The Rogue Agent

by Daniel Judson

  Resuming his shooting, he did not aim this time, instead laid down harassing fire to keep the three gunmen occupied.

  And give Grunn and her men a chance to move.

  The man to the right of the SUV had his back to the vehicle, and it was the rear passenger-side door that swung open first.

  In the harsh light of the spotlights, Tom watched Grunn, still seated, shoulder her M4.

  She was either aware of the fact that these men were clad in body armor, or she had simply made the assumption, because she didn’t aim for the torso or the head but rather raked the back of the man’s knees with a controlled burst, sweeping her weapon from left to right as it fired.

  The man dropped, tried to roll onto his side so he could return her fire, but she had already emerged from the vehicle and wasted no time positioning herself over him and getting off another three-round burst.

  All three struck just above his right cheekbone, killing him instantly.

  The remaining attacker at the rear of the vehicle ceased firing at Tom’s position, turning toward Grunn.

  Before he could aim his weapon, she quickly ducked down, putting the armored SUV between them.

  Tom was sighting the side of the man’s neck when the driver’s door opened enough for a hand to emerge.

  In it was a pistol.

  Handguns were difficult to shoot accurately, even at close range, and especially while under the pressure inherent in life-or-death situations.

  The driver of the SUV began firing wildly.

  Several rounds struck the third man in the torso, but the driver just kept firing and elevating his pistol until he happened to strike the man in the face.

  Of course, once their final man was down, the two men holding back in the trees were free to open fire.

  Their first shots sent Grunn to the front of the vehicle for cover.

  The driver of the SUV scrambled out, swung his slung carbine to his shoulder and fired toward the trees as he retreated for the front of the SUV as well. Tom recognized Sheridan, which meant DiBano, the youngest of Grunn’s men, was still inside.

  It didn’t take long for DiBano to join in the melee.

  He stuck his M4 out the door that Grunn had left open and, with the weapon set on full auto, fired blindly toward the trees.

  This had little effect on the two remaining gunmen, however; from their concealed positions, they continued to fire.

  In battle, it was the side that could throw the most lead downrange that generally prevailed.

  Here, Tom knew, was a slugfest to the end.

  But he had achieved his objective of freeing Grunn and her men from the SUV.

  It was now three against two down there—better odds than they’d had moments ago.

  Coming now from the floor below, though, were the sounds of heavy footsteps moving through the kitchen.

  The four men had breached the back door and were inside.

  As were Stella and Valena.

  Grunn and her men were on their own.

  The battle outside was theirs to fight.

  The battle inside—confronting the four armed men in pursuit of the two women Tom was intent on protecting—that was Tom’s.

  Twenty-Seven

  Tom had lost count of how many rounds he had fired, so as he ran to the escape hatch, he released the eight-round magazine from the Marlin as precaution.

  Taking a quick look, he saw that it was empty.

  Since the bolt hadn’t locked back in the open position, a round was chambered.

  He exchanged the empty mag for one of the half dozen fully loaded eight-rounders in his map bag.

  Nine rounds, ready to go.

  He had to keep a better running count from now on, or else risk having to deal with switching out a magazine or transitioning to his sidearm in the middle of a close-quarters firefight.

  There was no room for error here.

  He said, “Location?”

  Stella’s voice came through the earpiece. “Basement.”

  “Coming for you now.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes. Hang tight.”

  Tom reached the hatch but opened it slowly. Below was a pantry off the kitchen.

  If Stella had stuck to procedure, she would have closed the door as she exited to head for the basement.

  Tom could tell by the near-total darkness below that she had done that.

  Making use of the emergency rope ladder would be too slow and cumbersome, so Tom slung the Marlin over his shoulder and sat on the edge of the hole, then slid his legs through and began to lower himself with his arms.

  Once he was chest-deep into the hole and confirmed that his carbine was clear, he pressed his elbows against the floor, lowering himself through even more. Then he raised his arms over his head and dropped the rest of the way through, landing on the balls of his feet to minimize the noise.

  But he was a two-hundred-plus-pound man, and even though his full body weight had dropped less than three feet, the impact of his boots on the floorboards was audible.

  Tom immediately lowered himself into a tight crouch, and the instant he did, automatic gunfire began to splinter the wooden door.

  There wasn’t time to unsling and shoulder the Marlin, so he drew his Colt 1911 and flattened out on the floor.

  The holes being punched into the pantry door were at chest level, which meant his attackers had lethal intent, and the recognition that another person was determined to kill him caused a sea change in Tom.

  It always did, and it had the same effect on every man he had served with and fought beside.

  A mix of clarity and outrage overtook him, an equation that resulted in the determination that these moments would not be his last.

  That his glimpse of Stella through the hole cut into the floor would not be his final look at her.

  Or hers at him.

  Tom aimed for a point in the door that was just below midway—whatever the height of the shooter beyond, this area would be the man’s center.

  Not his center mass, but the anatomical midpoint of his body, where the pelvis was located.

