Chapter 6
SIX
Adam spotted a guy at the far end of the hall wearing black fatigues and a red bandana tied over the lower half of his face, carrying a high-powered rifle. He ducked back behind the T-bend in the hall too fast to clock anything more than gun.
“All we have weapon-wise is beanbags.” Adam gritted his teeth. “Marina, kill the lights in the whole facility.”
Dan whispered, “Hit him in the face. It’ll incapacitate him.”
The building rocked around them. Static crackled on the comms channel, and Marina came on. “They’re circling again, coming around to hit the building again. Ice is—I don’t know what Ice is doing.”
Ash and Kai swept out a door at the far end of this branch of the hall.
“Marina, the lights?” Adam lifted a hand and signaled that there was one guy to the left, down that branch of the hall. He’d have to look again to see whether the guy was coming or going, or just guarding the door at the end of the hall that was their way out.
Ash nodded once in response to his hand signal, indicating he understood, but still a frown crinkled the dark skin of his brow. “Ice went off comms.”
Kai had Hawaiian features, but there was nothing sun, sand, and relaxation about his demeanor right now. “What is he doing?”
These two were always the quickest to make a joke—when they weren’t under fire. Probably why Adam preferred to pair with Dan, along with the persistent need to keep a close eye on where Dan’s head was at.
All the lights flickered and went out, plunging the hall into darkness. Adam’s backpack shifted behind him as someone dug in there, and a pair of night vision goggles touched his shoulder. He grabbed them out of Dan’s hand, then felt his buddy pull out the other pair.
Adam checked the hall. “I don’t see him now.” The guy could have ducked into a side room or gone back upstairs. “Ice had better watch his back.” No one was out there to do it for him, so Ice had to be cautious and not get himself killed. “Otherwise, I’ll be annoyed.”
Ash flashed him a signal.
At the same time, they swung around opposite corners of the left branch of the hall, ready to fire. Guns up. Shoulder to shoulder almost. Ready to face off with a guy carrying a high-powered gun while all they had was freaking beanbag—
Adam killed those thoughts and started down the hall, Dan behind him. He kept pace with Ash, who had Kai behind him.
The Hawaiian said, “Why do I get the feeling this whole thing was a setup?”
Adam gritted his teeth. The hall in front of him forced him to tunnel vision, killing his ability to see a threat coming from any other direction.
Door to his left.
He squared up on it and swung his gun in first. “Clear.”
They continued down the hall, and the building shook around them. Marina said, “The entrance Kai and Ash used is off the table as an exit.”
“We need to keep searching for the security guards.” Adam had left one in the hall near where he came in, but where was the other? “Once we get them out, we’ll be gone.”
Dan patted his shoulder. Adam let him pass and glanced back to the T-bend in the hallway behind them. Clear. Kai kept his attention on their rear as they proceeded down the hall.
“Stairs?” Dan asked.
“We need to go up one floor,” Adam replied.
“It should spit us out close to the security office.” Problem was whether they would encounter serious resistance.
They needed to get out without engaging guys who had live rounds.
“Any indication whether this chopper team is part of the security exercise?”
Ash shook his head. “Ain’t no way. They’re tearing up the building, taking potshots.”
“Making it look real,” Marina said. “They’re probably trying to flush you guys out.”
Adam frowned. “Let’s get the guards to safety. Then we’ll figure out who these people are and what happened to Ice.”
Dan and Kai cleared the stairs, and they headed up. Even treading lightly, their footsteps echoed up the stairwell.
“They’re in the hall.” Dan kept his voice low.
“Push through,” Adam ordered.
It was a risk, but they couldn’t be stuck here pinned down in a stairwell. They had to make progress, and with the lights out, at least they had an advantage. So long as this other team didn’t have night vision.
Dan grabbed the door handle and hauled it open fast so that Ash had the element of surprise, going through the door first. He squeezed off a shot, and someone screamed. A thud. One down was one less combatant to worry about.
Kai ducked into the hall behind them, and Adam heard the sounds of a scuffle. A gun not loaded with beanbag rounds went off, the triple snap of a semiauto popping like fireworks in the hall. Flashing so that he had to shut his eyes against the light.
