Avenged (Hostage Rescue Team Series) (Volume 5) (32 page)

The door gunner kept his weapon trained on possible threats below as they neared the target. Moments later the pilots lowered the helo into a hover above the rooftop. The crew chief deployed the fast rope and turned to face them, signaled it was go time.

Nate stood with his teammates, put on his ruck and waited his turn to slide down the rope. Tuck was the first one down. Then Blackwell, Bauer. Vance, Evers. All of them fanned out in a defensive half circle, weapons to their shoulders.

The crew chief gave him the signal to go. Nate gripped the thick rope between his gloved hands and swung out of the helo. Wrapping his feet around it, he controlled the speed of his descent with pressure from his feet and hands. The second his boots hit the ground he turned to steady the rope for Cruz, who’d already begun his descent. When he was on the ground everyone else got up and raced after Tuck, who led the way across the rooftop to the access door.

****

Pressed against the far wall of the darkened courtroom by Duncan’s big frame, Taya stayed absolutely still, her heart pounding against her ribs. All around her people were crouched in the darkness, the sour smell of fear sharp in her nostrils. Some cried or whimpered, others were silent, huddling in the room they were trapped in together.

A gunman had stormed in a few minutes ago and opened fire. In the confusion Duncan had tackled her to the floor while the other two marshals returned fire. From the cries and sobs she knew people had been hit, but then the gunman had left, continuing down the hall to the next room. She had no idea whether the marshals had hit him or not.

Her pulse drummed in her ears in the eerie stillness. The screams from down the hall had died down now, but she could hear automatic fire popping somewhere in the background. The fire alarms were still going off, the shrill sound adding to the sense of panic she battled to keep at bay. Duncan and the other two marshals were armed, but she wasn’t sure about anyone else. Those gunmen were still in the building, some right next door, and no one knew whether they planned to come back. If they did, Taya and the others needed all the firepower they could muster.

Suddenly lights flashed on overhead. Everyone gasped and cringed, but no shots rang out. Duncan eased off her and drew his weapon, the other two marshals already moving with purpose toward the door near the front of the courtroom. Across the room, a woman covered her mouth and started sobbing.

Following her gaze, Taya saw five bodies lying in a pile near the open doorway. Three more bodies lay in spreading pools of blood near them. Some survivors were bent over the wounded, at least a dozen that she could see.

“Let’s go,” Duncan ordered, grabbing her wrist. Taya kicked off her high heels and scrambled to her feet. Her impulse was to help the wounded but she understood that she needed to get out. Her presence put the survivors at further risk and the shooters might come back at any moment.

Her legs wobbled as she followed Duncan, weaving in and out of the people crouched on the floor. Some looked at them in confusion, others begged them to help. She shut them out, kept putting one foot in front of the other.

Taya was supposed to have been seated in the room down the hall, the one where all the screams had come from. She shuddered.

“You’ve got to get out,
now
,” Duncan said to everyone. “Don’t sit here like a target, get up and move!”

A flurry of motion met his words. Some people huddled deeper into themselves, others got up and ran, trampling slower moving victims in their panic.

Someone crashed into Taya. She stumbled, grabbed hold of Duncan, who spun and clamped an arm around her waist to catch her before she hit the floor. He dragged her with him toward the front of the room and she saw the other marshals pause near the pile of bodies. A flash of bright orange caught her attention.

“Qureshi,” one of them said.

Taya’s mind cleared instantly, the fog of shock and fear evaporating like mist on a hot summer day. Her gaze zeroed in on the body dressed in the orange prison suit. The man was lying on his back, his head turned away from her, prayer cap knocked askew and his dark beard matted with blood.

She didn’t take her eyes off him as she hurried alongside Duncan. She wanted to see Qureshi with her own eyes. Wanted to know he was dead.

Pulling away from Duncan’s hold she stepped toward the body. Stared into that still face.

The fierce satisfaction rising inside her dimmed, then disappeared altogether.

“That’s not Qureshi.”

Duncan and the others paused and looked at her sharply. “Are you sure?” he asked, his sweat-beaded brow furrowed.

