by Dees, Cindy
He scowled. “I hear Tavors are as good as an M-16.”
“Better. As effective as a sniper rifle out to around 350 meters. Low profile and maneuverable for urban assault ops. Lighter and shorter than an M-16, and the weight’s concentrated back by my shoulder. Great weapon for a woman.”
McCloud looked shocked as hell that she could converse intelligently about a rifle.
“Chauvinist,” she muttered.
“What’d I do?” he protested.
She didn’t deign to answer. “Are we gonna stand here all night making small talk, or are we gonna move out?”
“Stay behind me,” he ordered. “If I hold up a closed fist, freeze. Open hand, palm down means to get down. If I grab my wrist and then flash you a number, that’s how many bad guys are located where I point next. If I twirl my finger by my head like this,” he demonstrated, “that means get ready to go.”
“And if I stick up my middle finger like this, it means stop treating me like a fucking amateur because I know standard military hand signals.”
A snort of laughter escaped him before he managed to glare at her. He drew his thumb and index finger across his lips and then used both hands to air draw a pair of giant breasts in front of his chest. “This one means shut up. You talk as much as a woman.”
She held up her pinkie finger, bent at the middle knuckle, and didn’t bother to translate that one.
They’d gone about two blocks, gliding from shadow to shadow, when shooting broke out somewhere ahead of them. It was distant, more of a rattle than distinct gunfire sounds. Mike ducked into an alley, and she sprinted to its other end behind him, pleased that she was able to match her steps exactly to his, masking the sound of her passing. He paused at the other end, listening and watching.
Their shoulders rubbed together and his body heat was tangible. Weird how reassuring his presence was beside her. The moon wasn’t up yet, and the night deepened around them. More gunfire erupted, this time from behind them. And close. He signaled for her to get ready to move out. She nodded, and they stepped out into the street.
All hell broke loose when they were about halfway down the block. Gunfire erupted on both sides of the street, muzzle flashes exploding like firecrackers. As for her, she’d have ducked back into that alley. But McCloud sprinted forward and she had no choice but to follow.
The gunfire intensified into a deafening cacophony, worse than a firing range full of machine guns. McCloud dodged to the left into a recessed storefront and she careened after him, almost losing her balance, he turned so abruptly in front of her.
“Get down!” he ordered.
She crouched beside him.
“Get inside this store. Quietly if you can. I’ll cover you.” He glided forward, toward the front of the dark cave of plywood that used to be display windows.
He was trusting her with a real job? Cool. Of course, now she had to come through and deliver or else lose his respect in the last two minutes before they both lost their lives. They were trapped in this doorway unless she could open the door at their backs.
She moved in for a closer look. An iron grille covered its outside, a plywood sheet its inside. Locked, of course. She didn’t have her lock picks with her, and besides, she wasn’t very fast with picks. She pulled out her pistol, aimed carefully, and waited until a loud burst of gunfire erupted nearby. She sent a bullet into the lock. The sound echoed around in the confined space twice as loud as a regular gunshot.
“What the hell are you doing?” McCloud bit out. “I said quietly. Are you trying to get us killed?”
“I’m trying to get us an escape route out of the dead end you led us into.”
She gave the door a tug. The lock was damaged but not quite destroyed.
“Get it open now…here come about eight guys.” Double taps started reverberating from immediately behind her as McCloud commenced picking off the incoming hostiles. One. Two. Morbidly, she counted them in her head as she whipped out her Tavor for a sustained burst of lead. Three. Four. She held down her finger long enough to send two dozen rounds into the door. Five. It was a horrendous waste of her limited ammo. But they were going to die if that door didn’t fly off the hinges in the next few seconds. Six.
“Got it,” she called out over the sounds of the seventh cluster of shots. Damn, Mike was a good shot.
“Fall back. Get inside!”
She ducked inside a cavernous, utterly black space. Warehouse, maybe. Squinting in the darkness and unable to make out a damned thing, she crouched against the wall beside the door. A large shape barreled through the opening beside her. Mike. She felt him more than saw him.
