“Seriously? That’s all you have to say to me?” Mirissa spat out the words.
OK, so maybe the warm, loving hug would come later. Myrine knew that her daughter had every right to be angry with her. After all, she’d just been kidnapped by a mother she thought abandoned her as a child. Mirissa didn’t know, however, that Myrine was only acting to protect her. Everything she’d done over the last twelve years she’d done to keep Mirissa alive.
“I know you’re angry with me, and for good reason. I really want to explain everything to you if you’ll just give me the chance.”
“Mom, there is nothing you could possibly say to…”
Mirissa stopped short when a loud explosion shook the building. The items on the desk shook, and the sound of automatic gunfire could be heard through the floor.
All thoughts of the reunion were immediately replaced with defense strategy. After punching in the security code that would erase the hard drives of every computer in the building, Myrine jumped up from her chair, hurdled her desk, and pulled on the edge of one of the bookshelves lining the wall. Over her shoulder, she barked orders at Ken and Jackie to secure the door and get a situation report. Once the bookshelf was opened on its hinges, Myrine grabbed several rifles from the alcove that was hidden behind it. Contrary to film and television, Myrine preferred the AR10 assault rifle to the more popular AR15. Although it had a smaller magazine, holding fewer bullets, it more than made up for it with the much larger sized rounds. When Myrine and her team were under attack, she wanted pure stopping power. Passing one to each of her agents and to Mirissa, she then armed herself and got ready for the fight.
Cracking the door to her office open just enough to peek out, she gave the all-clear sign and started out into the hallway.
“My ring!” Mirissa yelled.
Myrine ran back to her desk, retrieved the ring from the drawer where she had put it earlier, and tossed it to her daughter. Now that they all had their weapons, they headed down the hall to the stairwell.
In a practiced maneuver, Myrine stood to the right of the door while Ken stood to the left. She grabbed the handle and pushed the door in as Ken aimed his rifle at whatever might be on the other side. Still clear, they started down the stairs, Myrine taking the lead, followed by Ken and Jackie, with Mirissa pulling up the rear. The sound of a door slamming open below, followed by heavy footfalls coming up toward them, made them reverse course and start climbing. Two flights up they reached the roof access door and exited into the bright midday sun. Myrine looked for something she could use to barricade the door, but the only thing on the roof was an old piece of two by four lumber, and with nothing to secure it, she quickly moved on to plan B.
Mirissa ran to the edge of the roof on the opposite side of the access door. The next building was only about ten feet away. “We can make it,” she called over her shoulder.
Myrine joined her as she turned around. “Mirissa, we can make that jump, but they can’t, and I won’t leave them behind. Follow me.”
They came around to the other side of the roof where Ken was busy opening an air vent. He’d removed the cover and the fan (thank goodness it wasn’t running) and called Jackie over to climb inside. She all but dove through the vent access and quickly crawled through the small metal tunnel. Once she was out of sight, Ken called for Myrine but she shook her head, motioning for him to go ahead of her and cover Jackie. She kept one eye on their escape route, watching Ken disappear, and the other on the access door. They were running out of time.
The door burst open and five heavily armed men came pouring out, wearing black and gray camouflage and outfitted with earpieces. They each carried the LR-300, a gas operated compact assault rifle based on the old M16 design. They were obviously very well funded. Myrine dove to the right and Mirissa to the left. One quick, perfectly aimed shot from each and the first two assailants were down, sporting new holes right between their eyes. Without skipping a beat, Mirissa rushed the next gunman with a straight hand to his throat, crushing his larynx and guaranteeing his death moments later. When she turned her focus on the remaining two men, Myrine was standing over their prone bodies.
“That wasn’t so bad,” Mirissa said.
Myrine cringed at the comment the moment it escaped her daughter’s lips because she knew she had just tempted fate. That notion was confirmed when a stream of fresh gunmen came through the door.
As though they were reading each other’s thoughts, the women ran to the edge of the roof where Mirissa had been earlier. Without pausing, they jumped and landed hard on the adjacent building. A hail of bullets followed them, and before they had regained their feet, they were firing back. Judging by their opponents’ weapons, they would surely be wearing body armor and a headshot was the only way to guarantee a kill. Being off balance and aiming at such a small target, the two women expended a total of five rounds before finding their marks.
Three more of the intruders fell, while two others attempted the same jump as the women had just completed. A shot to each of their chests, although not fatal due to their body armor, stopped their momentum, and they fell the five stories to the street below.
Keeping their heads low while running, Myrine led Mirissa to a door that opened into a stairwell. Flying down the stairs the two women reached the ground floor in a matter of seconds, and, after checking the lobby, walked calmly to the back door, concealing their rifles as best they could. The rush of people leaving the building after the bomb blast next door made it easy for them to go unnoticed.
“I have to go back for my agents,” Myrine said. Mirissa nodded in agreement and the two made their way to the back corner of the building adjacent to their target. A quick look told them that no one was standing guard, so they jogged over and took up the familiar positions on either side of the delivery door.
Once back inside her office building, Myrine took the lead and Mirissa covered their backs as they crept down the hallway that ran the length of the back of the building. Smoke was everywhere and visibility was near zero. Halfway down the hall, the left side opened into the lobby. When they turned the corner, they found the site of the earlier explosion.