She nodded. “Positive.” She’d never forget his face. Never.

Screams erupted from out in the hallway. Taya started. Duncan lunged for her, grabbed her upper arm and yanked her toward the door. “Go, go!”

Running footsteps pounded over the marble outside the courtroom. Taya bolted for the exit.

More screams, followed by the roar of gunfire. A sharp, hot pain kissed the back of her right calf. She dove to the ground, saw Duncan on his belly, grabbing for her. Rolling, she caught sight of the two men standing in the doorway, AK-47s brandished.

Ayman and Darwish. She recognized them from the pictures in the file Vance had shown her.

Her heart stuttered, terror paralyzing her as Ayman’s gaze landed on her and locked there. A strange, hideous smile spread across his face and the muzzle of his rifle swung toward her. Duncan and the other two marshals aimed their own weapons at him.

The lights went out, plunging them all into complete blackness once more as the roar of gunfire echoed around her.

They were in. No booby-traps on the door leading from the rooftop. But that didn’t mean there weren’t other nasty surprises waiting for them below.

Weapon up, Nate stayed right on Vance’s ass as they crept down the stairway from the roof. Tuck was up front, Bauer directly behind him. They were headed to the main floor where they’d begin clearing the building one room at a time, beginning at the eastern end while Gold Team did the same from the west. By the time they met up at the middle, they’d have the remaining tangos contained in the center courtroom, with nowhere to go.

And then pray the militants didn’t plan on blowing the entire building up when they realized they were trapped. Agents had been able to listen in to some radio communications between the militants, confirming they planned to free Qureshi and take out as many others as possible, including anyone in that courtroom.

Which meant Taya.

Tuck paused at the base of the stairwell when the rattle of automatic fire rang out from down the hall outside the door. Nate’s hands remained steady on his weapon as he stayed in place with his team, his breathing even.

When the firing stopped Tuck and Bauer moved to opposite sides of the door, readying to clear the hallway when it opened. At Tuck’s nod, Evers stepped up and hit the release bar, opening the door a crack while the others covered him. Nate stayed in position, muscles tense, gaze locked on the slice of hallway revealed by the open door.

No shooting. No grenades.

“Clear,” Tuck murmured, his voice crystal clear in Nate’s earpiece.

Tuck and Bauer piled in the doorway, covering every angle before Tuck gave the signal that the hallway was clear. “Grant, report,” he said quietly to the Gold Team leader. A moment later Tuck looked back at them, nodded to confirm that the other team was in place and moving forward from the opposite end of the courthouse.

Tuck slipped out into the hall, Bauer right behind him. Evers was next, then Blackwell. Just as Cruz stepped into the hallway, the emergency lights went out. Without pause Nate and the others reached up to pull the NVGs down on their helmet mounts, then activated them. The slight ambient light in the hallway lit up everything in a green glow.

Let’s go hunting, boys
, Nate thought as Tuck stepped out into the hall.

Automatic fire burst from the courtroom to the left. The team froze in position against the right wall of the hallway, but no one stormed out of the room. The bastards were in there shooting at helpless civilians.

Tuck waved them forward. As a unit they crept toward the besieged courtroom. The soles of Nate’s boots were silent against the marble floor as they worked their way to the far doors.

He was more than ready to take the tangos down and get one step closer to finding Taya.

****

Flat on her belly on the courtroom floor, Taya swallowed a scream as the shots erupted around her, the muzzle flashes lighting up the darkness. Bullets smacked into the wall and floor beside her, peppering her with hot bites of marble.

A hand closed around her forearm. Duncan grunted and yanked her hard, rolling her beneath, then behind him. Taya flattened herself against the cold floor tiles and held her breath, afraid to move.

One of the marshals beside her cursed and hit the ground, falling half on top of her. She winced as his weight landed on her, felt the spray of blood and a wave of terror coursed through her. Even in the darkness the shooters could see their general location, probably from the light of the muzzle flashes.

“Go,” the man ordered her weakly, shoving her in the direction of the doorway.

Taya turned her head to gauge the distance but couldn’t see it in the dark. She remembered it wasn’t that far away, maybe fifteen yards. She could make it. Kick the door open and slide around the safety of the sheltering wall outside.