“Go right!” she called over the barrage of gunfire nipping at his heels.
While Mike dived and rolled to the right on command, she spun into the doorway and fired a spray out into the street. Two figures flew backward. Neither moved. She yanked her weapon up and spun to the left side of the doorway.
McCloud jumped back into the opening, his MP-7 at the ready. He reached forward and yanked the remains of the door shut. Complete blackness enveloped them. A momentary lull in the shooting settled around them.
“Stay here,” he ordered. “Kill anyone who tries to come through that door.” He fumbled around for a moment, but she couldn’t identify what he was doing by the sound of it. Then he moved off quickly into the void. Great. The bastard was leaving her to guard his retreat while he got away.
Except as soon as the thought crossed her mind, she dismissed it. He was a natural-born hero wannabe. He would never leave the woman behind. It was a sexist attitude on his part, but tonight she wasn’t going to pick a fight with him over his subtle misogyny.
In the faint hint of light seeping past the splintered plywood, she made out Mike coming back to her side. He shoved a long something, a piece of wood maybe, through the front door handles. The wood caught on each side of the door frame. It wouldn’t keep anyone really motivated from shooting their way through the door, but it would slow down a hostile for a few moments.
She made out something else. A bulky block protruding from the middle of Mike’s forehead and covering his eyes. Night vision goggles. Her first reaction should have been relief. But honestly, it was chagrin. She didn’t have NVG’s, dammit. A prepared operative would have brought some.
“Grab my belt,” he muttered.
Great. Just what she needed. To be led around in the dark, blind and helpless, completely dependent on him for her life. Resigned to his smugness when they got out of this mess, she did as he bid. He moved out fast. She stumbled along like a drunk, her fist clenching his belt like a damned lifeline.
And then, all of a sudden, his belt dropped toward the floor, all but wrenching her arm out of the socket as she was yanked down with him. Off balance, she fell on top of him. Mike rolled on top of her fast. She lost her grip on his belt—not that it mattered, since she knew precisely where he was located from her collarbones to the tip of her toes. Every hard, heavy, muscular inch of him.
A hand clapped over her mouth. She started to fight, but then realized from the angle that it was Mike’s hand.
He breathed, “Still got that cloth wrap thing Mala gave you?”
She nodded under his hand.
“Very quietly, spread it over us. We’ve got company.”
Five
Mike looked around in the lime green gloom of what used to be some sort of clothing warehouse. Abandoned clothing racks littered the space, along with chunks of plaster and concrete fallen from the ceiling. But of much more interest and alarm was the red beam of infrared light that had slashed through the space a moment ago.
Invisible to the naked eye, infrared lasers were attached to weapons as sights. The shooter then wore a special pair of goggles that allowed him to see the ubiquitous red dot on his target. The trick was to be wearing the right goggles. It just so happened his French Thales goggles had an IR mode, and it just so happened he’d had it activated when that line of infrared energy sliced acro
ss the room.
As Piper wiggled and squirmed, trying to get her cloth shawl thing spread across them, he eased out from under her and rolled over. They had to be plastered together side-by-side for the cloth to cover them both, but they ended up side-by-side on their bellies in prone shooting positions. Of course, without NVG’s, Piper was blind as a bat. And a blind sniper was about as useful as a virgin in a whorehouse.
Something warm and moist touched his ear. He jumped, then settled when he realized it was Piper’s mouth. Jeez, it was weird working with a woman!
She breathed, “Who’s out there?”
He answered as quietly, “Infrared targeting beam. I think it came from the side window. Dunno if the shooter saw our heat signatures or not.”
“Give me a room layout.”
“Twenty feet wide, sixty feet front to back. Door we came in is at seven o’clock and forty feet. Clothing racks and shelving are scattered behind us. Exit eleven o’clock. Desk to the left of it. One window, two feet wide by three feet tall, chest high, your eight thirty position. No glass in the window. Plywood covering. One more window your one o’clock. Partially covered with wood. Lotta debris on the floor.”
