Running Blind (3 page)

4

Setting up the nest had required mechanical precision, patience, time, and tolerance for extreme boredom. It had been well over an hour since the targets had started arriving. And still, she waited.

She peered through the Leopold 3x9 rifle scope and set it to minimum magnification. The scope made the targets appear to be only thirty feet away instead of three hundred yards, making long-distance kills almost as easy as close-ups. Jamie Cooper. Bobby Taggart. Mike Brown and his bitch of a wife. Their tightly knit group would soon be gone.

Calculating the wind speed with the help of a flag fluttering on a nearby building, she adjusted the scope. The Kestrel weather meter provided temperature and humidity, since both would affect the bullet's flight. As would the range and the thickness of the restaurant's plate-glass window. She consulted the range card again, then made another slight alteration so that the bullets would hit straight and true.

Satisfied that everything was properly set, she made a final check of the defenses she'd put in place. If any of Brown's team attempted to enter this room, a little surprise awaited them. They thought they were cagey, alternating their meeting days and times and locations, but they weren't cagey enough. Her contact had told her they'd be at this restaurant this morning.

Predictability, thy name is victim.

Adrenaline shot through her veins, and she quelled the rapid beat of her heart with long, steadying breaths. Then she settled deeper behind the scope and savored the moment.

After two years of planning, another few minutes were nothing. Now wasn't the time to get jumpy and rush the shot. There could be no possibility that this job went wrong.

When they'd killed her mentor, they'd killed part of her, too. He would approve of her ensuring that those who mourned her targets would know exactly who'd pulled the trigger and why. They would know that this was about revenge.

•    •    •

“I still don't know what you see in this chump.” Coop hugged Mike's wife, not only because it would get Mike all riled up but also because he had a special affection for her.

Eva, an attorney for the CIA, had hunted Mike down in Peru and forced him to fight the false charges that had ended all of their military careers in disgrace ten years ago. If not for her, Coop, Taggart, and Mike wouldn't have been reunited, exonerated, and working together today.

“Hey,” Mike groused good-naturedly, as predicted. “Get your hands off my girl. And for your information, I have some very special qualities. Right,
chica
?”

Coop laughed when the unflappable Eva blushed, making it clear that Mike might have recently worked on perfecting those “special” qualities with her.

“Who's organizing next month's breakfast?” Eva asked, dodging the question.

“I think that would be me,” Stephanie said. “I hope more members of Nate's unit can make the next gathering. In the meantime, I assume you'll be picking up Coop and Taggart's tab again?” she asked Mike with a grin.

“Har-har.” Grumbling, Mike tossed his credit card onto the table with the bill, then scowled at the tattered jack of hearts he'd pulled out of his wallet with the credit card; a bullet hole pierced the playing card clean through the middle. “That
used
to be my lucky card,” he said, tucking it away again.

“Better luck next time, boss.” Taggart kissed his own one-eyed jack of spades, which had been sliced half through with a KA-Bar knife.

“Not a word out of you, Cooper.” Mike gave him the evil eye.

“Wasn't going to say a thing,” Coop said. “Certainly wasn't going to point out that your card has let you down the last nine out of ten times.”

“Nope. Because you're not that kind of guy.” Mike grunted.

“I'd never gloat.” Coop grinned. “Sure did enjoy those pancakes, boss.”

He glanced down at his own card, a faded jack of hearts that was burned around the edges. Every time he looked at it, or saw Mike pull his out of a pocket, or watched Taggart flip his over and over between his fingers, he was transported back ten years to Afghanistan, where all the men in their unit had carried one-eyed jacks as a symbol of solidarity, of brotherhood.

Mike, Bobby, and Coop were the only ones left, and they carried their cards in honor of their fallen brothers.

And because none of the three of them could resist a gamble, they always drew cards to see who paid for breakfast.

“I hate to be the one to break up this friendly sparring,” Eva said as she shrugged into her coat, “but I've got a nine o'clock meeting I need to—”

A huge, booming crack cut off her words as the front window exploded, and flying shards of plate glass flew through the room like Hellfire missiles.

“Shooter! Contact front!” Coop yelled. He dived across the table and tackled Rhonda to the floor.

The rest of the team members scrambled for cover, reaching into concealed shoulder or waist holsters for their handguns.

“You okay?” he asked Rhonda.

She squirmed beneath him. “I'm fine. Get off of me!”

He rolled, scrambled up onto all fours, and, heart slamming, appraised the situation.

Stunned civilians, frozen in shock, sat with mouths agape. Then the restaurant erupted in terrified screams.

“Get down! Get the hell down!” Coop yelled. His 9mm in hand, he crab-crawled across the floor, sweeping glass aside with the heels of his hands. Mike was right beside him.

“Get down!” Mike dragged two screaming women to the floor. “Everyone hug the floor! Get as low as you can, and stay there!”

When people finally realized that they were the good guys, they scrambled to make themselves as small as possible. Behind Coop, tables slammed to the floor as the team flipped them over to use as shields. He crawled low over broken glass to get a fix on the shooter's position.

