At the front of the building, the big metal garage door rolled up, the noise jarring in the previous silence. Dim light from a streetlamp in the parking lot flooded the interior of the warehouse, casting shadows across the shelves and rows of pallets loaded with the drug-filled boxes.
Lennox expected to see a crowd of armed men immediately moving through the door, maybe even a forklift too. But instead, there were just two of them. They slipped stealthily aroundthe edges of the door, moving immediately into the depth of the warehouse to either side, scouting out the place before committing anyone else to the operation.
Crap, crap, and double crap!
These guysweregood. Far too good to be a random collection of mercenaries recruited off the battlefield to pull odd jobs for a terrorist organization. These were highly trained, experienced soldiers who worked together frequently.
“Kirk. Colt. Pull back and find cover,” Lennox said as softly as he could into his radio. “Do not engage those two scouts unless your position is compromised. We need to get more people into the warehouse before we set this thing off or it’s going to be the shortest ambush in history.”
Before the words were out of his mouth, Colt was already moving back into the deeper shadows along the wall of the warehouse. Backpedaling so he could keep his eyes on the drugs, Lennox eased away to hide between two crates the size of refrigerators. He heard the quiet footsteps of one of the men seconds before he caught sight of him weaving in and out of the shelves and boxes.
The guy moved like a ghost, checking behind each crevice and hiding spot but still moving quickly. Any doubt as to the background of these men was erased at that point. They were special forces. No idea which country’s but definitely spec ops.
Lennox held his breath as the man crossed in front of his hiding place. He kept his finger on the trigger of his M4, ready to squeeze if there was even a whiff of a chance that the guy had seen him. But as the seconds ticked by, and his heart thumped steadily in his chest, the man continued toward the front of the warehouse.
Ten seconds later, movement near the big roll-up door seemed to indicate that the warehouse had been called clear, even though no one had said a word that Lennox could hear.
The first one through the door was a big man every bit of seven feet tall dressed in tactical gear.
Lennox slipped from his hiding place and low-crawled across the concrete floor, finding a position behind some shelves that gave him a clear shot at the pallets and the heavily armed men approaching them. A puttering sound filled the interior of the warehouse as a forklift drove in, heading straight for the first pallet.
“Get ready,” Lennox said softly into the radio. “On my first shot.”
Easing his weapon forward, Lennox took aim at the large man, hoping to take out the group’s leader with the first shot. Unfortunately, the guy was moving along the pallets on the far side, which made the shot tougher. When he reached the last pallet in the row—the one that Lennox had first opened to figure out what was inside—he stopped, frowning at what he saw.
Crap.
Lennox had closed up the box, but there was nothing he could do with the shrink wrap. The man must have noticed, because one second he was standing there and the next, he was swinging his weapon up spraying rounds into the shelves above Lennox’s head, shouting that they’d walked into an ambush.
Cursing, Lennox squeezed the trigger on his M4, firing three-round bursts into the rapidly dispersing group of men. A fraction of a second later, automatic weapon fire erupted from two other locations around the warehouse as Colt and Kirk joined in.
He expected the majority of the men to start bailing—that’s what most troops did when caught in a hail of gunfire, either duck and cover or get the hell out of dodge—but once again, the men showed they were more than expected. Instead of trying to turn and make a run for it, the entire group of eight men pivoted as one and charged straight toward Lennox’s position as well asColt’s. It was the exact right thing to do, taught by every military in the world. When faced with an ambush, attack. But only the most disciplined of troops could pull it off.
Lennox didn’t think about the people coming at him. He simply squeezed the trigger until the magazine ran empty, then reloaded and repeated. Some of the men went down, but not as many as he’d hoped. Not shocking considering they were probably wearing the best tactical vests available.
Overhead, chunks of wood and other debris rained down from the ceiling high above him. Over the radio, Simon and Darwin were shouting and cursing. The effort of taking out that other sniper was not going well. Which meant Darwin wouldn’t be coming down here anytime soon to back up Kirk.
As if to prove that things could always get worse, an explosion suddenly ripped through the warehouse barely a dozen feet to the right of Lennox’s hiding spot behind a section of heavy shelving, sending pieces of metal whistling through the air. A moment later, another explosion shook the floor to the left.
Crap. They had grenades.
Praying there wasn’t another grenade coming, Lennox pushed himself upright and emptied an entire magazine in the general direction the bad guys had been coming from. Except, they weren’t still coming. Instead, the big man and the others left alive had used the distraction provided by the grenades to break contact. They were all escaping through the roll-up door.
Right before the big man disappeared from sight, he paused to pull a backpack off his shoulder and slung it toward the pallets with the drugs. The pack bounced off the closest one, ending up wedged between that one and the next. With a sinking feeling, Lennox was pretty sure he knew what it was.
“Get out of the warehouse now!” he shouted into his radio as he jumped to his feet. “They tossed in an IED!”
Knowing there was no way he’d make it to the roll-up doors, Lennox turned and made a mad dash for the closet window, the one covered with heavy-duty security grating like every other window in this place.
“Get off the roof!” he shouted into his radio, weaving in and out of the crates and boxes between him and the nearest exit point. “Get off right the hell now!”
Reloading in the midst of a sprint was tough, but he managed it, before aiming at the base of the window frame and squeezing off multiple three-round bursts. Then he launched himself forward, praying for the best.
He twisted his body in midair, intending to take the brunt of the impact on the thickest part of his tactical armor vest. Unfortunately, the sudden blast behind him changed his plans as the thump of overpressure caught him and tossed him through the air like a kid’s toy.
Lennox was vaguely aware of hitting the window. The grating barely slowed him down, but still hurt like hell. Then he slammed into the concrete of the parking lot outside the warehouse and learned that the ground hurt more than the window grating.
He must have bounced half a dozen times before sliding to a painful halt. Panic building up in his chest, he shoved himself upright, twisting his head left and right, praying he’d see his Teammates. But there was no one in sight. All he saw was burning debris from the partially demolished warehouse.
