Anyone who had spent time around firearms knew the sound of gunfire. Dahlia had heard the cracks. That meant the Germans had heard them too. She backed away from the doorway. Herman ran by her. She started at his back and ran a line of bullets up to the base of his skull. He collapsed face first. She whirled around and emptied the Walther’s magazine into the room. She needed to keep the others confined. If they escaped, they could flank her.
Fumbling with her long dress, she wrapped fingers around the Glock 19 and exchanged one weapon for the other. No need for stealth now. Guns discharged and bullets left the room. Wood splinters from the racks, shards of glass from wine bottles and some of the best wine on the planet flew into the air, pelting and splattering Dahlia, while she turned away, covering her head and face.
The cacophony turned into a semi-symphony. Thirty or forty rounds of rapid fire were followed by silence, while the men reloaded. Thirty, forty rounds later, fresh magazines were slammed home again.
Drenched in sweet-smelling Port wines and dry Bordeaux’s, Dahlia pushed hair out of her face and retreated to a corner, a choke point, her best option to pick them off when they came out of the room. The Glock came up on the first man to cross her sightline. Five trigger pulls later, he slid across the floor and never moved again.
Dahlia did the math on the round count. Eleven left. More than enough. Silence consumed the cellar—no gunfire, no reloading, no movement, no whispers. They’re planning something. She left her position and darted down the row to her right. Turning left, the wooden wall where she had been standing disintegrated in a volley of sustained fire.
She dropped to her butt and curled up into a ball, her back to the end of a storage unit. More glass, wood and wine showered her head and shoulders. The noise stopped. She crawled to the last row of whatever was left of stacked wine bottles, and peeked out.
A man darted left, heading for her original position, kitty corner of where she was now. A second man rushed out, gun up, but he spotted her too late.
Lying on her side, Dahlia zipped the man, starting at the belly and finishing with a shot to an eye socket. He did a jig, dropped to his knees and fell against the wall before sliding to the floor.
Dahlia jumped up and dashed toward the room. The man who had escaped ran in the opposite direction, three rows over. Through rows of whole and broken wine bottles, the two exchanged gunfire.
Covering her face with one arm and stepping on dead bodies to protect her feet from sharp glass, Dahlia fired blindly with one hand. She charged into the tiny room, weapon up, expecting more gunfire. Instead, the only thing she was met with was emptiness. She spied her Glock, slide locked back. Tossing the two-pound paperweight, she dug out her Walther and rammed home her last magazine of twenty-twos.
Overturning a large wooden spool, she squatted behind the German’s makeshift card table. Her last nemesis made a grand entrance, striding toward her, firing his pistol. Cowering, her back to her assailant, Dahlia held out the PPQ 22 and returned fire, while the spool around her shredded into a million pieces. Her weapon stopped working. Letting go of the defensive tool, she put a shoulder to what remained of her concealment and pumped her legs.
The six-foot-six, big-footed German flew over the spool like a middle linebacker being taken out at the knees by the fullback. He landed hard on his back. His opponent had followed the laws of physics—stay low and generate power from the legs—while he had stood flatfooted, observing his own two-pound paperweight.
Dahlia slowly got to her feet, examining herself. Her wine-soaked dress was ripped at the neckline and slit down the side, but she saw no wounds or blood on her body. She assumed a fighter’s stance. “All right, Bigfoot, I’ve bested men bigger…” Dahlia’s head went backward, “than…” as the man rose to his full height, stretched and twisted his back. Okay, you may be the biggest. She danced like a boxer. Laws of physics, Dahl. You got this. The bigger they are…
Bigfoot strung together a verbal onslaught.
Knowing a dozen German words, mostly the bad ones, Dahlia concluded his slurs involved one specific part of her female anatomy. “No need for vulgarity. This isn’t personal, dude.”
Confident with the size disparity, Bigfoot dispensed with any formal fighting technique, opting for a frontal assault. He strode forward and planted his front foot.
Dahlia waited for his arm to cock before thrusting her foot into the man’s leading knee. A sound somewhere between a ‘pop’ and a ‘crack’ filled the enclosure, and BF dropped to his good knee, holding the other and crying out. She followed up with a left and right cross to the man’s cheekbone. “Physics…isn’t she a bit—”
Down on his knees, the man had enough upper body strength to shove her away. His hand closed around her dress, as he yanked back his arm.
Staggering, Dahlia caught her balance and glanced at her black bra and bikini-style underwear. She looked at BF, who stood on his good leg, threw her dress aside and smirked, ogling the area he had referenced in his insult. “Never,” she squinted. “Going,” she shook her head. “To happen.”
He limped toward her.
She leapt into the air, delivering a roundhouse kick to the side of his head. Shaking off the blow, he backhanded her across the face, and she did a one-eighty before sticking out a hand and bracing herself against the wall.
Grabbing a handful of hair, Bigfoot pulled her head back and spoke into her ear.
His hot breath on her neck producing the odor of stale cigarettes and wine, Dahlia reached behind her, found the package between his legs and squeezed. His grip on her hair loosened, and she whirled around, slamming an elbow into his eye.
He peeled away, yelling and holding the eye before unleashing another backhand, sending her sprawling to the floor.
Kissing the dirty and cracked cement, she spotted something shiny. She reached for the object, as two hands closed around her ankles. Her body being dragged over wood splinters and spent brass casings, she rolled onto her backside. Flailing her feet, she broke his hold on one foot and kicked. He let go and covered his bloodied and gushing nose.
Dahlia barrel-rolled several times and grabbed the man’s empty gun. She looked up and saw the sole of a size-thirteen boot, coming her way. She wrenched her upper body, and the foot scraped across her shoulder, landing an inch from her head.
Flat on her back, fiddling with the gun, she gasped and her head came off the floor when the big man’s full weight came down on her stomach. Pressure building in her head, she fought for air; none came. Mouth agape, eyes bulging, Dahlia stared at her adversary, straddling and sitting on her, his nose dripping blood onto her chest, a serial killer’s gaze penetrating her.
Bigfoot closed one hand around her throat, while the second flipped out the end of his belt from a loop on his pants.
Her head pinned to the floor, she thumbed a button, and a cold, empty magazine landed between her breasts.
A sneer washed over his face.
His fingers closing off her oxygen supply, she depressed the slide stop, and the gun went into battery.
He unzipped his pants.
Wheezing, she put the muzzle under Bigfoot’s chin and yanked the trigger.
His head rocked backward and his torso listed in the same direction. A moment later, he crashed onto her legs and feet before rolling to one side.
Two minutes later, rubbing her throat, Dahlia took her first full breath. She kicked the corpse twice to free her trapped leg. Gritting her teeth, she cursed and yelled, while adding several whacks to the dead man’s body. She rolled and got to her hands and knees. Head hanging, she coughed and sucked in huge gulps of air. She glanced at the Glock under her hand. When physics abandons you…she coughed…it’s nice to have one left in the chamber. She had spotted a 9mm cartridge on the floor, snatching the ammunition as she was being dragged across the concrete. Before Bigfoot sat on her, she had loaded the cartridge into the pistol’s chamber—the gun’s slide still locked open.
Standing, Dahlia slipped into the tattered remnants of her dress, ran fingers through her wet hair and left the room the same way she had entered, using dead bodies for a walkway. At the top of the stairs, she stooped, curled two fingers under the straps of her sandals and tapped her earpiece. “This is Phoenix.” She breathed deeply and exhaled. “All levels of the structure have been cleared—over.”
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
.