Ryan dived for the cover of the furnace, thinking he had made it to safety, but then he felt the scratch and burn of a bullet rip across a small exposed section of his back at the edge of the tactical vest, just below his left shoulder. He screamed as a cloud of his own blood and muscle sprayed out over his head.
He was hit.
CHAPTER THREE
Ryan crashed down behind the furnace and slammed his back against the blower chamber as he hurriedly reached around and felt his shoulder for the wound. Rounds fired over him, drilling into the steel plate of the furnace. Ricochets showered him with sparks. Metal jackets clunked to the floor.
His heart beat like a double-bass drum on a thrash metal track and he clamped his teeth together to stifle an animal howl of pain. He felt a thick pulpy wound on the edge of his back where it curved around to his left-hand side. The hacker cursed under his breath. Half an inch to the right and the tactical vest would have stopped it. A wave of nausea washed over him as his mind flooded with the fear of a bullet wound.
Hawke had told him all about the dangers of lead intoxication from projectiles lodged inside the human body. The old cowboy joke about dying of lead poisoning wasn’t so funny and then there was the internal bleeding or vital organ damage to consider. Maybe Kim had been right to doubt his ability.
Sweating and desperately trying to control his breathing, Ryan searched with a trembling hand to see if the bullet had wedged itself in a bone… God, please no… but he felt nothing except a groove. Best guess was a round had torn through the skin and continued on its way to the far wall behind the furnace.
More firing.
He gathered his mind, reloaded his MP5 and took a breath. The wound was painful and bleeding but not fatal. He tried to remember what Hawke and the others had taught him about close-quarter combat and spun around and fired on the enemy before they had a chance to take up a new position.
Ryan’s rounds raked up the wooden staircase and buried themselves in the plaster of the supporting wall behind it. Through the goggles he saw the man who had now hit the deck at the top of the stairs and was crawling forward on his stomach with the shotgun in his right hand.
Ryan saw the moment and seized it, rolling forward until he was under the stairs. On his back, he lifted the compact machine pistol and let rip, firing on the man blindly through the top of the stairs.
He heard a scream and then the man tumbled forward, smashing through the spindles and collapsing with a hard smack right beside him.
In the ghostly green light of the night vision, Ryan saw the man take his dying breath through a bloody mouth. How did Hawke and the others do this for a living? He had a hard time imagining it until he realized with a gasp that this was his life now. Saving lives and taking lives was now part of his life and he still wasn’t sure he could live with it.
The young man raised his palm mic to his mouth. “Power out and basement secured.” He had already made the decision not to tell anyone about the wound. Ryan doubted it would cloud anyone’s judgement. This crew was too professional to be distracted by a man down, but he didn’t want to look like he was stupid enough to get hit.
He heard Lea’s voice in his ear as she spoke over the comms. “Great job, Ry. We’re going after Kruger so if you don’t want to miss the fun you’d better get up here.”
Ryan Bale didn’t need an embossed invitation. He rolled out from under the stairs and ran across the basement. Sprinting up the staircase to the kitchen, he raised his gun and emerged into a room that looked like it had been bombed. “Where is everyone?”
Camacho’s voice buzzed in his ear. “Going up the main stairs to Kruger’s study.”
“Me and Kim are heading to the bedroom suites,” Lea said.
“Care to join us?” Kim said. “Maybe his wife has some panties you could try on, you big girl.”
Ryan was crossing the hall now and hitting the bottom of the stairs. His back was pulsing with pain and he could feel the blood soaking into the t-shirt under his tactical vest. Up ahead he could see the rest of his team as they turned the corner on the next floor. “Oh, that’s funny, but I’ll think I’ll stick with Jack in the study.”
“Sure thing,” Kim said. “If I see any your size I’ll grab you a pair.”
Her voice cut out and the comms went dead as everyone concentrated on the next phase of the mission. They all knew Kruger was in the house; they had seen him enter the place just that afternoon and the intel that he was stashing the Sword of Fire here until summoned by the Oracle was also good. Now was their chance to take out the arms trafficker once and for all and retrieve the ancient sword.
Gunshots rang out from another section of the house and he prayed Lea and Kim were all right. This was not his natural milieu. For one thing, people who used the word milieu did not generally know how to strip a rifle in thirty seconds, but he did. He had changed now and he had to accept it.
He wasn’t the gawky nerd Lea and Hawke had recruited in London for the Poseidon mission. He’d been through the mill and learned the ropes from the best in the business. He’d seen things no one else dreamed of seeing. He’d fallen love. He’d watched his lover die. He knew the difference between all the bullet calibers and their uses and when to deploy a tear gas grenade or a real one.
And when to deploy the word milieu to devasting effect in any sentence.
With the schematics memorized, he swung a sharp right at the top of the sweeping staircase and found himself in the study. Camacho was hurriedly packing C4 on a large diamond safe in the far wall. “Jesus, you don’t hang around, Jack!”
“Down!” Camacho yelled and dived behind a desk.
Ryan slammed down next to him as the C4 exploded. It ripped the front of the safe from the rest of the casing and flung it across the room like a lethal trashcan lid. The safe’s door buried itself three inches deep in the opposite wall as smoke and the stench of burned almonds from the detonated explosives filled the room.
“Let’s see what we got,” Camacho said. “You cover the door!”
Ryan did as he was told as the American checked the safe. He heard a sigh and looked up to see Camacho punching the wall. “Nothing. Let’s hope the girls had better luck in the bedroom.”
Even with the pain in his back, Ryan considered the obvious joke but kept it to himself. What was worse than being sloppy enough to get hit? Making jokes afterwards, that’s what. He kept his mouth shut and followed Camacho out of the door and along the corridor to the bedroom.
They found Lea and Kim rifling through Kruger’s private wardrobe and drawers, but still found nothing. Lea cursed. “Nothing relating to the Oracle and no goddam sword.”
“Hey!” Kim ran to the window. “They’re getting away!”
An explosion rocked the house and blasted a hail of broken banister wood through the door. It blew over them like a hailstorm of razor-sharp splinters as they hit the deck to find some cover.
“Dammit all!” Kim yelled.
Lea smashed a fist into the floor. “I’m so frigging pissed off right now.”
“What do we do?” Ryan asked.
Camacho looked at the smoke billowing into the room from the staircase. “We go after them! It’s not too late and we never give up — right?”
The American CIA man moved forward, adjusting his goggles and raising the M4 carbine. Reaching the top of the stairs he felt some resistance as he tried to bring his right foot forward. Then he heard the tell-tale sound of a tripwire snapping beneath him.