16. Chapter 16
Chapter sixteen
“There are four of them covering the back, probably more in the front,” Trey shouted, pulling back as several bullets slammed into the door frame near where his head had been seconds before. “Dark tactical gear, heavily armed, and they don’t smell like Roman and his crew.”
Staying low, Trey moved across the floor of the living room to the corner where Mike and everyone else were all huddled around Xander, staring at the twelve-inch-long blade sticking out of his chest.
“Backup is on the way,” Hale told them as he shoved his cell phone back in a cargo pocket. “But we probably need to assume we’re on our own for the next ten to fifteen minutes.”
Mike nodded as Trey—who was one of the team’s medics—checked out the knife in Xander’s chest. Werewolves could handle a lot of damage, but a knife through the heart would have been enough to end it all.
“The blade isn’t near anything vital, so I can pull it out,” Trey announced.
Normally, they never would have revealed pack secrets, but at a moment like this, secrets took a backseat to survival.
“Shouldn’t we leave it where it is until we can get him to a hospital?” Roy asked in alarm as Trey leaned forward. “Pulling it out could kill him.”
“We don’t have a choice,” Trey said, wrapping his hand around the leather-wrapped hilt. “Those guys out there aren’t letting us leave anytime soon and we’re not getting out of here without Xander’s help.”
“But...” Roy’s words trailed off as Trey yanked the blade out of Xander’s chest.
Xander grunted and pushed himself into a sitting position, rotating his right arm in small circles as Roy sat there on the floor gaping in shock.
“Man, that feels so much better,” Xander said. “It was like I’d been shanked with a two-by-four.”
Before Roy could respond to that bizarre announcement, they were forced to the floor as automatic weapon fire ripped apart the windows and walls all around them. Mike instinctively threw himself on the top of the accountant.
“If these are the same Sentinel guys who are after Carter, why the hell are they shooting at us?” Trey asked as he and Mike wiggled across the glass-littered floor to look out the shattered windows at the men moving around the backyard with military precision.
“Haven’t they figured out Carter isn’t with us? ”
“I guess not,” Mike muttered. “Unless they really are working with Roman and they’re trying to get to me.”
“Sentinel?” Roy repeated. “You mean the international terrorist group? Roman would never work with them. The group has attacked several of his legitimate businesses in South America over the past year or so, costing him millions. If that’s who’s out there, they’re definitely not working with Roman. ”
Mike wanted to ask Roy if he was sure about that, but was interrupted as more gunfire echoed through the house, forcing him to dive toward the middle of the living room as Trey hid behind the remains of the door so he could keep an eye on the outside.
“If they aren’t working with Roman, then why the hell are they attacking us?” Mike shouted over the rattle of automatic weapons.
“I have no idea!” Roy called from where he was trying to hug the floor, getting as small as possible.
Mike’s head spun. Roman and his men coming after him and his family had made sense. Conversely, some international terrorists wanting to abduct Carter seemed strange. But these same terrorists attacking the four of them for no apparent reason whatsoever defied logic.
Those thoughts were interrupted by an explosion coming from the front of the house strong enough to shatter the large plate glass windows along that side.
“If you haven’t already guessed, they just took out the SUV,” Hale yelled from the other side of the room, where he was peeking out the remains of the front window. “Between that and the two heavily armed guys waiting for us out there, I don’t think we’re going to be leaving in that direction.”
“Then we stay and defend the house until backup arrives,” Mike shouted back, trying to be heard over the sound of gunfire from both the front and back. “It’s the only choice we’ve got.”
“Incoming!” Trey shouted from over by the back door.
Mike turned in time to see Trey running toward him.
Before Mike could even think to ask what the hell was going on, his pack mate slammed into him, taking them both to the floor.
Mike had to scramble to cover Roy as a whoosh came through the shattered door and exploded against the far wall of the living room.
Mike’s ears rang like someone had put a metal bucket over his head and beat it with a hammer. It seemed to take forever before it faded enough for him to even think. That’s when he realized there was a hole the size of a manhole cover in the far wall, with shrapnel everywhere else—including in him.
