Hellfire Drop (Brimstone Cycle Book 2)(14)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Glass explodes inwards, and despite being seated more than five yards away, I see broken pellets of glass patter against the floor at my feet.
Someone in the darkness outside of the window is trying, one handed, to pull Three Letter Agency into the night. Judging from the revolver in one of her hands, and the knife in the other, it’s a presumption that she doesn’t take lightly.
Carnage, in the form of close quarters fights, comes next. It’s the kind of violence that I’ve only seen on rare occasion before. The kind that happens in the most base and desperate situations, when the enemy is nose to nose. Knuckles crack on bone, and the sound of meat thudding into meat echoes through the high ceilinged room.
Neither Three Letter Agency nor whoever’s fighting her have enough space to use a weapon effectively. The woman grunts as she struggles, dropping her weapons in favor of fists, but her breathing stays even. The expression on her face is calm, maybe even beatific, despite the strain going on. Experienced killers are sometimes like that, even when caught by surprise.
In the end, which comes no more than five seconds after the struggle began, the woman’s training isn’t enough to bring her out on top. I hear a loud, ugly crack, like a tree branch snapping, and she lets out a clenched hiss of pain.
The driver in front of me abandons his position, launching himself towards the wounded woman at the window. He runs up at an angle and slams into her with a tackle that yanks her out of the attacker’s grasp and sends both of them onto the floor.
There’s a familiar pop, click, hiss of a holster clasp coming undone about a heartbeat before the driver lifts his own pistol, a simple Glock, and fires into the night. I hear a gunshot, two gunshots, three, from a few yards away. The shock of the gunfire flows out through the room, making my ears ring with pain. I’ve got good enough hearing to pick up the new stillness in the building, though. The struggles between the mercenaries and the attacker have stopped. The fighting, sudden and fierce as it was, is over.
“You good?” the woman asks the driver. Her voice comes out surprisingly calm, as if having her arm broken was a regular and boring experience.
I can hear the driver breathing deep as he inspects the woman’s wound.
He gasps, sucking in air. “Yeah, I’m good.” He says. “Your arm’s broken, though.”
“It’s fine.” says the woman. “I’ve got a spare.”
“Hold on.” says the driver, before coming back towards me. He bends low and digs into a bag in the corner that I hadn’t noticed before. I see weapons inside, including a KSG shotgun. He takes it out, checks the chamber, then loops the bag’s stap over one of his shoulders. Three Letter Agency comes over to my chair while he does. She doesn’t quite point her gun at me, but it’s clear that she wants me where she can see, and shoot, me easily if need be.
“You ready?” asks the driver, the question obviously not directed at me.
“Almost.” says the woman, before coming closer and bending down towards me.
“I’m going to cut you loose.” she says. I look down, and see a revolver held firm in one of her hands. “Stay put while we take care of this shit and I won’t have to put a bullet in your head.”
I nod at her, silently promising to do as she says. I honestly can’t tell if I’m telling her the truth. Can’t tell if I’ll have the guts to sprint for an opening if I see it. The night is oppressive, dark, and maybe teeming with beings even worse than these three mercs.
There could be others out there in the darkness. People looking for me. At least the mercenaries haven’t taken the luxury of beating or otherwise torturing me. There’s a few opponents out there who wouldn’t be so accommodating. For now, I think, I’ll be staying put.
The woman nods to me then stands up and walks closer to the driver, carrying on as though she wasn’t harboring a broken arm. Damn, she’s seriously tough. The driver, to his credit, refuses to put down his shotgun and fiddles, one handed, with the light he’d used to blind me earlier. It takes him a moment, but eventually he has it turned back on and angled to shine light out of the now broken window.
A man’s shape is standing outside, not five feet away from the building. Blood and gore covers so much of his face that it’s impossible to make out his features, save for a smile. The image is the stuff of nightmares and horror movie fodder.
It’s also a clear silhouette in plain sight of two mercenaries who have no qualms with shooting first and asking questions never. Three Letter Agency and the driver open up on the man, pumping shots into him as fast as the recoil of their weapons will let them. The driver even goes so far as to run his shotgun dry before switching to his sidearm, which I can now see is a Glock 19 identical to those I’ve stashed in safe houses and supply caches from here to Timbuktu. He throws another thirteen rounds of 9mm into the man before his pistol locks back, empty. Only then does the man in the window slump and fall down to the ground.
The driver doesn’t waste time trying to reload his shotgun. KSG’s can be finicky things to fill up, and a trained man like him can replace Glock magazines in about the time it takes for me to blink.
“Moving.” he says a moment before he starts approaching the window. His steps are careful, but manage to cover the ground at some speed. In no time he’s at the window, peering out and over the edge.