  For the sake of mobility, this area would be lightly armored, if armored at all, and whatever level of protection was present, the impact of a .45-cal round striking any of the several targets located there—bones, abdominal and leg muscles, genitals—would force his target to fold and fall.

  So Tom fired, putting a controlled pair through the door and following it up with a second pair.

  The audible grunt coming from the other side of the door told him that he’d found his target.

  Four shots down, four in the magazine, and one in the chamber remaining.

  Tom displaced, rolling to his right, once, twice, then stopping and repositioning himself.

  The area of the floor from which he had just fired was immediately riddled with bullets.

  Tom heard only one weapon firing, however.

  He sent two more controlled pairs through the door from his new location, then quickly transitioned to a seated position and crab-walked deeper into the pantry.

  Eight shots fired, leaving a ninth in the chamber.

  Tom ejected the empty mag, letting it drop to the floor, then slapped a loaded one into the grip. Rising to a kneeling position, he proceeded to empty the Colt, putting all nine rounds through the door, aiming once again just below midpoint.

  He repeated the mag exchange, but he had emptied the weapon, requiring that he manually release the slide.

  Engaging the safety, he holstered the cocked-and-locked Colt with his right hand as he reached around for the Marlin with his left. It took all of four seconds to complete the reload and transition.

  Shouldering the Marlin, he rose to a shooter’s crouch and moved toward the door until he was beside it.

  The moment he hit the wall, the barrage he’d fired from the Colt was returned with another hail of automatic fire.

  Again, only one weapon.

  Staying trapped meant losi
ng this fight, so there was only one thing he could do.

  He shifted the Marlin to his left hand, then shoved the barrel through one of the many holes in the door and began to unload.

  The fire coming from the other side temporarily ceased, and Tom made his move.

  He withdrew the Marlin and pulled the battered door open with his right hand, then raised the Marlin and continued firing as he removed the Colt from its holster and searched for his first target.

  What he saw was one shooter standing over a fallen shooter.

  The fallen shooter had taken multiple shots to the pelvis and was clearly in agony.

  The standing shooter had been attempting to return Tom’s fire while dragging his wounded comrade out of the way.

  It was close-quarters combat now, milliseconds counted, and Tom had no choice but to take advantage of the standing man’s compassion.

  He lunged forward with the Marlin raised like a fencer’s foil, striking the man in the throat with the carbine’s muzzle and simultaneously squeezing the trigger.

  The angle was right, though this was more a matter of luck than skill, and his spine severed; the man dropped instantly.

  Astride the downed shooter, Tom crouched just low enough to press his Colt into the gap in that man’s armor, located just below the armpit. He angled the pistol so that the bullet would follow a straight path through one side of the man’s upper rib cage and out the other, fragmenting as it went and tearing to pieces everything in between.

  Only the infliction of maximum damage would do now.

  He put a single shot into the man, then rose.

  Both weapons up, he scanned the kitchen for more targets, but there was no sign of the other two men.

  Tom’s eye went to the one thing that mattered now.

  The basement door.

  It was open.

  Looking back at the two downed men, he noted that night-vision goggles were affixed to their operator helmets.

  But that wasn’t what he was hoping to find.

  He scanned the torso of the nearest man and saw attached to his tactical vest the exact thing Tom was seeking.

  An M67 hand grenade.

  Below it was another piece of equipment that instilled instant fear.

  An incendiary grenade.

  Tom ignored the fear and grabbed the M67. Clipping it to his belt, he broke into a run, heading toward the open basement door.

  “Location, Stella,” he said.

  He received no reply.

  He spoke just a little louder. “Stella, come in.”

  Still nothing.

  Either the equipment had failed or she couldn’t respond, and if the latter were the case, there were a handful of reasons why she couldn’t speak, none of them good.

  Tom was approaching the door when the first shots came up from below.

  What he heard wasn’t the crack of the 5.56 round fired from a carbine but rather the explosive boom of a .357 Magnum going off in a confined place.

  Stella was fighting for her life.

  Tom broke into a run. “If you can hear me, I’m en route.”

  He’d lost count of how many rounds he had fired from the Marlin, but there was nothing he could do about that.

  He knew that he had fired only one from the Colt, though, so he holstered it, then ejected the mag from the Marlin and inserted a fresh one.

  The weapon was shouldered and ready when he reached the open basement door.

  Twenty-Eight

  As the original foundation of the building, the basement was a long, rectangular box with a floor of packed dirt and walls of fieldstone and mortar.

  A cold cellar, in the years prior to refrigeration.

  Completely below ground, it was windowless—dark and cool and silent, and usually smelling of damp.

  But the only smell that reached Tom’s nose was fresh cordite, and the silence had been replaced by gunfire, the darkness by muzzle flashes.

  In every way possible, the sanctuary Tom built had now been violated.

  Stella’s two shots from her .357 had elicited an immediate response from her attackers.

