Flynn backed away from the door. He couldn’t see into the basement, so any kind of attack was madness, despite holding the high ground. Hutton was waiting behind him.
“Pitch black,” he whispered.
Hutton held out her hands. They were balled into fists. Flynn held out his hand and she dropped military grade glow sticks into his palm. He nodded. She had thought of everything. Glow sticks worked via chemical reaction, which determined how long they lasted. The brightness was a function of the temperature. Warm weather meant a brighter glow. In the tropics one stick would do. Hutton had given him three. And she had warmed them up some.
Flynn cracked the sticks and tossed them into the basement. At the three corners he could hit from the top of the steps. He didn’t wait. He spun through the door and angled his Glock across the space. It was lit a familiar eerie green. One side was rock work. The outside wall of the basement. The rest had been finished in drywall. He moved down the steps. Saw a dormant hot water system in the far corner. Then a door that he guessed led to the garage. He dropped the last few steps onto the concrete floor and spun back toward the other end of the room. One corner of the room was an empty green. The glow stick gave off enough light to almost reach the ceiling. And enough to almost reach the space beneath the steps. Enough to show an irregular shape protruding from the shadow under the steps. Irregular for a basement. Not irregular for the human eye. Flynn knew what it was immediately.
A human shoulder.
“Freeze,” he said, extending his Glock at the space just to the right of the shoulder. The middle of the torso that he couldn’t see. The person grunted again, this time louder, like they knew they couldn’t hide now. Hutton picked up the glow stick from the corner behind Flynn and tossed it toward the person. It skidded across the floor and came to rest under the steps, illuminating the person from below, like a horror movie. They were chained to the wall, hands tied behind, feet wrapped in the same kind of tape Flynn had used in the drug den the night before.
Flynn lowered his gun. Hutton did not.
“It’s a woman,” she said.
“Not just a woman,” said Flynn. “It’s Beth.”
Chapter Twenty
Flynn ran forward.
“Beth,” he said.
In the green glow, he saw fear stretched across her face. She recoiled from him. He stopped moving. Considered it from her point of view. He was a wet formless mass, his poncho waving about, the only solid part of him the Glock in his hand. He dropped to his knees and grabbed the glow stick Hutton had tossed under the steps, and he held it to his own face.
“Beth, it’s me. It’s John.”
He watched her face tell the tale as her brain worked it through. Fear became confusion, confusion became hope. Hope burst through. He saw the tears form in her eyes. He edged forward. She had tape over her mouth.
“Try to lick your lips.”
Beth frowned but did as he suggested and licked the tape away from her mouth.
“This might hurt a little.”
Flynn pulled the tape from her face. He didn’t see the logic of extending pain by doing it slow. Beth gave a yelp.
“John,” she said. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”
“I’m here. Let me get you out.”
He pulled out his Glauca knife and cut the tape around her feet, and then used the cuff cutters on the knife to remove the plastic cuffs around her wrists. He yanked on the chains. The kidnapper had placed a standard handcuff on her left wrist, then attached the other end of the handcuff to a chain. Flynn used the glow stick to follow the chain to the wall.
“It’s attached to a pipe,” Beth said. “I couldn’t break it.”
Hutton stepped out of the shadows. Beth recoiled again and Flynn put his hand on her shoulder.
“This is Laura. She’s a friend.”
Beth gave Hutton a look of distrust.
“We can get those off,” said Hutton softly. She pulled out her little coin purse and removed a key. She unlocked the cuff on Beth’s wrist and Beth threw her arms around Flynn.
“I can’t believe you’re here.” She hugged him tight and then suddenly pulled away. “What if she comes back?”
Flynn frowned. “Who?”
“The kidnapper.”
Flynn shook his head. “I thought you said she.”
“I did. My God, I can’t believe you’re here.”
“The kidnapper was a woman?”
“Yes.”
Flynn looked at Hutton and she shook her head.
Hutton said, “Whatever, let’s get out of here. We can talk later.”
“Can you walk?” Flynn asked.
Beth nodded.
