by Juno Rushdan
Everyone put in soundproof earplugs. Gideon flicked off his Maxim 9’s safety. The last traces of distraction dissolved in a jolt of adrenaline. His pulse quickened, his muscles tightening in readiness.
They swept down the hill in a V formation, wearing sleek tac helmets, bulletproof vests, and gas masks in preparation to breach the entrance and pop smoke.
Within seconds, they were in position at the front of the building, facing south.
Men around the perimeter had dropped to their knees, covering their ears. Some rolled on the pavement, shaking as if on the verge of having a seizure. Gideon hated that Laurel was inside suffering along with these scumbags, but the sooner they got to her, the better.
Off his left flank, Castle and Reece took out the mercs on the west side of the building in a controlled sweep of muzzle-suppressed fire.
Alistair and Ares planted trackers on the vehicles parked around the building as a contingency in case anyone slipped through their fingers. They prepared for everything.
A guy staggered out the main door, hands clamped to his ears, stumbling toward an SUV. Gideon put him down with a single shot to the head.
The team flattened up against the brick facade of the building on either side of the doors, and Reece whipped out stun grenades. A tap on Gideon’s shoulder drew his attention to Ares pointing at three dead bodies—mercs who’d snuck up from the northeast side. Ares had clipped them, despite not being able to hear them close in.
Razor-sharp instincts made the team the best and helped keep them alive.
But how had the mercs managed to get that far with tympanic disruptors active?
Ares yanked out his earplugs with no side effects and signaled for them to do the same.
“What happened to the crippler?” Gideon asked.
Ares shook his head. “The devices wouldn’t malfunction. Signal must be jammed.”
Putting a communications earpiece in, Gideon checked one of the channels. No static. No pulses. But no chirp in response to the ping he’d sent through either, as though all signals had been swallowed into a perfect void.
The hairs on the back of his neck prickled. “A smart jammer.”
He took out the security device that’d monitor the mobile trackers. Bright red dots were lit up on the screen. It had GPS antijam tech, but he wanted to make sure it hadn’t been affected.
“Something next-gen like that isn’t easy to come by,” Castle said. “It must be big and powerful if the radius can cover the entire warehouse.”
Gideon backed up, testing the perimeter of the jammer. Fifteen feet out from the building, the next ping he sent through comms squawked in return.
He marked the zone with a hand signal for the others and hustled back.
“We’re outmanned five to one,” Castle said. “They’re well-armed, and we just knocked.”
“But I bet we’re better-looking.” Alistair’s face was deadpan.
Gideon heaved a breath. “What’s on the other side of the building? Is there a fire escape?” he asked Ares.
“There are a couple of parked cars and a fire escape from the roof down two stories with a pull-down ladder. It’s old, rickety as shit, and not hanging on by much. I don’t think it’ll support any body weight.”
“Okay. No way Laurel is on the ground floor. A sure bet the jammer is upstairs along with her and Daedalus. Ares and Reece, breach the rear doors on the north side.” Reece was the best with demolition and could get them in quickly. “We’ll enter here. It’s going to be a combat zone. They’re armed to the teeth. If we disable the jammer, we can end this cleaner and faster.”
Everyone agreed and holstered their 9mms in their thigh rigs, opting to use their SIG MCX Rattlers instead. Since this was no longer going to be a simple walk-in and cleanup, they needed something with a greater kick. The suppressed compact submachine guns strapped across their backs were chambered in .300 Blackout rounds—hollow-point and subsonic with pretty sweet knockdown power.
“Let’s do this,” Castle said.
Ares and Reece went around to the other side.
It was rare for the team to work in such a large group, but when they did, they functioned like a well-oiled machine. Hardcore synergy.
Castle pulled the pins on two stun grenades from his pack and pitched both inside the building through broken windows. A barrage of bullets fired outside and sprayed the steel door. In five seconds, a devastating bang of 185 decibels and eleven million candelas of flash, followed by white smoke, would go off. Anyone standing close to it would have ruptured eardrums and temporary blindness, and everyone else would be distracted.
