LineofDuty (16 page)

“Chemical plant,” Cole said. “Blue barrels, it’s seven miles
from the paper’s printing facility and I bet it’s a fucking labyrinth.” He
pulled out his phone and dialed. “Aaron, chem plant.”

Jake relayed the same information to O’Neil, his heart
pounding. There were many awful ways to die when it came to chemicals.
Sometimes it wasn’t the dying that was the worst part.

“There, he’s turning into that employee lot.” Jake pointed.

“Fuck.”

Cole turned the wheel hard as a car came from the opposite
direction with a man wearing a ski mask and carrying an automatic rifle hanging
out the back window. The
rat-a-tat-tat
of gunfire ripped open the
peaceful morning.

Jake pulled his handgun out of his belt and kicked his door
open. He took aim and fired, hitting the shooter on the first shot. He exhaled
and fired again, targeting the driver.

One shot—the windshield shattered.

Two more shots—center mass on the driver.

The car swerved erratically before running into a telephone
pole.

Gunfire peppered the back of the SUV. Jake and Cole both
ducked and Cole accelerated forward, but two vehicles were already blocking the
other end of the street.

“Vant, Westling, what’s going on?” was yelled over the
radio.

Jake scrambled for the radio. “We’re hemmed in. I think they
were going for Diego and we got caught up.”

The windows above them shattered. Both men ducked even
lower. Jake even slid into the floorboard.

“Backup is on the way. Hold on,” O’Neil replied.

“I don’t know how long we can hold on,” Cole bit back.

Jake fired back at the shooters at the front of the SUV.
They were outgunned and outnumbered.

The blast of a high-powered rifle split through the din. As
a sniper there was no mistaking the unique sound signature of his rifle, even
in this situation. A scream, another blast and another scream.

Becca.

“We’re going out the back,” Jake yelled. He yanked on the
lever, laying the seat down, and crawled onto the middle section. For whatever
reason, the back bench seat was gone and Jake slithered in amidst Cole’s gear
stacked in bins and bags in the back of the truck.

There were fewer gunshots aimed at them, or maybe just a
couple fewer shooters.

Cole shoved his gear to the side, crouching below the
busted-out windows, and yanked his phone out of his pocket.

“Hello?” Cole’s gaze flicked to Jake. “We’re good… Okay.” He
hung up and said to Jake, “Becca and Aaron are going to cover us out the back,
we’ll hang a left at the building and wait for them there. They’ll meet up with
us and we’ll fall back—”

“I’m not falling back. Nicole is in there,” Jake yelled.

A bullet whizzed over their heads and a couple of others hit
the top of the truck. They instinctively lowered until they were lying on their
stomachs, faces pressed to the rubber mat over the upholstery.

“Go, go, go,” someone yelled in the distance. Someone who
sounded an awful lot like Aaron.

Jake and Cole pushed the back doors open. Cole grabbed two
bags of gear while Jake kept his eyes open for anything that moved. There were
already plenty of bodies he could see, but they were no longer of the mobile
variety. He and Cole sprinted for the cover of the brick wall around the plant.
Thirty yards of heart-pounding adrenaline.

Gunfire peppered their trail. Cole yelled in pain. Jake
didn’t think, he whirled around, aimed, fired and grabbed his friend’s arm,
hauling both of them the last fifteen feet to safety.

“How bad?” Jake asked.

“Shit.” Cole leaned against the wall and dropped the two
bags.

Jake went to a knee and pulled the other man’s pant leg up.
The tightness in his chest loosened.

“You got grazed,” Jake said.

“I’m fine. Hand me a bandage in the small bag?”

“How about you cover us?”

Jake pushed his gun into Cole’s hand, letting him do his
part while he unzipped the bag. It held a few basic first aid supplies and a
hell of a lot of ammo with a few other items. He used the bandage to wrap the
calf. The wound wasn’t even bleeding much, but it would.

The little red convertible zipped down the street and came
to a stop next to them. Becca jumped out of the passenger-side seat.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

Though they weren’t on duty, both Becca and Aaron were in
full gear. Smart.

“It’s just a flesh wound,” Cole bit out. “I’m fine.”

“Backup is on their way. We called it in.” Aaron went to the
corner and peeked around. The street had grown quiet.

“What’s going on?” Jake demanded.