  The gunshots Tom was hearing now were automatic carbine fire.

  He felt a swelling rage, was seconds from being blinded by it and sent into frantic motion. Yet in his fury he was able to hang on to the understanding that he must do all he could to keep from crossing that fine line between purpose and recklessness.

  Between rescue and suicide.

  Tom thought of Carrington’s mantra, the first thing his former commanding officer had taught him back when he’d joined Carrington’s reconnaissance engineer team.

  The only way out is through.

  Tom cleared his head of everything but this and began.

  The stairs were his first obstacle—a series of planks on an open frame of two-by-fours, they would offer him no cover as he descended.

  More than that, a shooter could simply wait below them and fire up at Tom the moment he attempted to make his way down.

  There was no time, though, to probe and determine whether someone was in fact there, waiting to ambush him.

  And the steps were steep, more an angled ladder than stairs.

  Tom did the only thing he could.

  He flew into the darkness.

  Landing on the hard dirt, he dropped into a crouch and spun to face the stairs behind him, but he lost his balance and fell against the rock wall, hitting the back of his head.

  He ignored both the pain and the reflex to flinch, fixing his eyes on the stairs. The faint illumination coming through the open door above was enough to see that no one was beneath it.

  He wasted no time getting to his feet.

  Reaching into his map bag with his left hand, he removed his SureFire flashlight.

  Six hundred lumens strong, the light was activated by pressing an easily reachable tab located on either side of the end cap.

  A small amount of pressure from his ring finger was more than enough to engage the light.

  Tom held the light in his left palm, then grabbed the Marlin’s forend with a C-clamp grip—the support hand not under the barrel but off to the left side so that his thumb could hook firmly over the top.

  Holding his weapon this way allowed for faster target acquisition in close quarters, as well as better recoil control, which would ensure accurate follow-up shots.

  But more than that, it would enable Tom to keep the SureFire ready for exactly when he needed it.

  The gunfire had ceased, and as best as Tom could tell, only one of the attackers had fired, which meant the other had likely attempted to maneuver through the maze they had found themselves facing.

  A deadly maze Tom had constructed in the long months of renovation and alteration prior to the restaurant opening up.

  Heading toward that maze, Tom found his way by memory, listening keenly as he moved one step at a time.

  He had built the maze out of old wooden pallets he’d fashioned into crates, each one five feet tall and four feet wide.

  Some of the makeshift crates contained nothing but a few gallon-size containers of water to give them a degree of stability, while others hid sandbags stacked in rows that were three deep—more than enough of a barrier to offer protection from all but the most powerful rounds.

  And only Tom and Stella knew which crates to take cover behind and which, being easily shot through, were traps for anyone who attempted to use the maze against them.

  Tom had practiced weaving from crate to crate in the dark, knew how many steps to take to reach the first crate, then how many diagonal steps were necessary to cross to the second, and from there to the third.

  There were eight crates total, at the end of which was the last holdout position—a coal chute, the bottom of which was obstructed by a five-foot-tall cinder-block partition, each block hand-filled by Tom with a mix of ceramic tile bits and packed earth, after which the blocks had been cemented together.

  A wall from behind which they could safely
fire.

  At the top of the coal chute was a steel hatch door, locked from the inside.

  The hatch was just large enough for a person to escape through, but Tom had no doubt that Stella was still behind the partition wall.

  The open hatch would have allowed some degree of ambient light from outside to spill into the far end of the pitch-black basement, and Tom saw none.

  And the gunfire outside, sporadic now, was still muted significantly.

  No, Stella was there, he knew that.

  Ready to fight for her life and the life of the girl beside her.

  Fight back, like Tom’s mother had.

  But Tom was here this time, had the upper hand, and was determined to make use of it.

  Reaching the first crate, he crouched behind it, pausing to make sense of what he heard. Two men were talking—in English and with accents that were clearly American.

  Tom couldn’t let the fact that they were fellow countrymen affect him.

  More than just countrymen, they were likely veterans like him.

  But these two men had made their choice—the same choice Tom had once faced but ruled out when Carrington had offered him work as a private contractor.

  There was, of course, a difference between a private-sector special operator and a mercenary, but it was a distinction that was too easily lost sight of by too many.

  These men had either not seen that distinction or had but were indifferent to it.

  They were here to kill because that was what they were paid to do.

  Not for their country or as a last resort while protecting those who employed them.

  They were here to murder without asking any questions.

  Tom had decided long ago that he would never follow that path and become that kind of man.

  The kind of man who had killed his family.

  Their voices were low but not hushed. One man was telling the other to move, and the other was arguing that they needed to wait for reinforcement.

  There was urgency in the first man’s voice. It was clear that they were spooked by the maze they had suddenly found themselves in.

  Spooked, too, by the shots that had been fired at them from behind a barrier wall.

  By their conversation, Tom concluded that the brief firefight they had engaged in with Stella had covered the sound of his landing hard at the bottom of the steps.