Adam swept through after them and squeezed off his own shot.
He caught the guy wrestling with Kai in the back of the head, and they both went down.
Swung his gun to the left and fired again at another guy in black fatigues, a dark-colored bandana on the lower half of his face.
Braids wrapped around his head as he spun and fell to the floor. No time for him to fire.
Ash was across the hall in the security office. “Come on!”
Adam saw him drag the guard from a crouch behind the desk and haul him toward the door. “Let’s go,” he said in Spanish. “We’re getting out of here.”
A flicker of recognition passed in the guy’s expression. Sure, Adam spoke gringo Spanish he’d picked up here and there, not the Spanish more prevalent here in Argentina that sounded almost Italian. But panic was a universal language, as was, Let’s get the heck out of here.
Adam radioed, “On our way out,” and headed for the door at the end of the hall with the others behind him. “Give me a route.”
“You won’t like it,” Marina said.
“Pretend I might.” Far as he could see, there were limited options.
“There’s a woman between you and your exfil. She’s the only one not wearing a face covering. I ran her features through my facial recognition program.”
“So who is she?” Adam stopped at a door marked EXIT in glowing red letters, the only light in the hall. A door with that universal push bar across the middle. Close enough to being outside that he could almost smell the fresh air.
“No hits.”
Adam flinched. “Nothing? How is that possible?”
“The only way is that she isn’t in any database my program can worm its way into—”
“Which is practically every database on earth,” Kai said.
Marina continued, “Neither is her image anywhere on any social media.”
“Because nothing is private,” Kai added.
Adam shot the guy a look. Kai lifted both hands like, Fine, I’ll give it up. “Marina, seriously? In this day and age?”
“Right, let me just run your face through the same program. Hmm, no hits. That’s surprising in this day and age. Probably because I scrubbed your face from every database I found, and that was after the military decided that you suddenly didn’t exist.”
Adam said, “Point taken.”
The last thing he wanted was to discuss anything that concerned how the military had ended his “life” or what would happen if he was caught by a particular subset of the US government. The small group that wanted him either dead, or as good as dead.
Adam rolled his shoulders, trying to rid himself of the feeling of being trapped.
Marina said, “She’s on the other side of that door, waiting for you to come out. And she’s holding Ice hostage.”
“Then I guess we give her what she wants. Get our boy back.”
“Is that a good idea?” Marina asked.
“Is ‘good’ even a qualifier I need to worry about for my ideas? Can I just worry about effectiveness?” Adam paused. “Or do you have another door I can use?”
Ash turned. “Kai and I will find one.”
“You don’t know what she wants,” Marina pointed out.
“So I’ll ask her.”
“And if this isn’t just part of the exercise we were hired for?”
“We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.” Adam took off his night vision goggles. “Count to three and give me lights again.”
“…two…one.”
Adam eased the door open. “We’re coming out!”
He yelled it in English but didn’t know what language these people spoke or who they were. The guy who owned the company they’d been hired by was Polish and only visited this facility once a year—according to what they’d been told. They’d done everything through an intermediary.
Adam emerged into a courtyard with the main building behind him and two long wings on either side, leaving a forecourt in the center lined on the left with a couple of cars and a van.
First thing he saw was Ice, his expression distinctly unhappy. Yeah, Adam wouldn’t be either if he was being used as a hostage.
The woman stood behind Ice, wearing skinny black jeans and a brown leather jacket. Long dark hair with thick heavy bangs that touched her eyebrows. A stud glinted in the side of her nose as she shoved Ice forward a step, toward Adam, a pistol pressed against the underside of Ice’s chin.
She stared at them as Adam kept a steady pace toward her, his gun angled down but ready—and she knew it. Sig versus beanbag rounds? Yeah, this was gonna be great.
He had one member of his team with him. A security guard under their protection.
Above them, or behind him—where he couldn’t see without turning to look—the helicopter hovered.
Angling its guns at them, probably. He didn’t relish the idea of being shot in the back, but dying alongside his teammates was the best way he could think of to go.
