I TIGHTEN my choke hold on Sergio as bullets shower down on us, pummeling his body, my human shield. It’s only seconds before he goes limp as bullets hit the floor behind us, too, and from different angles.
Muzzle flashes from up high, at ten o’clock and two o’clock.
Two shooters spread maybe thirty yards apart. From a high vantage point. With night vision.
Every advantage.
I can’t hold Sergio up forever. So I fall back, pulling him on top of me, and spray bullets from my Glock to my right, having no idea in this darkness where I’m shooting, just my best approximation of the source of the muzzle flash, hoping it’s close enough to make the shooter stop and duck for cover, at least temporarily.
The bullets keep coming from the other side, automatic-weapon fire, AR-15 or something, peppering Sergio’s dead body, one hitting my forearm around his neck, searing pain, but I let go of Sergio and I’m dead.
A moment of quiet, the after-hum from the gunfire, nothing more.
They’re reloading.
I aim my Glock toward the other shooter, the gunman at ten o’clock, and let off a few rounds. Then a few rounds to my right, two o’clock.
Then my clip’s empty.
With my free hand, I reach to my belt, every movement of my fingers reminding me of the bullet that just entered my forearm.
I don’t reach for a new magazine for the Glock.
I reach for the flashbang and toss it somewhere toward the center of the room.
Close my eyes, cover one ear with my free hand, push my other ear against my shoulder. Duck my head behind Sergio’s body.
The grenade drops and goes off, a thundering blast of sound, searing light coloring my eyelids, even with my face pressed into Sergio’s back.
Two men wearing night-vision goggles, suddenly blinded.
And immobilized, disoriented, at least for a few seconds, from the blast.
My only chance. I pry myself loose of Sergio and stumble backward, squinting through the harsh light at the door I just entered.
The light from the flashbang suddenly gone, dark again. The flashbang did a number on me, too, no matter how ready I was for it, so I’m not so coordinated, either. I stumble forward into darkness, my chin bouncing on hard tile, my Glock falling to the floor.
Bullets spray the wall near me. They’re doing their best, but they’re disabled by the blast.
That won’t last much longer. They’ll recover, and then I’m a sitting duck if I don’t make it through that door.
I try to get back up, my head ringing, in total darkness.
More gunfire spray, hitting the door I’m going for.
Then a banging sound somewhere behind me, followed by a loud, efficient hum, and suddenly bright light surrounds me. Not grenade-caliber light but LED lighting. Someone flipped on the overhead lights.
I close my eyes instinctively as fresh gunfire erupts, but different gunfire, in a different direction. Some of the heavy rifle fire, but also some poppy gunfire.
Shots from a handgun.
I force my eyes open, squinting in the overhead lighting, and look to my left. Rafters, just like a gymnasium, at the top of which one of the men drops his rifle, his throat splayed open, and falls backward.
That’s the other guy, the taller one, the one who shot at me in Shiv’s house, the driver in the 4Runner in K-Town.
I reach for the backup at my ankle and turn, squinting in the direction of the other set of rafters on the other side, my two o’clock, where a man is adiosing the scene, going through some door, some escape hatch, at the top of the rafters. I don’t get a look at him, just his back, a heavy limp as he exits.
What, the one guy shot the other? With a handgun?
No, of course not.
I shake my head, get myself together, keeping my backup piece high just in case, and focus. I’m inside an old gymnasium, and a door is open on the other side of it.
With a body leaning against it. A woman’s body. A body still moving but wounded, a streak of blood against the door she’s propping open.
I jump over Sergio’s corpse and run the length of the gym toward her.
She’s been hit, but she’s still trying to clear the scene.
“Oh, no,” I whisper.
The wound is up by her left shoulder, high and wide of the heart, but still a threat to bleed out.
I pull out my cell phone.
“Don’t call it in,” Carla says through a grimace. “Neither one of us wants to explain this.”