Drew nodded. Apparently, he knew all this already.
“Casualties?”
“Zero.” He half-grinned at that.
“I thought you said you took fire multiple times.”
“We did, but no one’s been hit. Believe me, it’s a fucking miracle. They have assault weapons up there too—cop killers—plus, they’re spread out. We located one at a window and shot it out but they were already at another one a few stories up. My boys have them bottled up, though.”
“This supports my theory that they’re trying to send a message,” Jim said. Kristen was learning quickly why everyone called him Wonderkid.
“I don’t know about all that,” Johnson started to argue but Drew began to issue orders and the man wisely shut the hell up.
“Butters and Beanpole, I want you in…” The team leader scanned the nearby buildings. “That one. Actually, on the roof. Beanpole, do you think there’s cover up there to keep our star sniper safe?”
The man held his binoculars up, scanned the rooftop briefly, and nodded. “There are quite a few air conditioners that need to be replaced. The old models are big enough to hide him.”
“I resent that, and thank you,” Butters said over his shoulder. He was already assembling his weapon.
“All right. The rest of us will go in under the cover of smoke. Wonderkid, if you want to sit this one out, that’s fine with me. I don’t want anyone to rush into this kind of thing on their first day.”
“This ain’t my first day. I’ve used smoke grenades before and besides, I’ve waited for a slot to open on SWAT for months. I’ve itched for action.” He strapped an assault rifle on.
Kristen frowned briefly at the idea that Jim had basically waited for someone to die, but she quickly shook that thought out of her head. That was unproductive nonsense. Jonesy was gone and nothing could change that. Her goal now was not to lose anyone else, and that included the Wonderkid. She’d protect him like she had everyone else on her team, and that would make him feel differently about dragons.
“Hernandez, Keith, if you’ll do the honors?” Drew said after he’d handed out gas masks.
“Let’s do it, Rookie. Remember to pull the pin and then throw.” Hernandez mimed pulling the pin and lobbing the grenade.
“I know how to use a grenade,” Keith complained but he did pay careful attention when Hernandez counted them down.
“Three, two, one, puff, puff, pass,” the woman shouted and she and Keith each hurled their devices at the building. Before they’d even begun to smoke, they each followed with another one. In moments, the parking lot between the police and the five-story building was filled with smoke.
“Let’s do this. Watch each other’s backs. On point, I want—”
“I got it, sir,” Kristen said before he could finish, turned her skin to steel, and led the way through the smoke.
Gunshots erupted from above. Mostly, she couldn’t see them but sometimes, one came close, pierced through the smoke, and left a swirling wake in the acrid clouds. She ignored the gunfire. Her self-appointed role was to reach the building first and force the hostiles to retreat so her team could enter safely and guard the exits while she cleared the building.
Something glanced off her chest and she grinned. It had been a bullet, obviously, but the interesting part was that it had come from ahead of her. There were hostiles on the ground floor, which meant she had made the right choice to rush ahead and leave her team behind. She had work to do.
Moments later, she entered the building. The ground floor had been stripped of its interior. The entire level was open with rows of concrete pillars that supported a roof that was about twenty feet high. Very little light came in through the windows, and every single pillar was large enough to hide anyone with the exception of Butters.
Whoever had fired at her through the smoke clearly didn’t want to give their position away because, at the moment, the interior was completely silent. She didn’t hear gunshots from the higher levels either. Maybe everyone had come down thinking they’d trap the SWAT team.
Too bad for them. They couldn’t stop the Steel Dragon.
It was dark—too dark for her steel skin to reflect much light—so Kristen moved into the cavernous space with her gun up so she presented an obvious threat. With any luck, she’d come across one of the hostiles hiding behind a pillar, he’d see her weapon and try to shoot, and it’d all be over for him. If that interaction sparked others to attack, she would be able to pick them off one by one while they panicked and failed to hurt her.
It worked. After less than a minute, someone broke cover near the far side of the room. The person—she assumed it was a man because those who wielded guns for power usually were—darted out, unloaded as many damn rounds as he could into her, and ran farther into the open room before he ducked behind another pillar.
She smiled. This would be too easy. Despite being shot by dozens of bullets, she was unharmed. Hadn’t these guys watched the news? Guns couldn’t stop the police anymore, not with Kristen Hall—the Lost Dragon, the Steel Dragon—on SWAT.
“Give yourselves up now and we’ll take you in peacefully,” she said and flexed her aura as she spoke.
It worked too well. Three men broke from cover this time, each paused to shoot at her, and all vanished through an open doorway. She had meant to make them afraid and thought she had, but maybe too much. Maybe she had overdone the idea of terror she had infused into her aura. Rather than make them surrender, she’d made them flee for their lives.
She sighed morosely—she really wished she could control her dragon powers better—and set off in pursuit.
“Hall! Damn it, Hall, hold up,” Drew yelled over the radio. She glanced behind her to confirm that the rest of her team had made it through the smoke. Drew and Wonderkid were in the lead, followed by the Rookie and Hernandez. Everyone was still moving fine, which meant no one was hurt. So far, so good.
