Everything went silent again.
I didn’t like it. Playing cat and mouse like this, facing an unknown number of shooters who’d brought major firepower to the fight. Then Kurt’s voice came through my comms, and his words only made things worse.
“Reilly! Reilly,” he hissed.
“What?” I whispered.
“I just sent the drone on a quick perimeter swoop. The two SUVs, the ones with the heavies? They’re back.”
66
I couldn’t worry about that right now. I had enough to deal with here. And the sooner I cleared this kill zone, the sooner I could start figuring out how to deal with the new threat.
I used the stock of my carbine to smash through the window closest to me, then I chucked in another flashbang. Between four walls, its effect was much more potent this time and I charged in after it, loosing quick bursts left and right. And hitting nothing.
The space was empty. My eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness. I was in a large, open area, typical of an old log cabin, with a large fireplace as its central focal point and six-point buck heads staring down from the bare wood walls. I scanned around, looking for signs of life, but saw and heard nothing. I sensed the cabin was empty-it didn’t offer enough cover to make tactical sense to remain in it. The forest outside was a much better option. Still, I advanced cautiously, if quickly, swinging my weapon from side to side, my senses alert to any disturbance. I was all the way across to the opposite side of the cabin, the side of the other shooter, when I heard a rustling outside. I rushed to the side of the window and slammed against the wall just as something crashed through the glass and flew into the room.
They’d wanted to draw me into the cabin all along. That was their kill zone. And now that I was inside, one of the bastards had just fired a grenade launcher at me.
The lead SUV veered off the main road and bounced onto the trail that led up to the cabin, its big tires kicking up a spray of slush onto the windshield of the second vehicle, which was right on its tail.
It accelerated uphill, its powerful engine propelling it up the gentle slope with ease, and about twenty yards before the trail veered right around a large rock outcropping, its tires suddenly hit something and shredded to bits, causing the heavy car to crater into the ground and come to a shuddering halt.
The driver of the SUV behind it, his vision already hampered by the slush flying onto his windshield, didn’t have enough time to react and just plowed into the back of the lead vehicle, hard.
Which was about when the gunfire started.
I didn’t think. I just reacted.
Pure instinct, zero lag time. Just neurons firing an instantaneous reflexive order and muscles reacting without hesitation.
I launched myself through the glass of the window shoulder first and was airborne when the blast tore through the space behind me.
I hit the porch hard, curled into a roll, my ears and my skull reeling from the explosion, but I couldn’t let it affect me just yet-I needed my senses to function for just a second or two more; I needed to push away the heaviness and the ringing and the blurred vision and just focus every nerve ending I could muster to lock onto my target while he was within striking range and before he could get a shot off at me.
I caught him at the edge of my perception, a wraith with a white face and dark camo gear, and my arms somehow managed to bring the carbine up and line it up on him and my finger pulled back on the trigger as I aligned the red dot of the CCO sight on his chest. He staggered back as my three-round burst punched into him and dropped out of sight just as I rolled onto my back and shut my eyes to try and recalibrate my senses.
The whine in my ears was manageable-I’d had worse-and I guess the helmet had helped dampen the full brunt of the blast on the insides of my skull. I stayed like that for a few long seconds, breathing in, letting the blood rush around and reboot my shocked operating system.
I hit my comms and said, “Kurt?” but there was no answer.
I called out again, but nothing came back.
I pulled the transmitter out of its shoulder pouch and checked it. It was cracked. I switched it on and off, tried again, and got nothing. My heavy landing must have busted it.
I was on my own.
I pushed myself back on my feet and, hugging the log wall, I crept to the back of the cabin and the forest beyond.
I still had maybe one shooter out there, then there was Roos.
I scanned left, right, couldn’t see any movement. The ground rose away from the cabin in undulating hillocks and the tree cover was dense, some of it with good visibility in the case of the deciduous oaks and maples, other parts much darker under the evergreen firs, spruces and beeches. The snow cover was accordingly irregular and patchy: thicker and whiter where the leaves above were bare, and thin to nonexistent where the canopy was forbidding. More flakes were falling, though, and they were getting meatier.
Then I spotted something: tracks, in the messy scree around the base of the porch. Boot prints, one pair, leading away from the cabin, into the forest.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Roos had only brought ten men with him and not eleven.
Ten, a round number. An excessive one, if you asked me. I mean, I really didn’t think I merited that much of an effort. Eleven-that was just overkill.
I checked my carbine, slammed in a fresh clip just in case, and headed out.
I’d barely taken a step when distant machine gun bursts cut through the silence, angry, intense volleys echoing out from behind me. In that split second, I noticed a flash of movement, a shift of tones, a silhouette that was darker than its backdrop of leaves and branches, about thirty yards ahead of me, high up. I dropped to one knee and brought the M4 up just as several bullets cut through the space my upper body had been occupying and slammed into the logs behind me.
I squeezed the trigger, and the silhouette jerked before dropping thirty feet to the ground. He’d been waiting for me, up in a tree stand.
There had been eleven after all.
I was pretty sure Roos was now on his own.
And I was coming for him.
Deutsch let rip with full dedication.
She’d set up the spike strips at the end of first relatively straight stretch of trail, before it swept gently right around a large rock outcropping that served to shield her parked Crown Vic and to offer her a great vantage point from which to unleash her assault.
She knew what she was facing, but it didn’t worry her. She was committed, and she was ready. She was kitted out in helmet, ballistic vest, comms; she had the M4 carbine with its suppressor in place and its laser sight ready and she’d laid out her gear within easy reach around: five extra magazines, flashbangs, a fully loaded handgun, even the big knife.
Everything she needed to maximize the kill.
She started firing mere seconds after the long metal barbs of spike strips had shredded the SUV’s tires, just as the vehicles were immobile, before the doors even cracked open. She wasn’t off to one side but was almost in front of the cars, at a slight angle perhaps, which allowed her to cover both sides of the vehicles. Anyone trying to get out from either side would be within her reach.
She started with the two men in the front seats of the front car, moved to the two in the front of the rear vehicle, then came back to the front car and its back seat passengers before returning to the rear vehicle and the final two targets.
Thirty rounds per clip, three-round bursts, ten bursts per clip. Ten different targets, ten chances to take out an enemy. Six clips, one hundred and eighty rounds, sixty chances to take out the eight targets. If she connected with one out of seven bursts, if one out of twenty-one bullets managed to find its mark, they were all out of play.