Hired to Kill (The Nathan McBride Series Book 7)
Page 11
Shit! She’d just wasted five seconds, close to ten now, and missed an opportunity to take whoever was out there by surprise.
Brilliant, Jin, just brilliant.
The opportunity gone, she slid the dead bolt back, crouched, and cracked the door a few centimeters. Because it swung to the right, she couldn’t see more than a small sliver of the alley. What she wouldn’t give for one of those little dentist’s mirrors right now. From what she could determine, the alley wasn’t wide. It might allow two small cars to pass side by side. Just left of the door, piles of bagged trash, big metal recycle bins, and flattened cardboard were stacked against the diner’s wall. She had no idea what lay to her right.
There wasn’t time to debate her next move. She needed to be unpredictable and aggressive.
Because the door had a self-closing piston, she reared back and kicked it with a prolonged force, like doing a quick leg press at a gym.
As predicted, the door flew outward, but it didn’t swing completely freely.
It didn’t matter.
The sound it made was glorious: the thud of kinetic energy being transferred to someone’s head.
An AK skittered across the oil-stained concrete.
Its wielder fell to his knees, clutching a bleeding nose. She saw the source of the blood drops in the hallway. One of her bullets had passed through the man’s hand.
Off to her right, an engine started.
She pivoted through the door and caught sight of a white minivan. No more than twenty meters away, it lurked on the opposite side of the alley. No other cars or trucks were in sight.
She thumbed the MP5’s firing switch to its semiautomatic position and sent single rounds through both of the bludgeoned man’s rotator cuffs, purposely missing the arteries. The blunt force trauma of being hammered by a metal door coupled with the fresh damage to his shoulders proved too much. He curled into a fetal position, moaning in agony.
Jin was sorely tempted to shoot out his knees as well, but she had to deal with the minivan first. She didn’t think it a coincidence its engine had fired up the same instant she appeared in the alley.
Clasping the same kind of compact AK, the driver’s left hand extended through the window. Fortunately, a Kalashnikov can’t be easily controlled with one hand. Only the first few shots would be on target because an AK’s recoil causes it to climb when fired.
Needing cover, she ducked back into the hallway as the Russian weapon roared. Multiple rounds blasted through the opening before the piston could close the door.
Whoever controlled that AK had to be strong. He’d managed to score four hits inside the hallway, all at chest level.
She stayed in a crouch, waiting for the next pause in gunfire to make her move.
Another burst rang out after the door had closed. Supersonic slugs sliced through the metal veneer, punching more holes in the drywall.
To anyone in the surrounding area, the rattle of fully automatic gunfire had to sound like an active war zone. And for Jin, that’s exactly what this was.
She had little doubt it could be heard all the way to the steps of the Capitol. At this location, the law enforcement response would be fast and immense. Rifle fire in downtown Washington, DC, would draw every available police officer—and personnel from other agencies as well.
How long should she wait? If the driver pulled alongside the door and fired again, the bullets would come straight down the hallway. Without ducking into the men’s room, she’d have no cover. Going out there now might be akin to suicide, but she couldn’t allow the two surviving gunmen to escape. One way or the other, this needed to end.
She pushed the door open with her left hand and rolled out, coming up on one knee.
Moving faster than she thought possible, the minivan’s driver shoved his AK out the window again. She’d never be able to line up on him in time.
This could be it.
She dived to her left and landed on a pile of bagged trash as the gunman opened fire. He obviously knew his stuff, firing in short controlled bursts. Shoot. Recover. Shoot. Recover.
If he’d been able to fire with both hands, she’d likely be dead.
Her luck ran out when something punched her leg just below the knee.
You just took one, Jin. And with your elevated heart rate, it’s going to leak. A lot.
No time to dwell on it. She needed deeper cover.
She scrambled over the top of the trash bags and burrowed into a low spot next to a rolling trash container. Above her head, dozens more 7.62-millimeter bullets punched through the container’s metal surface. She heard breaking glass and something else being destroyed inside the bin, but thankfully, the slugs didn’t ricochet down to her position. She’d once heard her father refer to American cities as “garbage factories,” and she was now glad they were. Saving her from certain death, the pile of bagged trash outside the container acted like the protective mound of a foxhole, but not all of the trash would be solid enough to stop high-powered rifle rounds. Only a matter of time before a bullet found its way through.
Pain.
It arrived in her calf like an electric shock. Crap, just what she needed. Another distraction. She was no stranger to bullet wounds. Her skin bore the scars from many over the years.
Forget it. Stay focused. Lauren’s life is still at risk.
Right now, she was the only force keeping the murderers from returning to the diner to either retrieve their dead, finish off any survivors, or both. Someone had obviously wanted to enter the restaurant, or they wouldn’t have knocked on the door.
In sporadic bursts, the gunman kept firing, and it was really starting to piss her off.
She covered her eyes as chunks of brick and mortar blew out from the wall above the mound of garbage. Some of the shrapnel stung her arms and torso. More leaking to come. Until the salvo ended, she’d have to endure the mind-numbing assault—which seemed to be lasting way too long.
Screw this.