“In other words, we’re fish in a barrel.”
He opened his mouth to answer, but the infrared beam sliced across the room again, zooming toward them like a jackal scenting fresh meat. He grabbed the back of Piper’s neck and shoved her head to the floor. His cheek pressing into cold concrete, he watched tensely as the red beam skimmed inches above them and passed by.
Piper whispered, “Do you have a shot?”
“No visual on the shooter.”
“I’m useless in these conditions, and we’ve got to draw this guy out. I’ll make a run for the back door. When he pops up to shoot, you take him out.”
He hissed, “Are you nuts?”
“You got a better idea?”
“I might not get my shot off before he kills you.”
He felt her slender shoulder shrug upward beside him. And then her lush mouth settled disconcertingly against his ear again. “It’s your reflexes against his. I’ll take my chances that you’re faster. It’s better than lying here until he spots us and waxes us both. He obviously saw us come in here or he wouldn’t be looking so hard.”
Unfortunately, her assessment was correct. But he hated like hell to use a civilian—a woman—as bait. It went against every protective instinct ingrained in his gut.
“Ready?” she murmured. Her hands came up under her chest preparatory to pushing up. “You call it.”
He lowered his eye to his rifle sight and trained it on the window ahead of him. “Go on three.”
“Good shooting.”
He waited until the infrared beam started another sweep, this time toward the front of the warehouse. “On my mark.” He sighted in on the source of the beam. “One.” Utter relaxation flowed through his entire body. “Two.” He began a long slow exhalation. A final sigh of breath, “Three.”
Piper jumped up and took off running. She bumped into a stack of packing crates, which she pushed to the floor. She swore loudly and kicked some debris around with her foot. On cue, the infrared beam swung toward her.
C’mon. Show yourself. The sniper wasn’t moving into sight in the window! Piper was going to die for nothing!
“Dive!” Mike shouted at her. He jumped up and charged the window. Piper took a running fall, rolling into a shelf unit with a grunt. The beam was still on her. Dammit!
With a wordless shout, he rushed the window, shooting randomly through the glass. Finally, the beam of death swung toward him. The shooter came into view, a white blob of heat. Mike didn’t think. Didn’t stop to aim. He just took a flying leap and, laid out in mid-air, weapon still plastered to his eye and shoulder, took the shot. He double tapped the trigger, but the first shot vaporized the shooter’s head.
He landed hard, the weapon slamming into his shoulder. His entire right arm went numb. “You okay, Piper?” His NVG’s had been knocked askew and he couldn’t see her in the sudden dark.
“Yes. You?”
“Five by five. Stay where you are. I’ll come get you.”
He climbed to his feet, his right arm starting to sting like hell. He yanked the NVG’s back down over his eyes, gave them a whack, and they came back on. The French might have their foibles, but they made sturdy military optics. The room lit up in lime green. He made his way over to Piper and reached down for her.
“You okay?” she asked as he pulled her to her feet.
“Yeah. Why?”
“Sounded like you went down hard.”
“I’ve walked fifty klicks on a broken leg before. I’m fine.”
“That’s right. I forgot you’re a miracle of modern testosterone.”
He rolled his eyes and led her to the back door. “Doesn’t look boarded over from the outside. If we bust the lock, it ought to open.”
“Be my guest, Macho Man. I’m as blind as a bat.”
“Bats see pretty well, you know. And their sonar puts eyesight to shame.”
“Whatever. Just get the door open and let’s get out of here.”
He used his sidearm, a 9 mm Beretta, to blow the lock open. Quick look left and right. Alley. No hostiles in sight. He got his bearings and moved off to the right, toward his hidey hole.