More shots rang out, the pitch different this time, higher than the AK-47s used by the shooters. The marshals were returning fire, even though they couldn’t see their targets clearly.

She set her palms flat on the floor, eased upward and pushed her body forward a few inches.

Behind her, Duncan screamed and fell. Taya froze, automatically turning back toward him. She reached out, her hand landing on his chest. It came away wet and sticky.

“No,” he argued, pushing her hand away as he reloaded his weapon and fired again. “Go.
Go
.”

She was torn between the desire to flee and the need to stay put and help him. Before she could move he jerked again, his growl of agony reverberating beneath her hand. Blood spurted over her arm.

Oh, Jesus. He’d been hit bad.

She couldn’t leave him. He’d acted as a human shield, was sacrificing himself even now to provide cover for her.

Flattening herself against his back, she groped around for a weapon, found the pistol lying in his hand. His grip was lax. He was already so weak that he didn’t even protest when she pulled it from his grasp. She knew how to handle a weapon. Had learned to shoot as a little girl, but when she’d come back home from Afghanistan she’d had her brother work with her for weeks until she felt confident in her ability to hit what she aimed at every time.

And she was damn well going to hit her target now.

Curling her hands around the pistol, its grip slick with Duncan’s blood, she raised her arms slightly, using him to steady herself and aimed toward the shooters. Her finger curved around the trigger, a sense of hope filling her at the solid feel of the weapon in her hands. She fired four rounds in the direction of the muzzle flashes, two at each man. The volume of return fire slowed suddenly and she swore she heard one of them cry out.

Hope it hurts, you piece of shit. Here’s another.

She aimed higher, squeezed the trigger again and again, just the way Kevin had showed her. If she was going to die in this room, she would do it while fighting for her life.

****

Ayman grunted and stumbled back a pace as a bullet slammed into his outer thigh, but he didn’t go down. The intense burn faded beneath the rush of the adrenaline and amphetamines in his blood, his heart racing with it.

He’d been certain they’d killed the whore and her security team but someone was still over in the corner shooting at them. He shifted his stance, the pain in his leg barely registering as he turned the muzzle of his weapon farther to the right. Just as his finger applied pressure to the trigger he heard Darwish cry out. His teammate swung out a hand blindly and grabbed for him, hitting Ayman right in his wound.

This time even the drugs couldn’t dull the pain. Ayman cried out, lost his balance as Darwish crumpled to the floor and knocked him down. He scrambled to his feet, kicked out at Darwish, his foot connecting with something hard. Maybe his head. More shots cracked through the air, streaking past his head. Darwish shouted in pain, calling out to Allah, his voice gurgling.

Ayman ignored the fear curling inside him, struggled to his feet. Another round hit him in the chest, then another, in rapid succession. The Kevlar he wore made it feel like someone had kicked him in the chest but he didn’t fall.

Over the radio attached to his shoulder he could hear someone shouting directions in Arabic. He’d long since stopped listening to the transmissions as one commander after another reported heavy losses and urged the rest of them to keep fighting.

Ayman would fight to the death to save himself and his family.

He swung his weapon up, fired blindly in the direction of where those shots had come from. Another bullet sank into his leg, deep into his calf. He wobbled, stayed upright, a scream of rage and agony erupting from him. Pain swirled, a red mist obscuring his thoughts. It built relentlessly, swirling up to combat the drugs, taking over his body. Fear and panic began to sink into him like fangs, stripping away his resolve.

The Brethren had done this to him. Sent him and the others here like lambs to the slaughter, knowing they would never make it out.

His breathing came harder, faster, his heart pumping a desperate rhythm. He was staring death in the eye now, and he didn’t dare blink.

And he was taking that shooter out before he drew his last breath.

Ayman saw the muzzle flash from the pistol, felt another round slam into the armor protecting his chest. He grunted, adjusted his aim at the shooter. His finger curved harder around the trigger and the noise of the shots suddenly turned muted in his ears, as though everything was happening under water. The roaring of his own blood drowned out everything else.