Chapter 33 #3
The lobby is wide open, with just a small desk in the center, maybe a few feet wide. The crack of another round makes me look up to William’s vantage point and then back at the building. I’m going to literally wrap my hands around his fucking throat if I survive this.
There is movement behind the desk that suggests at least one person is behind it. I stop and take a breath. We have very little time before reinforcements show up.
Digging into my pocket, I slip the bud back in my ear. “August, tell me you’re behind that desk.”
“Yeah, this sucks,” he says in a high-pitched tone, and I hear another voice nearby but can’t make it out. Obviously, he can’t let on that he’s wired.
“Did you get your bingo?” I ask hopefully.
“This sucks so bad.”
“I’ll take that as a negative,” I breathe out. “We need to draw them out, so stop fucking shooting at them, William, and York, yes, you’re a prick.” I put my hands on my hips and stare up at the scaffolding. “A prick I could really use to have my six at the moment.”
“Inbound,” he responds.
I stay hidden behind the thick plastic, pacing, waiting. Minutes feel like hours, but I know there is only one way to sort this out.
“Thirty seconds. Coming up the back.” York's voice cuts through my thoughts. I can’t wait for him to arrive because he’ll try to stop me. I just need him to cover me.
“Eyes on me, William.” I look up to where I know he is, even though I can’t see him from here, and I step out onto the road. “Roger,” he breathes into my ear.
“Tripoli!” York barks, and I can hear him in my ear, but also behind me.
“Just have my back,” I say quietly as I cross the street.
“Come on, kid, what are you doing?” Carter chimes in.
I swing my eyes to the left for him but can’t see anything. “No man left behind, right?”
“We’re British,” he retorts. “We eat our own.”
“Glad I’m not one of yours then,” I mutter as I make the sidewalk and keep going.
“Stop!” a firm voice calls out from the building.
I stop. Breathe. Take another step.
“I said stop!” An agent shifts forward, stepping through one of the large, broken windows.
“Code name Tripoli,” I call out. “Turning myself in.”
A string of curses lights up in my ear from multiple voices, but I ignore it as the agent inches forward out the window. There are whispers inside, the crackle of radios.
“Grab her,” someone else calls out.
The agent in the window strides out, gun still trained on me, and then another. And another. My eyes flit to the desk, and I hope August has had a chance to plug his drive in.
“Three? That’s it?” I put my hands on my hips. “I’m kind of insulted.”
“Good to know you talk to everyone like that,” William says through the radio.
“You’re lucky you don’t already have a bullet in your head,” one of the agents growls.
“Oh, you and I both know none of you are authorized to kill me. Isn’t that right?” The first one moves up, pulling out a pair of cuffs. “But . . .” I look at him and then the cuffs. “I do like it rough.” I thrust my wrists forward to him with a smile. “Don’t try to be gentle.”
“For fuck’s sake,” William breathes out, and I can hear the sound of York’s wordless groan too.
The agent cocks an eyebrow as his partners close in, but I’m not getting locked up today.
When he raises a cuff above my wrist, I grab his gun in one hand and the cuffs in the other as I kick the agent beside him. Disarming him, I slap a cuff on his wrist before grabbing the other agent, keeled over from a kick to the gut, and slap the other cuff on him.
The third man pops off a round, and I draw my sidearm, putting a bullet in his knee before turning on the two cuffed together and putting a round in each of them. Nothing serious . . . just seriously inconvenient and painful.
With all of them down, I kick away the remaining two guns and march straight through the front windows.
“Carter, start a fire, because I’ve got some serious wood now,” William says over the radio.
Carter’s laugh is like a bark in my ear, but York cuts it off with, “Now’s not the fucking time.”
“You weasel!” I shout and grab August by the back of his jacket as I come around the desk. I haul him up in front of me and drag him across the floor and hiss, “Fucking turncoat.”
He doesn’t say anything as I press my gun into his back and force him forward so aggressively that he stumbles repeatedly. I guide him out the front to where the wounded agents are lying on the pavement.
“Let the guy go. You don’t need murder on top of treason charges,” one of them says, gripping his leg as sweat beads along his hairline.
It’s an irresponsible thought, a stupid one, but in the back of mind I think that it’s good they’ve been shot because now they know how it feels. I know how it feels. Once you know how it feels . . . it’s somehow more permissible to dole out such pain.
Suffer how I suffer.
“Tripoli,” a deep voice drawls from behind me.
Jeffries. Son of a . . . What is he doing here?
I shuffle around, dragging August with me as I put Jeffries to my right instead of at my back, and the cuffed agents remain to my left, useless. August keeps his hands in the air like a good little bystander, and York crackles in my ear.
