back and slid several feet, then scurried back further still as the ceiling collapsed down over his head.

There was no time for shock. Axel had to run for his life before the whole house came down on him.

When he escaped through the back door it was like the house had spat him out. He rolled in the dirt, ears still ringing, as a plume of dust and fragments of plaster spewed out around him.

Axel thought he heard screaming, but it could be a while before his hearing came back—assuming it ever did. The entire right hand side of the house was all but flattened and the left was barely standing. Among the clouds of dirt and smoke billowing across the scene, the remains of the house stood like a corpse’s fingers jutting toward the sky.

Where was Kennedy?

More importantly, where was Fox?

Axel ran around the remains of the house and toward the smoke, but it was obvious what had happened.

The bomb in the back of the truck had detonated.

The bomb Fox was working on.

The one Fox wasn’t qualified to disarm.

Some sort of noise wanted to break free from Axel’s chest, but he had no idea whether it was a cry or a scream, and he grit his teeth to stop it getting out. Instead all he could do was choke back a sob.

Fox couldn’t be gone.

Please, God, he mustn’t be dead.

His foot butted up against something and Axel looked down.

Someone wasn’t so fortunate as to have the protection of a house when the bomb had gone off, and the sight was all too familiar, even though Axel hadn’t seen it in years.

If Fox was still in that truck, there wouldn’t even be this much left of him.

Whatever the sound was, it finally tore out of him, ragged and filled with rage and pain.

Kennedy would pay for this.

Whatever it took.