Countdown to Zero Hour Read online

  Her gun was long lost, and the back stairway was too dark to search. She could get only glimpses of Art’s intense face and the flashes of the blades in the murky shadows. It felt like any second, more guards would pour in from the top or come scurrying up from the living room below.

  They had to get out of the stairway.

  Art obviously knew it. He bared his teeth, smashing Vasily on the wall again and again, even as the hooked blade dug into his left shoulder.

  Hayley had her own blade. She tightened her fist around the push dagger and dragged it from its sheath. Vasily was too intent on Art to see her attack coming. She had to stop him from hurting Art. She punched and slashed at the guard’s hand.

  His eyes popped wide with shock. The wounds on his hand opened up, making him drop his knife. Vasily raged at Hayley as if betrayed. He started to make a lunge for her but stopped short. A jagged groan escaped his throat, and he slouched.

  Art muscled Vasily to one side of the stairs, then let the man fall down where the other guard lay. As Vasily descended, Art’s knife pulled free from his chest.

  “Thank you,” Art whispered, leaning close and helping her sheathe her knife.

  “You’re hurt.” Seeing him take the wound had been too much. She was part of this war now. She’d drawn blood. The violence was hers.

  “It ain’t a thing.” He put his knife away and pulled off his jacket. It draped over the fallen men in the stairwell. After searching over the stairs for a moment, he turned back to her, placing the dropped pistol in her hand.

  Trapped. In the house. On the stairs. She had no choice and took the gun. The same way she’d been forced into violence. Anger burned in her. Other people tried to control her life. She couldn’t let them anymore.

  At first her rage had been aimed at Art. When she’d thought he was just a criminal, it was easy. Then after the truth of his mission was revealed, the complications fractured the fury. He was cornered, as well.

  He’d done everything he could to protect her. Now he was fighting to get them free.

  Once again starting up the stairs, Art murmured without taking his focus from the top, “You’re the master chef. You showed me a thousand new ways to taste. You’re beautiful and unstoppable and nothing that these people do, nothing you do to survive, takes that away.”

  His words led her up through the shadows of the stairs to the landing where sunlight streaked in hard planes. Art held up a hand to slow her, then checked over the area quickly. Shots popped through the house, but not in the immediate area.

  Art stepped forward, waving her with him, and the two of them hurried away from the stairwell and to cover at the corner, where the room opened up between two long hallways. From the height of the second floor, she could see more of the destruction below. Smoke continued to pour from the burning edges of the wrecked house. The blast from the propane tank had left a crater in the dirt and a halo of devastation that stretched beyond the toppled cinder block wall.

  Taking aim down the long hallway, which had been where the guard’s rooms were, Art fired a volley, then quickly reloaded. Bullets answered him, and he ducked out of the way. A pool table absorbed the attack. Chips from the shattered balls and splintered wood flew through the room.

  The fighting intensified at the front of the house, where Art had been shooting. He ducked into that hallway long enough to let loose another barrage. When he returned, avoiding the returned deadly answer, he tilted his head to the hall on the other side of the room.

  “That’s where the bosses are.” His pistol clicked, metallic, as he checked it with expert hands. “We converge on this point.”

  Footsteps thundered up the hallway where Art had been shooting. Wild gunfire came with them, clearing a path. She shrank closer to the wall, knowing she would never get small enough to avoid the bullets.

  Somehow Art watched the situation with his usual calm confidence, picking it apart and staying balanced. “Let them panic. We stay cool.” He bumped his hip on hers. “You cool?”

  “Ice-cold.” And hot. She went from numb to burning to back again, trying to process the war around her.

  Three men burst out of the guards’ room hallway. Art shot the first, and the guard stumbled and spun to the ground. The other two scattered—one leaped to the cover of the stairwell, while the other kept running and dove under the pool table, slamming his head and shoulder hard on one of the thick legs.

  Art traded shots with the guard at the top of the stairs. The man didn’t have a good angle on them and was temporarily pinned.