Try to jam that, motherfuckers. Gideon counted down with his hand. Five. Four.
The front doors to the warehouse blew off and a glowing projectile shot past them, hitting a tree. The trunk exploded into cinders.
Holy hell. They had RPGs.
The stun grenades inside detonated with a concussive boom.
They had to move now.
Gideon gave the go signal. He, Castle, and Alistair flowed inside, peeling off in different directions.
Dense smoke wafted throughout the entry of the industrial space, not reaching the high ceiling where metal ductwork ran in heavy rows. Dark figures skated in between concrete pillars and rectangular cases, digging in for the fight.
Gideon knew how his team would maneuver across the wide warehouse floor based on their special operations training and his years working alongside them.
He eased to the far wall, looking for a different angle to exploit.
There wasn’t much to take cover behind. Risking exposure was necessary if he was going to find an avenue to gain the upper hand. He followed the path of the ductwork along the ceiling to a wall and series of pipes.
Gunfire came from the far side of the space. Controlled bursts, teams sweeping in toward the entrance where the rest of his team were no doubt picking off targets.
With signals jammed, they were operating in the dark from one another, but everyone was capable enough to pull off this op lacking comms without hitting a friendly. Even Alistair.
The one equalizer—the mercs were functioning blind too.
An explosion came from the north, followed by more automatic fire. Reece and Ares were in.
Gideon skirted the wall, scanning for hostiles, until he hit a barrier. A half wall, maybe an office or, from the heavy industrial look of the space, an old clean air room used to house special AC equipment.
He shook a pipe connected to the wall, testing the stability. Solid. He holstered his gun and scrabbled up, using the bolted brackets for footholds and handles. Sweat dripped from his forehead under the gas mask, rolling down his temples, pooling under his chin.
There was a four-foot gap between the pipe and office-type structure. He pushed off the pipe, grabbing onto the top of the self-contained space. Hoisting himself onto the roof, he didn’t make a sound. Plenty of clearance to the ceiling, and the position was well above the cloud of smoke obscuring the front half of the space. The rest of the floor he could see clearly.
Gideon stood but stayed low and ripped off his mask to better survey things below.
Reece and Ares were quickly turning the foes in their vicinity into mincemeat.
Six dark-clad figures carrying tactical armored shields circled closer to Alistair and Castle, who’d already taken out five. Gideon locked sights on the two closest tangos. A couple of soft squeezes on the trigger and he took them out from behind. By the time he eliminated the rest, the team had moved toward the staircase.
Gideon jumped from the high structure, landing on the balls of his feet. Pain torpedoed his body and fatigue punched in, but he bottled it up and buried it for later. Hustling to catch up, he passed several open cases. Most were empty, but a few had heavy artillery, RPGs, and short-barreled shotguns. The shortest illegal barrel he’d ever seen. The
decreased length made it more powerful and deadlier because the ammunition was propelled faster. He grabbed one, slinging it over his shoulder, and took an armored shield that had a triangular viewport.
Catching these guys by surprise came with unexpected benefits.
The corridor leading to the stairwell was free of smoke, and the others had lost their gas masks. Castle and Ares each had a Gray Box massive six-shot, revolver-style grenade launcher at the ready, both loaded with nonlethal pepper-spray projectiles.
Those mercs would be heavily dug in upstairs behind cover. The pepper-ball rounds didn’t have to hit them, only go off close enough to fuck with them. Alistair had also swiped a tactical shield, probably from one of the dead guys.
Gideon took point, with the shield at the ready, and rounded the corner to the staircase with Reece on his six.
A wave of bullets rang out in a striking clang. Suppressive fire swept over the metal staircase to keep them from ascending.