Flynn helped her to her feet. He took the lead, Beth’s hand in one of his, his Glock in the other. Hutton brought up the rear with her Glock held down but ready. Flynn led them up the steps and paused at the door. It was habit more than anything. Never just waltz through an open door. But there was something in his dinosaur brain, a prehistoric notion, a gut feel. Something was different, as if the atmospheric pressure had shifted. He stopped for a moment. There was no sound other than the rain, which didn’t seem to have dissipated. He picked up the tiny vibrations that people give off, their breathing and movement and component molecules putting microscopic waves into the air. But that was all expected. Beth was hanging just short of a panic. She was giving vibrations off like crazy.
Flynn glanced right toward the front of the house as he stepped into the wide living area, and then moved to the left. Toward the rear of the house. They would exfiltrate the same way they had come in. Always less footprints that way.
The shot hit him in the leg.
Right on the hamstring, which contracted immediately and pulled him to the floor. He dropped Beth’s hand as his entire body was wracked with pain. It pierced through him as if he’d been hit by lightning. He convulsed massively, writhing and flopping on the hardwood floor. He’d never had a heart attack, but he wondered if he was having one now. He thought it would be more localized to the chest. But this was unrelenting and all-engulfing. He felt it to his fingertips. And it wasn’t just his body. He was sure that his brain was frying, like a potato in a microwave oven.
Hutton heard the shot. It was all wrong, but there was no time to think about it. She grabbed Beth by the back of her suit jacket and pulled her back into the basement. Hefted her around on the landing and pushed her down a couple of steps. Then she turned back, two hands on her weapon, back hard against the wall, which she reconsidered. It was nothing more than two sections of drywall. A bullet wouldn’t lose but a fraction of its momentum going through it and into her, so she crouched low on the step and edged up to the landing.
Flynn heard the footsteps about the same time as the agony began to abate. His brain was the first thing to kick in, although it was doing a full reboot and was a long way short of full capacity. Life support systems only. He realized that he wasn’t having a heart attack. He knew he had been shot. But he’d been shot before and it hadn’t felt like this. With a gunshot the shock reached right across the body, but the pain was focused on the entry point or the exit point, or both. In his case it had been both. He had been shot during an attempted coup in Central Africa. From a distance, a rifle shot. Still enough velocity to puncture his chest and collapse a lung and continue into the wooden wall of a building behind him. It had hurt and it had damaged him. Sections of his chest and lung and rib bones remained in the wall. In the Legion there was a concept known as Français par le sang versé—French by spilled blood. Legionnaires injured during service were offered French citizenship. It was an offer Flynn had never taken up. But he recalled the pain. And this was not that.
This time he had been shot in his leg. He felt for the location as he saw a black-clad figure approach above him. The figure was dressed in an urban tactical assault uniform. Black from top to toe, with black body armor, on which were numerous pockets and webbings and sheaths. The figure looked down at
Flynn through a single eye that Flynn realized was the business end of night-vision googles. The figure held a shotgun across his chest. A Mossberg. It was the only thing on the figure that wasn’t all black. The stock and the fore-end both glowed in the darkness as if they were bright yellow. It didn’t make sense. And then Flynn’s hand arrived at his hamstring.
A shotgun wasn’t like a rifle. It didn’t fire a bullet—in and out. It was closer to an incendiary explosive. It spewed pellets across a wide arc, indiscriminate and unfocused. A Mossberg from close range could take a man’s leg right off. At best, Flynn’s hamstring should be a bloody mess. But it wasn’t. There was no blood, no mess. But there was a shell. It was stuck into his leg like a genetically modified super bee.
“Confirm, X target is down,” said the black-clad figure, pointing the shotgun at Flynn.
Then the figure’s shoulder exploded.