  The man under the pool table gathered himself, rubbing at the back of his head while still holding his pistol. It was Gogol, one of the few guards who’d had a genuine smile for her, especially after they’d made the syrniki together.

  His swimming eyes focused and he gaped when he saw Hayley and Art taking cover together. She raised her gun and pointed it at him before he could collect himself any further.

  “Nyet, Gogol! Nyet!” It was all she could think of.

  Art barked in a steadier stream of Russian while maintaining his concentration on the man in the stairwell.

  Torn, Gogol glanced at the hallway behind him, where Art said the bosses were. The gun was in his hand, but it was on the ground, where he’d been trying to steady himself. His mouth moved as if in conversation with himself.

  The pistol shook in her grip. She continued to tell Gogol, “Nyet,” praying he wouldn’t make her pull the trigger. Art didn’t stop working on him, too, sounding forceful but not threatening.

  To counter them, the man in the stairwell spat sentences. She didn’t understand his words, but he was angrily shouting orders at Gogol.

  Reeling, Gogol squeezed his eyes shut. Could she shoot? The metal in her hand was the heaviest thing she’d ever held.

  Gogol shook his head and shouted over everyone else’s voices.

  Her finger tightened on the trigger.

  When he looked up again, it was into her eyes. He was drained. Releasing his grip on the gun, he pushed it so it slid across the floor toward Art and Hayley. Gogol placed his hands behind his head and sank into the ground, no fight left in him.

  But the man in the stairwell wasn’t ready to give up. Gogol’s sudden silence must’ve spurred him, because he became reckless, firing wildly as he sprinted back onto the landing.

  She and Art ducked out of the way. If he continued to fire like that, she would be hit. There had to be better cover somewhere. Before she could run, Art fired a single shot. The guard fell, his attack over.

  The battle at the front had stopped, and in the silence she heard footsteps hurry up the guards’ rooms’ hallway. Hayley tugged on Art’s arm, conscious now of the blood that streamed down his biceps.

  She whispered urgently, “We have to move.”

  “Not yet.” He held up his hand and waited. “Friendlies.”

  The two men who rushed from the hallway were the ones who’d attacked from the gate. They immediately spread out when they reached the room, covering the angles behind the walls, including Art and Hayley.

  The man closest to them wore a helmet and goggles, but his smiling mouth was exposed, surrounded by a tight, dark beard. “You were right, mate.” He had a roughened British accent. “That is a terrible hallway.”

  The other man circled around, making sure the room was clear. His complexion was much lighter than his partner, and he was clean-shaven. He put his fist out for Art and received a quick bump. “Thanks for the assist.” A bit of country twanged in his words. “We still on the rails?”

  “Affirmative.” Information came from Art in quick, efficient packets. “One POW.” He pointed at Gogol, who remained under the pool table with his head down. “Targets remain in one or both of the rooms in that hallway.”

  “Injuries?” the British man asked, quickly sc
anning over Art and Hayley.

  “Nominal.” Art turned to her. “And...?”

  If she was hurt, she couldn’t feel it. “I’m fine.”

  “More than fine.” Art gave her a wink, helping the blood run in her body and chasing some of the cold.

  All three men suddenly raised their weapons, ready. She hugged closer to the wall and tried to keep her hands steady on her pistol. There was no shooting below, or on this floor. A new threat approached, but she wasn’t as tuned as Art and the others. Where was it? What was coming?

  Then she heard the quick footsteps. The two men in tactical gear relaxed a bit, and the British man whispered to Art, “SEAL Team Zero.”

  Art bit back a chuckle as two men sped out of the hallway. Their equipment was strapped to heavy vests across their broad torsos. Even with his helmet, she recognized Harper from the hotel. The other soldier with him was an African-American man with a black bandana tied above his alert eyes.

  Harper shook his head. “Who fucking designed this house? More blind spots than a goddamn minivan.”

