A few assholes get off a couple of shots, but our team is no joke, and the traffickers are immediately overwhelmed. Anders and Max take out four guys right in front of them while Ant drops to his knees and slashes one guy’s groin, releasing a flood of blood.
The guy with the gun on me fires wide, a big mistake on his part. I close the distance and disarm him, shoving the muzzle of his own gun under his chin, aiming at the ceiling through his head.
He grabs my hand, shouting, “No!” as I pull the trigger.
He falls to the ground sounding like a dropped backpack, next to a guy Ant just stabbed in the temple.
Anders and Hopper stab a guy at the same time, then start arguing over who gets the kill. Omar tells them to shut up, then breaks a guy’s neck.
Anders scowls at his husband. “Show off.”
In the meantime, Levy and Nacho are working toward us. Levy punches a guy so hard his knees wobble, reminding me he’s a black belt in judo. He then grabs the guy’s head and pulls it toward his knee, knocking him out cold.
While that’s happening, a huge guy lands a solid shot to Nacho’s nose, and Levy makes him pay for it with a devastating kick to the ribs. The guy drops to the ground, and Levy towers over him, knocking him out with a vicious downward punch.
All in all, it takes less than five minutes for our team to take down the security force. A few of their guys are still alive, but not for long if Hopper has anything to do with it.
“Hopper,” Omar says calmly, “you can come back and kill everyone you want to, but let’s get the kids out first, okay?”
Standing with a man’s tongue in his hand, Hopper bites his lower lip. “You’re right. Sorry.”
“The tongue,” Omar says mildly.
“Oh yeah,” he says, dropping it on the man’s face.
Ant snorts, still trying to pull his knife from a very dead guy’s temple and not having much luck with it. Erik walks up to him, holds the man’s head, and then yanks the knife out for him, handing it to Ant. “Good job.”
“Thanks,” Ant says, wiping the blood off on the man’s shirt.
A few minutes later, Anders walks in from the office area, a silver case in hand. “Okay, I’ve got Charlie on the mend. It’ll be a few more minutes before he can walk though. Let’s get the kids out of here before they send in more people.”
He then walks up to Nacho and resets his nose before giving him several tiny injections around the broken bone.
“It’s gonna sting for a minute, but you’ll be good after that.”
“Don’t suppose you have anything for the bruises? If I go home with double black eyes, Bram is going to want somebody’s head.”
“Oh, easy,” Anders says, grabbing an enormous hunting knife from his sheath.
I raise my brows, not exactly sure where he’s going with this. He winks and gestures to the guy lying facedown in a pool of his own blood. He’s the one who broke Nacho’s nose.
The man is hurt but breathing. Anders grabs his hair and pulls his head up, slicing the knife clean through his neck, easily separating it from his body.
“If you want, I can gift wrap it for him.”
Nacho laughs and smacks Anders’ shoulder. “You are one fucking crazy dude.”
“Eh. Those tests were never conclusive,” Anders drawls, taking a quick selfie with the head.
A familiar laugh goes through our little group, and I assume it’s a joke he’s made on more than one occasion.
In the meantime, Levy’s made his way over to the children and is speaking to an older kid. I walk up beside him and listen in.
“It looks really scary in here right now, so you’ve got to help me convince all the little kids to keep their eyes closed as we lead them out of here, okay? We’ll do like the elephants with everybody holding on to each other’s shoulders, and we’ll close our eyes and walk out of here.”
The kid nods. “Okay.”
Omar, Max, Anders, and I quickly make a path, and Levy guides them straight out the front door. Just as we reach outside, Hedy pulls up in one of the buses with the little girl sitting on the bench behind her with Ant’s very large brindle pit bull panting serenely at her side.
