Retribution (Secrets & Lies #3)(62)
Isis opens her mouth to reply when suddenly a ripple of gunfire tears apart the kitchen window and I duck, bullets and glass flying everywhere. Peter half-turns, ducking as well. “What the f*ck?”
“We're under attack, you damn idiot!” Isis yells, cocking her rifle and pointing. “Go, cover the side of the house!”
Isis returns fire, ducking behind the kitchen cabinets and shooting out the shattered kitchen window. I can see a man running across the empty grass between the bayou swamp and the front of the house, and she shoots him, his head exploding in a wet rain of scarlet and his body dropping. I stare, horrified, and Isis glances back, her eyes wide and her lip curling. “Go! They'll be circling around!”
Peter nods and grabs me by the arm, dragging me with him even as I kick and fight, but he cracks me across the face again and I'm dazed, dragged along with him toward the back of the house. “They'll be coming here,” Peter gasps, his breath whistling in his chest, bringing his rifle up. I go to move away and he kicks me, knocking me to the ground and putting his foot on my neck and jabbing the barrel of his rifle against my head. “Don't move, and you might just see them go first.”
The gunfire continues, and someone starts screaming in pain, a high-pitched scream so high I can't tell if it's a man or a woman. I hear a crunching, massive explosion outside, then silence before the next volley of gunfire, and Isis is screaming in French. She doesn't sound hurt but rather angry and in full-on battle mode, and whoever's she's facing is in a world of pain.
Peter's muttering to himself, so fast and frantic I can't tell what he's saying, but suddenly a crash comes from the direction of the bedroom I'd been kept in, and the barrel of his rifle lifts away from my head slightly. “If they get me, I can still get you,” Peter rasps, giggling madly. He's totally over the edge, and I wonder how the man could be driven so insane, but then there's heavy footsteps in the bedroom coming toward the hallway, and Peter yells. “Stay back, or else I blow her f*cking head off!”
“You do that, and you miss your chance at me... Pops,” Jackson says from the shadowed hallway, stepping out of the bedroom, a strange-looking gun in his hand. “You don't want to miss out on that, do you? After all, I'm the one who started all this shit for you.”
Peter gulps, and I can't see anything except Jackson walking toward me, and in the background more flashes and shots from the kitchen. But I feel Peter's foot relax just a little bit, and Jackson lowers his gun. “Come on, Pops. I'll even make it fair, you can have at least a chance.”
“You're right,” Peter hisses, taking his foot off my neck and stepping to the side. “You did start all of this.”
“No, I did,” Katrina says from the side door, a pistol shot cutting off the end of her words. Peter falls to the side, and I stare at his empty eyes as his body hits the floor, a neat hole in the middle of his forehead. I roll away in disgust, and Jackson's there, helping me to my feet. Katrina kicks in the door and helps me the rest of the way up. “You okay, 'Lissa?”
“Yeah,” I say, hugging Jackson. “Oh God, you guys came!”
“It ain't over yet,” Jackson says, turning and raising his rifle.
Katrina puts her arm around my shoulders and triggers a microphone on her shoulder. “We've got her.”
A crackle comes over the radio, and Nathan's voice comes back. “Isis is out of the kitchen, neutralizing her now.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Nathan
The last time I had an automatic rifle in the swamp, I was twenty-two, crawling through the jungles of Panama, supposedly trying to help catch a drug kingpin. What I was really doing was crawling through muck up to my chin most of the time, chasing minor players in the game while the big guys were supposedly our hosts and supporters. Oh, we may have taken down Noriega, but that didn't mean the man in the president's office wasn't just as f*cking corrupt as before.
This time though, I'm fighting for something worthwhile, and I check my MP7, quickly borrowed from one of the Major’s men. Our plan is rough but simple. Paul, Harold, Buffy, Jim and I are supposed to frontally attack the house, drawing Isis and hopefully any of the other guns toward there. Anticipating that Peter will be a chickenshit and want to keep Melissa alive as a bargaining chip, Jackson, Katrina, and Lincoln will envelop the house in a pincer movement. Carson is going to act as a long-range support sniper and to make sure Peter doesn't call in any support. Andrea's sitting a mile away in the van on the computer, making sure the local cops aren't responding by jamming the local cell phone towers, a hack that Darcy uploaded to us just minutes ago.
“You sure about this?” Jim, who's taken command of Major Munchak's forces here on-site, asks softly as we look over the fifty yards of empty space between our current hiding place and the front of the house. “You don't want to do a knock-knock?”
“We approach as quiet as we can, but I can't believe Isis would be so stupid as to not have something around the house. Ground radar, booby traps, something. Andrea and Katrina may have shut down anything she's got networked, but she's not a one-trick pony. She's too goddamn good.”
Jim nods and scans the land with me. “Still, I hate rules of engagement like this. Hostage rescues are always tough. Did too many of the f*cking things in the past.”