Jin came up and aimed at the minivan.
The attacker’s AK spit white fire again, but the salvo went high.
The shooter must’ve just run out of ammo because he pulled the AK back inside the window.
This would be so much easier if she didn’t need this loser alive. She could easily drill him in the head from here, right through the windshield.
She saw the man freeze in indecision, probably wondering why she hadn’t fired.
He must’ve realized he’d never get his weapon reloaded in time because she saw him toss it to his right and slump down, making himself a smaller target.
The man on the ground continued to writhe in agony.
For extra firepower, she thumbed her MP5’s switch to the three-round-burst position.
The driver of the minivan didn’t do anything for several seconds. For an instant, she thought he might actually surrender, then dismissed the thought as ridiculous.
His next move would be one of two things: race forward and try to plow her, or throw it in reverse and try to escape.
Why not make the decision for him?
Jin had done tens of thousands of push-ups in her life and was about to find out if all that upper-body strength training would pay off.
She tucked the gun into her waist, forced herself into the tight gap between the trash container and the wall, and shoved its two-meter-long form forward.
Not knowing how much the thing weighed, or if it would even move, she gave it everything she had.
Success!
It rumbled forward. Too easily.
The container impacted the building on the opposite side of the alley and bounced back a meter or so.
Good news and bad news. She had the result she’d wanted—the container now blocked the driver’s path forward, but it left her completely exposed. She hadn’t expected it to move so freely.
Time to be aggressive again.
She hobbled directly toward the minivan, purposely firing high as she advanced.
The drive
r looked over his right shoulder, threw it into reverse, and gunned it down the alley. When he swerved back and forth to make himself a more difficult target, the minivan began fishtailing.
Things got more complicated when a delivery truck entered the alley and blocked the gunman’s escape.
Even though her right calf stung like all hell, she managed to maintain a pretty good pace. From the look of things, she wouldn’t have to run much farther.
The minivan continued to fishtail in bigger and bigger arcs, until the driver lost all control.
Its right front fender smacked the brick wall of the building on her left.
Metal crunched, glass broke, and plastic shattered.
Simultaneously, she heard the loud bang of the minivan’s airbag detonation. Perfect.
Temporarily stunned, the driver would need a few seconds to recover. Still in reverse, the minivan slowly crept across the alley at a sharp angle and stopped when its rear bumper found the wall.
The delivery truck froze about twenty meters inside the alley, its driver understandably shocked by what he saw: a wounded and bloody Asian woman armed with a machine pistol pursuing a reversing and out-of-control white minivan. Not something you see every day.
She formed a new plan, but it would have to be executed to perfection.
In six more strides, she’d be at the minivan.
Her idea went south when the truck began backing out of the alley in a big hurry; its reverse beep was nearly drowned out by its diesel engine noise. She hadn’t expected the driver to react so decisively or quickly.
There was no way she’d have time to disable the minivan’s driver and make it to the truck in time to kick the driver out and commandeer his ride.
With the truck out of the equation, she concentrated on the minivan.
Her leg felt weak, and the squishy wetness in her shoe confirmed it bled freely. She’d have to tie it off soon.
Her gun stayed up as she closed on the van, taking a wide berth to her right to create a better angle to shoot the guy if needed.
Stunned from the airbag deployment, the guy looked at her with an expression of uncertainty and fear, a good sign.
He looked Middle Eastern and fairly young—college age or a little older. He wore a pullover shirt with some kind of logo on the chest.
Screw him, Jin thought. He’d gone from predator to prey. He’d be fully realizing that soon enough.
Jin kept her machine pistol pointed at his face and yanked the door open. He held his hands up defensively, as if they could stop bullets. The empty AK sat on the passenger seat next to him.
She said nothing as she drilled him in the left knee.
Oops. She’d forgotten the MP5 was set to its three-round-burst mode.
What a shame.
His knee took three rounds rather than one.
She glanced back to the diner and saw the man she’d bludgeoned with the door. Looking like the victims inside the diner, he writhed in agony. She hoped he wouldn’t pass out. Yet.
A quick look in both directions confirmed the alley remained empty. No one had entered, and no one stood at either end watching the action. She couldn’t blame them. Automatic gunfire tended to scatter people.
Covering the wound with both hands, the man sitting behind the wheel of the minivan looked extremely unhappy.
Nine-millimeter slugs traveling faster than the speed of sound did a tremendous amount of damage to bone, cartilage, and ligaments. Not fatal unless an artery was severed. Agonizing, yes, but not fatal. This loser had a bona fide date with pain beyond anything he could possibly imagine. And part of her hoped he wouldn’t spill his guts too quickly.
To make him manageable, she had to render him semiconscious. She’d never be able to stuff him into the back seat otherwise.
In a calculated blow she’d performed many times, she drove the butt of her MP5 into the guy’s forehead. Clunk. The result immediate, the man went limp.
She glanced into the cargo area of the van. Its third-row seats were folded down, and five bags sat back there.
Five gunmen. Five bags. She felt confident there weren’t any additional threats.
The wailing siren she’d heard earlier had grown in volume.