Sorry, Roxie. His sister had been a US Marine, and so had her husband. Now they were feds. They would understand.
Adam stopped a car’s length from her. “You’re in my way.”
Ice got himself into this, and the second Adam showed concern for his friend, this woman would know she held all the cards.
“Yes, I am.” She shifted her weight from one heeled boot to the other. “I’ll take the drives. Everything you downloaded from inside. Then I’ll be out of your way.”
“You have ID? ’Cause we’re not supposed to turn the program over to anyone but them.”
Adam glanced over his shoulder at the chopper, the rotor blades pulsing overhead. The craft was angled to the right, so the pilot and a guy in the doorway—slid open—pointing what was probably a 50-cal at them. He turned back to the woman. “So …who are you guys?”
A tendon in Ice’s jaw flexed, and his hand reached for his pocket.
The woman sneered. “I’m the person who is going to kill you and all your friends if you don’t give me what I want.”
Ice slid out a pen-shaped device and clicked it, pointing it up at the chopper. Adam caught a glimpse of green laser, and at the same time lifted his shotgun and fired at her face—the only clear shot.
The beanbag round hit Ice’s shoulder, and he fell back, along with the woman.
The sound of the helicopter rotors got louder. It swept toward them, and the 50-cal sprayed bullets that hammered the asphalt. Adam rammed into the two of them and slammed the woman’s head on the ground as more heavy rounds pounded around them.
“Go!” He didn’t have time to turn before Dan smacked into him, dragging him up and shoving him along. Getting him out of the line of fire.
Adam got Ice up, aware the guy was now bleeding from two places.
As a group they raced for the closest vehicle, and Adam ducked between them, getting low. But they weren’t going to be out of sight of the gunner on that chopper. The gunner would just spray bullets at the car. Eventually, he’d hit one of them.
Adam called over his shoulder, “The guard?”
Dan ducked down right as bullets slapped the roof of the car over their heads. “Square in the chest. He’s gone.”
Adam hurried around the front end of the vehicle. “We need a way to do more than just distract this chopper, or we’ll never get out of here.”
He kept to the shadows, trying to stay where the helicopter couldn’t get to them, then stopped with his back up against the van’s rear doors.
The aircraft circled away, probably trying to come in for a different angle.
Dan tried the rear door on the van, but it didn’t open. Adam eyed the fire escape against the building—not far but at the same time probably farther than he could go without getting shot.
Ice let out a frustrated cry. “Ouch.”
Adam looked over, and the guy lifted a pistol.
“What? She didn’t need it.”
Dan tsked. “Thou shalt not steal, bro.”
“Tell her the murder one if you get a chance. I don’t think she knows about that one.” Adam took the pistol. “Both of you stay here.”
A woman’s cry, more anger than pain, came from the middle of the forecourt.
“She’s up.” Ice shuddered.
Dan said, “I think you made her mad.”
Adam looked around the back left corner of the van and made a run for it along the side of the building. Glass shattered to his right and a guy in black clothing flew out of a window onto the asphalt.
Kai and Ash jumped out of the window after him, keeping to the wall on that side of the building.
The helicopter flew overhead, but Adam didn’t think the gunner could see Ash and Kai from that angle. The aircraft would have to come all the way around, and right now Adam was in the crosshairs.
Just the way he liked it.
Adam tore up the fire escape, his boots pounding on the metal stairs. At the top he ducked down, waiting for the right moment and taking a second to check the pistol.
When the chopper was close enough, he raced out onto the roof and raised the gun up in the air. He squeezed the trigger over and over, pushing out round after round at the underside of the helicopter, hoping—maybe even praying—that he’d hit the fuel tank.
The gunner swung the barrel around to aim at him.
Adam dove onto the roof and rolled, heard the helicopter engine whine over him, and wrapped his arms over his head.
Bullets hammered the roof around him.
Wind whipped at his clothes, and the scream of the rotors struggling filled the air. The chopper whined through the sky, plummeting fast, and hit the ground in a ball of fire. Followed by a boom that shook the whole building.
Adam rolled to his back and stared up at the stars. He’d died more than once before. Eventually, it would happen for the last time. “Not today, I guess.”