Barely two minutes had gone by since the first tear gas canister pierced the upstairs window. As the two women waited for the attack, each second dragged by like a year.
Suddenly, the door burst open, followed closely by the boot of the man who’d kicked it. His follow-through was careless, allowing his momentum to carry him off balance into the basement before he could ready his weapon. For most situations, it wouldn’t have been a problem. In this instance, a weapon was already drawn and pointed in his direction. Allyson squeezed the trigger and unleashed a barrage of hot metal. The first three rounds pounded his chest, driving him back toward Adriana. She held her knife in one hand and a pistol in the other. The attacker stumbled back, right into her arms. Allyson’s shots should have killed him, especially at point-blank range. But when Adriana caught him, her suspicions were confirmed. They were wearing Kevlar vests.
She wrapped her right forearm around his forehead and pulled back while her left sent the tip of her knife up through the base of his neck and into the back of his skull. His body went limp almost instantly. Adriana yanked out the blade as he dropped to the floor in a heap.
The second man heard the shots and immediately knew what happened. He stepped around the doorway and squeezed the trigger. The suppression barrel flashed, popping a chain of shots in Allyson’s direction. She ducked behind the boxes, protected more by the darkness and smoke than the cardboard and junk within. His shots went wide and high. Two ricocheted off the concrete floor and pinged dangerously around the room, stopping somewhere in the darkness.
A single muffled pop sounded from behind him, followed by a pink mist erupting from his forehead. His eyes went immediately blank, and he crumpled to the floor. Adriana stood behind the door, still pointing the smoking gun in the direction where the man had been.
The third attacker delayed entering the building after seeing his two comrades dropped by the women. Adriana pressed her back to the wall, holding her pistol just below her chin, ready for the next assault. Suddenly, the glass next to her shattered, and a metal canister clanked on the floor.
“Flash bang!” she yelled, and pressed her forearm tight against her eyes.
The searing white light that accompanied the low-level explosion pierced the darkness in every corner. Even with her eyes closed tightly and her arm pressed against them, adjusting back to the near total darkness took a few seconds. Adriana blinked rapidly. A long, black cylinder appeared around the edge of the door, moving slowly and waving back and forth as its holder scanned the room. She put the knife in her mouth and clenched it with her teeth then reached up, grabbed the doorknob, and pulled it back as she pointed her pistol at the man’s head.
He saw the door move and reacted with remarkable speed. Ducking to his left, he narrowly escaped a bullet to the face as Adriana squeezed the trigger. His left hand let go of the submachine gun, stretched across his body, and grabbed her wrist, twisting it down and back. In the same movement, he raised his gun, pointing the barrel at her torso. She was a split second from being torn apart.
Adriana winced at the pain from her wrist, but her instincts kicked in again, years of training once more taking over. She moved in the direction the assassin was bending her wrist, pushed hard with her legs, and jumped into the air, cartwheeling over his arm and landing next to him. Her teeth let go of the knife, and she caught it in her left hand. He saw the blade just before her body twisted and struck out in a deadly swipe. The man deflected the sharp edge with a swing of his gun and then pulled the trigger, hoping a round or two might catch her as it went around. She ducked below the barrel’s aim and swept her leg behind his heels, striking them with enough force to throw him off balance but not enough to bring him down. As he teetered, Adriana corrected her motion. Pressing her hands to the floor, she swung her right leg out and struck him in the abdomen. The blow finished the job and sent him tumbling backward into the open doorway.
She spun around and pushed herself off the ground, launching at the assassin with renewed fury. Her gun blazed, peppering hot rounds into his Kevlar vest as he fell to the ground. Adriana leaped through the air and landed on him before his back struck the outside landing. Her weight combined with his momentum caused his head to smack against the hard concrete. But his life was already in jeopardy before the effects of the concussion could take hold. In the blink of an eye, she flipped the knife handle around and jerked the edge across his neck, sending the tip deep enough to sever everything under the skin.
Adriana rolled off the man as he clutched desperately at the mortal fountain spewing from his neck. She breathed heavily, relieved to get fresh air into her lungs even as the lower level of the house purged itself of the smoke through the open doorway and broken windows.
Back in the basement, Allyson’s eyes had finally adjusted to the flash. She’d heard Adriana’s warning and closed her eyes, but her hand had been too slow in covering them, and the painfully bright light temporarily blinded her. She heard a scuffle nearby but could only see outlines at first. Then an automatic weapon fired several times, cut off suddenly by a thud and another suppressed gun’s fire.
Allyson blinked and rubbed her eyes. She’d been lucky. If she hadn’t closed her eyelids, the blindness would have certainly lasted much longer. Her eyes adjusted quickly now, and she could see the stairs in the far corner of the room. She remembered what Adriana had said about more attackers on the main floor. She didn’t wait for her eyes to be fully corrected and sprang from her hiding place at the front wall.
Sure enough, a black boot and pants leg appeared around the corner of the right-angled stairwell landing. She could see well enough to take aim and raised her weapon. The barrel flashed four times as she neared the stairs. Two of the rounds sank into the wood; the other two found their mark. One shattered the top of the man’s foot, the other burrowed into his shin.
As well trained as the assassins must have been, this one couldn’t help but yelp in agony. He fell over sideways onto the platform above the final four steps, and Allyson finished her charge with a last shot to the face. The protective screen on his gas mask splintered and splashed red, then his body slumped to the floor, one leg still propped on the step above.
A black tube poked around the corner, and Allyson dove for cover underneath the stairwell. She rolled to a stop against an old filing cabinet and waited. A moment later, the weapon sprayed a barrage of bullets into the room. Two sparked off the floor. Most found their way into boxes or sheetrock. She waited below the stairs, watching as a pair of boots cautiously moved down one step at a time. Allyson hadn’t kept track of how many rounds she’d fired, but she knew her magazine was running low at this point. She cursed herself for leaving the two spares in the bag on the far side of the room.
The next assassin came into view through the space between the steps, and she could see a second pair of boots appear just above. So there were at least two left. Maybe more. Two she could handle. But three would be a problem, especially when she was running low on ammunition.
Allyson always found that when taking on an assault of multiple enemies, it was best to take out the one in the middle or the one at the back first. In this case, she hoped the second hitman was the last one, but even if he wasn’t, eliminating him would slow down anyone behind him and give her time to take on the lead.
A gurgling sound came through the doorway and drew the attention of the men on the steps. It was the diversion she needed. Allyson poked her weapon’s barrel through the gap between the steps and aimed up at the second man’s groin. The trigger was sensitive, the way she liked it, and pulled easily against the weight of her finger. The weapon erupted with three loud bangs. The rounds obliterated the assassin's lower region and punctured deep into his organs.