He picked up his pace as he passed through the door. The receptionist didn’t protest, instead just nodding submissively. In terms of her cultural situation, she was the exact opposite of the soldier he’d left lying on the sidewalk. In male-dominated Pakistan, he would expect deference while she would expect to be dismissed.
His luck held as he weaved through the cubes. A few people glanced up at the sweat-drenched man in their midst but most remained focused on what they were doing. By the time the sound of the front doors being thrown open reached him, he was already approaching the back of the building.
Demanding shouts reverberated through the building, but a moment later they were drowned out by the dull thud of chopper blades. The people around him began to stand and wander out of their cubicles when the vibration started to shake the structure.
“Stop!”
Rapp ignored the shout, continuing to walk casually toward a door in the back wall. More yelling and the sound of running feet didn’t prompt him to look back. The combination of the cops and the fact that the chopper was close enough to start knocking pictures off the walls was creating a panic that would be enough to cover him for the next few seconds.
Yanking the door open created a blast of air that felt like a convection oven. He used a hand on the jamb to pull himself forward into the hurricane of rotor wash. There was a red climbing rope whipping around the narrow alley and Rapp went for it, catching the carabiner dangling from the end and attaching it to the harness beneath his shirt. A quick wave and the helicopter started to rise, lifting him off the ground.
Rapp reached for his fanny pack and retrieved his weapon, pumping a couple rounds into the wall next to the door when one of the cops poked his head through. He disappeared back inside and stuck a hand out, firing blindly around the jamb. The rounds ricocheted through the alley but by then Rapp was well clear. The chopper continued to rise until he was out of practical range of anyone on the ground and then dipped its nose and started in the direction of the warehouse Coleman had infiltrated.
A voice crackled to life in his earpiece but he couldn’t understand what was being said over the roar of the air around him. He grabbed the rope to steady himself and looked up, spotting Joe Maslick hanging out of the helicopter’s open door. He pointed and Rapp followed his finger to a large building to the north. It took up the entire block and had a ring of windows around the top. Despite the sun glare, intermittent flashes of gunfire were visible through them.
With no idea of Coleman’s position, the floor plan, or the strength of the opposing force, entering through one of the broken skylights was a no-go. Instead, Rapp motioned toward the roof of an adjacent building.
“Scott!” Rapp said, activating his mike. “I’m going for the high ground on the northeast side of the building. I should be in position in two.”
There was no response as the aircraft started to descend. Rapp hit hard, rolling across a melting asphalt roof and coming to his knees near the low concrete wall that encircled it. The rope dropped on top of him and he looked up, pointing at the HK416 assault rifle in Maslick’s hand. The former Delta operator nodded and let it drop. The rotor wash put it into a flat spin as it fell but Rapp managed to catch it. He moved right, lining up on a broken window in the side of the warehouse.
As planned, he was high enough to see about seventy percent of the building’s floor. The relative darkness inside didn’t make for great visibility, but it was enough.
The chopper started to rise, taking the noise and the wind with it. The oppressive heat, though, remained.
“Scott, I’m in position. I can’t see the first fifteen feet of the north side of the floor because of the wall and I’m blind to the last thirty feet at the back because of the light. I have full view of the center section all the way to the east and west walls. That’s your cover area. Do you copy?”
Rapp could see muzzle flashes coming from the back but they weren’t enough to pick out individual targets. About all he could do was make an educated guess that Coleman was dealing with three to four men with automatic weapons.
“Scott, do you copy?”
“Fifteen feet from the north and thirty from the south,” Coleman repeated back.
Rapp let out a relieved breath and swept the rifle’s scope right, searching for targets. “Mas. Get your ass in position over that building and make sure nothing comes out.”
“Copy that, Mitch. I’m on it.”
CHAPTER 16
COLEMAN eased right, taking cover behind a rusting metal-forming machine before sprinting across the open five yards to a pile of rotting pallets. He stayed near the wall and in the shadows, which obscured him from the men spraying bullets in his direction but also made it impossible for Rapp to track him.
The automatic gunfire emanating from the back of the building started arcing to the right in search of him and he darted across another gap, rolling through the debris before coming up onto a single knee. He lined up on the flashes but couldn’t find a target reliable enough to risk giving away his position. Instead, he crawled away from the wall, hoping to enter Rapp’s field of view without being forced to cross into the sunlight beaming through the windows.
The gunfire went silent, which should have been a positive development, but the abruptness of it set alarm bells off for the former SEAL. It had been too loud for his opponents to hear a cease-fire order that uniformly. And that left only one possibility he could think of: they had someone coming in on him that they didn’t want to hit.
He dove left just as the dull snap of a silenced pistol sounded. The round smashed into his motorcycle helmet with a deafening crash, jerking his head to the side. There was no time to worry about whether he was injured-or maybe even dead and just not realizing it yet-so instead he rolled with the force of the impact and came back to his feet. Miraculously, his body and mind were still working in concert and he began sprinting toward a stand-alone office just beyond the line that separated sunlight from shadow. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw an armed man walking calmly toward him. Not Middle Eastern and not like any terrorist he’d ever run into. No, this shooter wasn’t just Caucasian; he was wearing a really nice suit.
Just before reaching the door, Coleman altered his trajectory and dove through a window. On the back wall, a puff of dust sprang up where the gunman’s round penetrated. Judging by the position of the impact, his aim was once again dead-on. Had Coleman not changed course, the bullet would have hit him right between the shoulder blades.
The former SEAL found himself rolling through a carpet of broken glass with virtually no control. By the time he slammed into what was left of an old desk, his torso, hands, and arms were a spiderweb of oozing cuts.
He pressed his back against the wood and aimed through the doorway, spotting the man coming at him in a sideways run to minimize his profile. Coleman suffered a rare moment of confusion at the speed of his opponent’s approach. Rapp was the fastest guy he’d ever seen in person and this son of a bitch was noticeably faster.
It was impossible to line up a reliable shot, so he calculated that his best option was to conserve his ammo. Against a lesser opponent, he might have gone for a few near misses in an attempt to score a psychological blow. This asshole wouldn’t be so easily intimidated.
Coleman slid away from the desk through the loose glass just as the man opened up again. Three rounds hit right where he’d been a split second before, grouping in a circle just over an inch in diameter. It was an incredible display of marksmanship. Even with time to aim, it would have been impressive. But from a full run? Bullshit. No one could do that.