"Melendez!"
"What!" he heard from the bathroom, followed by a flush.
"They've got Jessica! Get on the gun and engage targets immediately! Don't wait for me! Channel eight on comms!"
Munoz had already slammed the hotel room door shut by the time Melendez charged out of the bathroom. He sprinted down the hallway to the elevator. If the elevator car was near his floor, it would ultimately be quicker than taking the stairs. It would give him time to attach a suppressor to the Steyr TMP machine pistol buried in his backpack. He glanced at the illuminated numbers above the elevator doors. Sixteen and five. He hit the "down" button, and stared at the numbers, ready to hit the stairs. The sixteen changed to fifteen. Fucking beautiful.
He reached into the backpack for the compact radio and headset, figuring that if he put this on first, people would be less likely to question his counterfeit Buenos Aires Police credentials and the evil-looking submachine gun that he would be readying in the elevator. The door opened, yielding an empty elevator. He jumped inside and jammed the button to close the door. He prayed that it went straight to the parking garage.
The hotel door slammed shut and a blanket of panic settled over Melendez. He had no idea what was happening, and for the first time since he joined the Black Flag program, he was on his own. What the fuck had happened? Munoz had told him to start shooting and bolted through the door. That was it. While he tried to process the confusion, he shifted into autopilot and started mechanically running through his mental checklist. It was his best defense against the stress that had suddenly engulfed their situation. He didn't spend any time thinking about what he might see when he put his eyes to the scope. Right now, he needed to put rounds downrange as quickly as possible. Munoz's voice left little confusion about that fact.
He yanked the black RPA Rangemaster Standby 7.62mm sniper rifle out of the bag and grabbed the nylon ammunition pouch containing four additional ten-round magazines. While passing the second bed, he reached into Munoz's backpack and retrieved the other radio set. He threw this onto the table and shoved the spotting scope out of the way. After rapidly unfolding the rifle's stock and securing it into his shoulder, he opened both lens caps on the Schmidt and Bender 3–12 x 50 scope and extended the bipod. Finally, he rested the rifle on the table and canted it toward the eleventh floor of Jessica's building, methodically searching for the targets Munoz had assured him would appear.
The variable power scope had been set for 8X magnification and required no elevation adjustment in this case. The distance from the end of the rifle's barrel to the apartment was seventy-three meters, a calculation he had digitally assessed on their first day in the room with a laser rangefinder. At such short range, only a serious wind would affect his bullet. All of the flags on nearby balconies stood motionless.
As he settled into the scope, he detached the magazine already inserted into the rifle and replaced it with a different one from the small nylon pouch. The rounds in the new magazine were specialized bonded core bullets, specifically designed for shooting through glass obstacles. The only downside to the 180-grain bullet was that it would pass through its target, even after penetrating glass. At less than 100 meters, the bullet would strike its target at 2,600 feet per second and could easily kill someone in an adjacent room after passing through a human target.
He removed his hand from the rifle and switched the radio on, removing the headset from the compact unit. He glanced over to confirm that the orange LED read "8." Back on the scope, he continued to breathe slowly and searched for targets.
The scope's wide field of vision gave him a view of the entire room, which allowed him to immediately assess the situation. He could see Jessica on her knees behind a man that was actively struggling to keep her down. The man's hands were visible on both sides of his hips, tightly gripping and pulling backward. He was clearly strangling her. Three more men stood in the room, and he made quick mental notes to help prioritize his shots. The man close to the front window, on the far right, cradled an automatic shotgun in his arms. The man facing him, directly in front of Jessica's attacker, pulled a knife from behind his back. His face looked bloodied. The guy to his immediate left stood with his arms folded, laughing. Strangler, Shotgun, Knife, Chuckles…in that order.
He pulled the bolt back and chambered a round, steadying the scope at the highest point on the back of Strangler's neck. He started to depress the trigger, watching the crosshairs drift ever so slightly with his shallow breath. He found the drift's natural rhythm and removed a little more pressure. Any additional pressure would fire the weapon. As the scope's center dot eased into place on a point directly aligned with the man's spine, he barely activated the muscles in his finger, and the rifle kicked into his shoulder. He vaguely heard the glass shatter on Jessica's balcony, before reloading another round. He was in a different world right now, where all of his attention was focused on the mechanics of shooting. The fear and panic that had tried to overtake him less than a minute ago had vanished, replaced by an eerie, detached calm.
The man to Miljan's left started to reach behind his back. Jessica instantly closed the gap and executed a hinged high kick to his throat, sending him back against the foyer wall next to the hallway closet. Both of his hands instinctively reached for his own neck. The rest of her body hinged with the kick toward the floor, allowing her to grab the knife. From the downward position, she placed the serrated knife behind Miljan's knee and reversed the hinge, using most of the momentum to sever the hamstrings of his right leg. Miljan screamed and collapsed, falling into the crook of Jessica's knife arm. Bracing him against her body and keeping him upright, she slashed the blade viciously across his neck, feeling the knife's serrations tear through the tracheal cartilage. At the same time, she reached her left hand toward the small of his back and found the handle of a pistol.
As the knife came free and her slashing arm swung outward, she continued to spin into a stance facing the man she had just kicked. He had begun to gain some sense, but both of his hands were still occupied with his rapidly swelling neck. At point blank range, Jessica fired the semi-automatic handgun several times into the man. Her final shot sprayed brains and other dark matter against the closet door.
She ducked and spun, aiming the pistol with her off hand at the next target she could find. She didn't have much time to process the scene. The strangler's body lay face down in a massive crimson pool, centered on what remained of his head. Josif stood in the doorway with his mouth and eyes wide open, a pistol held limply in his right hand. Her main problem appeared to be the man aiming a Saiga semi-automatic shotgun at her head.
The shotgun erupted a fraction of a second after the wall behind him turned red. She felt a sharp stinging pain in her pistol hand and saw that Josif's white coveralls were now stained by a bright red lateral slash. The man with the shotgun fell to his knees; a powerful fountain of blood sprayed from his neck onto the ceiling as his body continued down to the floor. Jessica's left hand didn't respond to the electrical impulses ordering it to fire the pistol at Josif, despite the fact that it was aimed directly at his chest. She didn't waste any time trying to figure out why. In one easy motion, she threw her knife at Josif.
Despite its undeniable usefulness as a hand-to-hand weapon, her Spider knife had been designed as a throwing weapon. She had special ordered a serrated set from the company and found that the serrations barely affected their ballistic performance. She could accurately place the knives in a six-inch diameter circle at thirty feet, and Josif stood well within that range. The knife buried itself in his upper right arm and prevented him from raising the pistol. She watched him dash to the right and disappear behind the wall.