––––––––
I collapsed to my back, the wind knocked out of me. My lungs refused to cooperate. Not even a sip of air could get in.
Agony erupted throughout my torso.
It felt as if a bus had hit me.
Paralysis froze my arms and legs.
I could blink. And groan. That was about it.
The thousands of voices around us bombarded me at once. A mountainous wave of noise washed over my mind, drowning out my own thoughts. I couldn’t focus, couldn’t think amidst the turbulent sea.
Tate slid in front of the door and ducked down on the other side of the frame. He pumped a handful of shells through the drywall beside him as he continued to move down the hall.
Huxx and Briggs unloaded into the wall I’d been shot through.
The roar of the guns reverberated through the building.
Smoke filled the cramped space.
Whoever was in the apartment returned fire in short bursts.
Tate shouted something I couldn’t hear over the bedlam around us.
I finally managed to force a gulp of air in and the feeling of drowning slightly abated. I focused all of my willpower on walling off my mind again. My ability to think slowly swam up from the depths of my consciousness. Movement returned to my extremities, and I struggled to a seated position against the wall.
The fabric of my vest had a hole in it.
I ripped the vest open and looked at my body armor, praying it hadn’t penetrated.
My whole torso hurt so severely I was convinced they’d hit me with a high-powered round that had penetrated the armor. The location of the shot could have killed me.
But it hadn’t. The bulletproof vest had stopped the round. I wasn’t bleeding out. My lung hadn’t collapsed from a puncture. My liver would still be functional. Thank you, Jesus.
The shot had just kicked my ass and knocked me down.
Maybe broken a few ribs.
Nothing I couldn’t handle.
“Ash?” Drew roared in my ear. “Ash!”
There wasn’t any time for a chat.
I grabbed my rifle, which hung from the clip on my chest, and raised it. More holes punched in the wall opposite, just a few inches above my head. The rifle bucked against my shoulder as I put round after round through the wall. The gun clicked empty a few seconds later.
I popped the mag.
Jammed a new one home.
The gunfire coming from the other room had ceased after I stopped shooting.
A fresh wave of hell coursed through my chest as I rolled to my side and got up. Huxx and Briggs stood a few feet away, guns trained at the destroyed wall. Tate communicated with Drew, telling him I wasn’t dead. A ringing in my ears dampened everything else around me. We’d fired a lot of rounds in a very tight space.
Tenants in the other rooms on our floor were losing their minds in their apartments. Their panic hammered on me. I doubled my mental defenses off as I took a staggering step forward.
My legs felt like rubber.
“I’m good,” I croaked.
Tate inspected me from head to toe in a flash, and then turned his attention to the door. He inched toward it.
And then an explosion knocked all of us back a step.
A deafening roar blasted through the entire floor.
It took me back to the day in Iraq when all of my problems had begun. The intense flashback threatened to consume me emotionally, but I shoved it aside as I staggered into the wall behind me.
For a moment, I thought they’d thrown a grenade at us, but the shot-up wall in front of us remained intact. The explosion had come from inside the apartment.
Tate lunged forward and disappeared inside the door. The explosion had knocked me off guard, but Tate had much more experience in those kinds of situations and he used the distraction to his advantage.
Huxx was hot on his heels. Briggs glanced at me, his eyebrows arched in a you-good? expression.
I nodded I was before following him inside.
Smoke filled the tiny apartment.
Debris littered the floor of the living room we stepped into. Chunks of drywall were everywhere. A television and couch were torn to pieces, their innards scattered about.
We were the only people in there.
A smoking hole cut through a wall to the right.
Tate ran over and placed his back against the wall beside it. He tentatively glanced through the hole. Soot and drywall dust covered his mask as he took another peek, this one longer.
From where I stood, I could see through the hole a bit. A bed, the comforter disheveled and covered in wood and plaster, was visible on the other side of the wall.
The bastards had blown their way through to the next apartment. We thought we had them cornered in Christie Tolbert’s apartment, but they had other plans. And explosives, apparently.
Tate lunged through the hole in the wall.
Knowing Smith’s men had to get to the stairwell to escape, I ran back to the entrance of Tolbert’s apartment. I stuck my head out and checked the hallway only to have three bullets whiz by my face.
They were so close I actually heard them slice through the air.
I jerked my head back, cursing myself for almost getting my beautiful mug shot off.
But I had spotted all three of them running down the hallway toward the stairwell. The man in the back was shuffling backward, his rifle aimed in our direction. He’d popped off a three-round burst when he saw me.
The son of a bitch in front wore a black suit. I knew who that was. He and I had a score to settle. A lot of scores to settle. My knee still hurt at the end of a long day from when he’d stomped on it.
They had me pinned down. If I jumped out, there was no chance I could get a shot off before he put me down. But I couldn’t let them simply run away from us.
“Sit rep?” Nelson called in my ear.
Even in the midst of the gunfight, I questioned why he’d taken over the comm line from Drew. Was my friend so caught up in losing the officers and thinking I’d been killed that he couldn’t continue operating the communications equipment?
I grabbed the mic, said, “We’re in a world of shit. Three of them are on foot, heading for the stairs.” I remembered Bree had a good angle. “Manning, watch the landing. Take a shot if you’ve got it.”
“On it,” she answered.
Nelson asked, “Do you have the device? What about Christie Tolbert?”
“Negative on both.”
“Smith’s men aren’t the primary objective. Get the device.”
That was easy for him to say—they hadn’t just put a pill in his chest and knocked him on his ass. I considered going after them anyway. Nelson thought the device would be our best bet in fighting Smith, but I figured differently.
Given time, I knew I could eventually pry some information out of one of their heads. Assuming they would even allow themselves to be captured. Or that they even knew anything of consequence.
If any of them could help me find Smith, it was the Man in Black. I stood there for a moment, conflicted over whether to follow orders or to race down the hall and bounce their heads off the stairs a few times until they talked.
Over the comm system, Huxx said, “I’ve got a destroyed computer here. Looks like they smashed it on purpose. Should I grab it?”
“Fuck yeah,” Nami said in the background. It sounded as if she wasn’t in front of the microphone, but had shouted over Nelson’s shoulder. “Grab that shit!”
I chanced a peek down the hall again. The men were gone, the door at the end still swinging shut behind them.
Tate exploded from the next apartment down and looked both ways. “Damn!”
“No shot.” Manning breathed heavily. “They’re heading down to the next floor.”
From inside the apartment behind me, I heard Huxx and Briggs tearing through the living room. I turned around, saw them flipping over the furniture and kicking pillows out of the way.
Huxx said, “I don’t see a thumb drive, but it could be anywhere. Either those men have it or it’s hidden somewhere. We could spend all afternoon searching this place. We need to find the woman so she can tell us where it is.”
“Let’s move.” Tate stayed in the hall, his eyes fixed on the door. He pulled shotgun shells from a pocket on his vest and fed them into his shotgun. When it was full, he racked one into the chamber.
The four of us reconvened in the hall and sprinted for the stairwell.