“They went through here,” she shouted and ran toward the doorway the hostiles had taken.
“Hall! Stop! I repeat, stop! For fuck’s sake, that’s an order!” Drew bellowed as he sprinted across the open room.
Kristen ignored him. She reached the doorway to find the stairs leading up had been demolished. Her first thought was that there had to be another way up, but then she heard something from the stairs leading down into the basement—footsteps.
The idiots had given themselves away. Despite having snipers on the upper floors, they tried to hide out in the basement. They must have hoped she would try to climb the broken path or—and this was more likely, she thought—there was another set of stairs somewhere in the building that led directly into their trap.
They could spring that one in a minute, but right now, she intended to eliminate the assholes who thought they could outsmart a dragon by hiding in the basement.
“Dammit, Hall, don’t you fucking move!” Drew was halfway across the room now.
If she didn’t hurry, she might find him in the firefight with her, something she definitely did not want to happen.
She plunged down the stairs toward the darkness below.
Chapter Thirty-Three
There was sufficient light to enable her to take the stairs two at a time but she had to hold the railing for the last section. Each step took her farther and farther from the light and soon, she could barely see at all.
From what she could make out, the floor was essentially the same as the one above it. Although the ceiling wasn’t so high, concrete pillars ran in rows that vanished into the gloom.
Kristen took a step forward. Footsteps echoed through the room and something greenish bobbed through the dark. Night vision goggles, she realized. Maybe they had wanted SWAT to come down there, after all.
Of course, that meant she had already walked into a trap. But it also meant it was all the more important to make sure her team didn’t follow her down.
“Hall. I need you back on the ground level now,” Drew ordered, his voice cris
p and cold over the radio. Her expression resolute, she silenced the device.
She heard more footsteps and peered into the gloom. Suddenly, it was as if someone turned a dimmer switch up. She could see—albeit not very well—someone’s shoulder protruding slightly from behind one of the pillars in the sixth row.
Her thoughts returned briefly to the dragon party. Hadn’t Shadowstorm said something about night vision when they were dancing? Was this another of her dragon powers manifesting?
Someone darted from one pillar to another. Movement seemed fairly easy to make out. Her eyes were adjusting but she didn’t have time.
From behind her, footsteps and the heavy breathing of people trying to move quickly reclaimed her focus.
She had to move and she had to move now if she wanted to prevent her team from getting hurt. They had night-vision goggles in the van, but the police had said the shots had been fired from above. She thought about alerting Drew but knew that would only encourage the team to join her. No one had thought about the basement. It was a stupid mistake, and she would not let it cost them. Not when she could end this before their trap hurt any people.
Her radio still inactive, she walked into the darkness, still in her steel skin, and tried to use her aura to dare these assholes to attack her.
After five steps in with no response, she paused and waited.
She continued to ten steps but still, nothing happened.
At twenty steps, she caught movement from the corner of her eye.
They’d taken the bait. Her senses deepened. With each passing moment, her eyes could pierce more deeply into the gloom. Her ears seemed keener too, and she realized she could tell fairly easily which way the people moved simply by the sounds of their footsteps.
Confident in her ability to succeed, she let them move into position until they had her surrounded. Perfect! This meant the hostiles were occupied with her, and that meant her team would be safe. Even Jim would have to admit that having a dragon working with people changed things.
One of the hostiles leaned out from behind a concrete pillar and fired at her.
She smiled and made no effort to dodge. It wasn’t like weapons could hurt her.
The projectile from the weapon struck her forearm. As expected, it didn’t hurt. It did stick, however. She looked down quickly. Two barbs wound with copper wire extended back to the shooter. For a moment, she could actually feel the tickle of the magnetic field from the little devices. A split-second later, electricity surged into her skin and for the first time since she’d known she was a dragon, she felt pain.
The sensation was excruciating—worse than the time she had tried to unplug the old clock in her grandfather’s garage and touched the live wire or the taser she had felt during an extremely unpleasant day of training at the police academy. It was even worse than being hit by a rocket—for her anyway.
Her teeth gritted, she fought the urge in her body to clench up. Her gaze followed the cables to the man who had shot her. It was harder to see now—apparently, severe pain didn’t do much for one’s concentration. She determined that the barbs were connected to some kind of high-powered taser rifle in the hands of a man dressed in tactical gear and equipped with night vision goggles.
By sheer force of will, she took a step toward him, followed by another. It was hard—damn hard—to make any progress with the electricity that coursed through her skin and made her muscles twitch, but she could do it. They obviously wanted her to drop her steel skin, but she wouldn’t fall for that.
That was what she thought until another two barbs fired from her left and stuck to her ribs. She tried to knock them away but between her twitchy muscles and the magnetic fields, they didn’t budge. Instead, they released more electricity into her steel skin. She took another step forward, even though she now moved away from one of her attackers. It was the hardest step she’d taken in her entire life.
A third pair of prongs struck her, this time in the small of the back. More electricity flooded her system like a forest that was already burning struck by additional lightning.
Kristen tried to take another step but fell to one knee.
