The four of them buckled and fell to the tarmac outside the hangar, dropping their guns, either groaning in agony or dead.
‘Through there,’ King said, motioning to the door set into the far wall. ‘Now.’
The barrage of automatic weapon fire would attract every last man on the property to their location. He thought he’d counted ten men when he’d first seen the convoy approaching. Which left six, all fully armed, all ready for combat, all dangerous.
They ran for the door, fear lending them speed. King discarded the empty M4 in his right hand and gripped the second fully-loaded rifle double-handed. Thirty bullets left. No spare magazines. He reached the door first, praying it wasn’t locked. He thundered a boot into its centre and it swung open, clattering on its hinges. He breathed a sigh of relief and ducked through into the gear-fitting room. The two women followed. He slammed the door shut and took a quick glance through the plexiglass.
Men dressed in khakis and brandishing all types of automatic weapons began to surge into the hangar, stepping over their dead comrades. King saw this and fell away from the door. A trio of shots destroyed the glass a moment later, several more thudding into the wood, some tearing through.
They couldn’t stay here.
Under a heavy barrage of gunfire he grabbed Kitchener and Kate from their crouched positions and hurried them toward the door on the other side of the room. The pair had instinctively covered their ears and ducked their heads, hoping to avoid getting struck by a bullet. Often King felt the same urge, but he knew their best shot at survival was getting as far away as possible, even if it meant risking a bullet in the spine. They passed harnesses and unpacked parachutes and a rack of different-sized jumpsuits and then smashed open the double doors that led somewhere outside.
He found himself in a narrow gravel alleyway between the hangar and the clubhouse. The trail arced down past the two buildings, opening out onto a cluster of caravans that normally housed fun jumpers and solo course students. He gripped the two women by the shoulders, getting their attention, and pointed down the path.
‘Take cover down there,’ he said. ‘Shoot anyone who comes near you.’
‘What about you?’ Kate said.
King looked at the clubhouse and said, ‘I’m going in there.’
Kitchener said, ‘You’ll be trapped.’
‘I know. But there’s nowhere else to go. And I’ve made it out of worse situations before.’
‘I don’t doubt that, but that doesn’t mean you’ll make it through this.’
From within the hangar came the sound of a door crashing open. The mercenaries were through to the gear room.
King gave Kate a quick hug. They made brief eye contact, and he could see the fear in her eyes. Not so much for her own life, but for the fact that she might see King die in front of her. He nodded reassuringly, smiling, as if to show that everything would be okay. She nodded back, unsure. Then Kitchener dragged her away. The pair took off running down the road.
King spun, raised the M4’s sights to his eye and fired a volley into the double doors. It would make the remaining mercenaries hesitate. They would take a moment to regroup, form a strategy, so that they didn’t come running out to their own deaths. Which gave Kate and Kitchener precious time to find cover amongst the caravans.
King looked up at the clubhouse. Perhaps he would do better to make a break for it. If he ran for his life there was a chance he would live. But then what? He would be without a vehicle, without a proper arsenal, ten miles from where he needed to be as Lars loaded a plane full of weaponised anthrax spores. Then the six men left here would tear the property apart searching for Kate and Kitchener. He needed to kill these men, or he would never make it to the other runway in time.
And he worked best in close quarters. Messy fighting, just how he liked it.
He vaulted onto the clubhouse’s porch and aimed the barrel of his M4 skyward. He fired a few shots into the air, drawing attention to his location. He stepped through one of the open doors, heading inside.
CHAPTER 37
The rounds of unsuppressed rifle fire had temporarily stunned his hearing, meaning the inside of the clubhouse felt like a mausoleum. He looked over the familiar sights. The main area branched off in two separate directions, the left-hand side leading to a set of offices where clerical work occurred, and the other leading to a communal kitchen. At one end of the kitchen, a narrow tiled hallway led to a shared bathroom. King took all this in, knowing it would be valuable information in the event that all hell broke loose.
He jogged to the centre of the room and ducked behind one of the couches. It was a disadvantageous position to wait for combat. The clubhouse sported a few large windows, some floor-to-ceiling, all positioned at random intervals around its perimeter. Plenty of vantage points if they decided to surround the building.
Which they did.
King saw movement on the far side. Nothing prominent, just a flash of limbs and the glint of a weapon. He skirted around, positioning himself between two couches. M4 up, searching for targets.
They were taking their time. Which meant they had their forces under control. They weren’t bull-rushing in, like King had expected them to. With a sinking gut, he realised he had put himself in serious danger.
One of the windows shattered. Somewhere behind him, out of his line of sight. He spun, weapon raised. No sign of an enemy, nothing to shoot at. He searched for the source of the breakage, and found nothing. Then a second later he saw the small black cylinder skid to a halt on the linoleum, not far in front of him.
A flashbang.
He had no time to shield himself. The grenade went off just as he noticed its presence, an all-encompassing explosion of bright light, accompanied by an ear-splitting din. The combination ravaged his senses simultaneously, blinding him, deafening him. He knew he was ducking for cover but he couldn’t see or hear anything. He loosened his grip on the rifle in his hands and it scattered away to parts unknown. He knew he wouldn’t find it again.
He moved instinctively, crab-crawling across the floor, navigating by touch alone. His head spun. He felt the scratchy surface of a countertop. Somehow he’d made it to the kitchen. The bathroom should be somewhere behind him. He would be trapped, but he needed cover. Even if that meant cornering himself. Losing all senses was a terrifying sensation, especially in the heat of combat.
He felt shards of something brush across his skin. Fragments of plaster or ceramic. They were tearing the place apart. He couldn’t see or hear the bullets flying all around him, but he knew they were there.
The bathroom was his only available option.
He crawled and scratched his way down the hallway, at the same time shaking his head vigorously side to side, desperate to regain some kind of sight. Even a blurry haze would do. Anything was better than total darkness, coupled with a pounding headache and ruined eardrums. He felt weak like this. Vulnerable. Exposed. Slowly his hearing began to return, and he heard the muffled thumping of automatic rounds ripping the walls of the clubhouse to shreds.
Movement, close by. He felt the displacement of air and a distant, tinny sound at the edge of his hearing. Like grunting. Someone had come charging into the bathroom. A large shape, directly in front of him. He shot forward, wrapping an arm around the man’s midsection, still blind, acting merely on touch alone. He used his momentum to throw the guy off-balance and they both crashed to the floor amidst a tangle of limbs. He heard metal against linoleum, off to the side. A weapon hitting the floor. The guy had been armed. King’s crash-tackle had sent the rifle spinning away.