  She noticed that while the soldiers spoke, none of them stayed in the same place very long. All four of the men in the tactical gear circulated around the room, checking out windows and down hallways, their guns loosely gripped but ready.

  Art put his hand out. “Can I get a radio so I can avoid surprises?”

  The African-American man pulled a small walkie-talkie out of a pouch on his vest and handed it to Art, who snapped it to his belt and ran a cord from it into his ear.

  “Trigger’s on com.” Art barely uttered the words, and the other men nodded.

  Harper stepped closer to Hayley. He bristled with weapons but still asked gently, “You still kicking ass?”

  “I guess.” There was a lull in the battle, but she knew better than to relax. She might never catch her breath.

  “She is,” Art answered definitively.

  “Then you were right, Diaz.” The African-American man gave Art a friendly pound on his uninjured shoulder. “She isn’t a liability.”

  All her kitchen knives had been destroyed, but she found some steel. “And you should taste my meatloaf.”

  The men chuckled, and the soldier backed off a bit.

  Art explained, “Jackson was our man in the dirt this whole time. He’s finding his way back to civilization.” Art pulled ammunition from Jackson’s vest and reloaded his own pistol. “Glad you got my message.”

  Jackson smiled, as relaxed as if it was a sunset beach meet-up and not a gunfight. “Nothing like a fifty-foot fireball to start the party.”

  “How many heavies remaining?” The man with the southern twang was back to business.

  “Unknown,” Art answered. He made quick hand gestures to the others, and they fanned out through the room and started approaching the hallway with the doors leading to where he said the bosses had been.

  Her exploration of the house had only taken her to where the guards’ rooms were. This part of the floor was unknown. It felt airless, a hallway leading to a dead end. No windows. The sun shot all the way through the house and streaked the walls with amber and orange.

  Art stalked behind the other members of Automatik, and she followed. Together, the team moved silently and coordinated. All the angles were covered. The hallway ahead was quiet. At least five armed men waited there. She couldn’t imagine that any one of them would want to be taken without drawing blood.

  The soldiers moved around the pool table and Gogol. Scattered furniture piled like bones. The room narrowed into the hallway. She stared at the shadows and light on the doors, searching for movement with such intensity that the shapes persisted when she looked away.

  Art shook his head and scowled, something bothering him. He reached forward and tapped Jackson on the shoulder. Once he had the man’s attention, he indicated the edges of the room with hand gestures. The other soldiers watched and understood, and quickly spread out, away from the hallway and along the perimeter.

  Three quick shots roared, louder than she’d heard so far. The room shook with the concussion. Huge chunks of plaster and wood sprayed out from one of the walls next to the hallway.

  None of the soldiers were hit, but if they’d been walking through the room as they had been before Art had redirected them, at least one would’ve been wounded. Or killed.

  Three more blasts rattled off. The bosses weren’t using the doors—they shot their way out.

  Led by Garin. He smashed through the perforated wall carrying a huge shotgun that fired and fired again. His eyes were red with rage, and he shouted what sounded like Russian curses and oaths. Strapped to his chest was a loaded black tactical vest.

  His shots drove the Automatik soldiers to cover. Behind him came two screaming guards, firing pistols. Then the bosses streamed out of the actual door of the conference room, guns barking and filling the room with bullets.

  Art hurried backward, taking her with him. They avoided the initial outburst of the escape. The wall of gunfire chased them. Returning fire as he retreated, Art bought them a sliver of space. The other soldiers were pinned behind narrow pillars and broken furniture and couldn’t knock down the attack.

  Garin brought hell with him. Fire and hot metal. Death.

  She still had her pistol but couldn’t figure out where she could shoot to stop the onslaught. And if she stopped long enough to aim, she’d be torn apart.

  Art and Hayley passed the pool table, and Gogol sprinted out from beneath it, disappearing down the guards’ room hallway. A stray bullet caught him in the leg, and he crashed into a wall, then the ground. Her stomach flipped as she heard his agonized scream.

