Hunters, Matt Rogers [pdf ebook reader .txt] 📗

being so intent on gunning him down.

The skull mask floated around the side of the desk, and the carbine came up.

A perfect line of sight, straight down the barrel.

Slater and Alonzo in the crosshairs.

Slater thought, Shit.

The guy fired.

Held down his finger on the trigger and emptied his weapon into Slater and Alonzo.

109

At least, that’s what he thought he did.

The gun sure blared, made all the accompanying sounds of a relentless discharge. But his targets just stood there, seemingly immune to bullets. In fact, they looked at him with expressions that were almost bored.

The carbine went dry in his hands.

He couldn’t help himself.

He stared down at it, unbelieving.

Then he looked up at Slater.

Slater winked and said, ‘Blanks.’

What? the man thought.

It didn’t compute.

They were the only ones with access to their weapons. Cross had passed him his M4 in the truck, right before they’d gone in…

Cross.

He stared at the wolf mask.

Whose wearer brought his carbine across to aim at the back of the clown’s head and pulled the trigger.

Those aren’t blanks, the skull mask wearer thought as the clown’s twisted expression exploded in a shower of gore.

Then Cross threw a staggering elbow straight backward like a cannonball, which practically caved in the fourth man’s throat — the guy in the plain balaclava. He went down without an ounce of resistance and then Cross put both hands back on his carbine and brought it up to aim directly between the eyes of the skull.

The skull mask wearer thought, Did I actually see his face this morning? Or did he get in the truck with the mask on?

He already knew the answer.

The man who wasn’t Deckard Cross shot him in the head, so he didn’t get any time to ponder how badly he’d fucked up.

110

King ripped off the sweaty balaclava just as the rear unit barrelled into reception.

He paused a beat, just in case they might surrender, but when they moved to shoot him he fired first, putting a separate three-round burst through both men’s heads. They both pitched forward from the momentum of their charge, so the guy taking up the rear sprawled on top of the corpse in front.

King twisted and pinned the guy in the plain balaclava down with the sole of his boot. The operative was already struggling, flailing. King kicked his gun away and snarled, ‘Play dead and you’ll make it out of this alive. Comprende?’

Comprende.

The guy pretended he’d been knocked out cold.

Humiliating, but better than being dead.

In the stunned quiet of the aftermath, Slater asked, ‘How’s the arm?’

King couldn’t feel it, so he answered with a simple shake of the head. He’d used his left arm to elbow the fourth operative, but only after recognising that he was willingly destroying all the healing that had taken place over the past forty-eight hours. The pain was back, as grave and head-pounding as before, but he could deal with that. It was a small price to pay for the freedom of his friends.

Alonzo said, ‘How’d you manage that?’

He hadn’t been informed of the specifics of King’s infiltration. Slater himself hadn’t been one hundred percent sure. They hadn’t had time to communicate in the minutes before it kicked off. Watching the skull wearer pull that trigger, the gun blaring in his face…

Fifty-fifty.

Complete victory, or your whole life snuffed away, like that…

The ultimate gamble.

So it made sense that his heart raced and that sweat broke out across his forehead and along his upper back, running down under his shirt.

Wired with stress, he said, ‘I can guess what comes next.’

His eyes were on the bodies.

King nodded. ‘Forty-five seconds until evac. How fast can you get changed?’

111

Across East 36th Avenue, obscured by the tint of the opposite building’s windows, three snipers watched the strike team spill back out of the consulate.

The three ground troops were frantic, and the fourth was nowhere to be seen.

The survivors were panicked.

On the verge of hysteria.

The sniper to the far left of the opposite façade knew the ground operatives personally, so he quickly identified who was screaming behind the masks.

The wolf and the clown. Deckard Cross and Tye Moore.

It was unbecoming for them to be scared, which meant they must be in horrific agony.

Nerve gas?

He leaned closer into his MK12 Special Purpose Rifle, one eye squeezed shut, the other trained down the sight. He had an unobstructed shot if he needed it. He’d already carved a small cylindrical hole out of the reinforced window pane to feed the barrel through, a monstrous suppressor attached. If they were going to get into a shootout in Manhattan, it was prudent to have the best silencing technology on hand.

So he had no qualms about using his weapon as he zeroed in on the entrance to the consulate, ignoring his screaming friends.

They were the toughest men he knew.

If they were hysterical, it was bad.

What sort of poison did those sick fucks use? the sniper thought.

He was so fixated on the entrance he didn’t notice the civilian vehicle breeze past on East 36th. Maybe he caught a flash of it out of the corner of his eye, but it didn’t register through his tunnel vision. The whole team — from the snipers to the intelligence gatherers to the ground forces — had received orders that they’d be going in within five minutes of breaching, so it made sense that the established cordon hadn’t fully done the trick. There was always a reckless commuter so desperate to get to work on time that they’d drive around an erected barricade.

What did catch his attention was the three fleeing operatives ceasing their screaming and diving into the open rear door of the vehicle, one by one.

Someone slammed the door shut from within and the car sped away.

The sniper only caught the profile of the back of a blonde woman’s head behind the wheel, and a dark-haired woman in the passenger seat.

Then the car was gone, veering onto Lexington and vanishing.

The sniper hesitated.

He grappled with confusion at heights he couldn’t fathom.

He thumbed his throat mike