Smokescreen (13 page)

Perspiration streaked his face under the electrostatic-cling mask. The cloth over his mouth restricted his breathing. But there was no way he was going to take the mask off and risk getting identified. He had to protect Grace and Michael. He’d given Mac his word on that.

Dalton was looking back to his right, watching out for pursuit, when he caught movement to his left in his peripheral vision. He turned his head, bringing the assault rifle around and down, and saw the gunman tight in against a stack of crates across the alley from him.

Not gonna make it this time,
Dalton thought. But he didn’t quit. He never had.

Hunkered down on a short stack of crates between two smaller ones on the first floor, Christie spotted No-Face as he slammed into place in the alley ahead of her. He’d taken out the men climbing the stairs, as well as two of them who had been hot on her tail.

She waited for just a moment, wondering what to do about him. She still couldn’t believe how hard the gunmen had come after her, or how they’d known she was there. Dead silence echoed in her head, reminding her how used to the conversations channeling through her communications unit she was and how they were now missing.

The communications had been cut off almost immediately after the machine gunner in the helicopter had opened fire. She felt certain the signals were being shut
down with a nearby frequency generator, an umbrella of disruption that had killed digital communications of all kinds. The encrypted frequencies used by the Bureau were even better than Washington, D.C. police and fire departments. However, before the shutdown had happened, she’d heard the yells of the men in her unit, screaming that they’d been hit or that they were under fire. She had no doubt that some of them were now dead.

Suddenly she spotted the gunman sneaking up on No-Face and bringing his rifle to bear.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend,
she told herself. It was an old axiom from Sun Tzu’s
The Art of War.
Soundlessly, she leaped from the top of the crate, kicking out at the man’s head and making solid contact.

The Kevlar helmet cracked the wooden crate beside the man. He went down in a loose-limbed sprawl. Christie landed on her feet just as No-Face pointed the assault rifle at the center of her chest.

They stared at each other, and Christie didn’t know what the man was going to do.

“Nice save,” No-Face said in a hoarse voice. He lifted the rifle to his side once more. “He had me cold. Keep your head up. You and I are getting out of here.”

“Just like that?” Christie asked bitterly.

The face beneath the electrostatic mask moved and she bet he’d smiled. How the hell he could smile at a time like this she didn’t know.
He didn’t lose his team out there,
she told herself.
His friends and fellow agents aren’t dead.

“Close enough,” he replied. “Do you know how to use an assault rifle?”

“Yes.” That was part of Bureau training for field ops these days. Everybody else had assault weapons, so the FBI agents had to have them as well.

He stripped the assault rifle from the gunman’s hands and tossed it to her. She slid her pistol into her shoulder holster beneath the Kevlar duster and worked the rifle’s action.

“Check the magazine,” he said as he stripped spare magazines from the unconscious man.

Christie did. The capacity indication holes showed twenty-five rounds were stored in the staggered magazine. “Full.”

Without a word, he tossed her the bandolier of extra magazines. She caught it and stood there.

“Move,” he said. “His two buddies are running a little scared right now, but you can bet they’re regrouping. This is a scorched-earth mission designed to deliver a lot of casualties. Somebody’s sending a message.”

Christie hung the bandolier over her shoulder.

No-Face drew the unconscious man’s silenced pistol, shot the man through the head twice, and dropped the weapon before she had any indication of what he was going to do. He turned to go like what he’d just done was nothing. The blank mask suited him to a
T
in that moment.

“Move out,” he ordered.

Move out?
The hell she would. She launched herself at him, letting free the dark anger that blossomed inside her.

C
hristie slammed the rifle across No-Face’s chest and knocked him back into the stack of crates. “What the hell did you just do?” she demanded.

She’d hit him so hard she’d knocked the wind out of him and he couldn’t answer immediately. He hung against the crate with his feet inches off the ground.

“He was unconscious,” Christie said. “You didn’t have to kill him.”

No-Face struggled to free himself and couldn’t. He finally sucked in a deep, shuddering breath that rasped wetly. The mask section over his mouth hollowed, then pushed out as he managed to inhale then exhale. “You don’t leave…a pissed off individual…behind when you’re…executing a strategic retreat,” he gasped. “Not if you…might have to…cover the same…territory. And that guy would…definitely have been…pissed off.”

Horror and denial coursed through Christie. He wasn’t going to ignore what he’d done, or try to call it anything other than what it was. “That was murder.”

“That was survival,” he countered, getting his breath back. “You don’t leave an enemy alive unless you know you can leave him behind.” He sucked in a deep breath.
“Do you plan on hanging around here till the rest of the group finds us?”

Men’s voices drifted to her ears, calling out in Chinese as they cleared the warehouse section by section. They were getting close.

Reluctantly, Christie let him drop. He remained on his feet with effort.

“They were after you.” He crossed to the dead man and yanked the corpse’s arm into view. “Look.”

