Tate plunged through the door and angled to the left, checking the corner. Huxx went right. I walked fast to the far end of a small lobby and stopped beside a wall of post office boxes. Briggs brought up the rear. He pulled the door shut behind us and flipped the lock into place.
No residents or militants were visible from our vantage point.
I glanced down a dark hallway and spotted holes peppered through the walls.
“Firefight.” I motioned at the carnage.
Some blood trailed down to a door at the far end of the hall.
Drew said, “We’ve got some activity out back. Looks like the officers I sent to pick up the witness are under attack. Get moving!”
I let my consciousness wander out again. Four men were on the floor above us. Another was higher up. I didn’t sense any of them were outside engaging the cops. They must have been shooting from inside the building.
“We’ve got five homeboys above us, four of them on the second floor.”
“Oh, really?” Tate grunted. “So we just ignore the bullet holes and blood leading us down the hall and follow your bullshit upstairs?”
“Yup.”
Two of the men above us were walking from the back of the building to the front. They’d be directly above us in a few seconds.
I grabbed the mic by my ear. “Manning, does the stairwell have any windows?”
There was a small pause, then Manning said, “Yes. Looks like each landing has a window looking into the street.”
“Keep an eye on the second floor. You should see two men appear in the landing in a second or two.” I let go of the mic and watched Tate with a smirk on my face.
“We don’t have time for this.” He gestured down the hall. “Get ready to—”
“Got ‘em. Two hostiles in suits with… looks like M16s. They’re moving up to the next floor.”
Tate faced me. “Nice guess.”
“Sure it was.”
“Okay, we’re going to the second floor—two-by-two formation.” Tate looked at Huxx. “You Navy boys use that?”
“We invented it.” Huxx moved to the stairs, stopped on the right side. “Ready.”
Briggs slid behind him.
Tate stepped to the left side and waited for me to fall in line with him.
We took the steps quickly, aiming our weapons up the stairs as we went.
I had already worked up a serious sweat inside my uniform. The weather had cooled dramatically over the past few weeks, but I had about four thousand layers of body armor and stylish paramilitary clothing covering every inch of my body. Sweat would have poured into my eyes if not for the mask sopping it up.
Tate stopped at the next landing, glanced out the window. He asked Manning, “You got us?”
“Affirmative. The hostiles are on the fourth floor now.”
Tate hustled to the door. “Benson, are you telling me that there are two men still on this floor?”
I quickly double-checked. The voids the men had for minds were still there. “Yup.”
The way he hesitated before entering the second floor made it plainly obvious that he still didn’t believe me. I’d nailed the two men moving to the stairwell though, so he knew better than to ignore me again, even if he didn’t understand how I’d come up with that information.
He thought I’d pulled it out of my ass. That was actually pretty close.
We skirted down another dark hallway in the same two-by-two formation. No one came out to greet us. When we neared the end of the hall, Tate glanced back at me. I gestured to an apartment three doors down on the left. We continued in complete silence, our footfalls masked by the stained, worn-out carpet.
“Officers down!” Drew shouted into our ears.
I understood why he wanted us to move faster. Drew was a cop after all, and his brothers-in-blue were getting lit up by the sound of it. But we couldn’t rush in there and get our faces shot off. That wouldn’t help anyone.
The door I’d pointed to was closed, but the wood around the handle and lock was splintered. A dirty boot print was visible beside the handle.
I held up two fingers and pointed at the door to signal that both men were inside.
Normally, we would have breached the apartment hard and fast. If a door was locked, there wasn’t any time to dick around. If we wanted the element of surprise, we wouldn’t have time to try to pick the lock or any of that spy-movie nonsense.
But the door had already been compromised.
So Tate put his left hand against the wood and eased it open. His right hand held the shotgun against his shoulder.
The door opened to a dingy apartment. Clothes were scattered everywhere. Dust bunnies rested along the baseboard. Fist-sized holes were punched in random sections of the walls. Stains covered the lone couch that sat on the far side of a small living room.
