Into the Fire(111)
She was untouched. All four operators lay heaped in the doorway.
He released her, and she staggered to the side, one knee buckling, her face blank, stunned. The spilled contents of her briefcase littered the floor at her feet. She stared at the bodies.
“I’m the one they…” Her voice went husky and guttered out. “They were going to kill me.”
Two of the men’s pistols lay on the floor. One operator hadn’t yet cleared leather, and the fourth had died with his gun in his hand.
Evan dragged them in, kneed the door shut behind them, and took a moment to steady his breathing.
He had counted a straight dozen men spilling from the van outside Max’s apartment. That left eight more out there. He’d brought plenty of extra mags as well as the FN Ballista in case the clash went rangy, but right now he needed to figure out where the other operators were positioned.
He crouched over a body, reached behind the still-warm ear, and clicked the bone-phone to speaker.
“—repeat: Confirm target is neutralized. I’m eastbound on Grand, circling around for pickup. I have Little Bird in hand if we need to shift to B plan.”
A charge went through Evan, snapping him upright.
Mia’s shock evaporated as it hit her, too. “‘Little Bird’? Is that … Do they mean Peter?”
Evan recovered and sprinted to the giant windows, looking down on the traffic grid of the surrounding streets.
He spotted the white van in motion below.
It blurred, and he grabbed his face hard, squeezing his eyes, and then let go.
“What are you doing?” Mia asked. “Are you okay?”
He ignored her, his focus on the road below. He calculated.
Then turned. Mia wobbled on her feet, her back to the wall, using it to prop her up.
“White cleaning van,” he said. “It’ll be at the corner of Seventh and Grand. You’ll be clear.”
Her lips firmed as if to fight down panic. “How do you know?”
He said, “I know.”
“I’m unarmed,” she said. “What am I supposed to do?”
Evan was already on his knees before the Hardigg Storm Case, pulling the twenty-six-inch fluted barrel from the foam lining, mounting it on the receiver, and quick-locking the suppressor. He looked up at her, a wisp of hair falling across his eyes. “Go to your son. Draw them out. Everything else is on me.”
She stared at him. Swallowed down her terror.
And bolted out the door.
Evan finished assembling the Ballista, configuring it for the .338 Lapua chambering and slotting in the ten-round box mag. Then he cycled the bolt, flung open the balcony door, and set up on the railing. His right pupil was still blown, but he could use his preferred eye—a bit of luck on this endlessly luckless mission.
Behind him the bone-phone squawked. “Team One, come in, over. Team One? Team Two, come in.”
Way below, the white van coasted out of view. It would emerge any second onto Grand.
He didn’t have a range card for the new rifle, but it had been zeroed at four hundred yards. He needed to range the target, so he swung the scope, looking for a standard-dimension object. A half second later, he locked on to a stop sign near the kill zone.
City stop signs are standard anywhere in the United States. Thirty inches across the red octagon. White border just shy of an inch. Five feet from the bottom of the sign to the pavement. Using the stop sign as a measurement reference point, Evan calculated his hold-under and cosign compensation and focused in on the scope. At three hundred yards, if he held under ten minutes of angle, he’d be right on.
The white van emerged beneath him, a dot in the stream of traffic driving directly away. An optical illusion made it appear to be rising before him, an air bubble in an IV tube. It disappeared behind a high-rise. Materialized on the other side.
An image rushed him—Peter in the back of the van, his charcoal eyes flat with shock. Maybe they’d knocked him out for ease of transport.
Had they taken him from his school? Removed him with a show of false authority and the flash of a badge? Or simply snatched him from a sidewalk?
They’d taken him as a contingency plan to control Mia if the execution didn’t go smoothly in the hotel. And once Peter was no longer necessary, they would handle him the way they’d handled Grant Merriweather and Lorraine Lennox and anyone else who’d gotten tangled in their web.
At the thought Evan’s heart rate quickened, a thumping in his neck. A headache spread its steel fingers through the back of his skull.
And then—all at once—the view through the scope got soupy.
He pulled his head away, his face washed with sweat. Not now.
He blinked hard and put his face back onto the stock, in line with the scope. The van was a blur, moving among other blurs. The road was full, and as his vision doubled, it grew fuller yet, phantom vehicles appearing and blending into one another. It was hard to tell which were real and which were illusory.
Five minutes of clarity. That’s all he required.
He ripped two autoinjectors of epinephrine out of his cargo pocket. Gripping them side by side in one fist, he popped the blue safety caps off with his thumbnail. Then he rammed the needles straight through the fabric of his pants into his outer thigh, holding them in place until a double click announced that the doses had administered.
Warmth surged through him, rolling up his stomach and chest, setting his mouth tingling. His vision snapped into focus with a sudden heightened lucidity.