Phoenix members on my left flank saw me, their rifles swinging toward me before recognition hit. "Irish! Get over here! Move with us!"
I should have listened. The side buildings were closer. The tactical play was obvious.
But Nolan was ahead of me, and a mercenary was following too close behind Dec, and the rational part of my brain had been replaced by a single imperative that had nothing to do with tactics and everything to do with the two people I couldn't lose.
I sprinted across the open ground. Bullets snapped past me, close enough to feel the displaced air against my face. The twenty yards between me and the main building were the longest distance I'd ever crossed.
The mercenary behind Dec was closing. Through the dust and the smoke, I saw movement at the doorframe, a blur of motion, and the mercenary crumpled. His hands went to his throat. His rifle was gone before his knees hit the ground, snatched from his grip by hands I couldn't see. Blade. Had to be.
Good. Someone had it handled.
I hit the entrance at a half-sprint, plunging through the open doors into the dimmer interior, and the wall of rifle barrels that greeted me was impressive, terrifying, and deeply unwelcoming.
"It's me!" My voice came out hoarse, barely a rasp, swallowed by the gunfire still raging outside. "It's me, it's Irish, don't fucking shoot!"
I threw myself sideways toward the nearest wall, away from the center of the doorframe. Stray rounds chewed through the doorway behind me, punching chunks from the concrete frame, the impacts sending dust and debris spraying across the floor.
Blade was right there. Same side of the doorframe, the mercenary's body crumpled at his feet, his knife wet. Behind a flipped table further back, Axel with a captured rifle already shouldered.
"You know," I panted, pressing my back to the wall beside Blade, "I was expecting a warmer welcome. Maybe a fruit basket."
"Turn around." Blade. Flat. Economical.
I turned. His knife sliced through the zip ties in a single stroke, the tension releasing from my wrists like a pressure valve opening. I shook my hands. The blood rushed back into my fingers in a wave of pins and needles.
I moved along the wall toward Dec and Nolan behind the overturned table. Rounds still cracking through the doorway, the staccato snap of incoming fire chasing me across the room. I dropped behind the table beside them and Nolan was on me instantly, his arms around my neck, fierce and brief, the glasses pressing into my shoulder, his whole body shaking with a relief so violent it registered as trembling.
"You're alive." Barely a whisper against my collar.
"Consistently." I held him for one second. Then let go.
A pistol found my hand. Nolan pressing it into my grip, his fingers closing mine around the metal. "You'll know better what to do with it."
Dec was beside me. His jaw tight, his eyes carrying the fury and the relief in equal measure. "You ran across the open courtyard. Through active crossfire. With your hands tied behind your back."
"I know. I'm an idiot. We can discuss it later."
"I almost shot you."
"But you didn't. Because you're very good at your job."
His mouth opened. Closed. The almost-smile that I lived for ghosted across his lips and vanished.
No time. From outside, a metallic clank. Then another. Small objects arcing through the doorway, trailing wisps of smoke, bouncing off the concrete floor and rolling to a stop in the center of the entrance hall.
"GRENADES!" Dec's arm hooked around Nolan and pulled him behind the overturned table. I dove on top of both of them, shielding, my back to the blast zone.
The stun grenades detonated.
Light. White. Total. The flash burned through my closed eyelids and turned the darkness behind them into a white-hot void. The concussive wave hit my back like a fist made of air, compressing my lungs, rattling my teeth. The sound was a frequency that bypassed hearing and went straight to the nervous system, a piercing shriek that erased every other input and replaced it with a ringing so dense it felt solid.
DECLAN
The ringing faded in stages. White to gray. Silence to static. Static to the muffled, underwater sound of boots on concrete and weapons being chambered.
I was up before my vision cleared. The Sig in both hands. My ears screaming. My balance compromised, the vestibular system fighting to recalibrate against the concussive damage. The world tilted fifteen degrees to the right and I compensated through muscle memory, planting my feet wider, lowering my center of gravity.
The doorway. The mercenaries would come through in the first three seconds after detonation. That was doctrine. Stun and breach. Every military force in the world used the same timing because the timing worked.