It had decimated the lobby, blowing out all of the windows and destroying the guard desk. Judging by the small crater in the floor and the widespread damage throughout the large room, the explosion was most likely caused by a fragmentation grenade. Although the initial explosion radius of these types of grenades was smaller, the fragments could travel up to 200 meters at high speeds. The airflow from the newly broken windows had allowed much of the smoke to clear, but the increased visibility wasn’t necessary to see that the two guards that occupied this room were dead.
Filing that away to deal with at a later time, Myrine continued down the hall toward the stairwell, checking each room they passed for survivors. Where is everyone? These offices should have been full of people when the bomb went off, but there was nobody, alive or dead.
After clearing the first floor, they moved up to the second. Going through the door to the hallway the same way they had gone through every door today, they again started checking for survivors. And again found no one.
As they made their way up the stairs to the third floor, the stairwell door opened before they had gotten into position. Shocked to see them, the intruder fumbled with his weapon, trying to level it. Myrine grabbed the muzzle and pulled hard, using his momentum to bring him down the stairs. Mirissa ducked low and struck out with a sidekick to his knee, shattering it with a sickening crunch and leaving his tibia swinging painfully. Myrine crushed his larynx to stifle his screams.
Leaving the man writhing on the floor, they entered the third floor hallway and immediately dropped to their knees at the sound of nearby voices. After a moment, with no unwanted visitors, they crept down the hallway, keeping their bodies as low as possible. They followed the voices to the conference room halfway down the hall on their right and chanced a look through the large window above them.
The intru
ders had corralled the remaining agents into this large room and were in the process of interrogating them.
“Where are they?” the apparent leader asked.
As expected, none of the agents uttered a word. They were well trained, and Myrine knew that everyone captured in that room would die before giving up her location, even if they had known it. She couldn’t let that happen. She knew, intellectually, that she should leave with her daughter and hole up in one of her safe houses until she could rally the troops and come up with a game plan, but she also knew there was no way that would happen. For the last decade these people had been her only family, and if she had proven anything during that time, it was that she would do anything to protect her family.
Signaling to her daughter to retreat to an empty office a few doors back, they silently went back the way they came. Once inside the office, they assessed their situation.
“There are three armed guards in that room that we’ll need to deal with quickly and quietly. There’s no telling how many more are in the building and we don’t want to attract any more attention. Once we have the guards subdued, we can get the hostages out through the same stairwell we used to get here, and, hopefully, out the back delivery door.” Myrine was planning this rescue on the fly, but she knew they only had minutes before their intruders started using lethal force to get the information they wanted.
“Our rifles will be too loud, so bring out your blade,” She instructed her daughter.
“I don’t have my knife. Your goons took it when they kidnapped me and shoved me in that little room.”
“Not that knife,” Myrine retorted. “Your ring!”
The look of confusion on her daughter’s face told Myrine everything she needed to know. She held her right hand out in front of her, made a fist, and closed her eyes. Almost immediately, the ring began to grow. The small green snake that was once a simple inlaid emerald design, came to life and began spiraling up Myrine’s forearm, getting thicker and longer as it went. Its scales shimmered a beautiful green as its head settled to a spot just under her shoulder. The end of the tail, still resting on what was left of the ring, sprouted a double-edged blade that measured eight inches in length and came to a sharp point.
“Hasn’t your Guardian taught you how to use your ring yet?” Myrine asked.
“I guess he hasn’t gotten to that little tidbit of information yet,” replied Mirissa, unsure why Greco had omitted such an important lesson.
“For now, let me do it for you.” Myrine grabbed hold of her daughter’s right hand, curled her fingers into a fist, and once again closed her eyes.
As her ring started the same transformation as her mother’s, Mirissa’s eyes widened. “It feels… weird. Like it’s a part of me, almost.” When the snake’s head reached her upper arm, it looked right at her before settling under her shoulder. Mirissa moved her arm up and down, bending and flexing. “It moves like it’s liquid. It’s incredible.”
Once they had a semblance of a plan, if you could call it that, they headed back down the still-empty hallway to the conference room. Keeping lower than the windows, they settled on either side of the entrance and, when set, Mirissa thudded her fist against the bottom of the door.
It only took a moment for one of the armed men to come out into the hallway, looking for whomever it was he assumed was there. He looked both ways down the corridor, failing to look down, and, with the door blocking the view from behind him, Mirissa stood swiftly, covered his mouth, and drove her blade right through his neck, from one side to the other. Keeping her left hand over his mouth, she wrapped her right arm around his chest and silently brought him down to the floor.
One down.
Within a few seconds, another gunman walked into the hall, calling for his partner. As he stepped through the threshold, the now dead man’s foot blocked his path. Looking down to find the obstacle, his eyes met Myrine’s, just as her blade ran across his throat from ear to ear.
The third gunman was more prepared. Sensing that something was wrong, he stopped short of the doorway with his gun at the ready. Using his foot to push the door to its fully opened position, he swept his weapon from right to left, looking for the opponent he knew was there.