“Looks like they followed Diego into the plant,” Aaron
replied.

“I’m going in.” Jake grabbed extra ammunition from Cole’s
bag and reached for his gun, but Cole jerked it away.

“No, you aren’t going in there,” Cole said.

“You would if it was Tanya,” Jake roared back.

They all froze as he stared his sergeant in the eye.

Despite all the rules, Cole had led their team into the
hostage situation to save his wife and other hostages. There was no fucking way
Cole could look at him and tell him no.

“You aren’t doing this alone,” Cole said. “How close is
backup?”

“Not close enough,” Aaron replied.

Cole slowly lowered his arm and extended the handgun toward
Jake, who took it.

“Becca, is there another way in down there?” Cole asked,
gesturing farther down the wall.

“Let me look.” She jogged down the sidewalk.

“We do this together,” Cole said. “I didn’t go in alone. You
won’t either. We’re a team.”

Jake nodded.

“Here,” Becca yelled.

Aaron and Jake picked up the bags. Cole walked with them,
only a minor bob to his stride.

They entered through an emergency exit standing open.
Judging by the lack of employees, Jake figured the smart ones had made a fast
exit.

The interior of the plant was all machinery, silver and gray
metal cylinders with pipes between them.

“This place is huge,” Aaron said as they moved forward in
formation with him at point.

“Backup is almost here,” Becca said, her voice pitched low.

Blasts echoed through the plant, pinging off metal,
distorting the sound. Jake strained to locate the sound.

“That’s from below us,” Becca said.

“Let’s go,” Aaron replied.

They moved forward as one, adrenaline making sights sharper,
everything, even the sensation of cool air across skin, more stimulating. Aaron
took them down a metal staircase, through an open portion that looked down into
what appeared to be some sort of vat storage.

People yelled and more guns discharged.

Jake wanted to sprint ahead, break someone’s jaw and get his
wife.

From their vantage point halfway down, Becca leaned over the
railing.

“There.” She pointed to the far corner of the space. Muzzle
fire blossomed like fireworks between the vats.

“SWAT is outside, there’re more of these guys behind us. I
guess we slipped in between waves,” Aaron said.

They descended the stairs swiftly and hit the ground moving
as one entity through the vats. Jake couldn’t help but wonder what might be in
the containers. Were they flammable? Could they be looking at a situation where
things exploded around them? It made him all the more anxious to get out.

“What’s the plan?” Aaron asked, pitching his voice low as he
peered around another corner before their little team moved onward.

“What’s backup saying?” Cole asked. His pace hadn’t
faltered, but neither was Jake paying him much attention.

“To leave,” Becca replied.

“Fat chance of that,” Jake retorted.

Becca continued, “Seems there’s some disagreement about
whether we should pull out or stay put. There isn’t a way for us to exit now
that these guys got their backup.”

“We keep going forward,” Cole said. As sergeant, his
decision absolved Jake of the primary responsibility for getting them into the
situation, but it still weighed heavily on his shoulders.

Their communication went to hand signals, leaving Jake and
Cole at a disadvantage. The voices became almost intelligible, most of it was
in Spanish.

“Aaron, go to the wall and follow it,” Jake said.

They hit the wall and began slithering along it, eyes
peeled.

“It sounds like we’re dealing with two gangs here, both
trying to get Diego,” Becca whispered, keeping them abreast of the details.

“Great.” Jake didn’t like this one bit. Nicole caught in the
crossfire was not his ideal of a rescue.

Yelling and a fresh wave of gunfire some distance away
heralded what he could only assume were the new additions of other gang
members.

The vats gave way to an underground loading dock area where
pallets and barrels were stacked, ready for delivery. The team hunkered down
behind a stack of what appeared to be sacks of cement and surveyed the
situation.

Across from their location was an office, probably the dockmaster’s
office. The windows and exterior were riddled with bullet holes. To their right
and left, men hid behind whatever cover they could find.

“Watch our back,” Cole said.

Becca and Aaron turned. Aaron took a knee while Becca lay on
her stomach where she could see the feet of anyone approaching. Aaron’s lips
moved as he spoke, not to them, but to the command center.

“Get them to come down to the loading docks. They’ll pinch
these guys and they won’t be able to do anything but give up,” Cole said.

To their right, three men gathered near one spot, their
gazes trained on the shack.

