Chapter 18 Inferno
INFERNO
IRISH
Hawk winked at me.
One eye. A fraction of a second. A gesture so small that nobody outside the Steel Phoenixes would have recognized it for what it was, and everyone inside the compound understood it meant something final: We don't hand over our own. Get ready.
The blood hit my veins like liquid fire.
Every nerve ending in my body ignited at once, the adrenaline converting terror into fuel with a speed that felt chemical, my heart slamming against my ribs, my muscles tightening under the zip ties, my vision sharpening until the courtyard looked like a photograph taken at too high a resolution.
I could see the triggers. I could see the knuckles.
I could see the angle of every rifle barrel aimed at my bro∏thers and the men I loved, and underneath the fear and the fury, a single blazing thought: Hawk is not letting Nolan walk into this. Nobody is.
I jumped.
Both feet off the ground, knees driving upward, and I slammed my boots down onto Kolev's foot with every ounce of force my rebuilt body could produce.
The impact traveled through my heels into the bones of his foot, and the sound he made was enormous, involuntary, a bass grunt of pain that loosened his grip on my throat for one fractured second.
The volley hit like a physical wall. Not sound.
Pressure. Twenty-five weapons firing in a cascade that merged into a single sustained detonation, the muzzle flashes strobing in the amber dusk, the noise so massive it stopped being audible and became a vibration that lived in my chest cavity, in my teeth, in the fluid of my inner ear.
Brass casings sang off concrete. The air filled with the acrid bite of cordite and the mineral taste of pulverized stone.
I dropped.
Not a decision. An instinct. Every muscle in my body releasing at once, my full weight collapsing downward, and the dead weight of a hundred and eighty pounds yanked Kolev off-balance, his arm wrenching loose from my neck, his massive frame staggering sideways.
I hit the ground hard. My shoulder took the impact, the concrete slamming through my shirt into the muscle, the jolt traveling up my neck into my skull.
My hands were still zip-tied behind my back.
My face was a ruin of blood and bruises.
And above me, the air was alive with bullets traveling in every direction at once.
I rolled. Not toward Kolev. Away. Sideways, prone, my body rotating on the axis of my spine, the asphalt scraping against my arms and chest as I moved.
The bullets cracked overhead in a continuous stream, the supersonic snaps of rounds passing through the space I'd occupied half a second ago.
I rolled again. Again. The world a spinning blur of concrete and sky and muzzle flash, my ears roaring, my lungs burning.
I crashed into legs. A mercenary, standing, rifle up, firing toward the Phoenixes at the garage wall.
The collision took his ankles out from under him and he went down hard, his weapon clattering, his elbow hitting the ground beside my head.
I didn't think. I rolled onto my knees, found my balance despite the bound hands, and drove my boot into his gun hand.
The crunch of small bones against steel-toed leather.
His fingers spasmed open. The rifle skidded away.
I staggered upright. The courtyard was chaos. Smoke and dust rising in plumes, the gate half-obscured, mercenaries firing from behind the Jeeps while Phoenixes returned fire from the garage and the building entrances. Bodies on the ground. Some moving. Some not.
Another mercenary. Ten feet in front of me. His back to me, rifle shouldered, firing at the main building's entrance. He hadn't seen his friend go down. He couldn't have heard it through the wall of gunfire.
I charged. Low. Three running steps and I launched into a roundhouse kick that caught him at the knees, my shin connecting with the back of his legs, the momentum of my body sweeping his feet from under him.
He went down sideways, flat, the rifle discharging into the sky.
I landed on top of him. Both knees dropping onto the side of his head with my full weight behind them.
The impact jarred through my legs into my hips. He went still.
I rolled off him, grunting, the zip ties cutting into my wrists. My hands were numb. My ribs screamed where Kolev had broken something hours ago. My face was a mask of dried blood and fresh dust. And I was alive, and moving, and the main building was twenty yards ahead.
Through the smoke, I saw Dec. His arm around Nolan, his Sig firing controlled shots over Nolan's shoulder, pulling him backward toward the main entrance.
Nolan was resisting, his body straining toward the courtyard, toward me, and Dec was hauling him with the brute force of a man who'd decided that getting his partner to safety was the only variable that mattered.