Not wanting to wait for him to get one or both of them in his sights, Myrine swung her leg out in a low, sweeping kick, knocking his feet out from under him. As he fell, he leveled his rifle and got a single shot off.
Mirissa rocked back with the impact of the bullet as it hit her right bicep, but continued to thrust her arm forward to impale her attacker. As he hit the ground, her blade found the space between his fourth and fifth rib, and carried right through to his heart, ending his life immediately.
Knowing that they had lost the element of surprise, Myrine called out to the hostages in the room, “Follow me! We’re getting out of here. Now!” and headed for the stairwell, trusting her daughter to cover their rear. Speed was their only hope of escape, as a stampede of highly trained men would surely be heading toward the sound of the gunshot.
As Myrine and Mirissa scooped up the rifles they had left at the end of the hall earlier, the group burst through the door to the stairs, and sprinted toward the lobby level. So far, so good, but their luck wouldn’t hold forever. At the lowest level, Myrine paused briefly to quiet her companions before cracking open the first floor door. The smoke in the lobby area would be all but cleared by now, but the breeze created by the blown out windows had only lessened it in the hallway slightly, and it would still provide decent cover for their escape if they moved quickly.
Signaling to her group, they started down the long hallway leading to the delivery door they had come in earlier. When they reached the opening to the lobby, Myrine heard gasps from a few of her followers as the horror of what had happened today truly set in, but like the professionals they were, their speed didn’t falter.
With the delivery door only a few feet in front, Myrine stopped dead in her tracks as two gunmen calmly walked out of one of the offices on their right, with rifles aimed.
“Where’s your daughter?”
Myrine looked him in the eye and said, “She’s not here. She went to get help.”
Without another word, the gunman raised his weapon and shot the woman that was standing to Myrine’s right. She felt her anger boil over as she watched Janice Campbell, an analyst that had been in her employ for almost five years, fall dead to the floor.
“Where is she?” the same man asked again.
If looks could kill, the two men in front of her would have suffered an agonizing death right then, but, unfortunately, that was a power that Myrine did not possess. As she opened her mouth to tell another lie about her daughter’s whereabouts, she heard Mirissa call out from a few feet behind her.
“I’m here.”
A taunting grin crept over the man’s face as he waited for Mirissa to join her mother. Once the two were side by side, each covered by one of the men’s rifles, he spoke into his throat mic. “Team Leader this is Bravo One. We have the targets secured”
Before he had a chance to listen to his leader’s response, the air vent above their heads came crashing down, and with it, Ken and Jackie. Ken took out one of the intruders by swinging his legs while still holding onto the edge of the air vent, kicking him straight into Myrine’s blade. Jackie, already standing on the floor, threw a straight punch at the back of the second man’s neck, where his spine met the base of his skull. The nerve damage caused by the sudden trauma to the spinal cord, though not fatal, succeeded in disorienting the man long enough for her to grab his weapon, turn it on him, and end his life the same way he had ended Janice Campbell’s only moments before.
“Go, Barbie,” Mirissa said with an approving smirk.
With a last glance at Janice, Myrine once again filed her feeling of loss away, and lead the group outside.
Sirens filled the air as police and fire emergency vehicles poured into the street at the front of the building. Feeling the threat level decli
ne with the addition of local law enforcement, Myrine allowed herself a moment to check on the wellbeing of her people.
“Is anyone injured?”
As everyone shook their heads, Myrine turned her attention to Mirissa. “Are you all right?” she asked. Her daughter was frantically searching her right arm.
“I thought I’d been shot upstairs, but there’s nothing there.”
“That was your protector. I’ll explain later. For now, we need to lose these weapons and bring our rings back to standby mode.” Throwing their weapons in a nearby dumpster, Myrine grabbed her daughter’s right hand, closed her eyes, and brought both of their snakes back down to size, their emerald encrusted heads once again perched on the crossed swords of each of their rings.
Taking their time, so as to not attract any unwanted attention, they made their way through the alleys between buildings, steering clear of the main roads, until they had gotten several blocks away. From there, it was easy enough for them to blend into the crowds of office workers roaming the streets, the crowds that were blissfully unaware of the dangers that surrounded them every day.
Myrine had a private word with Ken as they were heading down Forsyth Street before gathering her group around her. “I’m going to take Mirissa to Safe House Beta. You each know what you have to do. Stay on your toes.”
After their group disbanded in the streets of Jacksonville, Myrine needed to get her daughter out of town. She made a call on her cell phone to secure a vehicle, a nondescript Ford Taurus, which they picked up in a parking garage on Forsyth Street, then started on the road toward the safe house.
They made one stop at a storage unit that Myrine had rented years ago for just such an occasion as this. She grabbed a large duffel bag from the back seat and opened the storage unit door.
Mirissa let out a low whistle at the sight of what lay inside. There were racks covering two of the walls from floor to ceiling that held an extensive collection of firearms.
The rack on the short back wall held rows of pistols and the longer wall on the right held rifles. Quickly making their choices, they loaded the weapons in the duffel bag, along with extra magazines and several boxes of ammunition for each.
Crossfire (Book 1) (The Omega Group) Page 6