He was thrust across the room from the impact, and blood rained down over Flynn, splattering across his poncho. He watched the man hit the floor and then turned to the basement door and saw Hutton crouched there, her Glock hot in her hand. Then it all fell into place. For reasons he couldn’t begin to fathom in his current state, the assault team had fired nonlethal rounds. He’d seen them before but never used them. Never had cause to. If it got to the point that he had to fire his weapon, he generally didn’t care if the other guy ever got up again. But the assault team did. He’d been hit by an electronic round, like a Taser XREP, but more powerful. It was a shell that could be fired from a standard shotgun, but instead of opening up and spraying lead pellets everywhere, it fired a capsule topped by electrodes that lodged in its victim and shot an electric charge through them. It was designed to immobilize, not kill.
From somewhere toward the front of the house, Flynn heard someone call out.
“Y target has live rounds.”
Flynn shouted to Hutton, “Nonlethal rounds.”
He couldn’t see her face, but he guessed she wouldn’t take it well. The guy she’d shot had a weapon. The shooting was righteous. She couldn’t see the yellow stock denoting a shotgun whose firing pin had been reconfigured such that it could only fire nonlethal rounds, not a regular shotgun shell. No way for her to know that. But that wouldn’t make her feel any better. The special agent in her took those things seriously.
Hutton edged forward.
“You’re okay?”
He could hear the amazement in her voice. She had expected major damage.
“Severely annoyed.”
“Did you say nonlethal rounds?”
Flynn tried to speak, but the sound of the doorjamb erupting into a thousand splinters above Hutton’s head rendered him mute. She fell back on the landing. Flynn realized he had heard the tap-tap-tap of a triple burst. An automatic weapon. Not a nonlethal round. Not this time. But he was lying on the floor, open and vulnerable. He looked up and saw nothing but darkness. Clearly the assault team, whoever they were, all wore night-vision equipment. Probably heat-based. In a cold house on a cold night he would be lit up like a deer in the spotlight.
But they didn’t shoot him. He lay there begging his eyes to work harder, to no effect. But they didn’t fire. He leaned toward the basement.
“I can’t see.”
Hutton got the point. She always did. That was one of the things he liked about her. She cracked two night sticks and threw them around the corner, into the living area of the house.
Another figure stood there. It was the same look all over again. Tactical assault gear, night-vision headwear. The figured held a weapon. Impossible to say exactly what it was. Maybe an M17, or perhaps an HK416. But it was possible to tell what it wasn’t. It wasn’t a Mossberg. It wasn’t a shotgun. That was for damned sure. And its stock and fore-end were as black as the rest of the room. Not yellow. Not in the slightest.
Flynn sat straight up, bending from the core. As he did he brought his right hand around to the front. In it was his Glock 17. The electronic burst that had shocked his body had caused him to clench his fist, right around his firearm. Now he fired one-handed. Not his preferred method, not in the dark with a recently fried brain. But the target was close and he was a decent shot. Not sniper material, but as good as anyone in close quarters. He fired three times. Fire burst from the muzzle. He saw the figure begin to move, brain kicking into gear. But there was nowhere to go. An open room. No furniture.
Flynn kept his shots low. The body armor the figure was wearing would stop a 9mm Parabellum. But there was no armor on the legs. The fire burst blinded him but he heard the dull thud of a round splattering into flesh. The figure cried out in pain, hit and down but clearly not dead. Flynn checked the room for any other figures but found none.
“Let’s go,” he said to Hutton.
“They’ll be coming from the rear too,” she said.
“Yes. So keep low. Behind the island.”
Hutton grabbed Beth’s hand and yanked her up the steps and out of the basement. Flynn stayed in his sitting position, Glock outstretched, watching for more gunmen. Hutton dragged Beth past him toward the rear of the house. He waited two seconds and saw no further movement. The figure in the living room had fallen on his rifle. He gripped his leg. He wasn’t firing again anytime soon.
Flynn spun to his feet and took four long strides and found Hutton crouched by the corner leading into the kitchen.
“Someone’s there,” she said.
“Light ’em up.”
She held up a flashlight, for Flynn to see. She was out of night sticks.
“Strobe,” she said.
Flynn took a breath. “Go.”