The gun battle raged one block over now, but they were able to move mostly unimpeded. They ducked down another street and, without warning, somebody took a pot shot at them. But the bullet winged way wide of them. Probably some terrified kid. Who needed bedtime stories when a real-life drama like this was playing out under your nose? Hell of a way for kids to grow up.
“You got a flash bang?” she muttered.
He blinked, startled by Piper’s question. “Yes.”
“We need a diversion to get across this street. Yesterday when I was scoping out this area, there were at least a dozen rebels strolling around as if it were home sweet home. I think that sniper who just tried for us isn’t alone.”
Good thing she’d run a recent recon in this neighborhood. It had been a solid week since he’d eyeballed this sector. He pulled out a flash bang—a grenade designed to create mostly noise and sound. He murmured, “When it blows, you run for it. I’ll cover you. When you reach that alley over there, turn and cover me. I’ll be right behind you.”
She nodded grimly.
He couldn’t believe he’d just said that. He was entrusting his life to this civilian female. “Five second delay,” he muttered. He pulled the pin and lobbed the grenade. He muttered, “One monkey. Two monkey…”
When he reached four, she took off running. Right about when any lurking snipers could acquire her as a target, the flash bang blew. She swerved, righted herself, and kept on running. Grimly, he jumped off the curb and sprinted for Piper. He was a sitting duck. Every watching eye on the whole street would be trained on where that explosion had just happened, and unlike her, he didn’t have the distraction of an explosion to make them miss their shot.
He was startled when a muzzle flash lit up from the mouth of the alley Piper had just dived into. Another one. Two more in quick succession. Cries accompanied each shot. If she was actually acquiring and hitting hard targets with each of those shots, she was as fast as a pissed off rattlesnake. He dived for the darkness beside her and rolled against a mud wall as the ground behind him exploded in a puff of dirt. Damn, that had been close.
“Thanks,” he grunted.
“No prob. Let’s move out before any of these jerks decide to rush us.”
“The way you were picking ’em off? Not likely.”
Nonetheless, he climbed to his feet and took up a point position. Abruptly, his back felt a whole lot safer. That girl was hell on wheels with a firearm.
They had to sprint the last block full out as some sort of armored vehicle cruised into the area. He highly doubted it was the government trying to restore order. More likely, El Noor had a new toy and was looking for some building
s to blow up.
Mike jammed his key in the lock of his front door and leaped through it as a small tank came into sight. Piper lurched into him and he kicked the door shut behind her just as the armored vehicle’s spotlight swung at his building. Jesus, that had been close. The embracing darkness of the stairwell wrapped around them. Safe. For now.
Piper panted against him and their chests collided as he, too, sucked wind like mad. The deep silence of the thick walls around them was almost a shock to the senses after the chaos outside.
“We good?” she gasped.
“Yeah,” he replied, nearly as winded as she was. “Nice job out there.”
“Hark. Was that a compliment out of the badass commando?”
“Don’t make a big deal of it or I won’t give you any more.”
He felt her smile in the dark as warmth and amusement rolled off of her. An urge to pull her close and kiss that smile into oblivion nearly overcame him. But no, he was not going to repeat their last adrenaline fueled hook up. He knew better.
Damn, he’d missed her.
More to the point, he’d missed human contact with someone who had something in common with him. The same language, the same country, the same political allegiance. It didn’t hurt that a friendly face came packaged in such a sexy body that was all fiery female.
Mentally fighting a surreal battle with himself over sex or no sex, he climbed the long staircase and unlocked the upstairs door, letting them into his abode. Piper sighed in relief behind him. The soft sound fluttered down his spine like a lover’s touch. It was gentle and feminine in the midst of his hard-edged, razor sharp world. Foreign. Frightening. Fantastic.
He felt as if he was falling in slow motion, gradually losing his mooring to reality. Women did not exist in his world, and he did not let outsiders of any gender into it. And yet, Piper was sliding past his defenses seemingly without effort, as easily as breathing. With each inhalation, he was drawing her a little deeper into his life. And it scared the living crap out of him.