Christie looked, spotting the video display in the protective plastic pocket on the sleeve. The screen showed her twice, full face and profile.

“They were hunting you,” he said. “They knew you were here. You and your team were set up.”

“How did they know?”

He let the arm drop. “I don’t know. I’m still working that out.”

“Who are you?”

He shook his head. “No. We had this conversation.”

Christie started to square up with him. She needed answers and she needed them fast.

Lunging forward, he put a hand against her face, painfully squashing her nose with his palm, and shoved. She only thought about resisting for a moment, knowing she could have overpowered him with her Enhanced strength. The pain in her nose was too much. Her eyes watered. She went backward reluctantly.

“Move!” he shouted as he kept driving her. An instant later, bullets ripped into the crates they’d been standing in front of. He turned and fired the assault rifle one-handed, unleashing a stream of bullets that sprayed back into the alley he’d come through.

Knowing it would be foolish to fight against him,
Christie let herself be driven, turning and keeping her footing with difficulty.

They raced in a zigzag pattern through the stacks. Without access to her onboard computer and GPS mapping program, which continuously downloaded global positioning satellite information and let her know where she was, Christie was uncertain about the direction to take.

No-Face showed no hesitation at all. He moved through the maze of cargo like he’d lived there all his life, only doubling back twice when they inadvertently encountered enemy reinforcements. He knew the battlefield as if he’d laid it out.

He fired short, controlled bursts once they were moving, chasing the gunmen back and putting one of them down. Christie relaxed and fell into the same groove, drawing confidence from the way he moved and the way he led.

The last turn put her in view of the back warehouse doors. No-Face pulled her in against the line of crates without the three guards stationed at the door spotting them. The sea-green eyes regarded her.

“You’re strong,” he whispered.

Figuring he was looking for a response, Christie nodded. She wasn’t breathing as hard as he was. Her lungs had been Enhanced as well, adding tiny micro oxygen scrubbers that kicked in when her adrenaline was pumping near max.

“Can you get me up there?” He pointed to the top crate twelve feet above.

Putting her assault rifle aside, Christie made a cradle of her hands and bent at the waist. “Can you land on your feet?”

“Usually do,” he said, stepping into her hands and hanging on to his captured assault rifle with both hands.

Christie threw him at once, aiming him for the top of the stack. He flew up two feet past it, twisted in the air, and came down on his feet. He knelt and brought his rifle to his shoulder even as Christie reclaimed her own.

The guards had been watching for people on the ground. They hadn’t looked up. No-Face fired quickly, aiming for the weak spots between the helmet and the shoulder pads of the body armor. From the height, his bullets struck home in two of the gunmen’s lungs and spinal cords, killing them within seconds.

The third man ducked back and brought up his weapon, firing a torrent of bullets that drove No-Face to cover. He was carrying a SAW, a military M-2495.56 mm machine gun designated as a Squad Automatic Weapon used for team support. It generally carried a two-hundred-round magazine. The Bureau had trained all agents working against gangs and hostile foreign corp security—which sometimes amounted to the same people—in heavy firepower.

We’ve got to get out of here before reinforcements arrive,
Christie thought. They’d left the last gunman only a short distance behind, but by now the gang leaders must know the mission was in trouble.

She triggered the adrenal pump within her chest that flooded her system with adrenaline. The fight/flight chemical concoction Nature had invented had been refined in labs. For a few minutes, she was faster and stronger than ever.

Dashing around the corner of the cargo, she sped for the third gunman. Crouched down as he was, she knew shooting him would be almost impossible. In her adrenaline-laced condition, the man seemed to be moving in
slow motion, the bullets individually spaced instead of a blur of muzzle flashes.

She’d crossed half of the fifty feet separating her from the gunman when he noticed her. He swiveled, trying desperately to bring the M-249 around. She heard No-Face’s voice even over the hammering booms of the machine gun.

“Noooooooo!”

From the corner of her eye, she saw No-Face stand up atop the crates and try to pull the rifle into line. She was in the way, though, blocking the shot even if he had time to make it. The crate he was on was shot to hell.

Christie leaped, easily pulling her body up into a flying kick, poised perfectly. Her left foot smacked into the gunman’s Kevlar-masked face just as a line of bullets cut the air beneath her. Her forward momentum drove the gunman into the wall behind him. He was unconscious before he slumped to the ground.

With her Enhanced sense of balance, a small amplification of the inner ear, Christie whirled in midair and landed on her feet facing back toward the center of the warehouse. She lifted the assault rifle and scanned the area with her night vision.

“Are you waiting for an invitation?” she asked. She knew her words came out fast, strung together by the adrenaline bouncing through her nervous system.

No-Face leaped from the top of the crates, dropped to the floor in a roll that brought him back to his feet and ran to her. She stood in front of the man she’d kicked unconscious, not giving him a chance to kill the fallen enemy. No-Face opened the door, shoved through and dropped into a crouch as he scanned the outside of the building.

