Knuckles whispered, “Only shoot if you see a weapon. If not, use nonlethal force.”
Brett said, “Civilians?”
“Take ’em down. No time to sort that shit out now. No verbal warnings, just put ’em out and move on.”
Brett nodded, saying, “I’ll go to the far stairwell, you take the near.”
Knuckles said, “Let’s go.”
Brett darted from the darkness, and Knuckles followed with his weapon in front of him in a two-handed grip. He reached the first stairwell andsaw a man appear at the top of the berm, focused on Brett moving down the sidewalk. Knuckles began gliding up the stairs as quietly as he could, hoping to get the drop on the unknown.
The man raised a pistol and began shooting towards Brett, the sound of the gunshots exploding the silence.
Knuckles skidded to a stop, put the red dot of his weapon on the man’s torso and fired a double tap, his gunshots about a third as loud as the weapon the man was firing.
The man staggered back and fell from view. Knuckles glanced over at Brett and saw him sprinting up his stairwell. Knuckles resumed running, no longer worried about making noise. He reached the top at the same time as Brett, seeing him dive to the right, then hearing more gunshots coming from the other side of a one-story brick shack.
Lying flat on the ground, Brett returned fire from the prone. Knuckles ran to the man he’d hit and kicked his weapon out of his hand, launching it down the stairs, then turned to the gunfight, not bothering to check on the man’s status.
Brett rolled over and sprinted to cover against the wall of the shack, shouting, “My side, single man, pistol.”
Knuckles ran to the wall, flattening against it about twenty feet away from Brett. He motioned with his hand, indicating he was going to circle around and flank the shooter. Brett nodded and crouched low, scooting to the edge of the corner.
Knuckles turned his corner and went down the wall to the far end, moving in between the tanker truck and the shack. He saw a rubber hose coming off the truck and disappearing around the front of the shack. He peeked around the edge, seeing the hose disappear into a doorway. Beyond the doorway was the shooter, flattened against the wall and focused on Brett. Knuckles braced against the brick corner, put the dot on his head and squeezed the trigger, the impact of the round throwing the man forward.
Knuckles started moving down the wall of the shack and reached the doorway. He shouted, “Threat down. Open breach.”
Brett shouted, “Coming!”
Knuckles pulled a flash-bang off his belt and waited on Brett to arrive. He heard Brett’s footsteps and then a man burst out of the open door, running flat out. Knuckles tracked him with the red dot, saw no weapon in his hand, and removed his finger from the trigger. He flashed the light inside the shack, seeing pipes and the rubber hose, but no humans.
Brett reached him, and he said, “Go catch that guy.”
Brett saw the man halfway down the path of silos and took off, sprinting much faster than his target. Knuckles pulled the hose out of the hole causing fluid to spill out over the floor of the shack, flooding it. He went to the tanker truck, studied it under the glow of his weapon’s light, then turned a valve. He looked back, and the fluid had stopped.
He glanced down the path of silos and saw Brett frog-marching the man who’d tried to run back to the shack.
He walked to the first man they’d fired upon, recognizing him as the second unknown from the zoo. He was holding his chest, frothy blood flowing around his fingers from a punctured lung, a ribbon of red leaking from his lips.
He moaned, “Help me. Call an ambulance.”
Knuckles raised his pistol and said, “I’ll see if Sheriff Marley can send one.”
The man’s eyes flew open, and Knuckles pulled the trigger.
Chapter 84
Jennifer nudged my shoulder, waking me up. I yawned, seeing it was daylight, and said, “Are we on?”
She said, “Yeah. I think it’s showtime.”
I looked at the back of the aircraft cabin, seeing Veep and Aaron on one side, both with laptops on the table in front of them, and the prime minister of Israel and Amanda Croft on the other side, also with laptops in front of them.
I said, “They didn’t want to wait until we land in the US? The connectivity has got to be shit with all the streaming going on.”
“The prime minister doesn’t think we have the time. He’s afraid it’s going to leak that he’s been freed and they’re going to blow that RDD.”
I said, “Well, after what Shoshana did at the airfield, he might have a point.”
