That first kill — dropping the driver of the first vehicle — had rattled the attackers, and despite their larger numbers, that rattling had given her the advantage. At least for as long as her ammunition held out.
Now that she was armed with thirty rounds of 5.56 millimeter devastation, the other team was going to learn just how bad a mistake they’d made.
Because she was the last person to handle the M4, she knew that a round was already chambered. She used her thumb to change the selector switch from safe to single-shot and she rose again. With the weapon pressed against her shoulder, she moved from behind the Mercedes and advanced on the SUVs and their cowering occupants.
Way back when she’d first loaded the magazines for her carbine, the anticipated threat had been vehicle-borne kidnapping, and as a result she’d loaded them with armor-piercing ammunition. As she stepped out, she scanned for targets. Where she saw legs on the ground, she zeroed in on a spot about three feet north of the legs and fired through the steel panels that obscured the torsos. The titanium-tipped bullets hit with enough energy, concentrated at an infinitesimally small surface area, to liquefy the steel at the point of contact, only to pass through, intact, to pierce whatever — whoever — lay behind the shield.
Two attackers hit, two attackers killed, for a total of five dead, so far.
There had to be at least one more, maybe several. Not only had she thought she’d seen them when they drove up, but it made no sense to have two vehicles with only five people. In a perfect world, the smart move would be to wait them out, let them make the first move, and then pick them off when they did. But this much gunfire and this many bodies were going to attract a lot of attention, and that attention was going to come with badges and guns. She didn’t want any of that. They couldn’t afford any of that. There was no way to explain the inexplicable.
“Graham,” she said. She never took her eyes off the real estate in front of her.
“Right here.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No, I’m fine. I have the extra bullets.”
“Okay, good. Now, get out, stay behind cover and look on the ground near the front of the car. Do you see the keys? I dropped them and they should be down there.”
She heard him moving.
“Got them.”
“Have you ever driven a car?” she asked.
“I don’t have my license.”
“Different question. Have you ever—” She stopped the question because the answer was irrelevant. “You’re about to drive the car,” she said. “Get behind the wheel and start it up.”
“But there’s broken glass—”
“Graham!”
“Okay, okay.”
Jolaine saw movement behind the SUV that was farthest from her. A crouched bad guy was duckwalking to get position behind the engine block for better cover. She didn’t see the man as much as she saw the gun barrel. He held it a little too high.
Jolaine switched the selector from semi- to full-auto and fired a three-round burst into the engine block. Even the armor-piercing rounds wouldn’t penetrate the thickness of the engine, but they would burrow deeply enough to disable the motor and to give the guy a religious experience. Just for good measure, she fired another three-round burst through the other SUV. There would likely be survivors among the attackers, and she didn’t want them to have a way out.
She had just begun to wonder what Graham was doing when the Mercedes engine turned over and then revved as Graham gave it way too much gas. “Get in!” he yelled. “We’re ready.”
“Hold on a second,” Jolaine replied. That guy behind the fender, and whatever other friends he had left, were a problem. She dared not turn her back on—
There were two of them side by side and they popped up together, their weapons at the ready. They opened fire, on full-auto. They emerged from precisely the spot where Jolaine had been watching, one of them standing into the red dot of her gun sight. She dropped him with a bullet to his chin.
His friend reacted with impressive speed, diving back for cover while the head mist still hung in the air. Jolaine swung her aim and got off a shot, but it wasn’t a clean hit. She thought she saw an impact on his shoulder as he fell, but she couldn’t be certain. She needed to be certain.
With her M4 at the ready, pressed in tightly and her finger outside the trigger guard, she advanced on the spot where he fell. Behind her, she heard Graham plead for her to get back into the car, his voice squeaky with panic. But their only route out of the parking lot was through these guys, and that would mean driving through the kill zone of an ambush. Unacceptable.
Jolaine had lost track of time since the shoot-out began, but she was confident that it was still under two minutes. The other cars in the parking lot meant that other guests were either watching through windows — a foolish choice — or cowering in corners. Either way, lots of phone calls were being made to 911, and that meant she and Graham were in a hurry.
Impossibly red blood traced rivulets in the uneven pavement of the lot, almost all of it from the ruined head of the first shooter to pop up from behind the second SUV.
“Jolaine, please don’t!” Graham cried.
She ignored him. There’d be time to explain later. Now she needed to concentrate on the potential threats. She heard the Mercedes transmission slip into gear and she knew without looking that Graham was backing out of the parking spot to be prepared to drive off. She was fine with that so long as he did not try to pass her.
Or panic and leave me behind. That thought made her regret that she’d crippled the other vehicles.
As she carefully turned the corner around the front bumper of the target SUV, her mind filtered out the hideous sight of the dead man with the exposed brain and instead scanned for signs of the living. She led with her carbine as she whipped around the corner to encounter whatever threat lay beyond.
The second man she’d hit sat against the rear wheel of the vehicle, his legs outstretched, his face gray and twisted in agony. His right arm and the right side of his shirt glistened with blood. She’d hit him harder than she’d thought. His rifle — she saw now that it was an MP5—lay on the ground next to him, and he made no effort to reach for it.
Keeping low, Jolaine kicked the weapon away and turned her attention to the rest of the parking lot, searching for additional targets. Movement close to her rear caused her to whirl, but she broke her aim when she saw that it was Graham with the Mercedes.
She held up her hand to tell him to stop, and said, “Don’t move any closer, Graham, and don’t get out of the car.” Her eyes never stopped scanning all compass points. “Keep an eye out for other people and tell me anything you see.”
“We need to go, Jolaine,” Graham said. “Please, let’s just go.”
“Ten seconds,” she said. She turned her attention to the wounded man. “Who are you? Why are you attacking us?”
The man moved slowly, as if lifting his head consumed all of his energy. “Not you,” he said with a heavy accent that sounded nearly identical to that of Bernard Mitchell. “The boy. The boy will get you killed. We do not care about you.”
“Why him? What did he do?”
“He has something that belongs to us,” the man said. Bloody froth bubbled at the corners of his mouth, and Jolaine realized that she’d hit his lung. “He has codes.”
“What codes?”
The man coughed, launching a pink spray that somehow missed Jolaine. “Don’t be a fool. He needs to follow protocol, then this all ends.”
“What is going on?” Jolaine said. She heard an edge of desperation in her own voice.
“Follow protocol. Otherwise, everyone else wants to kill him. To kill you, too.”
“Everyone,” Jolaine repeated. “Who is everyone?”