“Clear,” he shouted, and his voice seemed to come from a long way off.

Christie turned and bolted for the door, watching as the last gunman came into view. Bullets chased Christie outside. No-Face had already run to the end of the alley and taken up a defensive position.

She ran to him.
Safety in numbers. At least he hasn’t tried to kill me yet.
And if he screwed up and got careless, she intended to put him in handcuffs despite the fact that he’d saved her ass a couple of times.

Before she reached him, he darted around the corner, legging up the alley to the front of the warehouse. She followed him, eating up the distance between them easily with the adrenaline in her system.

He was about to settle into position at the corner of the warehouse when machine-gun fire tore through the metal. Tracer rounds chewed craters in the street. The helicopter cut the sky above them like a shark slicing through a dark ocean.

Beyond the alley’s mouth, Arturo Gennady’s car continued to burn and that was just the centerpiece of hellish wrath that had descended on the immediate vicinity. All of the buildings had been hit. A cannon from the speedboat had razed all of the observation and camera points her team had taken up.

Pinned down in the alley, Christie watched helplessly as a second helicopter dropped out of the sky and hovered in the street near the burning car. The black-clad gunmen evacuated the warehouse on the double. Some of them carried bodies over their shoulders.

“Taking away their dead,” No-Face said. “So you can’t identify them.”

Christie cursed, knowing he was right. In seconds, both helicopters vanished into the night sky.

“Can you contact your team?” No-Face asked.

Christie tried. Only silence echoed inside her head. “No.”

“Your support team?”

“Nothing,” she said.

Sirens screamed across the Potomac, coming closer.
You’re already too late,
Christie thought bitterly, watching the flames twist and spiral in the gutted hollows of the buildings where her team had been.

She looked at No-Face, studying those sea-green eyes. A thin slice under his left eye wept blood and soaked the cloth of his mask. “Do you know who they are?” she asked.

He hesitated, then answered, “Not yet.” He stood.

“Where are you going?” Christie stood as well. She felt vaguely nauseous and she cursed the adrenaline side effects she was about to go through. Her arms and legs and head felt heavy and her coordination was rapidly going. Flooding her body with adrenaline enabled her to do superhuman things, but the payback her system demanded was equally devastating.

“I’m going to take care of some business.” He looked at her. “You took an adrenal pump with the Enhanced package?”

Stubbornly, Christie didn’t answer him. She tried to lift the rifle.

“That was a mistake. The pump leaves you nothing.” He moved too fast for her, knocking the rifle out of her hands. She reached for her pistol. He took that away and emptied it, flicking the bullets over the ground at his feet. He dropped the empty magazine and the weapon on the ground.

Christie leaned forward to pick them up and fell drunkenly to her hands and knees. She could barely
hold her head up. An adrenaline pump was used only as a last resort, enabling the possessor one last frantic chance in a live-or-die situation. Using it during an ongoing situation with no sign of relief meant being weak as a kitten if that situation continued past the pump’s window. She’d had no choice back at the warehouse, and she had no choice now.

No-Face turned and gazed at the battle zone the docks had turned into. “I doubt any of your team made it out alive.” He turned back to her. “There was nothing you could do about that. It wasn’t your fault.” He sounded like he felt sorry for her.

“Bastard.” The epithet came out weak, with nowhere near the force she’d intended. If she could just keep him talking a few more minutes, gloating or feeling sorry for her or whatever the hell it was, either Fielding would have units available to take him down or she’d catch her second wind. She hoped it would be the second wind.

“Save it for the guys that did this.” He started to walk away from her, then stopped as if he was unsure of what he was doing. “It was the Bronze Tigers Triad. I saw a tattoo on one of the men inside the warehouse. You want to vent some hostility or arrange a little payback, start there.”

“I’m just supposed to believe you?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I saved your ass up there—”

“I saved yours, too.”

“Yeah, you did. So I owe you this one. It’s always nice to know who your enemies are. Saves on a lot of confusion.” He started walking away.

Trembling, trying hard not to throw up, Christie threatened, “I’m going to find you.”

“Don’t waste your time,” he said. “Save it for the Tigers.” Then he turned the corner and was gone.

Raising her head, fighting the vertigo that spun ceaselessly inside her senses, Christie looked at Arturo Gennady’s dead body lying out in the street. Tears filled her eyes but she held them back. She wouldn’t cry now, not with Fielding’s reinforcements on the way. But later, when she was alone and no one was watching, she’d let go.

“Chace!
Chace!
”

Looking up, not believing she’d heard the voice, Christie spotted Dwight Yeager stumbling through the rubble toward her. Two other agents from the team stumbled along in his wake.

Thank God,
Christie thought.
Someone survived.
But her thoughts turned dark at once. There was no getting around the fact that they had walked into an ambush. All the survivors were going to be suspect.

Including her.