Though this was smarter than all of them rushing across the open parking lot, they were still in clear view of a number of rooms in the eastern wing, as well as those in the wing they had just vacated.
The potential of interconnecting fields of fire had been reduced but not eliminated, so Cahill whispered, “Watch the windows. You cover the ground floor. I’ve got the second.”
Ballentine did as ordered, only looking away every few steps to confirm that the women just ahead of him were still in motion.
They had passed the halfway point in fifteen seconds, made the far end of the building in another fifteen.
Ula stopped them at the corner, but again for only a brief pause as she studied the street.
She breathed evenly, her eyes scanning from left to right.
Steady but quickly.
Cahill noticed that the woman’s daughter kept her eyes almost always on her mother, watching for the cues that would tell her what to do next and precisely when to do it.
They were in sync at a level reached only by those who had trained and fought together for long periods. But it was more than that, too.
It was, to him, something akin to a predator and its cub.
Everything the mother did, the daughter observed and absorbed.
Every skill the daughter displayed had no doubt come from the mother, a woman as skilled as any man Cahill had fought beside.
Or against.
Within seconds of pausing at the corner, Ula and her daughter were hustling in double time again, moving along the fence toward its broken gate. Doing so brought them into the open, and Ula made a point of concealing her carbine inside her open jacket.
This was, after all, New York City, and even though this neighborhood was far from densely populated, there was no point in taking the risk of drawing attention.
Ballentine had clearly noticed Ula’s attempt at discretion, because as he broke from cover to follow, he made a point of concealing his subcompact Beretta by drawing his arms in tight and placing his right hand over his stomach with his left covering the pistol.
A “safe carry” posture employed by some law enforcement.
As a result, the way he moved was awkward looking at best, but Cahill didn’t bother to correct the kid.
As for himself, Cahill simply lowered his right hand so it was hanging beside his thigh and walked as naturally as he could.
Ula and her daughter reached and cleared the broken gate. Ballentine followed and caught up with them on the sidewalk, was alongside them as they approached the van’s back panel door.
Grasping the handle, Ballentine slid the door back, letting the two women enter first, then followed and pulled the door closed.
Cahill was climbing into the passenger seat and closing his door when Hammerton pressed down on the accelerator, swinging the wheel with both hands and steering the van into an aggressive U-turn.
The wide, curving arc turned into a slight fishtail, but Hammerton compensated, straightening the vehicle out before proceeding to backtrack toward the BQE.
Cahill had yet to fasten his seat belt, and the three passengers in the back had barely managed to sit down, when the first gunshot came.
For the former recon marine there was no mistaking the report of a .50-caliber rifle.
And the devastation that massive round caused.
A .50-cal BMG bullet traveled at roughly four times the speed of sound, so Cahill should have only heard that familiar thump seconds after the powerful round had already torn its way through the van’s radiator and penetrated deep into the V-6 engine.
But in combat the human mind can play all kinds of tricks, and to his senses the sound of the shot being fired arrived virtually at the same instant as the deep ping of the armor-piercing round’s impact.
Even in the immediate shock and confusion, Cahill was able to glean a crucial fact: the shooter had fired from extremely close range.
The bullet wrought its unmistakable catastrophic damage to the engine block, causing the motor to instantly seize and the vehicle to slow dramatically.
A fast follow-up shot to the same location brought the van from a crawl to a dead stop.
Unlike the first round, however, the second was a tracer—an incendiary round that glowed red-hot as it flew toward the target, allowing the shooter to track the projectile’s arc and make quick-aiming corrections without needing to observe its impact.
In this case, though, the pyrotechnic served no other purpose than to set the disabled engine ablaze.
But Cahill was able to use its fast, perfectly straight line of flight to determine the point of origin, and his eyes went to a black SUV parked at the curb two hundred yards straight ahead.
The shooter was standing inside the vehicle and using its open sunroof as a fixed firing position.
Cahill saw the silhouette of a head and a pair of shoulders, but only for a fraction of a second, because the shooter quickly ducked back inside, pulling the long rifle with him.
And almost immediately, another vehicle pulled out from its position of concealment behind the SUV.
Its headlights off, the second SUV barreled toward them.
Flames emerged around the edges of the van’s hood, the fast-rising black smoke forming a swirling cloud that obscured Cahill’s view through the windshield.
But he didn’t need to see the vehicle approaching.
He could hear its gunning engine as it closed the distance.
Loud and getting louder.
Ten
Cahill turned in his seat and grabbed Hammerton, pulling the man with him as he rushed into the van’s back compartment.
A burst of automatic gunfire shattered the driver’s door window the instant Hammerton was clear.
Cahill dove for the storage container that doubled as a med bed and flung it open. As he did, Hammerton lunged for Ballentine and Valena, who were standing frozen, stunned by the sudden violence.
Hammerton placed his hands on the top of their heads and half guided, half shoved them to the floor.
He pressed them down till they were flat on their stomachs, but he remained on his knees, his eyes on the double doors at the van’s rear.