She yanked the gunman out of the driver’s seat, dragged him to the rear sliding door, and pulled the handle. The automatic door moved in painfully slow motion, so she forced it open, not caring if the mechanism broke in the process.
Though small, this guy wasn’t light. He probably weighed seventy-five kilograms. Again, Jin was going to find out if all her strength training would pay off.
Ignoring the pain in her calf, she hoisted him up by his collar and belt, got his torso onto the floor of the passenger area, and climbed in to finish the job. It was a whole lot easier pulling him than pushing.
More echoing sirens had joined the fray. The closest one sounded less than a minute away, but she still had another gunman to collect. Out of time, she torqued the sliding door closed and climbed into the driver’s seat.
The delivery truck was long gone. Its driver would likely report what he’d seen to a 911 operator right away. With a little luck, the truck driver might get a busy signal. Hundreds of people had to be calling to report automatic gunfire, which meant every arriving cop would be high-strung and suspicious of anyone they encountered.
She couldn’t do anything about the minivan’s damaged front fender or scraped rear bumper except stay close to cars in front of her once she left the alley.
She drove forward, stopped next to the downed gunman, and climbed out. Grunting in pain, she limped over to the bullet-ridden door.
The loser with the destroyed shoulders hissed at her in Arabic.
She pointed the MP5 at the man’s knee, was about to pull the trigger, and then remembered the weapon was still in its three-round-burst mode. Why not? she thought. Screw him.
The nine-millimeter screamed again, causing another groundswell of thunder to crackle across the city.
She didn’t know what was louder—the triple report of the machine pistol or the man’s cries of agony.
Not wanting him to bleed out before the cops arrived, she decided to spare his other knee.
After opening the door to Mabel’s and ripping the tape from its latch so it would lock, she yelled, “Mabel, tell the police there’s a wounded attacker out here. You got that?”
“Got it!”
Her hands. They were quite literally covered in blood. She stepped into the hallway and entered the men’s restroom to wash her hands as best she could in three seconds. The blood swirling down the drain should’ve bothered her more than it did because much of it was her daughter’s.
Was her heart that hard?
She avoided looking in the mirror before leaving.
What’s the matter, Jin? Afraid of what you’ll see?
Before leaving the hallway, she called out, “I love you, Lauren; I always have.”
She entered the alley, made sure the door wouldn’t open, and pulled away in the minivan. Her thoughts returned to the sobering image of Lauren clutched in the protective grasp of her dead father. She could hardly believe he was gone.
This whole thing felt like one of the many nightmares she regularly endured. But this one had a different ending—she’d been able to fight back. She wasn’t bent over a steel table with her wrists and ankles manacled to its legs. There weren’t multiple prison guards drooling, laughing, and sneering. The stink of their breath . . . their black, lifeless eyes . . .
Not this time. During this real nightmare, she’d been unchained and unafraid. If Lauren had ever doubted her mother’s mettle, she wouldn’t now. Jin had just proven you didn’t have to cower and hide. You could fight back and win. If she didn’t survive the next few hours, she hoped Lauren would remember her in a positive way—fearless and capable.
A sudden wave of rage took her. She smacked the steering wheel hard enough to hurt her wrist.
None of this was her fault!
The man behind her was going to pay for his crimes with open-ended pain.
Jin Marchand was no stranger to interrogation. If this man knew who was behind the attack, he was going to tell her. Common household items worked quite well. In the right hands, a pair of scissors became an awe-inspiring tool of encouragement.
Resisting the urge to speed as she exited the alley, Jin turned right, glad she’d washed most of the blood from her hands. Plenty of cars, taxis, and small trucks filled the road, but because of all the howling sirens, they eased along slowly.
Jin had no idea where the closest police cruiser was. She thought it was behind her. And it might not be the police. It could be a fire engine or an ambulance. Either of those would have to stage at a safe distance until the police arrived and secured the scene, which meant a slight delay tending to Lauren’s arm.
The stinging throb in her calf reached a peak. She didn’t think an artery had been cut, but she was leaking at a pretty good pace. Her wound made her think again about Lauren and her father.
Stone had given his life to save Lauren.
She now wished she’d called him Dad.
Too late now . . .
Setting the unwelcome feeling aside, she concentrated on driving. She needed to put several miles between herself and Mabel’s Diner within the next few minutes or risk ending up trapped inside a roadblock. A glance over her shoulder confirmed her prisoner remained unconscious. Had she clocked him too hard? If so, she might not be able to conduct a proper interrogation. She’d need him fully awake.
Still battling the urge to speed, she turned left at the next intersection and scanned her surroundings with her eyes only. So far, no one walking or driving had focused on her.
Unfortunately, there were literally hundreds of traffic signals all through downtown DC, and she seemed to arrive at every one of them while it was red. Jin wasn’t super familiar with DC but made the decision to head west on Constitution. She thought crossing the Potomac and going north on the George Washington Memorial Parkway would be the best way to put the most distance between herself and Mabel’s in the shortest amount of time. To avoid the streets immediately adjacent to the White House, she went straight through a couple more intersections before turning south.