“We’re going to start firing in about two seconds,” he warns me.
“You have been far too much trouble,” Jeffries chides as he steps through the empty window frame. “Far too much trouble for what you are.”
“Russel never told you what I am, did he?”
Jeffries pauses for a fraction of a second but continues, “You’re far less than you think you are.”
“More than enough to deal with Russel, though. Do you think you’re more of a challenge than the Director?”
“Taking credit for someone else’s kill.” He clicks his tongue.
I look around dramatically. “Oh, so you think a bomb going off and a shooter taking out your guys is completely unrelated to my presence here?” I tsk back. “I was dancing with Russel right before he died, Jeffries. I’m a harbinger of bad tidings these days.”
“My guys are fine.” He nods toward the agents on the ground, gripping their wounds.
“Are they fine?” I look at them. “Are you fine, fellas? Feeling good?”
The zip of a bullet sounds, and the solo agent sprawls forward onto his stomach, motionless with a hole in his head and a pool of blood growing.
Jeffries flinches, and his gun comes up, shifting high up to the buildings for a second before landing back on me. A bead of sweat forms on his forehead too.
I throw August to the ground beside me, and he scrambles as I train my gun on Jeffries in return. August gains his feet in my periphery, keeping low as he backs away.
“I’m fucking untouchable,” I grit out, “but not even Russel knew how true that really was. It’s one of those fuck-around-and-find-out things.” Lowering my gun, I step forward until Jeffries’s gun is pressed into my chest. “Do you want to find out, Jeffries?”
“You’re bluffing, and not only are you easy to read, Tripoli, but my dick doesn’t respond to you either, so you can go fuck yourself. I’m taking you in, one way or another.”
“Ah, so you’re not allowed to kill me either.
I wonder why that is?” I shove his gun away from me.
“Everything you read off me is intended, Jeffries, unlike you. How’s the ex-wife and kid?
Are they still in that bungalow in Baltimore?
It’s a cute little neighborhood.” His eyes flare, and I tap my head.
“It’s all in here . . . and that’s not the only place it lives anymore. ”
His eyes widen, and he backhands me. My head snaps to the side, and for the briefest second, I can’t believe he did it.
Then I turn on him, punching him in the jaw. His meaty hand wraps around my throat, and I narrow my eyes as he squeezes. “What? Trying to get me to call you Daddy, too?”
“Holy fuck,” August mutters from somewhere behind me, and someone else I can’t identify hisses in shock over the radio in my ear.
York appears, stepping out from the plastic sheeting and crossing the road. Sniper rounds zip through the air, and the two cuffed agents stop moving to my left. Jeffries jerks his gun away from me, and it arcs wide toward York.
“Relax, boys.” My voice strains under his grip as I raise my own gun.
A shot fires, and then I’m firing, right into Jeffries’s head.
His hand slips from my neck, and I stare at his body on the ground in front of me. It feels murky, slow . . . The air around me feels too thick to wade through until someone grabs me from behind, and I flail.
“Stop.” August's voice cuts through my panic. “York.”
Eyes wide, I look around me. Jeffries is down, the three agents are down and . . . My eyes dart to the road. York is down.
“No,” I whisper and tear out of August’s grip. I jump over the cuffed agents and scramble to the road, dropping down beside York.
“Shit,” I blurt out as I grab onto him. There is a hole in the front of his right shoulder, and despite the dark jacket, I can see the bloom of blood around it growing rapidly.
“On three,” August says, breathing heavily as he comes up beside us and slips his arm under York. “We’ve got to go. That virus has been delivered by now. Their whole system is melting down, and we’ve got to be the hell away from here.”
“Yeah.” I work my arm under York and count. On three, we tug him up and get his arms around our necks.
“Fuck,” York groans weakly.
“Inbound,” Carter barks in our ears, and I squint at the volume.
Shuffling, we turn York as a car screeches around the corner, pulling up right in front of us. We get in, me first, resting York’s head on my lap as August squeezes in behind us.
Carter peels away again, and I rummage through my tactical vest until I find some field dressings. Tearing them open with my teeth, I press them into York’s shoulder and then feel around the back only to discover there is no exit wound.
Not good.
Still, my hand comes away bloodied despite it. I stare at my fingers confused and then frantically tilt him away from me and look again. The back of his head is split open and bleeding. It probably smashed against the road.
Not. Good.
“Head trauma,” I say loudly as I press another dressing to his skull.
“Fuck!” Carter slams his hand on the steering wheel.
We tear through the small square, stopping on the corner. William jumps in the front seat, and we tear out of there.
“How is he?” He looks over his shoulder at York and then up to me.
“Not good.”