“Yes,” he said with a decisive nod, “let’s go.”
Corey tore into a duffle bag in the trunk and doled out extra ammo along with his age-old homily of making it count—head and chest shots, no indiscriminate firing.
The men split off into their designated groups, and the cars crawled down the hill. Emory winced at the crunch of pea gravel as they rolled through an open gate. They parked alongside the building beneath the shadow of a corrugated steel overhang. The men moved in fluid silence out of the vehicles and crouched between the engine blocks and the outside wall. There was no way the commotion hadn’t announced their arrival, but nothingstirred; only the singing of crickets and his men shifting in their squatted positions.
“We stick to Corey’s plan,” Emory said to the huddle. “Jack, you lead your side. Corey, it’s all you for ours, man.”
Corey mumbled a “yes, sir” and Jack gave a perfunctory nod. In the back, Zulu stiffened with wide eyes.
“You good?” Emory asked as a measure of solidarity. It didn’t rightly matter. They were doing it, no time for self-reflection or pep talks. The kid exhaled a shaky breath and nodded.
“Say your prayers if you got ‘em,” Corey muttered before leading the way in swift movements that took advantage of the shadows along the wall.
They crept up the metal stairs to the building and gathered at the top. Emory scanned the faces of his men contemplating what lurked behind the metal door. It didn’t need saying. They all knew this was the most dangerous part. He gripped his Glock and steadied his finger along the trigger guard. Corey turned to him, panting and giddy with an adrenaline rush.
“Ready, Chief?”
Emory nodded and Corey whipped open the door. Silence swallowed up the echo as it collided against the outside wall. With an all-clear, they spilled inside with weapons drawn.
The gutted-out space was vacuous with exposed beams and cinderblock walls. A row of empty metal shelves lined the middle and transom-like windows near the ceiling offered meager light.
Emory followed Corey to the right with Liam behind. Jack, Pete, and Zulu broke left. The place smelled of mold, and the building gave a haunting, metallic sigh as a breeze picked up outside.
With his eyes adjusted to the dark, Emory scanned for movement as they collectively swept toward twin doors, one on each side of the space. Every breath hitched hard in his chest as they approached. In a mirror image, the two groups of men stood with their backs against opposite walls. Corey counted down on his fingers and stared at Jack, who palmed the doorknob on the other side.
Three.Two. One.
Emory lifted his gun. The doors flung open in unison, and both Corey and Jack recoiled with backs flush against the wall.
Still nothing, just an empty corridor on Jack’s side with no signs of life and surely the same on their side too. Emory’s jaw clenched as he bit back a slew of expletives but refused to voice the fear rattling in the back of his head.She’s not here.
“You’re clear,” Jack mouthed. Corey nodded the same.
They paused a beat before Corey slipped into the empty hall. Emory followed and stared down the front sight of his weapon. The corridor reeked of decay. Water-rotted walls buckled from age, abandonment, and the assault of the elements, and brown stains splotched what was left of the drop ceiling. Gunfire rang out in the distance behind them.
“Sounds like Jack got himself a warm welcome,” Corey said and eased around the corner at the end of the hall.
The gunfire oddly comforted. It meant they were in the right place, at least. Down another corridor, they slipped toward a door where a jaundiced glow emanated from a square door light.
“Who the fuck is that?” Corey asked about the bald man’s head perfectly framed in the glass pane.
He sat on a fold-out table, blithely unaware of their approach as he bullshitted with someone else in the room. Next to the table, another door opened to an area stacked with pallets and boxes.
“Velasco,” Emory said and recognized the man by his fleshy jowls and sweat-soaked temples. At Rich’s party, he’d barely kept up with his cohorts.
They knelt when they reached the door and Corey turned to Liam with a shit-eating grin. “You good, old man?”
Liam rolled his eyes. “I wrote the book on this, boy. Quit your talking and let’s go.”
Corey bolted up and delivered one violent kick to the wooden door. It splintered as it exploded open and half of the bald man’s head bathed the wall behind him with Corey’s shot. The other man fumbled with his weapon as Emory buried a bullet betweenhis eyes. He collapsed, dead before he hit the floor and blood streaking the wall behind him.
Chaos erupted on cue. Bullets ripped through the open area, splitting wood as they tore through empty pallets. At least five Velasco men spilled through doorways on an uproar of shouted orders. The mishmash of tactics sent their men scattering in opposite directions.
Corey laid down cover fire as Emory and Liam hurried into the fray and ducked behind a stack of pallets. Jack and the others barreled in and picked off Velasco men who scrambled for cover.
Emory’s pulse thundered in his ears. The hair on his arms stood on end. He might’ve chalked it up to the way his body hummed and blood pumped, senses singing on high alert.
Beside him, though, a corridor enrobed in darkness housed a shadow. One cold winter’s night so many years ago, Emory deciphered that same presence. It had sickened with unnatural dread, the same dread that afflicted him now with a cold sweat slicking the back of his neck. Tonight, that presence would force Emory to meet it in the abyss.
