It all falls down, p.10
It All Falls Down, page 10
part #1 of Birth of Heavy Metal Series
“Let the team up in the apartment know the stairway is clear if they have the opportunity to escort Anderson out,” he instructed into his comms as he checked the sub-machine gun he’d pulled off the man. He punched two needles into his head, just in case, and tucked the pistol into the holster when he decided that any shooting he would have to take care of on the ground level would need more firepower.
“Will do,” Anja said. She sounded distracted, possibly because she was coordinating a rescue op for Monroe. “Courtney should arrive at your location in less than a minute, and I don’t see you on the ground, Savage.”
“I was temporarily held up,” he muttered and picked up the pace to get down to the ground floor.
“Excuses, excuses.” She chuckled, and he shook his head.
Sam understood what Anderson was going through. Well, she’d never been in those particular circumstances herself, but she could empathize, at least. The man was in a difficult position. He was trained and armed for a fight like this, but the reality of the situation was that these men had targeted him for a reason that had to be fairly obvious at this point. They wanted control of Pegasus—or they wanted Courtney and Anderson out of the driver’s seat of the company—and since getting them out legally could be tied up in litigation for years and years, the quickest and simplest way was to simply erase them from the picture. They’d tried to do it subtly before, but it seemed like there was now some desperation in the enemy camp and that a hint of a time element had come into play.
Either way, it didn’t matter that Anderson wanted and could help to protect the apartment and fight their attackers off. He was their ultimate target and they would focus their fire on him once they realized where he was in the room. The circumstances relegated him to the position every operative in the world hated the most—the package.
She glanced at him and identified the frustration that was clearly etched on his face. While she could empathize, there wouldn’t ever be a time when she would wish to change places with him. The choices were clear, and he had to stay safe so Ivy and Damon could see him again, no matter how helpless and frustrated he felt. He would have to suck it up and wait this one out, which was the most difficult thing for people of action to do.
“Savage cleared the stairs and he’s headed down,” Anja announced in their earpieces. “He said that if you guys want to get Anderson out of there—”
Sam didn’t respond and simply let the burst one of their attackers fired through the door say what needed to be said.
“Right,” the hacker grunted. “Well, anyway, I have an eye on Courtney, and she should arrive there in thirty seconds if traffic holds as is. That woman can drive, but I wouldn’t recommend any of you get in the car with her when she’s in that kind of mood.”
She shook her head and while she waited for Anja to get back on topic, propped her shotgun over the top of the bar and released a couple of shots at the door to keep their attackers at bay.
“Anyway,” the other woman grumbled, “I think she’d like to have some help from on high until Savage can get his lazy ass down there. Terry, do you think you can cover that?”
“I’m on it,” the sniper said softly and displayed the cool collectedness Sam had come to expect from the man when he was under fire. He also implicitly trusted his two teammates inside to watch his back while he watched Monroe’s.
Well, she wouldn’t let him down. She would never live it down if she did.
“In other news, it looks like someone actively worked to keep the cops away from our little fun in the sun here,” the Russian informed them, and the clatter of her keyboard provided a busy soundtrack in the background. “I finally have a couple of cars heading your way. They should be a couple more minutes, though, so hang in there.”
Yeah, right. Sam wasn’t the kind to wait around and let someone else—much less the fuzz—come in and rescue her. Besides, Terry was counting on her to keep the enemy off his back and away from Anderson. That was her responsibility, not some badge’s.
She muttered a few choice curses as she reloaded the shotgun with what few shells she still had on hand. Six left, plus one still in the barrel, which gave her a total of seven. It would have to be enough, she decided as she fumbled in Savage’s duffel bag and ferreted around until she found what she was looking for.
Stun grenades—also called flashbangs by the kind of people who would call guns “boomsticks”—were first used by the SAS in the 1970s and were actually interesting ordnance. Their flash was intended to activate all the eye’s photoreceptors and leave the victims temporarily blinded and with an inhibiting afterimage that affected their aiming capabilities. The other half was a bang louder than a hundred and seventy decibels, enough to deafen anyone in range and, if you were close enough to disturb the fluid in the inner ear, make them lose their balance.
As non-lethal weapons went, they were one of her favorites, right up there with bean-bag shotgun rounds.
She pulled the pin and lobbed the stun grenade over her shoulder, then waited and listened for it to clatter on the floor before she covered her ears quickly and closed her eyes.
Even through her hands, the noise was deafening, and the flash was still bright through her closed eyes. It was enough protection to leave her somewhat untouched by the effects and she hefted her shotgun and vaulted over the top of the bar. Two of their attackers had been unlucky enough to try to breach the room at the same moment that she’d thrown it, which made them easy pickings. She pulled the trigger three times and they collapsed quickly before they could see who had opened fire on them.
The remaining three appeared to realize that they were under attack and tried to return fire. All three missed with their first bursts, which either pounded into the wall or through the window to rain glass down on Terry. Hopefully, he’d escaped injury as all she heard from him was a muttered something that sounded like “fudging idiots.”
