“Well, would you look at that.”
The man had fallen to his knees. Now he looked up with fear on his face. “Don’t worry.” Alicia smashed him across the temple with the steel barrel. “I won’t treat you like you’d have treated me.”
She watched him collapse into unconsciousness and tied his hands.
Then she looked up, and set off in pursuit. The comms were still working so she asked for a sit-rep.
“D Street,” Crouch puffed back. “Under fire.”
Alicia tapped it into her maps app and took off fast. There was nothing odder than using an app to find a battle, she thought, but hey, that was modern warfare. She soon found D Street and saw the combatants ahead.
At the top of the street a random driver panicked at the sight of several men waving guns, and crashed his car into several parked vehicles. Alarms sounded, and shouts went up. Shots were fired. She saw the two thieves still being dragged, the banner balanced across their shoulders. She saw Crouch and the others, creeping between vehicles and advancing slowly. The shots were aimed at them, but plowed into cars and walls. Alicia saw an angry, half-asleep man stalk out of his front door, wearing a bath robe, and motioned him back inside with a wave of her gun barrel.
“Street’s a health risk,” she said. “Stay inside.”
He disappeared fast. Alicia couldn’t risk firing with the clumsy shotgun, so stayed low and quickly joined her friends. The men ahead were jumping over the hood of the crashed car to escape, highlighted just for a second. Russo picked one off with a headshot.
“Still no joy from the cops,” Crouch reported. “Most of DC’s law enforcement are ranged around or converging on the mall.”
“It’s still happening.” Her comment was a statement, not a question.
“So, the mall thing.” Austin’s face scrunched as he tried to make sense of it. “That’s just a diversion, allowing these guys to escape?”
“It feels like more than that,” Crouch admitted. “Though, either way, it is doing the job.”
They moved out, again using vehicles for cover, and raced down the rest of the street. Another arrow-straight street bisected this one, with the enemy already halfway along. Crouch radioed in once more and received only a terse reply.
“I get it,” he sighed as he replaced his radio. “I really do. The mall event will be seen as a terrorist attack. They have to give it top priority.”
“Where the hell are they going?” Russo wondered, watching the runners.
“Doesn’t matter,” Alicia said. “It’s easy. Just keep them in sight.”
The thieves and their guards just kept running, meandering down the streets as if searching for a lost car, but Alicia knew they had to have a plan. By now, they were a fair way from the mall. Maybe this was all about creating distance. She threw the shotgun she’d appropriated to Austin just to see how he handled it.
The young recruit almost dropped it at first, then caught hold and tried to appear confident.
“Whatever you do,” she said. “Don’t use it.”
“What? Wait… I…”
“It’s for show,” she said. “You use it and I’ll be forced to hurt you.”
“He’s not ready for a gun,” Crouch said, moving at her side.
“Not ready… then why the fuck is he here?”
The older man shook his head. “Ah, it’s a long story.”
“Long-lost son? Kid you didn’t know you had? Oh shit, don’t tell me it’s Russo’s toyboy?”
Crouch laughed as Russo choked and almost tripped over his own legs. “Nope, none of those. I’ll explain later but, for now, keep him out of it.”
Alicia grunted, but took the shotgun back. By now they were traversing another street and the area around them was pitch black. Somewhere far ahead they could hear a low rumbling and the sound of car horns.
“Freeway of some kind,” Crouch said.
“You think they’re planning to use it to escape?” Caitlyn asked, tapping at her map app.
“Who knows what they’re planning? It’s all very unorthodox.”
“But one thing is for sure,” Alicia added. “This thing they’re doing — it’s working.”
They continued the chase, Crouch flagging and now even Russo starting to slow. Alicia grinned at the big man, clapping him on the back.
“Hey Robster, you wanna lean on me a while?” she drawled.
“Fuck. Off,” he panted.
“What? No ‘bitch’ at the end? I’m disappointed.”
“I. Don’t. Have. The. Energy.”
“Those thieves,” Crouch said as they kept pace with their assailants. “Does anything look off about them to you?”
Alicia nodded, ducking fast as one of the men targeted them for a bullet. “Looks like they’re being coerced,” she said. “Like I said before. But that’s not a bad thing. Means we have friends on the inside.”
“Maybe,” Crouch said, returning fire. “I guess we’ll see. That’s a big old space up ahead.”
Alicia saw it for the first time. An enormous structure surrounded by a vast parking lot, floodlights brightly lit, the endless open bays offering no shelter and no protection.
“Move in, close up,” she said. “This is our chance.”
CHAPTER FIVE
The armed men made good use of the few scattered parked cars dotted around the parking lot, moving from cover to cover. Alicia judged the figures as barely adequate — yes, they’d had some training but their instructor had either been severely rushed or intensely incompetent.
Out here, under the stark bright lights, everything was in the open.
She saw the male and female thieves, Terri Lee and Paul Cutler, their faces bloodied, black leather suits ripped. She could see stress carved deeply into their features. She counted nine armed men surrounding and urging them on; although nobody was standing up to be the leader. The thieves were weakened, wilting under the weight of the banner and the skill it took to keep it straight as they ran among men that cared nothing for their welfare.
“Hey, where are they going?” Russo suddenly shouted.
Alicia looked closely. “Shit, they’re running for the store. And it’s open.”
The large structure was a twenty-four-hour supermarket with two large sliding double-doors waiting to greet the runners. Alicia sped at the same pace as those they chased, seeing them disappear through the doors and then, a moment later, hurl a grenade out into the parking lot.
“Bomb!” she cried.
The team dived onto the tarmac, scraping exposed flesh and staying low. As low as could be. The grenade rolled before it exploded, closing the gap. The noise was chilling, the expectation of what might happen nightmarish. Alicia heard deadly fragments striking the light-stanchion she’d rolled behind, felt two small tugs at her clothing, but nothing penetrated. When she looked up, the parking lot ahead was clear.
“We okay?”
“Go.” Crouch was already on his feet.
Alicia took back the shotgun and leveled it as they approached the doors, carefully skirting the new hole that had been blow into the car park. A quick glance inside revealed nothing. She moved closer, activating the doors and then slipped past. A white-painted, well-lit entryway met her and then the entire store opened up just a few meters ahead.
“Gotta be at least three exits,” Russo grumbled.
Though the store was relatively quiet, some civilians were inside and screaming at the sight of the men with the guns. Alicia saw someone running from a home furnishings aisle to the left and ran across. The man running away saw her, tried to stop quickly, and ending up slipping on the polished floor, rolling to her feet.