The eerie silence was broken only by soft, terrified sobs and the sounds of 911 calls flying out from cell phones. A cutting wind scuttled in through the shattered window.

“Did it stop?” a woman's voice sobbed.

“Just stay down,” Coop repeated loudly, so everyone knew to stay cautious. “Is anyone hit? Anyone hurt?”

Silence among the sharp breaths and muffled sobs.

“Check your neighbor. Make sure everyone's okay!” Mike said from under the open window.

Taggart and Waldrop belly-crawled across the floor toward them, and the four of them made a quick check on the civilians.

Joe Green made a break to cover the back of the restaurant. Santos, hunched low, ran to support him.

Another shot rang out.

Santos spun in a circle and went down. “I'm okay,” he assured everyone quickly as he scooted behind a downed table. “Just nicked my arm. I'm okay.” To prove it, he scrambled toward the back door and got into position with Green, his gun trained outside.

“Mike,” Rhonda said tremulously.

Coop looked over his shoulder. Her face was white.

“Eva's been hit.”

“Oh, Jesus, please,” Coop prayed under his breath as Mike tore across the room to get to his wife.

Another shot sang through the air right behind him, missing its mark.

Coop left Taggart with the jumpy civilians and rushed after Mike.

Stephanie knelt beside Eva, who'd been lowered to the floor. She'd tucked her coat under Eva's head, and Rhonda covered her with her jacket.

“We need to stop the bleeding.” Rhonda scrambled off in search of something to use.

Oh, God
, Coop thought. Eva was so pale and still.

Mike carefully peeled back the jacket to see where his wife had been hit, and a horrible, gut-wrenching sound welled from deep in his chest. Coop made himself look and bit back a gasp. Eva's pale, delicate hand lay low across her ribs. A steady trickle of blood spilled between her fingers. Her eyes fluttered open, unfocused, then drifted shut again.

Mike folded her into his arms. “Call 911!” he yelled, knowing full well that several calls had already gone out. “Call 911!” he roared again desperately as Stephanie placed another call requesting an ambulance.

“How bad?” Coop whispered, glancing up at Stephanie, but he already knew the answer.

Grim-faced, Stephanie shook her head.

Eva was bleeding out. No one had their gear with them. No medic's kit, no QuikClot. No IVs. Nothing.

Rhonda crawled back to Eva's side with a thick stack of linen napkins that Mike pressed against the wound and applied pressure on the bleed.

“Get her flat, Mike,” Steph said when he tried to hold Eva tighter in his arms. “She needs to be flat.”

She needs a doctor
, Coop thought, sick with helplessness and fear. Eva was semiconscious and fading fast. Her skin was so pale. He reached for one of her hands. Cold and clammy. Then he checked her radial pulse. Weak and thready.

He knew just enough medicine to treat field wounds and understood that her body was trying to shunt blood to her central organs. Not good. Not good at all. It meant things were shutting down.

“We need to locate the shooter,” Taggart said, meeting Coop's eyes from across the room.

He was right. They were pinned down like ducks on a pond, with no flight options in sight. Too many lives were on the line to sit here. Someone was going to have to play cowboy.

He glanced at his friends. There was nothing he could do for Eva. Mike, Stephanie, and Rhonda were doing what they could. Taggart and Waldrop guarded the shattered window. Green and Santos covered the back.

He crawled up to join Taggart on the floor at the window and searched outside. The shots could have come from anywhere. The bank of office buildings to the east of the restaurant. An apartment building to the west. An abandoned building in the middle of it all. They had to find out.

“Toss me a coat. Any coat!” Coop yelled at Rhonda. “Taggart, Waldrop—keep your eyes peeled outside for a rifle flash.”

Rhonda grabbed Taggart's jacket and, at Coop's nod, let it fly.

The shot was almost instantaneous.

“Muzzle flash. Vacant building, six floors up. One, two . . . wait, I've gotta count . . . thirteen windows in!” Taggart shouted after a brief, intense moment.

They had him—and he wasn't as smart as he thought, if he allowed anyone on the ground to see his muzzle flash.

“Taggart. You're with me.” Coop headed toward the rear of the restaurant and shot out the back door.

5

Waldrop laid cover fire as Coop and Taggart sprinted the length of three football fields. Pumping blood and adrenaline kept them warm in the fifteen-degree weather; their breath escaped in frosty white puffs as it left their burning lungs. When they reached the target building, they drew their guns and took a few seconds to suck in some breath and assess the building. Ten stories of brick, it took up an entire block. Graffiti was scrawled across the walls and the few ground-floor windows that weren't broken out.

“I'll go left,” Coop said, and Taggart immediately took off to the right.

When Coop reached the first corner of the building, he pressed his back against it, checked around the brick, then raced for the opposite end, stopping at every doorway to check for a possible entry point.

“Locked tight,” Taggart said, breathing hard, when they met at their original point of contact.

“I didn't see any vehicles. You?”

Taggart shook his head. “Nope.”

