As Cramer’s group disappeared through another door at the end of the corridor, Avery ducked his head below the floor level, against more incoming fire. He heard the footsteps of the first two Russians coming closer. He heard the confidence in their voices that they’d wounded him and would corner him and finish him in the stairwell.
Avery dropped his rifle, letting it clatter down the steps, and switched back to his SOCOM pistol. The pain in his arm worsened, and he was no longer able to support the M4 sufficiently. He rested the pistol on the stair next to him, selected a flashbang from his vest, released the pin, waited a second, reached up, rolled it down the floor, and flinched when a round of 5.45mm struck the floor barely an inch from his hand, kicking off sparks.
A split second later there was the tremendous ear shattering blast made louder by the close confines and the acoustics of the corridor. Even in the stairwell, through his clenched eyelids, Avery still saw the brilliant white flash, and took comfort in knowing it was a thousand times worse for his opponents.
Avery sprung up from the stairs, extended his right arm with the SOCOM pistol level in front of him, left leg bent with that foot on the next step in front of him. He tracked his targets, his mind making the split-second assessment of their threat potential and determining the order in which to eliminate them. The pain in his left arm grew in intensity, but if he let the pain hinder him, he was dead.
One Russian had moved farther back down the corridor, away from the stun grenade, but his wide, glazed-over, flickering eyes stared right at Avery without seeing him. Disorientated, he was in the process of shouldering his rifle, hoping to get a lucky shot, knowing that Avery would be coming back up the stairs any second.
The second Russian was on his knees, barely five feet away from the destroyed shell of the stun grenade. His hands fumbled around on the floor for the AK-12 he’d dropped, and he nearly fell over.
The first Russian fired his AK-12 blindly and randomly, but his aim was too high and off-center. The shots went wild and sparked off the walls and ceiling, not coming within four feet of Avery, who was calmly advancing down the corridor, closing the gap between them.
He shot the first Russian twice in the face. He dropped his rifle and collapsed as Avery shifted his aim down and to the right and pulled the trigger on the second Russian as the man’s fingers graced the butt of his rifle on the floor. His head snapped back, and his body went instantly limp.
The corridor cleared, Avery planted his back against the wall, hit the mag release with his right hand while his left reached painfully for a new magazine from his vest. He clumsily reloaded and chambered a round before proceeding down the corridor, hoping that Poacher or Flounder would catch up with him soon.
1:34. There were three more rooms on the third floor, each behind a heavy steel door, and Avery stopped at each one. One room was a storage space, the other a kitchen with a lounge area. The room that Cramer and the Russians had fled from was a large office space with desks and computers. All of them were deserted.
Reaching the end of the corridor, Avery kicked open the door that Cramer and Litvin had disappeared behind, and found himself staring into the cold exterior night, and felt the air blowing against his face. He cleared the threshold and stepped outside onto a narrow, rickety catwalk that extended twelve feet through the air, thirty-five feet off the ground, to a connecting platform on the mixing tower.
Cramer and Litvin were abandoning ship and going for the Kamov, Avery realized.
He followed his SOCOM pistol across the catwalk, his boots clapping against the metal surface. There was sufficient exterior lighting that his eyes’ photoreceptors acclimated quickly to the night. He heard the rattling crackle of AK fire coming nearby, but it wasn’t directed toward him.
Halfway to the platform, in the shadows, Avery discerned a figure crouched over the handrail at the edge of the platform, firing his AK-12 off into the hills where Reaper was positioned. The shooter faced away from Avery and was so focused on finding the sniper that he was completely oblivious to the movement on the catwalk and anything else taking place around him.
Another man lay sprawled four feet from the shooter. Blood dripped from beneath the destroyed head and through the small square spaces in the platform’s gridded surface. Reaper had managed to get at least one of them.
Avery glanced upward.
Above, on the next platform up, Cramer, Litvin, and another spetsnaz escort continued working their way up the tower, climbing the narrow ladder to the next scaffolding. The spetsnaz shooter stayed behind on the scaffolding and covered Cramer and Litvin with his AK-12 as they scurried up the next ladder. Once they reached the top, the spetsnaz shooter turned and swiftly and effortlessly scaled the ladder to catch up to them.
The next platform above them was at the top of the tower and supported the Ka-226.
Avery stepped off the catwalk onto the platform. He kept against the cylindrical curve of the tower, following its contour.
Eight feet way, the first Russian shooter, who had been engaging Reaper, fired another burst toward Reaper’s position in the hills. The clattering of his rifle masked Avery’s approach. After letting off one last burst, the Russian sprung onto his feet and ran around to the other side of the tower, to the ladder, eager to make it to the helicopter with the others and not be left behind.
Avery came around the tower in the opposite direction and met the Russian face-on as the man turned the bend. The Russian stopped dead in his tracks, surprised, as if Avery had just materialized in front of him out of nowhere. Avery shot him twice in his armored chest and then reached out and pushed him out of the way. The Russian flipped over the handrail and plummeted to the ground, where he broke his neck on impact.
Avery took the SOCOM pistol into his left hand, grabbed onto the eight-foot tall ladder with his right, and hauled himself up, his movements becoming sluggish and slow, uncoordinated. He became increasingly dizzy and lightheaded, telling him his brain wasn’t getting enough blood. He focused on his breathing, taking deep, slow breaths, in and out.
Nearing the next level of the tower, Avery heard the Kamov’s twin turbines and coaxial rotors power up, encouraging him to pick up the pace, but his body felt too weak and very heavy. He ignored the pain and forced himself up the ladder. He didn’t know what he could do to stop that helicopter from taking off, but there was no way he was going to allow Cramer to get away again.
Reaching the top of the ladder, as he stood up, Avery lost his footing on the last rung and stumbled forward onto the platform, landing on his chin, splitting it open, dazing him, and nearly knocking him out right then and there.
He rolled over onto his back. Staring up the ten feet length of the next ladder, he saw Cramer looking down at him from over the ledge of the next platform. He expected Cramer to alert the others, expected a Russian to point his rifle down at him and hose him full 5.45mm. But Cramer never said a word. Holding eye contact with Avery, expressionless, he shook his head once and then turned away.
Sparing the life of a former friend, or something else, Avery didn’t know, but it was Cramer’s mistake.
Five feet to his right, Avery saw the bodies of the two Uzbek guards Reaper had sniped when the team first arrived on-site. He saw the RPG-7s leaning upright against the handrail, the bulbous heads indicating they were armed and ready to go.
Avery worked his way back onto his feet, and dragged his weight forward to the edge of the platform, unable to move fast enough. He felt cold and feint. He thought he must have lost a lot of blood, though he didn’t think his brachial artery was hit. If it had, he wouldn’t have made it this far. At the moment, he didn’t care either way, as long as he had enough life left in him to see this through.