She grinned and eliminated a third man with another shot before she was forced into cover behind the wall. A quick count put her down to three shells left. It was probably enough to deal with the two of them, but maybe not. The odds were close to even and she wasn’t there to play games of chance with her life and those of the people around her. She dropped the weapon and immediately reached down to draw the HK45, which she’d holstered on her hip.
One of the two remaining men had obviously heard the clatter of the shotgun and barreled in before she had the weapon ready. It was a smart move on his part, or it would have been had he not still been recovering from the flashbang. He looked into the room, missed her completely, and pushed in past her as she drew her pistol. Sam extended a foot and tripped him but another pair of hands from outside caught her gun hand and her shoulder and hauled her clear of the room.
Anderson would have to take care of the poor dumbass she’d left behind for him.
Sam had a more pressing engagement. She was thrown clear of the room and her back impacted with the wall on the other side of the hallway. Her instinctual response was to grasp the barrel of the sub-machine gun the man still had in his hands. She wondered why he hadn’t simply shot her with it, but there were times when you didn’t look metaphorical gift horses in their metaphorical mouths.
Her assailant looked powerfully built, a little too large to be one of the special forces guys—those teams usually went for lean and mean. Engineers and drill sergeants were the ones who liked to have that much bulk on them, which begged the question of what exactly he was doing there.
Well, there’d be time for that later. She ducked below the fist he powered at her. He was definitely not a well-trained individual, so probably the kind who knew he had power over most of the people he fought and didn’t see much use for training beyond that. To actually punch someone with their back to the wall was a rookie move, though, and when she simply evaded the blow, his fist collided with the concrete wall hard enough that she heard a couple of cracks from his bones. He uttered a scream of pain, retreated a few steps, and cradled his hand.
Sam acted before he thought to swing his weapon to bear on her. She followed his small retreat, raised her foot quickly, and stamped as powerfully as she could on the gunner’s instep. He lost his balance and barely managed to catch it using the wall of Savage’s apartment for support.
Her adversary grunted softly and looked around, obviously still disoriented although he tried to fight. She knew that if he recovered sufficiently and she gave him the opportunity, his sheer size and weight put her at a disadvantage, and he would overpower her. In a rapid motion, she punched the barrel of her pistol into the man’s throat and as he choked for a second, she used a backhand strike to hit him in the temple with the grip of the gun. His eyes rolled back, and he sank slowly into a heap. A small trickle of blood oozed from where she’d struck him.
She paused for a second, still breathing deeply at the short yet strenuous exertion of the fight, and glanced around the hallway to make sure the man didn’t have any friends coming to help him anytime soon. Savage had done his part and eliminated his half of the group on his own, but there was no need to get too arrogant at this point of the mission. In her line of work, it was almost inevitable that she’d take a bullet at some point, but she would damn well do her best to make sure it never came down to a shot in the back because she’d been in too much of a hurry to clear a room or something totally dumb like that.
When she stepped into Savage’s living room again, her gun in hand, and swept the room, the man she had tripped still lay face-down, two holes in the back of his head from which blood seeped into the carpet.
“Savage will definitely not like this,” Anderson grumbled and checked the Glock in his hands a couple of times.
“Yeah,” Sam responded. “I’m sure Pegasus will be able to pay to refurbish this place.”
“Hell, at this point, it will be cheaper to get him a new apartment,” he replied.
“If you guys aren’t too busy,” Terry called in that chillingly calm voice of his, “I have Courtney in my sights and would appreciate a little peace and quiet out here.”
“Sorry.” She gave the room one last casual scrutiny and headed into the hallway where she’d left the thug she’d pistol-whipped. He was still unconscious but alive, judging by the way his chest rose and fell slowly. Hell, if it weren’t for the bruising on his throat and the swelling starting to show on his temple, she might have been able to say he was taking a quick nap.
Then again, people napping didn’t usually sleep heavily enough for them to not wake when they were dragged into the apartment.
“Savage, where are you?” Terry asked over the comms as Sam placed the unconscious man against the couch. “We’re about to have some action out here, and I think you should be a part of it.”
“I’m already out here,” he confirmed.
The sniper didn’t respond, but as she moved to the broken window, it was obvious that his mind was already elsewhere. The longest shot he could anticipate here couldn’t be more than five hundred yards, which was child’s play for a man of Terry’s caliber. At the same time, though, he was shooting with a smaller, unfamiliar hunting rifle. While he was good, there were still many variables for someone in his position to plan for. Too many, Sam would have thought.
“I have eyes on bogeys heading in behind Courtney,” he said, his voice still in that low, distant tone as he stared down the scope and with a pause in his breath, squeezed the trigger.
The rifle boomed and kicked hard against his shoulder, but he kept it propped on the railing of the fire escape. He had crouched and hunched over in order to keep the shot steady, which looked like a very uncomfortable position to be in.
He cursed softly, which indicated, even though she couldn’t see where he had aimed, that his first shot had gone awry. While he whispered the changes he needed to make to himself, he drew the bolt action back and thrust it forward again, loaded another round into the chamber mechanically, and pulled the trigger again. No curse followed this time, merely another quick and practiced reloading action and a shot in rapid succession.