Hutton went up and Flynn down. She held the flashlight around the corner of the wall and trained it on the kitchen and flicked it on. It was a powerful unit. The light would have been seen miles away in an open field. But they weren’t in an open field. They were in a suburban kitchen. The space exploded in cold light. It was blinding to everyone. But it was worse to the guys in the assault gear. They were facing it, and they were wearing night-vision equipment. Their world burst into a disorienting whiteout. And then not. The flashlight was in strobe mode. Alternating bursts of light and dark, like flash bangs without the bang. Blindness and confusion. For a second or two.
Flynn charged across the end of the kitchen island toward the bank of sliding doors. Focused his vision on the middle of the kitchen. On no one thing in particular. The flashlight pulsed on and he saw the first guy. He was on the rear side, by the windows. The side Hutton had come along when they had first entered the house. Then absolute darkness. Flynn kept moving. A second burst of light. The first guy held a weapon. Maybe a shotgun, maybe not. No time to tell. Not in a split second of light, not using peripheral vision. But Flynn saw the yellow stock. Then darkness again. He was halfway across the opening to the kitchen. A third burst of light. A second guy. Farther back, against the hole in the wall where the oven had been. More darkness. More light. The second guy had a rifle. All black.
That meant the second guy would be first, and the first guy would be second. Flynn dropped below the end of the kitchen island and skidded on the polished wood floor. He was two seconds into it and getting up to fire over the top of the counter, when the second guy opened fire. The guy couldn’t see, that was for sure. He was shooting blind. But he’d recovered from the initial disorientation and knew the source of the strobe light, so he swung his rifle in the general direction and opened fire. It was loud in the empty room, and the sound of rounds discharging added the bang to Hutton’s flash. Drywall and wood splattered everywhere and Hutton dropped the light.
The guy kept firing. He should have stopped. He should have retreated down behind the opposite end of the long kitchen island. But he stayed standing, firing his weapon in Hutton’s direction. Her flashlight hit the floor aimed square and true at the gunman. He was lit up, and then not. And then lit again. He only stayed firing for a couple of seconds. But it was a couple of seconds too long. Flynn swung his arms up over the top of
the island. His Glock swept by the first guy in light toward the second guy in darkness. The next burst of light saw him aiming at the second guy, who had finished firing at Hutton.
Flynn started low. The first shot might have just missed the countertop itself and hit low on the wall. He let the recoil lift his hands as he fired again a little higher. And again, higher still. In the strobe it looked like slow motion, like an old movie box where the viewer turned the handle to make the movie run past a lamp. The guy was launched backward, firing into the ceiling as he went. Flynn knew he had a hit, but he didn’t spend time thinking about where or how bad. Instead he turned back toward the first guy, who had become the second guy because of his shotgun.
When a tactical team made an assault, they made sure they were fully equipped. And if they intended nonlethal force, like a civilian SWAT team might do, they made damned sure the guys carrying the nonlethal weapons had secondary weapons with what Hutton would call stopping power. Flynn rotated and saw the guy. He had changed his mind. To hell with nonlethal force. He had dropped the Mossberg and was reaching down for his sidearm. In full light he wrapped his hand around the butt. In darkness he began pulling it out of its holster.
And in full light again his head exploded.
There was no angle to aim low, so Flynn aimed for the torso. He got it wrong. The shot went high and up through the guy’s chin and out through the back of his head and deposited a crucial part of him into the crown molding at the top of the wall. Flynn dropped so his armpits were hard against the corner of the countertop, and surveyed the room. It was like watching a series of snapshots, each one the same. No one appeared, no one fired. He didn’t wait around for anyone to start.
“Follow me,” he said to Hutton. Hutton pushed Beth forward so she was behind Flynn. Despite the situation, Beth wasn’t panicking or screaming. Hutton picked up her flashlight and flicked it off.
Flynn pulled the door open and scoped the rear lawn. The rain made hearing enemies impossible. But there was a little more ambient light outside, and he swung his Glock from one side to the other and then back. The space was empty. But it was surround by trees. And it was fifty yards to the tree line. A lot of open ground. If they went across the backyard.
Burned Bridges Page 17
