He might have been in the process of pulling the trigger at something down there, but her scream cut through him like a knife, and Jerry instead whirled back around in her direction and opened fire.
She ducked her head and ran along the length of the second floor as the wall exploded around her, the sound of the submachine gun’s parts spinning sending shivers up and down her spine. She thought she was ready for it; she had seen it at work up close and had even held and used one at the range. But she wasn’t quite prepared for the sheer violence of its thirty rounds, all of which seemed to be coming at her at subsonic speeds.
She stuck out her hand and fired the Glock blindly down at the living room while shielding her face with her free arm against the chunks of the wall swarming around her. It sounded and felt as if every inch of the second floor was coming apart at the seams and there would be absolutely nothing left when this was over.
Then, a sharp, ferocious bark broke through the whirring gunfire and the clink-clink-clink of empty brass casings scattering across the tiled first floor. The wall behind her stopped exploding just as Allie reached the head of the stairs. She didn’t so much as stop as she rammed into the wall and didn’t have any more room to keep going.
She didn’t have to turn her head very far to glimpse Jerry below her at the same time a rocket of white fur — easily visible against the dark living room — streaked toward him. Jerry reacted much faster than the bigger Jones had at Walter’s house, and instead of trying to shoot the dog, Jerry lifted his submachine gun and swung.
A sharp yelp filled the house as Apollo was knocked out of the air by the stock of the weapon and landed in a pile of fur on the floor. The dog quickly scrambled to his feet, but despite his breathtaking speed, Apollo wasn’t fast enough. Jerry had already dropped the MP5SD and drawn his sidearm and was lifting it—
Allie aimed, praying that she hadn’t wasted all five remaining rounds during her mad dash across the floor, and pulled the trigger.
Chapter 10
“It’s him, the girl, and the woman. It’s an easy job. You’ll be in the country with no one around for miles. Maybe a neighbor or two. Maybe. It’ll probably be the easiest and most lucrative job of your life. When this is over, you’ll thank me.”
Jack grunted. Why did he ever think it was going to be that easy? Nothing about his life had ever been that easy. His childhood, his teenage years, even his twenties serving Uncle Sam.
And yet, and yet, when Walter had driven up in the car and the girl ran into the house, he had allowed himself to believe that yes, this time it could really be that easy. This one time, a job was going to wrap up all nice and tidy, and once they got Walter to do what they needed, he’d take the man outside while Jones dealt with the girl and Jerry took care of the girlfriend. He was just dealing with civilians, after all, not gun-toting mercenaries, or drug dealers, or private security.
It should have been simple.
Fucking idiot.
There were two of them — a big, broad-shouldered man standing next to a thinner but taller one. They were wearing suits, but only the tall one looked like his was tailored by someone who knew what they were doing. They leaned against the black SUV’s open front doors, the lights glinting off pistols clutched in their hands.
Two more men were using the white SUV as a shield. It was parked slightly behind and to the right of the black one, and instead of pistols, these two were wielding long-barreled submachine guns. Maybe Uzis with suppressors. Either way, they’d definitely come prepared, which boded poorly for him.
There were four outside in the front yard right now and at least two more at the back of the house. Or there were two more before he let loose with the Sig556. He probably shouldn’t have kept shooting long after the man disappeared in a shower of glass and wood and bullets, and Jack chastised himself for losing control even if it was just for a few seconds. He kept waiting for whoever was still out there to show themselves, either through the gaping hole where the back door used to be or along one of the back windows, but no one did.
It had been exactly a minute and a half since he fired, and Jack scrambled away from the door now, keeping his eyes on the back door and windows the entire time. He slipped into the living room then angled right, toward the bedroom hallway. He shot a glance at the second hallway further back to make sure it was empty before reaching his destination and slid up against the wall. He paused to take a breath before sneaking a look around the corner and, again, at the back of the house.
Nothing. Not a damned thing.
“What’s going on out there?” Walter called from the open guest bedroom door behind him.
“Everything’s fine, Walter,” he called back.
“Who’s shooting?”
“Stop talking and get back to work!”
He waited for a response, but didn’t get any. He also didn’t hear the tap-tap-tapping that he was waiting for, so Walter hadn’t gotten “back to work” as ordered. Jack guessed he couldn’t really blame the guy. The Sig556 made a hell of a racket, especially when fired inside a building on full-auto.
But Jack didn’t dare backtrack to convince Walter to resume his task. He couldn’t take his eyes off the living room, the back door and windows, or the foyer for even a second. There were no other ways into the house except through the two doors in front of him. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. There were the bedroom windows, but they’d have to pry the burglar bars loose first to come through there.
He reached down with his left hand, the right holding the assault rifle just out of view of anyone looking in from the back of the house. He pressed the PTT and whispered into the throat mic, knowing the device wouldn’t have any trouble transmitting his words: “Jerry, come in.”
He waited for an answer, but like the last time he had attempted to contact Jerry, only silence came through the earbud.
“Jerry, goddammit, come in. You still out there?”
Still nothing, because Jerry was dead. That was the only explanation. There was no way he would run off, not without his share of the job. Jerry would never abandon a retirement package that would have finally made all the years toiling in the private markets for chump change, doing every two-bit dictator and asshole’s bidding, worth it. Because Jerry, when you got right down to it, was just like him.
“Hey!” someone shouted from the front yard. “Hold your fire!”
Jack didn’t answer. It was probably a trap, trying to get him to expose his exact location for another brute force attack.
I was born at night, but not last night, chump.
“Hey, you in there?” the man shouted again. Then, when Jack still didn’t answer, “Answer it!”
Answer it? Jack thought, when he glimpsed movement coming from his right — from the back of the house — and stuck out his rifle to shoot. A man in a cheap suit had appeared, but before Jack could pull the trigger, the man tossed something into the house. It was small, and for a moment Jack thought it was a grenade, but the shape was all wrong—
It bounced off the couch and landed on the carpet about five feet in front of him.
It was a phone.
One of those cheap brands almost identical to the burner cell phone he had in one of his pockets at the moment.
The fuck?
The man had darted away, flitting across one of the back windows. Jack almost pulled the trigger anyway, but the man was surprisingly fast, and the presence of the phone (Not a grenade, thank you, God) had thrown him off. He felt stupid letting the man get close enough to throw the phone all the way inside the house. If it had actually been a grenade, he’d be dead right now. Or, at least, minus one or two limbs.