Chapter Ten
Anja did her best to keep her boss updated on what was happening around Anderson but also tried not to distract the woman from what she had to do. Talking on the phone while driving was never a good idea under any circumstances. The hacker had to assume that the thought extended to when you drove aggressively to escape people with guns who pursued you with every intention to use those guns, even if it was using the earbud comms. A distraction remained exactly that and could be as deadly.
It was a challenging endeavor for Courtney to wind her way through the city as the traffic gradually intensified with the onset of the rush hour. She had originally hoped to get home before there was a horde of cars all headed onto the streets with the same intention. So much for that idea, and now, she was forced even deeper into the city to where Savage lived in the hopes that the team would be in a position to help her when she arrived.
For a little while, it had been touch and go. The route Anja led her on traversed streets of the city she was unfamiliar with. All the while, she heard and—in some instances, felt—gunshots as her pursuers seemed to almost sense where she would turn next. On top of all this, she tried to keep up with what was happening in the building.
Apparently, these people had thought to deliver a solid double-whammy against Pegasus and planned to eliminate her and Anderson in one two-pronged assault. She had to assume it was the mysterious client Savage had been tasked to track. In all fairness, he probably hadn’t had the time to even start on it yet. There was the possibility that someone else was behind this, of course. They had made their fair share of enemies during the process of taking control of Pegasus and even simply from working in the Zoo as both she and Anderson had done.
But no. It had to be this Elena Molina chick, right? Having to trace someone else who tried to kill them was too exhausting a thought to even contemplate. All Courtney had to do was escape this situation alive, and she could delegate all the work of hunting and punishing the guilty parties involved in this mess. She couldn’t be blamed, either, for heading back out to the Zoo where she had a fully functional fortress between her and anyone who might want her dead. Someone had painted a very large target on her back, after all, and unless the board members wanted their stock prices to fall further this close to the sale of Carlson’s stocks, they would want to make sure the company CEO didn’t suddenly drop dead from a suspicious case of lead poisoning.
A lane opened up and allowed her to slip through the jam that held most of the city at a slow crawl. She pushed forward quickly but had to stop again soon after. The only real bright side she could think of right now was the fact that her attackers were caught in the same traffic. The police would be heavily stalled in their attempt to intercede as well, though, which was a dark side on a bright side.
She instinctively uttered a low scream at the sound of gunfire again. More bullets peppered her Jag and glass from the last remaining back seat window sprayed across the vehicle. Something stung and blood dripped on her arm and she grimaced as she looked to see what it was. The injury wasn’t bad and could have been from glass or a grazing bullet. Next time, she vowed, she would invest in a car with bullet-proof glass and reinforced sides so she wouldn’t have to deal with these problems.
The reason for the Jag had simply been that she’d always liked the car. When Pegasus offered her a choice of vehicles to be rented for her stay in Philly, Courtney had selected a car she had wanted to drive since she was a little girl. And it had been everything she dreamed it would be right up to the point when people decided to use it for target practice.
“Fucking assholes!” She scowled out her window. A couple of her attackers had taken advantage of the stalled traffic to move forward on foot. It was a smart move, or it would have been if they had managed to hit her. As it was, they were left stranded on the sidewalk with no cover and no way to find any in a hurry.
She aimed her pistol and fired through the window opening, the glass long since removed by the first barrage on the access ramp. One of the men stumbled back and clutched his chest where she had delivered a bullet into his body armor. The second dove to the ground and crawled toward the cars. People screamed and yelled in reaction to the gunfire exchanged between the two parties. Most tried to get out of the way and to be cautious as well. In their confusion, they could as easily run into the shooting while actually trying to avoid it.
With that said, the dumb bastards who had missed her did give her a good idea. The Jag was a fairly small car with a decent suspension—the kind that would be able to take the punishment of driving up onto the sidewalk. She could only hope there was enough space between the traffic and the buildings to allow her to get ahead of her attackers. There would be the small problem of the lights and poles that were placed on the sidewalk too, but she could cross that bridge when she got to it.
Courtney immediately eased the vehicle up the curb and pressed the accelerator as the powerful engine roared to bring her fully onto the sidewalk. It jostled and bounced, then settled, and she increased speed. While she still moved at under twenty miles an hour, it was faster than the five miles an hour the rest of the traffic was stuck at. People honked at her for cheating, and she flipped them off. Yell at me when you’re getting your ass shot at, fucker.
In their defense, the fuckers did shut the hell up when the sound of gunfire resumed again. The SUV was too large to fit on the sidewalk and she couldn’t see it in the traffic anymore, but the sedan was small enough to allow it to come after her. They paused to pick up their man who was still on the ground. He rubbed furiously at his body armor, most likely to coax some feeling back into his chest after her shot, but he scrambled in and they remained determined in their pursuit. It was impossible to move quickly on the sidewalk, but it was better than simply waiting around for her assailants to devise newer and better ways to get close to her and complete their mission. She was well aware that she wouldn’t get the deposit on the car back, that much was certain.