Their team ducked back, taking cover. Reece pointed to his own eyes, then to the stairwell. Pulling out a telescoping-wand camera that allowed viewing without getting your head blown off, he ventured to the edge of the staircase to determine the location of the gunmen. Reece shifted the wand around the corner for a complete picture. He slipped back beside Gideon and used hand signals to communicate.
Two shooters. One at the top of the stairs. The second leaned over the railing. Taking turns with bursts of fire.
After the report, he slid out of the way, taking Gideon’s shield.
Reece was a good shot. Decisive. Sharp. Gideon was faster, more precise.
Now that he knew the setup of the shooters, he listened for the pattern and the rate of fire. The man at the top had the best vantage point of the steps, making him the most dangerous. He needed to be eliminated first.
Waiting for his blink-of-an-eye window to open, Gideon removed his helmet. He couldn’t chance the gear getting in his way, throwing him off the slightest centimeter.
The bottom stairs cleared of gunfire for a breath, the shooters prepping to alternate bursts of shots. Gideon dove, sensing where to aim as much as sighting the targets. He fired and rolled, readjusting, and shot again. The first man slumped over the staircase with a slug in the forehead. The second took a bullet to the throat.
Gideon sprang to his feet and let Reece slip ahead of him, leading the way with the ballistic shield. They bounded up the stairs. Quick. Quiet.
The landing was a short hall, and the stairs faced the wide-open room beyond it, where every other merc was dug in. There was minimal space for their team to maneuver and hide. Whatever was waiting could hit them full force as they came up the stairs before they had a chance to take cover on either side of the double-wide doorway.
If only they didn’t have an innocent civilian that they needed to get out alive, then Reece, their demolition guy, could’ve wired the place with explosives. Kaboom. End of Daedalus and Omega. End of story.
Bracing against the railing, Gideon put his helmet back on. “I didn’t see Laurel when I scoped out the place. She must be in the far back office with Daedalus. Don’t get crazy. We don’t need her taking a stray bullet.”
A round of acknowledging head nods.
Castle and Ares got into position near the top of the stairs. Both fired pepper-ball shells into the room, popped smoke, and ducked back.
A riot of gunfire kicked off. Copper-jacketed lead poured through the doorway, raining hot bullets on the stairwell.
Reece raised the ballistic shield. Gideon and Castle lined up behind him.
A tap on Reece’s shoulder signaled go. They moved single file, crouched as one unit to the right of the doorway.
Alistair led the rest of the team behind his shield to the left.
They each took turns, exchanging fire with the mercs. Shots whistled overhead, pinging the railing and biting into the concrete wall on the other side. Gideon pumped three shells into the room, taking out one man and leaving him with two in the shotgun. Daedalus’s men were dug in and picking them off like this would take forever. While Gideon’s team continued their assault, he looked for a different angle of attack.
At the end of the short hall, he spotted a door. It was a tiny storage closet—mop, bucket, old cleaning supplies, rusty sink. Nothing useful.
Damn it. As he was about to rejoin the firefight, he spotted the vent on the wall near the ceiling. It was one of those eighteen-by-eighteen-inch industrial covers. He turned the mop bucket upside down and stood on it. Something inside the lockpicking kits they carried should work. He found a tool to fit in the grooves of the screws and removed them.
Taking off the slatted cover, he set it to the side. Gideon went back to update Reece.
“I found a vent,” he said over the raucous hail of gunfire. “If I’m able to turn off the jammer, I’ll let you know over comms. Then use the tympanic disruptors to shut these assholes down and end this shit.”
“Roger that.”
Gideon returned to the supply closet, adjusting the submachine gun on his back, and hoisted himself up into the darkness of the metal air duct. He belly-crawled through the square tunnel, going slowly, partly due to the constricted area but also so that his thigh rig, the tip of the Rattler on his back, and the shotgun in his hands didn’t make any noise.
Not that it was easy to hear over the deafening staccato of the automatic-fire storm.