Phoenix members on my left flank saw me, their rifles swinging toward me before recognition hit. "Irish! Get over here! Move with us!"
I should have listened. The side buildings were closer. The tactical play was obvious.
But Nolan was ahead of me, and a mercenary was following too close behind Dec, and the rational part of my brain had been replaced by a single imperative that had nothing to do with tactics and everything to do with the two people I couldn't lose.
I sprinted across the open ground. Bullets snapped past me, close enough to feel the displaced air against my face. The twenty yards between me and the main building were the longest distance I'd ever crossed.
The mercenary behind Dec was closing. Through the dust and the smoke, I saw movement at the doorframe, a blur of motion, and the mercenary crumpled. His hands went to his throat. His rifle was gone before his knees hit the ground, snatched from his grip by hands I couldn't see. Blade. Had to be.
Good. Someone had it handled.
I hit the entrance at a half-sprint, plunging through the open doors into the dimmer interior, and the wall of rifle barrels that greeted me was impressive, terrifying, and deeply unwelcoming.
"It's me!" My voice came out hoarse, barely a rasp, swallowed by the gunfire still raging outside. "It's me, it's Irish, don't fucking shoot!"
I threw myself sideways toward the nearest wall, away from the center of the doorframe. Stray rounds chewed through the doorway behind me, punching chunks from the concrete frame, the impacts sending dust and debris spraying across the floor.
Blade was right there. Same side of the doorframe, the mercenary's body crumpled at his feet, his knife wet. Behind a flipped table further back, Axel with a captured rifle already shouldered.
"You know," I panted, pressing my back to the wall beside Blade, "I was expecting a warmer welcome. Maybe a fruit basket."
"Turn around." Blade. Flat. Economical.
I turned. His knife sliced through the zip ties in a single stroke, the tension releasing from my wrists like a pressure valve opening. I shook my hands. The blood rushed back into my fingers in a wave of pins and needles.
I moved along the wall toward Dec and Nolan behind the overturned table.
Rounds still cracking through the doorway, the staccato snap of incoming fire chasing me across the room.
I dropped behind the table beside them and Nolan was on me instantly, his arms around my neck, fierce and brief, the glasses pressing into my shoulder, his whole body shaking with a relief so violent it registered as trembling.
"You're alive." Barely a whisper against my collar.
"Consistently." I held him for one second. Then let go.
A pistol found my hand. Nolan pressing it into my grip, his fingers closing mine around the metal. "You'll know better what to do with it."
Dec was beside me. His jaw tight, his eyes carrying the fury and the relief in equal measure. "You ran across the open courtyard. Through active crossfire. With your hands tied behind your back."
"I know. I'm an idiot. We can discuss it later."
"I almost shot you."
"But you didn't. Because you're very good at your job."
His mouth opened. Closed. The almost-smile that I lived for ghosted across his lips and vanished.
No time. From outside, a metallic clank. Then another. Small objects arcing through the doorway, trailing wisps of smoke, bouncing off the concrete floor and rolling to a stop in the center of the entrance hall.
"GRENADES!" Dec's arm hooked around Nolan and pulled him behind the overturned table. I dove on top of both of them, shielding, my back to the blast zone.
The stun grenades detonated.
Light. White. Total. The flash burned through my closed eyelids and turned the darkness behind them into a white-hot void.
The concussive wave hit my back like a fist made of air, compressing my lungs, rattling my teeth.
The sound was a frequency that bypassed hearing and went straight to the nervous system, a piercing shriek that erased every other input and replaced it with a ringing so dense it felt solid.
DECLAN
The ringing faded in stages. White to gray. Silence to static. Static to the muffled, underwater sound of boots on concrete and weapons being chambered.
I was up before my vision cleared. The Sig in both hands.
My ears screaming. My balance compromised, the vestibular system fighting to recalibrate against the concussive damage.
The world tilted fifteen degrees to the right and I compensated through muscle memory, planting my feet wider, lowering my center of gravity.
The doorway. The mercenaries would come through in the first three seconds after detonation. That was doctrine. Stun and breach. Every military force in the world used the same timing because the timing worked.