  Art continued to move them from cover to cover, shooting when he could, but barely keeping ahead of the mayhem. How long could they run?

  One of the Automatik soldiers pierced a shout into the fight. “Grenade!”

  The deadly metal explosive clanked on the ground in front of Art and Hayley.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The unknown fuse could set the grenade off in a split second. Art dove at the weapon, shoving it away with his outstretched hand. The alloy sphere, designed to fragment and tear flesh apart, skittered across the wood floor then exploded under the pool table.

  He turned and found Hayley taking cover farther up the room, toward the guards’ rooms’ hallway. Safe from the grenade. The shooting continued, though he couldn’t hear it after the blast. But he could feel the wake of the bullets as they streaked in all directions. He fired a couple of wild shots into the mix, gaining space so he could rush the few feet between him and Hayley.

  Another grenade arced through the air and thudded to the ground near them. Art shouted to Hayley as he shot in a different direction, clearing a path for her escape. She ran toward the back stairwell.

  One of the two guards with Garin swung a gun around toward her. Art spent too many bullets eliminating the threat, but he wasn’t going to conserve anything until he knew she was safe.

  She made it into the top of the stairwell.

  Two seconds had passed since the second grenade had fallen. Art leaped into the guards’ rooms’ hallway just as the explosion hit. He pulled his feet around the corner and watched the destructive wave take the wood and drywall apart.

  He jammed himself to standing, then was rocked by a third blast, somewhere between him and Hayley. It had to stop. She was in the middle of a firefight.

  After reloading his pistol, he took himself to the edge of the hallway to assess the fight in front of him.

  Hayley was gone. The top of the back stairwell was a collapsed jumble of plaster and exposed wood studs. Cold fear boiled off to rage.

  He stepped into the fight, bullets flying all around him. A boss, Krylov, turned in a circle, firing a submachine gun erratically to hold anyone back. The jumpin
g barrel came around toward Art, and he fired a shot into Krylov’s knee. The man buckled in pain. Art put another bullet through his shoulder. The gun fell from the boss’s hand. Harper tackled him and bound his wrists with zip ties.

  Two other bosses were already subdued and on the ground. The youngest, Yemelin, kept Sant and Raker pinned with a flurry of pistol shots.

  The big noise of the fight was gone, though. Something was very wrong.

  Garin was missing. Rolan wasn’t among the bosses.

  Alarm knifed deeper into Art.

  He leveled his aim and shot Yemelin in the forearm. The boss’s hand sprang open, and the gun fell to the floor. Sant broke his cover and took Yemelin to the ground, restraining him and shoving him toward the other captured bosses.

  “Only four.” Raker scanned, checking for where the other threats might be.

  A truck engine screamed below the second floor. Art rushed to a window in time to see Garin jumping onto the running board of the water truck as Rolan drove it around the house.

  Holding on to the passenger door, Garin fired a spray of bullets up at Art and the others. They ducked, avoiding being injured but allowing the truck to gain distance on them. Different shots popped from the first floor. They sounded a bit unsure, the pace slow, but managed to strike the truck in loud thumps.

  Garin’s attack passed, and Art peered down the broken windows.

  Hayley stood, smoking pistol in her hand. Her face was stern, resolved.

  Art breathed for the first time in his life. He wanted to vault himself out of the window to her, but when she saw him, she pointed toward the escaping truck with her gun.

  “I’m okay,” she shouted through rushed breaths. “Get them.”

  For her, he would. For his father. For anyone else they might hurt.

  The rest of his team was occupied with the bosses in the room. He sprinted across the space to the opposite windows. The glass was all blown out, but the wood framing remained. It wasn’t enough to stop him.

  He picked up speed and barreled into the window. Wood snapped and shattered. Jagged edges scraped at his arms and shoulders. Through the barrier, he landed on a short roof that curved above the edge of the first floor. The surface buckled under his weight, but he managed to run a few feet on it before leaping off.