Parkowski got up, ran towards the window, and slid down to the left side.
A pair of bullets streaked into the house from the window, leaving dime-sized holes. They both impacted the old couch on the far side of the room.
She quickly put her NVGs on. They made the world a fuzzy green; giving her the perception that everything she saw had a slight glow around it. Then, she peeked out of the window.
Behind one of the boulders, over a football field away, she saw a hint of movement.
Parkowski used her thumb to move the rifle’s safety to the “single” position.
Placing its butt against her good shoulder, she leaned out to the window and put her eye against the rifle’s optic.
Whatever had been there was gone.
Parkowski was about to pull back when she saw a dark figure lean out of the boulder’s right side.
She moved the rifle so that the crosshair was right over it and fired.
Big mistake.
Parkowski had forgotten that the glass was mostly still there.
It shattered, blowing shards everywhere, including one back into the rifle’s scope.
The spent piece of brass bounced on the worn hardwood floor.
“Shit,” she said. Parkowski leaned back to check her rifle’s optic as a hail of bullets slammed into the house.
Thankfully, the walls were thick enough to stop any from penetrating through them.
The rest shredded Chang’s couch.
Her scope was fine. A piece of glass had gotten into it, but she deftly removed it and threw it on the floor.
Parkowski leaned back and fired, almost blindly, into the night.
One, two, three, four trigger pulls.
One, two, three, four rounds went out towards the boulder.
The first was fairly accurate.
The next three went wild, all high.
Parkowski leaned back as the assailants — there had to be more than one — returned fire.
Even with her earplugs in, she could hear the supersonic bullets slam into the house.
Only a few pieces of glass remained in the corners, the rest of the window completely obliterated. The rest had been shot out by her opponents.
She was no firearm expert, but the people outside — whoever they were — seemed to be firing different weapons than the submachine guns in the frantic chase from Los Angeles to Barstow. From their description, Chang had told her that their weapon of choice was a Heckler and Koch MP-5 submachine gun, firing a 9 mm round that matched her shoulder wound, with a distinct chatter. The rounds being fired at her now were larger, with a louder report, probably from a rifle not unlike her own.
Did that mean that they were with a different organization?
Or did it mean that they were experts, who had selected a different weapon with increased range?
Parkowski did some mental math. There were thirty rounds in the magazine to start, and she had expended five. That left twenty-five before she had to reload.
But she realized she had been trying to do too much. Parkowski had neglected to grab an extra magazine from the duffel bag.
She took a deep breath and poked her head around the edge of the window, just enough to see the expanse between the road and the house.
This time, she didn’t see anything.
As she pulled her head back, another hail of bullets slammed into the house, most just above where her crouched body was.
They had night vision — or even worse, thermal — goggles too.
“Fuck,” Parkowski said.
Another coordinated volley came in from the boulders.
She wasn’t sure what their endgame was. They hadn’t made any attempt to communicate, to ask for their surrender. They had just started shooting when she appeared in the window with her rifle.
Parkowski became hyper-aware of a different sound, a lower, harsher crack close to her position.
Her boyfriend had switched weapons.
She leaned out and fired another pair of bullets in the vague direction of her assailants, then leaned back to safety.
Just what were they trying to do?
Her heart beat faster than it ever had before. One wrong move, one miscalculation, and she would die under a hail of bullets fired by people much more skilled than her.
Parkowski wished more than anything she could talk with her boyfriend. DePresti was an acquisition officer, an engineer — the farthest thing from a combat expert — but his time in the military had rubbed off on him. Whatever basic combat training he had experienced was definitely paying off. He seemed cool, collected, and ready to defend the house. But, they hadn’t figured out any method to communicate once the bullets started flying.
They hadn’t had time.
There was a strange lull, a pause in the response by their enemy.
She wasn’t sure why.
Parkowski poked her head out, kept it there.
No response.
She leaned back. “Mike!” she screamed, barely able to hear the sound of her own voice through her earplugs.
A moment later he appeared next to her.
DePresti’s face was bloody, but he looked coherent and his hazel eyes were locked in.
“What happened?” Parkowski asked as she carefully took a fingernail-sized shard of glass out of his cheek.
“Window exploded into me,” DePresti said loudly. “I’m fine, it missed my eyes.”
“What are they doing?” she questioned.
He shrugged. “I honestly have no idea. If I were them, I’d coordinate my assault so that one group can advance while the other pins us down, then repeat the process. I don’t know what their end game is.”
“Me either,” Parkowski said. “Do they want to capture us, or do they want us dead?”
DePresti shrugged. He handed her a pair of magazines. “Use these wisely.”
Parkowski smiled and accepted them.
Her boyfriend smiled back, his teeth glistening in the dim light, and went back to the kitchen.
She poked her head out again and this time she was met with a new round of bullets. There were fewer, but they came from a different direction, near where the hills that surrounded the complex started their rise. They were also now visible to her; white lines tracing across the black sky.
The bastards had repositioned.
Parkowski swore to herself and carefully crawled underneath the window to a new position in the corner. If they were to move slightly more up the rise, they could reach her through the window on the next wall.
Something big — probably a large caliber bullet — hit the back of the house.
“They moved!” DePresti yelled, barely audible.
“I know!” Parkowski screamed back.
Her repositioning saved her. Another bullet hit the spot she had been crouched in a moment ago.
“Fuck fuck fuck,” she said to herself.
There was a silver lining, though. Her assailants were now using tracer rounds. She knew exactly where they were.
Parkowski switched her rifle to her bad shoulder — the adrenaline pumping through her dulled the pain — and leaned out in the opposite direction she had previously.
She fired a dozen rounds.
The AR-15 jammed.
“Shit.” She opened the bolt and tried to get the stuck casing out of it.
A new noise — a dull thud — came from just inside the window.
Parkowski looked up in horror to see a cylindrical grenade, the same as the one that had been used to incapacitate Chang, lying on the floor.
Even in the fog of the NVGs, she could make out a small stream of smoke escaping from it.
CHAPTER FORTY
Parkowski threw her rifle onto the ground and dove to the grenade. A familiar pain spread from her shoulder to her back as she crashed down next to it. She groaned as the rest of her body followed onto the wooden floor.