A dead body was sprawled across the floor in front of the couch, blood pooling under the torso.
The apartment looked like the kind of place I’d spent the better part of the last decade living in. Minus the cooling body, of course.
Tate went first, then Huxx, Briggs, and me.
“Freeze!” Tate shouted as he rounded into the living room.
Two men stood by a shattered window, aiming rifles at something outside. They both wore gray suits that I’d seen before. Why in the hell these guys always had on suits, I didn’t know. It was weird.
The men didn’t freeze.
Instead, they dove in different directions as they spun their weapons our way.
Tate pumped two rounds into the bro on the left.
Huxx and Briggs shot the shit out of the dude on the right.
I didn’t even fire a shot. Hell, I barely got in the room before it was over.
“That’s all of them in here,” I said.
“You two search the other rooms,” Tate said, ignoring me. “Uri Geller and I will check the bodies.”
“Har-har.” I almost laughed. It was a decent joke, much to my surprise.
Uri Geller was a dude in the seventies who got famous for bending spoons and other ‘miracles’.
Huxx and Briggs disappeared into a kitchen.
I moved to the body on the right and bent down to check the man’s pulse. That was when I saw the hole in his temple. Not much point in checking to see if he was alive when his brain was oozing onto the carpet.
“Asshole down.” I looked to Tate.
He shook his head as he bent over the other guy.
I checked out the window they’d been standing in front of.
A parking lot stretched behind the building. A police cruiser was idling against the side of a truck. Bullet holes riddled the entire car. They must have put two or three magazines into the damn thing.
A body slumped over the wheel.
Another was sprawled behind the trunk.
And yet another lay facedown ten feet away.
“Damn it. The officers are down. This place is going to get real hot, real fast.”
Tate touched his mic. “Two hostiles down. Three cops are hit in the parking lot. Moving to the fourth floor to clear the rest. No sign of the woman.”
“Hold,” Drew said in a sullen voice. “We’re having issues with the drone.”
“Perfect.” Tate walked to the door and watched the hallway.
Briggs and Huxx came back in.
“Clear,” Huxx said. He gave me a suspicious glance. “How did you know?”
I shrugged. We didn’t have time to get into another argument.
“We’ve lost communication with the drone.” Drew sounded as if he wanted to punch faces. “You’re on your own until we can get it back online.”
“Figures.” Tate turned to me. “So, Uri, can you tell us where the girl is?”
I tried to find Christie Tolbert’s consciousness amidst the myriad of minds surrounding us and couldn’t. Too many frightened tenants filled the apartment building for me to pinpoint anyone other than Smith’s men. I might have found her on a normal day, but it would be impossible with the streets teeming with pissed-off rioters.
Even if I had all morning to sift through the thoughts and emotions, I might not be able to pinpoint her. And for all we knew, she might have already fled the building when the firefight broke out.
I frowned. “No. There are too many people around us.”
“Convenient. You know where the hostiles are, but not the target.” Tate hit the mic. “Manning, keep on an eye on the top level. We’re moving up.”
“Roger.”
Even though I wanted to slap Tate for his little dig, I almost chuckled at all the mixed-up lingo everyone used. We’d worked in too many branches of the military and law enforcement to all be on the same page. If we ever worked more missions together, we’d have to unify the way we communicated.
Tate led us back to the stairwell, and we reformed before heading up three more flights.
The presence of frightened tenants on each floor bombarded against my defenses. I had a lot of stamina, but I wasn’t sure how long I could keep my physical exertion at a high level while also protecting my mind. It felt as if I were in the middle of a football stadium and everyone in the stands was shouting at me.
Tate stopped outside the entrance to the fourth floor. He looked back at me.
I nodded, held three fingers up.
We moved through the door single file before splitting to each side of the hallway as we entered. I went down the left side with Tate. We made it halfway down the hall when we spotted an open door on the right side.
And then I got shot in the chest.