He drew his SIG and leveled it at the entrance, ready to fire should the doors be opened from the outside.
The only person still upright was Ula. She had removed the Kel-Tec from inside her field jacket and swung the folding stock to the open position. It locked with a solid click, and she shouldered the weapon as she strode, bent forward at the waist, toward the back door.
As she closed the short distance, the automatic gunfire resumed, these rounds puncturing the van’s right-side panel and passing through the interior before exiting through the left side.
The shooter’s aim, however, was high, so he either hadn’t anticipated that his targets had dropped down low as they retreated, which meant he was inexperienced, or his intent wasn’t to kill but rather to lay down suppressing fire.
Cahill decided it was the latter since that was consistent with the sniper in the SUV disabling the engine instead of taking out the men behind the windshield, which he could have accomplished just as easily.
Which Cahill would have done had he been sent here to kill.
So an abduction, he thought. But who is the target?
That didn’t really matter, though. If even just one of them was meant to be taken alive, their assailants would have to attack with restraint.
Cahill and those with him, of course, had no such restrictions.
It was kill or be killed, as simple as that, and there was freedom in this.
He tucked his Kimber into the waistband of his jeans, then reached into the storage bench and grabbed his Heckler & Koch MR556A1—an AR-15-type carbine.
A magazine was preinserted, and the bolt had been locked back in the open position, so he slapped the catch lever with his palm, sending the carrier forward and chambering the 62-grain, steel-core, 5.56 NATO round.
Grabbing two more
mags, he quickly shoved them into his jacket pocket as he rose to a crouch, then slipped on the attached single-point bungee sling and readied his weapon.
Ula was standing to the right of the double doors, watching him and waiting for her cue to move. Cahill had no doubt that she had made the same assessment he’d made—that the only advantage they had right now was to go on the offensive.
Come out shooting and prevent the ambush from turning into a siege, one they couldn’t possibly hold.
Everything he’d seen that woman do—everything about her—told him that she had been a soldier, likely a leader of soldiers and a good one at that.
Cahill glanced at Hammerton. His SIG was still aimed at the rear doors, and though his being armed with a nine-mil pistol meant he was outgunned, he indicated with a single nod that he was ready for what needed to be done.
The second SUV skidded to a stop, aligning itself nose-to-nose with the van.
Its headlights came on, flooding the interior with a stark mix of bright light and severe shadows.
In this starkness, Cahill could see Ula’s face clearly.
Her eyes went to her daughter, her focus drifting, but only for a second.
Car doors opened. Boots hit pavement.
She looked at Cahill again, her eyes as sharp as before.
A mother determined to protect her child, no matter what it took.
Cahill rose from his crouch and, bent at the waist, walked toward her.
She waited till he was next to her—till they were face-to-face, looking each other in the eye―and then she turned, unlatched the door, and kicked it open.
Shifting her finger inside the trigger guard of her Kel-Tec, she came out shooting, Cahill right behind her.
Eleven
The bleeding wouldn’t stop, no matter what he did.
The backseat of the SUV was slick with blood, and Cahill was covered in it, too—not just his hands and forearms as he worked to keep her alive, but his torso and face and jeans.
Not all of it was her blood.
They’d had no time to retrieve any of Cahill’s medical gear from the van prior to hijacking their attackers’ only remaining vehicle—not that it would have mattered, because Ula was losing blood fast from multiple entrance and exit wounds, as well as the torn organs and severed arteries that had been struck as the three fast-moving rounds had cut through her, and nothing Cahill could carry in a kit would be enough against that.
Hammerton had been shot up as well, though not nearly as badly.
In the far backseat, the former SAS trooper was doing his best to sit upright.
Ballentine and Valena were the only ones intact, at least physically. Ballentine drove as the girl sat in the passenger seat, looking back and watching Cahill as he worked frantically on her mother.
If he could even just slow the bleeding . . .
Several times Ballentine told Valena to look at him, speaking to her calmly and assuredly.
This told Cahill they’d had significant interactions prior to tonight.
She wasn’t just the daughter of Ballentine’s assigned partner.
She knew and trusted Ballentine.
Cahill wondered, though, exactly what Ballentine’s relationship was to the woman who’d fought so expertly and bravely.
Were they partners in another sense?
Despite the obvious closeness between Ballentine and the girl, she didn’t listen to him, couldn’t stop herself from staring at the horrific scene playing out one seat behind her.
She showed all the signs of someone slipping deeper and deeper into shock.
Cahill glanced over at her several times, wishing she’d do as Ballentine was telling her to do, but that was the least of his problems.
Here was another woman dying.
Another woman gushing blood, this time from multiple gunshot wounds.
He thought of his last moments with Erica, with her slumped in the passenger seat of his Jeep, a single nine-mil round lodged in her chest, the jagged edges of its blossom-shaped hollow point severing vital tissue as she struggled to breathe.
Conscious till the moment she died.
And it had been anything but a fast death.
