Girl Under Fire (A Sam Hemming FBI Thriller Prequel), Julia Payne [ebooks online reader txt] 📗

"Harold," I scream, forgetting protocol. He is my boss, not my friend. But nothing, and no one, comes back to me. What is going and why won't anyone answer me?

Did they all?

No, I can't believe it as I break out, running toward the sound of the gunfire.

Chapter 2

Ambush

 

Landing a block south of the penetration point, I began to hear muffled gunshots. "Who's shooting," I ask over the radio. The only sound I hear is the continued sounds, like shots from a muffled riffle. They come in rapid succession but not the kind that sprays from a fully automatic weapon. These were shots coming from multiple riffles in the air, each firing once.

"They were set to selective fire," I thought as I kept running and not even turning to look behind me. If there was someone behind me, I may likely not make it home.

"Com check," I scream for the third time. No one comes back while I am running up the snowy curb. The only thing that is giving me the cover is the snowbank that was piled up when the plow went through. It towered above me, providing the refuge I needed. I was tempted to shout over the intercom one more time when I figured no one was there. It was an ambush, and I just lost all my men.

Mac took a hit right after we got out of the vehicle, and then everything went silent. Pragmatism dictates I make the assumption that I remain the only survivor.  It was starting to look bad, I thought, as I ran as best I could on the blanket of white. My feet were not gripping the sidewalk like they usually would. Snow-covered the sleet that had fallen earlier, and it made my flight to safety tough.

"What's going on?" I wonder, desperate for an answer. Mac was supposed to be right behind me as I double-timed it up the street to the entrance. Now he's gone too. The mission has gone sideways. That much is obvious. I have two priorities that need to happen, and they need to be simultaneous. The first is that I need to capture Nyke. That's the only way all this gets better. The second is that I have to keep myself safe long enough to get him, get out, and get to safety.

Nyke was in the building, that was for certain. I just needed to find a way to get in. If they knew I was coming, they would have all the obvious points of entry covered. That means the front entrance was out of the questions. The construction site next door was a possibility I thought as I crouched beneath the snowbank. A small gap in the snow gave me a view of the street across. This part of the street had been plowed. The plow now sat at the end of the street; its driver slumped over the steering with a bullet in his head.

The snow was covering it fast. Nothing there either, I tell myself. At this rate, I have to consider myself ambushed. There was no way out and not many places to hide. In the distance, I begin to hear voices. More like one voice, and he's yelling commands in Greek.

"That can't be Nyke," I tell myself. It must be one of his goons. The voice continued to give out instructions in a short burst as it got louder. He was moving in my direction. It was clear by the speed he was approaching where I was. He had no idea I was alive; I was hoping. Just in case my comm erupted, I turned it off. It was the one thing everyone sees in movies that give away one's position. What a cliché, I think.

"I could lay down and play dead," I whisper. That would be another cliché. No. Think, Sam. Think. I had no other choice but to risk getting to the construction site and jumping over the wood hoarding. I didn't know how much attention I would attract once I got up and ran for the fence. But there was no more time for calculations. I needed to move, and so I did. The good thing about all that snow was that my boots hit the ground in silence. No one heard a peep as I made my way to the six-foot plywood hoarding and leaped. Using my momentum, I swung over the fence and landed on the other side. The snow was heavy on the other side, and I fell in waist-deep. At least the landing was soft.

I stopped just to tune my ears to the chill of the ambient surroundings. I needed to pick up any sound from the street-side of the wooden fence. There were faint sounds – ones that I couldn't make out. My ears picked them up, but my mind couldn't process them. It was then I realized, too, that I could feel the pounding of my heart in my head, and it dominated what my ears were picking up. I had to calm down. But, how could I? How could I expect to calm down?  Everyone around me, and everyone, presumably, at the end of the com channel back at the 34th Street safe house, were dead.

"This was not a time to ask someone to be calm."

I tried to listen for anyone banging up against the fence, but there weren't any. I was hoping the snow would cover my tracks before anyone found them. That would be the only way I escaped. So far, my luck had been holding. There was no burst of excitement on the other side.

The construction side of the fence was a mess. The crew had stopped work, it seemed like, since the week before Christmas. The snow had homogenized and visually sterilized the equipment. It was now an undulating blanket of white. Serene. But beneath, I