When a fourth taser struck her in the neck, she could see the cords extending into the darkness—darkness that was much deeper than it had been moments before—and she tried to swat them away. Her arms were completely unresponsive.
She fell heavily, her steel body clanging and echoing off the concrete floor and pillars.
Desperately, she tried to stand—no, that was an enormous overstatement. She tried to think about standing and could barely manage even the idea of it.
Her body wasn’t her own. It was a twitching mess of pain. She felt like she was on fire, except this was far worse. Fire didn’t make someone’s muscles loosen so they pissed themselves. It didn’t make someone’s legs buck and kick while it immobilized them.
The sound of gunshots blasted into her awareness.
No. No! No, no, no, no, no, no! She was unable to even close her mouth. Drool trickled out and electricity coursed through it to sting her teeth.
She tried to turn to see what was happening, but even that proved futile. Still, she could think clearly enough to know that she’d failed her team. She’d tried to rush in to protect them and now, they were engaged with the enemy while she was reduced to nothing but a quivering pile of metal.
But she was stronger than that. She wouldn’t let this defeat her. After all, her dad was only human, and he’d been shot and survived. She was a steel dragon and could overcome this.
Somehow, despite all the twitching, she got her arms under her and pushed with every ounce of strength she had.
It wasn’t even remotely enough. The additional strain on her arms only made her twitch more, and she couldn’t raise her steel chest barely an inch off the ground. She collapsed into a writhing mess, completely powerless.
Kristen couldn’t even turn her head to see behind her. She didn’t know if the gunshots were from her own team attempting to rescue her or from the hostiles executing them.
Beyond her growing despair, she realized that the nature of the gunfight had changed. Instead of the quick bursts of fire—the regular exchange as two teams of combatants tried to pin the other down—it became the longer, steadier shots of one side pursuing another. Kristen could almost hear her team control their breath as the hostiles—cowards!—ran deeper into the room.
They’d done it. Her team had done it. Despite her running stupidly in to protect them, they’d saved her.
Kristen tried to turn her head to face them but that only sent shockwaves of pain through her body.
She closed her eyes, fought tears back, and opened them again to see the red digital numbers of a clock in front of her. Was this all a dream, then?
No, it wasn’t. She wanted it to be, but that wasn’t an alarm clock. It was a timer—and one connected to something attached to one of the pillars.
Oh. A bomb, her brain told her. Of course.
“Hernandez!” She tried to call out but her vocal cords ignored her.
Instead, her gaze traced a wire that ran from the timer to another pillar, and another and another. Many of the supports had bombs on them—maybe all of them.
The gunshots stopped and Drew and her team arrived. She tried to tell them what was happening, that she’d seen a bomb—no, bombs—but all she could manage was to stutter and drool while she stared at one of the pillars.
Hernandez waved a hand in front of her face. She blinked, looked hard at the woman—though even that motion was painful—then returned her stare to the bomb.
Her teammate caught the hint, looked up, and cursed. “We have a fucking bomb.”
“That’s not important right now. Get this shit off Hall,” Drew said and kicked away one of the magnetized barbs. Apparently, the hostiles had left their fancy tasers on the ground when they’d fled. He and Keith quickly kicked them all away.
Kristen sucked in a breath of air when the last one was removed.
Her muscles no longer felt like they were controlled by a kid flipping a light switch, but she still hurt. It felt like she’d been cooked. Her muscles were hers once more but they were completely drained. She tried to speak but couldn’t even manage that.
“They escaped into the sewer,” someone said. Jim? That was the new guy’s name, Jim. Even her brain seemed to be barely functioning.
Drew looked her in the eye. His face was full of pity and concern. Was this how her team saw her when she rushed in somewhere to protect them? She didn’t like it. “Hall, you’ll be okay. Keith and I will catch these creeps and make sure nothing like this happens to you again—”
“Not a good idea!” Hernandez shouted before he could finish.
“You can’t disarm the bomb?”
“Not in the forty seconds left in the timer. Plus, it’s not one bomb. It’s a goddammed demolition rig, at least as far as I can tell.” She sounded as nervous as hell. Kristen didn’t think she’d ever heard her sound scared of anything.
She wanted to say something about how Hernandez was a chicken after all, but she only managed a gurgle in the back of her throat and more drool.
“How big are we talking?” the team leader asked as his gaze settled on the timer.
“They’re trying to take down the whole damn building, Drew.”
“Then we follow these assholes into the sewer. They’ll lead us to a safe place,” Washington shouted.
“There is no way we’re leaving Kristen,” Drew replied almost viciously.
“She has steel skin so she’ll be fine,” the man responded.
“There must be limits to her power.”
“But—”
“Damn it, Wonderkid, now is not the goddamn time. Get over here and help me with her.”
There was a moment—a second really, because she saw it run out on the timer—before Jim moved. That felt like an eternity. Even though she couldn’t see him, she could imagine his posture from his tone of voice. He itched to run into the sewer and catch these people, not because they’d hurt her but because that was his job. He saw her simply as collateral damage. She couldn’t help but wonder, if he had his way, whether he’d let the building drop on her because it would be one less dragon.
Steel Dragon Page 25