Gideon crept past two vents off the room with the bulk of Daedalus’s men. Some were wiping their eyes and coughing. The pepper spray pellets were working, slowing them down and throwing them off their game. But their arsenal still presented a serious issue.
Someone was setting up an M2. The Ma Deuce was a .50-caliber heavy machine gun usually attached to vehicles and aircraft.
Gideon wished their comms were operational so he could warn the team.
Bypassing another duct that connected to the one he was in at a right angle, he finally made his way to the end of the air shaft and peered through the vent in the office. He couldn’t see anyone or a device that looked like a jammer, but voices carried over the gunfire. A conversation, three men. It seemed to be coming from the right, back three feet down the cross vent. He squirmed and shimmied in reverse to the intersection and barely made the tight turn.
If he made any noise in the cramped space, not only would he lose the slight element of surprise, but he’d also draw gunfire.
Through the grate, he saw a filthy bathroom. A large window let in natural light.
A woman, bound and gagged with duct tape, sat in a chair. It had to be Laurel. She was alive. Other than a pink face puffy from crying and some smudges of dirt, she didn’t appear hurt. But she was wearing a vest rigged with grenades.
Omega told one man to go wait by the chopper on the roof, and he sent the other guy, called Rho, back into the office. Then he spoke to the man in a dark suit responsible for all this violence. Daedalus. Same suave, upper-crust looks, slicked-back hair, and clean-shaven face from the photo that’d been in Gideon’s digital case file two years ago. Only then he’d been identified as an asset, and another man—the wrong man—had been listed as Daedalus.
“I want you to go and take the woman with you,” Omega said.
“I’m not leaving you.” Daedalus put his hand on Omega’s shoulder. “You don’t know what it was like, wondering if you were alive or dead. It was torture. I won’t go through that hell again.”
“You’ve done it before. You can do it again.”
“No. This time was different. The only way I leave is if you’re with me.”
“I won’t leave my men to fight on our behalf while we slink off like cockroaches.”
“Then it’s settled. Neither of us will be a cockroach.” He laughed, calm, self-assured, like this was any ordinary day. “We’ll see this through together. Side by side.”
�
��You can really be a stubborn dick sometimes.”
Another caramel-smooth laugh. “That’s what you love about me.”
“No. It’s not. Stay in here so I don’t have to worry about you taking a stray bullet.” Omega left the bathroom, closing the door behind him.
Daedalus turned to Laurel, gun in his hand. “All that racket out there is over you.”
Her glassy eyes went wide.
“And me, of course. I’m the star of this production. Do you want to know what’ll happen if those men make it to you?”
Laurel shook her head like the answer was the last thing on earth she wanted to hear.
“I’m going to pull a pin on one of those grenades strapped to your vest. Then you’re going to go pop!” He slammed his heel down on a bug crawling on the floor. “Just like that.”
Laurel started crying.
There was no sign of the jammer in the bathroom from that angle. The only thing for certain was that he had to put down Omega first. If Gideon gave that bruiser the chance to get the drop on him, he wouldn’t live long enough to regret it.
This small element of surprise was all he had, and he was going to make it count. He crept back to the main air duct rear first and reoriented himself at the T-juncture so that he had the advantage of seeing everyone’s position in the room.
Rho stood behind a concrete column. “Our men are holding their own out there. The last car of guys will be here in five minutes. When they creep up behind those motherfuckers, this will be game over.”
As if Gideon’s team didn’t have enough to contend with. Their attention would be focused on the ongoing assault, and the gunfire would mask the sound of anyone coming up on their six. He considered making the slug-slow crawl back to give them a heads-up, but it’d eat up precious time, and he might lose a possible window of opportunity to get into the office and finish this. Finding the jammer and disabling it would solve the problem.
Besides, the team had Ares. They’d manage.
“But I agree with you,” Rho said. “The chopper is ready. It’s better for Daedalus to wait this out someplace safe.”
