Sarah and I approached slowly. I stayed a few paces behind Sarah and scanned the area. Even though I had Tailor watching me and some backup, something was bothering me. I felt vulnerable.
“Stay here,” Sarah said. “I’m going to go talk to her.” She then keyed her own radio microphone. “Xbox, I’m making contact with the package now.”
I waited for him to acknowledge Sarah before speaking. “If this takes too long, I’m going to grab her and throw her in the truck. If she tries to get back in her car, draw down on her.”
Sarah looked a question at me. “Hunter’s orders,” I said. “She’s coming with us whether she likes it or not. I was told to shoot her if she tries to run. So you need to make sure she understands that the only way she’s getting out of this alive is if she does what you tell her. If she gets cold feet, I’ll put a slug through her. If I don’t, Tailor will. Clear?”
“Yeah, clear,” Sarah replied, walking away from me. I didn’t know what the hell she was being so touchy about. The fact that Asra Elnadi was a woman didn’t make her a good person. She was a black-market arms dealer who sold weapons to terrorists. If she hadn’t come to us first, she’d have probably ended up dead when we went after Federov. Maybe it was a chick thing.
I was standing about fifty feet away from Sarah when she addressed the target in Arabic. I constantly scanned the surroundings. I was gripped by a sense of unease that I just couldn’t shake. Was it because of the previous night, or was it something real?
“I’ve got the package in tow,” Sarah said over the radio, sounding relieved. “So far so good.”
I activated my microphone again. “Xbox, Nightcrawler, you see anything?”
“Negative,” Tailor replied. “It’s quiet. Why? Something up?”
“Just a bad feeling.”
“Hang on,” Tailor said. “I just had a door open. . . . There’s a couple guys walking up some exterior stairs.”
It might not be anything, I thought, just somebody working late, but it didn’t make me feel any better. I couldn’t see anything moving in the darkness. “Xbox, where?”
“Two hundred meters due north of you. They’re on a catwalk on that three-story warehouse. Shit, they just walked behind something. I lost them.” I could see the building in question but couldn’t make out any details from here. There was a long pause as Tailor searched through his scope. “They were carrying boxes or something, but it’s hard to see details through this thing.”
Sarah seemed to have our contact under control and was gently leading her my way. I wished she’d hurry the hell up. Asra was babbling away, nervous. The arms dealer had a high-pitched voice. Something she said seemed to spook Sarah, and they started moving quicker. She sounded nervous over the radio. “The package thinks she might have been followed.”
My attention focused back to the warehouse. I’d just caught a tiny flicker of movement at the top.
“Okay, I got visual on one of them again. He’s setting down his box.” Tailor sounded uncertain. “Wait. Shit. It’s a weapon, I say again, he’s got a weapon. Get out of there, Nightcrawler! Engaging!”
Sniper. “Understood, moving!” I said, breaking into a run. There was no cover where we were. We had to get out of there. “Sarah!” I yelled, digging the Land Cruiser’s keys out of my pocket. “Get her in the truck!”
“I heard him!” Sarah said, grabbing the package by the arm and pulling her along. Asra balked at this and began chattering at Sarah. She seemed like she wanted to know what was going on. There wasn’t time for that. I caught up with the two women, took Asra by the other arm, and hauled her roughly back to our Toyota.
She struggled and bitched at me. I looked over at Sarah as my left hand went to the butt of my gun. “Tell her that Federov is coming for her, and if she doesn’t get into that truck right now I’m going to fucking shoot her.” Sarah conveyed my warning to Asra. The arms dealer’s eyes went wide, and she complied with my command. I hurried for the front seat. Muffled cracks echoed across the storage yard; Tailor had started shooting.
“Xbox, do you have—” But a deafening bang cut me off. Bits of metal flew from the hood of our truck. I lurched to the side and threw myself to the pavement behind the car. The next bullet exploded through the engine block, destroying it. Asra started screaming. “Out! Out!” I shouted, crawling toward the women. Windows shattered as huge bullets lanced through our ride.
Sarah reacted quickly, getting as low as possible. I reached up, got a handful of Asra’s suit jacket, and yanked her to the ground. We were pinned. The sniper had something huge, and by the rate of fire, semiautomatic. Our Toyota wasn’t cover, it was just concealment.
“Got one. Shit! Can’t spot the other guy. Shot’s blocked. Moving!” Tailor shouted.
A hole as big around as my fist punched through the Toyota’s side panel. The bullet dug a divot into the ground, launching stinging asphalt bits. If we ran for the nearest conex, not all of us would make it, but if we sat here, we were as good as dead.
Asra stood, panicking, trying to flee. Sarah knocked her down before I could. A bullet whined through the space she had just filled. Sarah threw her body on top of our package to hold the struggling woman down.
This day just kept getting better and better. The sniper had disabled our vehicle first so we couldn’t run. The only reason we hadn’t been hit yet was luck.
“This is Shafter. We’ve got multiple vehicles inbound from the east at a high rate of speed. We got more company!”
“Copy!” I said. Another heavy slug plowed through our truck, showering me with shattered safety glass. “Hurry!”
“Got you, fucker,” Tailor gasped as he opened fire. The gun was suppressed, but the supersonic bullets cracked by over our heads. “He’s down! I got him!”
I rolled over. Sarah was still on top of the flailing woman. “Are you hit?” She shook her head. Asra was in shock, covering her ears with her hands and babbling like an idiot. “Shut her up!” Fluids were pouring from our perforated truck. More bad guys were inbound. It was time to go. “Shafter, we need extraction, now!”
I scanned nervously out the window as we raced away from the scene of the shootout. This was exactly why we always tried to use multiple vehicles. The colonel was going to be pissed that we’d lost another one. Wheeler was driving, Hudson was riding shotgun. Tailor was in the back of the van, scanning out the rear window with his rifle in his lap. Sarah and I were in the back, too, as was our guest. Asra Elnadi was still prattling on about something.
“What’s she saying?” Hudson snapped.
“She says she’s very sorry. Federov must have had her tailed, and . . .” Sarah scowled. “Mike, she says you’ll regret roughing her up, and that she’ll complain to our superiors and have you punished.”
I looked over at her incredulously. The arms dealer was an attractive woman of about forty. Her mascara was running badly. She glared back at me with an indignant look that said don’t you know who I am?
I made a face at her and turned toward Tailor. “What took you so long back there?”
“There was a crane in the way. I couldn’t get a shot. I had to run a ways.”
“If you didn’t smoke so damn much, you’d have gotten there faster.”