Crap.
It felt like he’d been stabbed a dozen times by heavily-armed garden gnomes. Painful for sure, but, thankfully, not fatal. Like him, his pack mates were bleeding from multiple places. Roy, too, and he was clearly in serious pain.
“They have a rocket launcher out there!” Trey shouted, his ears probably still ringing so much he couldn’t hear himself talk. “We have to get out of here before they reload.”
So much for holding out in the house until backup arrived, Mike thought as more gunfire erupted. It was one thing to say these guys were terrorists, but quite another to think they’d brought a rocket launcher with them.
Who the hell did that?
“Walking out of here will just get us killed faster,” Mike said, ducking to the floor again. “But if we stay, they’re going to keep shooting until this place collapses on our heads. We have to go back down into the bunker. It’s our only choice.”
“We’ll be trapped down there with no way out,” Xander pointed out. “All they’d have to do is catch this place on fire and we’d suffocate down there.”
“We could escape out through the secret tunnel in the back of the bedroom,” a trembling Roy volunteered from where he lay on the floor as Trey wrapped a length of couch fabric around the accountant’s bleeding leg wound.
“I really want to ask why you didn’t mention this earlier,” Mike growled even as more bullets slammed into the wall behind him. “Xander, you’ve got Roy. Lead the way and don’t let him out of your sight.”
The five of them had just started running down the basement stairs—Xander half carrying Roy—when Mike heard the whoosh of another rocket entering the house. The blast of the warhead going off above them sent him tumbling down the rest of the steps, taking everyone else with him.
“They’re coming,” Trey announced, as the thud of heavy boots sounded above them. “We need to move faster.”
“Hale, you’re with Xander,” Mike said as he opened the shelving unit and shoved them ahead of him. “Trey, you’re with me as rear guard. We need to give them time to get Roy out of here.”
The two of them followed Xander and Hale as they got Roy through the tunnel and into the bunker.
Mike and Trey only had a few seconds to take up positions behind the heaviest pieces of furniture in the living room before shadows appeared at the tunnel entrance and two small objects came flying into the large open space of the living room.
Diving to the floor behind the thickest part of the sofa, Mike winced as the grenades exploded, hot fragments sizzling through the air all around him. Mike waited a single heartbeat, and then he was coming up on one knee and lifting his gun, knowing the attackers would be coming.
No matter how ready he was, Mike was still stunned when three heavily-armed figures darted out of the tunnel, wearing tactical gear that made his SWAT equipment look cheap. The men moved fast, spreading along the far wall of the space, covering each other like a well-oiled machine.
He snapped off a quick shot with his handgun, watching as one of the men staggered a second before regaining his feet, the bullet clearly not penetrating the man’s Kevlar body armor.
Then the guy was spinning his short-barreled assault rifle in Mike’s direction, a hail of bullets sending him diving to the floor once again.
Mike winced as one of the bullets grazed his shoulder, pain flaring as he rolled across the floor before coming up to get another shot off.
His round found its target, the man staggering back again and stumbling a little as he bounced off the wall behind him.
But then the guy immediately righted himself, lifting his rifle in Mike’s direction once more.
He threw himself to the side to avoid the gunfire, but then heard a growl of pain from his left.
Looking that way, he found Trey had partially shifted.
Given the amount of blood soaking through Trey’s uniform, it was clear his pack mate had been hit multiple times, which explained why he’d shifted.
Hiding the Pack’s secret took a backseat when someone was trying to kill you.
Mike saw the two men in front of Trey start to back up, though strangely enough, they didn’t seem alarmed at the sight of all those claws and fangs. If anything, they looked satisfied for some reason.
The two men continued to back up carefully, keeping each other covered as they headed for the tunnel that would lead back to the basement of the house. A quick glance to the right revealed that Mike’s opponent was backing away, too.
As he watched all three of the men continue to back away, a sick feeling began to settle in his stomach. He couldn’t understand what was going on, but his instincts were screaming there was something really wrong about to happen.