So either the shooter had already left, had a driver waiting for him somewhere nearby, or had arrived on foot. That gave them two chances out of three that he was still up there. And still shooting to kill.

“Ideas?” Coop asked as they bolted toward the closest door.

“A good, hard kick ought to do it.”

Holding his pistol in a two-handed grip close to his body, Coop mule-kicked the door open and burst inside. He cleared the left side of the stairwell and felt Taggart at his back, clearing his sector.

They'd breached enough enemy strongholds together that their actions were a well-choreographed, deadly dance.

A hand clasped his shoulder, confirming that Taggart was ready to go up.

Stairways were a bitch to clear. The “fatal funnel.” The bad guys could toss a grenade or fire a burst of shots and be guaranteed to hit something.

Quickly, but taking care, they cleared each stairway and landing.

Coop's pulse pounded in his head by the time they got to the sixth floor, where they figured the shooter had been hiding.

Office doors flanked either side of the hallway. They eliminated the side to the north and center of the building.

“Which window?” Coop glanced down the hall.

Taggart looked at the first door. “The thirteenth.”

“How many windows in each room?”

“Guess there's only one way to find out.”

“Cover me.”

Two-handing his 9mm in front of him, Coop drew a deep breath. Then he hauled back again, kicked open the first door, and burst through the threshold, staying low and out of the kill zone.

Taggart rushed in low behind him.

The room was empty.

“Captain America couldn't have done it better,” Taggart said, a weak attempt to cut the tension.

“Just count, smart-ass.”

“Five.”

Five windows in the room.

They hustled back to the door, checked out the hall, and, finding it empty, rolled out of the empty room together.

Taggart stopped by the next door. “What do you think?”

Though they both knew the room after this one held the thirteenth window, it never paid to assume.

“Clear it just in case.”

Taggart went in first this time. And again, they found the room empty.

As they stepped back out into the hall, Coop heard the soft click of a latch on the next door down the hall.

Beside him, Taggart nodded. He'd heard it, too.

•    •    •

Rhonda hoped that everyone in the restaurant was asking whatever power any of them believed in to save Eva. With more pleas sent in Taggart and Cooper's direction. They were out there now, easy targets for whoever was doing the shooting.

“They'll be fine,” Steph said, reading her mind. “They know what they're doing.”

She might not like Cooper much, but her heart beat more for his and Taggart's safety than for her own.

And it beat more for Eva's.

She fought back tears. Her teammates weren't just battle buddies. They were good friends, including their wives and kids. To many of them, this extended family was the closest to normal that it got. And now she was one of them. Now she understood that when one of their own was in danger, they'd move mountains to remove the threat.

She felt so helpless. It seemed like an eternity since the first shot had been fired, though it had barely been four minutes since Eva was hit. Less than two minutes since Taggart and Cooper had raced out the back door after the shooter.

“Where are the police?” Mike demanded. “Where's the ambulance?”

She wanted to help him, to reassure him that Eva was going to be okay. But she'd seen the wound. She knew . . .

The sound of sirens cut into her dark thoughts and provided much-needed hope.

“Thank God, they're here!” She felt a rush of relief as the first wave of squad cars rolled to screeching stops in front of the restaurant, lights flashing. Uniformed cops piled out of the cars, guns drawn, and carefully approached the building.

“DOD!” Joe Green shouted, flashing his government credentials high in the air so the cops could see them clearly. The rest of them did the same.

“Take cover,” Green warned them. “The shooter's still out there.”

Half a dozen cops scrambled inside and tucked in low beside them.

“We've got two men out there looking for the shooter,” Green said.

Normally, Mike would coordinate the action, but his head and his heart were wholly focused on Eva. It broke Rhonda's heart to watch him.

“And we've got a victim down,” Green told the lieutenant in charge. “GSW to the abdomen. Big bleed.” He glanced over his shoulder at Mike, who looked lost and desperate.

“There's an ambulance on the way,” the lieutenant said after double-checking with dispatch.

“Tell them to step on it,” Green pleaded. “Tell 'em we've got a critical.”

Rhonda felt as if another lifetime passed during the next several seconds, before the wail of another siren announced the rapid approach of the ambulance.

The restaurant, the terrified customers, and the rest of her team all faded away amid the eerie flash of red, white, and blue strobes that rolled against the walls and glinted off the broken glass.

Her gaze fell to Eva, who was now unconscious and who she feared was dying on the floor.

Fear for Eva, for Mike, for Taggart and Cooper pressed down on her shoulders as she watched the ambulance crew tend to Eva, load her up while the police provided cover, and finally race away to the hospital with Mike at her side.

Don't let her die. Please, don't let her die.

Several more police cars arrived in the meantime. As soon as the restaurant was secured, Green, Waldrop, and Santos took off to provide backup for Taggart and Cooper.

Rhonda and Stephanie stayed to supply information to the police. Sitting in the kitchen on a stack of boxes, Rhonda answered question after question . . . all the while thinking, pleading, and bargaining with the powers that be that no one else got shot.