Cahill felt a deep sorrow rising within, one that threatened to spill over into tears, but he fought against it, had to tell himself that this woman wasn’t Erica, that he wasn’t back there again, helpless, watching the woman he loved die.
There wasn’t a day—or a night—when he didn’t relive that terror.
But he needed to focus now, needed his mind clear and sharp and decisive.
He repeated four words like a mantra whenever the shit was coming down around him.
You’re a fucking marine.
You’re a fucking marine.
You’re a fucking marine . . .
He let logistics occupy his mind.
The safe house in Connecticut, complete with a skilled physician and operating facilities, was still an hour away, but the chances that Ula would survive that long were slim.
Added to that was the fact that the vehicle they had commandeered was likely equipped with a GPS tracking system, so even if he could keep her alive, they would need another way of reaching their destination. Otherwise a fresh team of gunmen would follow them there, and the firefight they had just barely survived would simply resume.
And do so in a place Cahill was determined to keep secret.
He didn’t see any other choice, so he said to Hammerton, “Get the phone out of my jacket pocket.”
Hammerton had been in the back of the van when he’d been hit by bullet fragments—one piece lodging in his right thigh, the other cutting clear through his left palm, both pieces of jagged lead coming from rounds that had traveled through sheet metal and broken apart before reaching him.
A great deal of their kinetic energy had been lost, but the fragments caused damage nonetheless—his leg was all but useless, and he now had just one good hand.
Still, he managed to push through the pain and lean forward. He removed the cell phone from Cahill’s pocket.
Cahill was digging into Ula’s open leg wound with his index and middle fingers, searching for the damaged artery.
The femoral artery—nicked at best, completely severed at worst.
But even the best-case scenario wasn’t good.
Cahill said to Hammerton, “We’re going to need an airlift. Now.”
Hammerton nodded and used Cahill’s phone to make the call.
It took ninety seconds for their current location to be pinned down and the best landing zone to be determined. During that time, Cahill located the artery and assessed that it had been severed—the worst possible scenario.
The only good news was that the artery hadn’t retracted up into her pelvis. If that had been the case, and he couldn’t reach it and pinch it closed, she’d be dead in minutes.
He worked quickly, his heart pounding, and held one end of the artery closed with his index and middle finger, preventing her heart from pumping out what blood remained inside her.
He’d bought her just a little more time.
It was a matter now of making it to I-684—still a good fifteen minutes from their current location.
A long time, particularly since the ninety seconds he’d just endured had felt like an eternity.
Even though I-684 wasn’t a heavily traveled highway at this time of night, it would still be far from empty. But its six lanes, separated into three northbound and three southbound by a wide, grassy median, was the nearest place a civilian helicopter could land safely.
And do so, if they were lucky, without drawing too much attention.
But the stealthy exfil of an asset was no longer the mission here.
That objective had not survived first contact with the enemy.
In combat, plans seldom endured beyond the firing of the first shot.
The SUV reached the makeshift landing zone, between the first and second exits on I-684, just as the helicopte
r appeared over the western tree line.
The copter—a Bell 429—hovered for a moment as the pilot searched the median below for level ground, then finally touched down.
Ballentine pulled the SUV to the shoulder, shifted into park, and killed the motor.
A two-man crew dressed in black fatigues exited the copter. One carried a collapsible stretcher, and both wore medic bags slung over their shoulders.
They hurried to the SUV and began the process of transferring the wounded.
Hammerton was first, Ballentine and Valena wedged in beside him like crutches and helping him across the grass.
Cahill maintained his hold on Ula’s femoral artery as the two men placed her on the stretcher, then ran along with them as they rushed toward the copter, passing the slow-moving Hammerton.
He couldn’t move through the rear door with her, and there was no way he would be heard over the sound of the spinning rotors, so he indicated to one of the medics that he was holding an artery and couldn’t let go.
That medic propped his end of the stretcher on the floor and got in beside Cahill. He removed a clamp from his kit and expertly applied it.
A part of Cahill still didn’t want to let go, but he did, stepping aside as the second medic pushed the stretcher in.
As Hammerton was being helped onboard, Cahill looked back at the SUV.
Two details remained: All evidence connecting him and the others to that vehicle—blood, fingerprints, hair—had to be eliminated. And he needed to gather any and all intelligence that he could.
Running back across the grass to the SUV, he quickly located the vehicle identification number at the bottom of the driver’s side windshield and snapped a pic of it with his phone.
He then hurried around to the back and did the same with the license plate.
There wasn’t time for anything more than that.
Dropping down to the ground, Cahill scrambled beneath the vehicle’s rear bumper, removed the KA-BAR knife hidden in his right boot, and thrust the thick blade into the bottom of the fuel tank, piercing the sheet metal.
Withdrawing the blade from the puncture released a steady stream of gasoline onto the pavement.
Back on his feet, Cahill dug into his jeans pocket with his bloodied hand for his Zippo lighter.
The Rogue Agent Page 6