“No, no, no,” Jake chanted. He couldn’t spy any movement
from the office. There was no guarantee Nicole was there. Just a hope and a
prayer she wasn’t already dead somewhere else. Or near it.

Two shots from inside the office made the trio of would-be
chargers take cover.

The team’s hands were tied. If they exposed themselves, Jake
had no doubt they’d die in a matter of seconds. If they stayed put, one of the
stray bullets was going to hurt Nicole if she was in there.

It was a no-win situation.

Nicole’s hand shook uncontrollably and the gun wobbled in
her grip. The man at the other end glared at her, but he was in no condition to
fight off even her.

Diego spat curses in Spanish she didn’t understand and
didn’t care to.

This was a nightmare. The stuff of her worst dreams.

Her head buzzed, maybe from a combination of the lack of air
in her barrel prison and the gunshots blasting her poor eardrums to pieces. At
least it was her hearing and not the rest of them, though she doubted how long
their luck would hold.

Diego had shown up in a blaze of rapid-fire demands, dragged
her out of the barrel. She’d staggered out of the darkness and into, well,
wherever they were and that was when she stepped into hell. They were hunkered
down now behind several overturned desks in a shed-like office.

This was what her husband did for a living—not her. She knew
the basics of handling firearms, but that did not translate to this situation.

I’m going to die.

“Diego, do something,” she snapped. Her enemy had become her
ally, but only for as long as it took her to get out of this.

“How about I kill you right here?” he roared back at her.

If he didn’t need the bullets so badly, she suspected he
just might.

“You, come here.” Diego grabbed the bleeding man by the
front of his button-up shirt. Unlike the other toughs out there, he was dressed
nicely. “I bet you wish I’d rotted in hell, don’t you, Santiago? Huh?”

Diego hauled the man to his feet and put Santiago in front
of him.

“Tell them not to shoot.” Diego put his gun between the
man’s shoulder blades.

“
No disparen
,” Santiago yelled out several times.

There were answering voices in Spanish and absolutely no
gunfire.

“I thought you said there were two gangs out there,” Nicole
said in a hushed voice.

“Don’t talk,” Diego spat out. “Stay behind me, point that at
the people on the loading bay.”

She did not want to go out there. That was suicide.

Diego sensed her hesitation and pointed his gun at her. “You
go first.”

“What?” she yelped.

“Go now,” he snapped.

Was this really happening? Her heart raced and she still felt
slightly dizzy. Barefoot, she picked her way over the busted-out glass,
gritting her teeth against the slicing pain. Diego jerked the door open and she
stepped through.

Which side of the damn bay was she supposed to point her gun
at? She didn’t even know. She chose to direct her aim toward the men creeping
down the loading ramp. Diego exited at her back and stayed between her and the
man he’d called Santiago.

They edged straight across from the office, toward pallets
of bags and big metal containers.

Diego yelled something at the men, but the roar of blood
past her ears blocked it out. She could see men whispering at each other, a few
edging closer.

“Diego, I don’t think this is working,” she said through
clenched teeth.

He walked into her back and she stumbled forward.

A single shot rang out from behind her and her heart seemed
to explode, fear wrapped so tight around her she could barely move.

A man darted out from between the pallets and four other
figures rose up behind him, unleashing a rain of bullets on either side.

Jake.

She barely had the presence of mind to keep one hand on the
gun as he scooped her up, one arm around her waist, hers over his neck, and he
half dragged, half carried her to where the rest of his small team waited.

“Is she shot?” a woman’s voice that must be Becca asked.

“No, but we need to get out of here now.” Jake pulled her
behind the pallets, his hands roving over her body. He gulped down air, his
eyes large and fear-rimmed.

“I’m okay,” she said. If she wasn’t shot she was okay.

“Diego’s down. I think he’s dead,” Cole said as the four
ducked down.

“Let’s go,” Jake said. To her, “Can you walk?”

“Her feet are bleeding,” Becca said.

“We need to move now.” Aaron flattened himself to the ground
as their position started taking fire.

“Come on, baby.” Jake supported most of her weight as the
group surrounded them, keeping low and moving through large metal cylinders of
something.

“We need to run,” Aaron said behind them.

“I can run,” Nicole said. What was a little pain to her life
possibly ending? There was a white light that didn’t end in pearly gates in her
future.