Collateral (Tier One #6)

Ember Up-Armored SUV

Odessa, Ukraine

“Absolutely not,” Dempsey said, shaking his head at Grimes. “I’m not sending you alone into that apartment building without comms. Martin is going with you, period, end of story.”

Munn eased the SUV to a stop, double-parking beside a row of cars at the rear of the apartment building across the street from the target warehouse.

Grimes felt her stomach go heavy, like she’d just chugged a cup of liquid lead. “But a two-man frontal assault on that warehouse is crazy. Especially, if Tango Two turns out to be a shooter,” she said, referring to the heat signature they’d labeled the secondary, possible sniper. “I won’t have a line on him.”

“I know,” he said, “but I have a plan to make it impossible for him to do his job.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m going to hover the drone swarm in front of his window. He’s not going to be able to see shit.”

She bobbed her head side to side, imagining herself trying to shoot through an undulating cloud of four-dozen drones blocking her sight line. “Mmm, that might actually work.”

“We only need fifteen seconds,” Dempsey said, his hands moving over his kit, checking his loadout as he talked. “Just long enough to round the corner, advance one block, and breach.”

“Okay, I can live with that,” she said and turned to Martin. “Looks like it’s you and me.”

The young Marine nodded. “Ready when you are.”

Munn put the transmission in Park, turned on the vehicle’s hazard flashers, and handed Martin the vehicle’s key fob. “Take this. I have a feeling you’ll be our exfil.”

Martin accepted the fob and stowed it in a Velcro flap pocket on his kit.

“Radios stay on TAC-1, just in case Wang comes through,” Dempsey said.

Grimes checked her radio and gave him a thumbs-up. “Good to go.”

“Good luck,” Dempsey said, then shot Martin a look that she took to mean, Look after our girl.

The compulsion to state the obvious—that she wasn’t the one who needed looking after—was overpowering, but she held her tongue. “How will you know when I’m set?” she said, reaching for the door latch.

“A little bird, or four dozen, will let me know,” he said, tapping the tablet computer with his index finger. “We’ll hold until then.”

She nodded, pulled the door latch, and jumped out of the vehicle. She hated operating in daylight. Without the night, she felt incredibly vulnerable . . . almost naked. She shoved the thought from her mind, despite being acutely aware of multiple pairs of civilian eyes on her and Martin as they charged into the apartment building, kitted up in full battle rattle. She reached the entrance door first and tried the handle.

Locked.

Martin drove a booted foot into the slab beside the handle. She heard a loud crack, but the door held. He took a step back, then plowed into the door with his shoulder, and this time it gave way. A middle-aged Ukrainian woman checking her mailbox in the little foyer screamed as Grimes quickstepped into the space, sighting over her Rattler. She instantly assessed the woman as a nonthreat and cleared left. Martin drifted in behind, cleared right, then moved toward the stairs. He cleared up the first flight, then swiveled to watch their six as she advanced. Upon reaching the first landing, she dropped into a tactical crouch and cleared the switchback flight.

“Clear,” she said, and Martin swept around her while she shifted her aim back down the stairs, her turn to watch their six.

They worked in tandem, methodically and expertly ascending the switchback flights to the third-floor. Unlike a typical fire escape stairwell, this staircase was the primary conveyance for the building’s residents. It had wide treads, an open architecture, and lacked doors at each level, which meant that the building probably did not have an elevator. Using hand signals, Martin indicated he would clear right. She nodded and silently counted them down.

Three, two, one . . .

The Marine pivoted around the wall into the hallway, clearing right. She followed him, clearing left.

“Clear,” he said.

“Clear,” she echoed, swiveling right and chopping a hand toward the target apartment. Like all good operators, she’d created her own mental map of the building, assigning cardinal directions and predicting the number of apartments on this floor based on the number of exterior windows. “This one,” she said, her voice a harsh whisper as they approached the target unit.

Martin nodded and drifted past the door, falling in beside the doorframe.

She pulled up short, taking a knee on the other side.

It had been months since she’d breached a room. After taking on the role as overwatch, all the breaching had fallen entirely to the guys. Despite the liquid lightning coursing through her veins, she felt a flutter of butterflies in her stomach. Charging blindly into a room, knowing you faced coin-flip odds of getting cut down by ready fire, was unnerving no matter who you were.

Unless, of course, your name is John Dempsey . . .

She exhaled and looked at Martin. He nodded once and stepped off the wall and into position. Grabbing a flash-bang off her kit, she said, “Three . . . two . . . one . . .”

On “go,” she pulled the pin and Martin snapped a front kick, splintering the doorjamb. With perfect synchronicity, she tossed the grenade through the expanding gap as the door arced inward. During the millisecond delay between the release and her squeezing her eyes shut, she registered two male figures in the room—one holding a spotter scope and the other lying prone. The grenade detonated a heartbeat later, with a blinding flash and a thunderclap that rattled her teeth. Training and muscle memory took over and the next thing she knew she was in the room advancing, with Martin on her right, sighting over her weapon.

Trigger squeeze.

Trigger squeeze.

She put two rounds into the Russian sniper and Martin dropped the spotter as the man went for a gun. She walked up to confirm the kill and saw that one of her rounds had hit her target dead center mass between the shoulder blades and the other had punched a hole in the sniper’s skull—entering at the base of the neck and exiting through his face. Blood and chunks splattered the carpet, wall, and windowsill. She stepped up to the window and waved once at the drone swarm hovering fifteen feet away at her elevation, then she looked at Martin.

“Help me move this,” she said, nudging the dead sniper’s body with the toe of her boot. “I want to set up here.”

“I got him,” Martin said, dragging the corpse clear by the ankles, leaving a smear of crimson in his wake.

“Thanks.”

“I’m going to go see about blocking the door.”

“Check.”

While Martin used a chair to wedge the apartment door shut, she got to work—unslinging her Sig 716G2 and setting the tripod in the exact spot the Russian sniper had selected. For a moment, she considered looking for a towel or sheet to throw over the gore, but the truth was she just didn’t fucking care anymore and simply stretched out prone atop the bloody mess. She pressed her cheek against her weapon and sighted through the TANGO6 scope at the street and warehouse below. She heard Martin return a moment later and take station beside her.

Without taking her eye off the optics, she said, “What are you doing?”

“I’m your spotter,” he said, in that black-or-white, matter-of-fact manner only Marines could pull off.

“Like hell you are,” she said. “You need to get down there and provide covering fire.”

“I’m not leaving you alone,” he said. “JD was crystal clear on that point.”

“Trust me, they need your help more than I do,” she said, glancing up at him.

“Look,” he said, pointing out the window. “Somebody just walked out of the target building.”

With heat in her cheeks, she turned back to her optics. “Shit,” she said, seeing the front door to the warehouse swinging closed as a male figure walked away, mobile phone pressed to his ear.

“Did you get a look at his face?”

“No, because I was arguing with you,” she snapped. “Damn it.”

I know better than to take my eye off the fucking scope, she thought, cursing herself for the lapse in discipline. A chill chased over her entire body as her crosshairs found the back of the target’s head. She exhaled and put tension on the trigger as the man turned back, appearing to holler something toward the door.

“Holy shit, it’s him,” she said.

“Him who?” Martin asked.

“One—this is Zeus, do you copy?” she said into her mike, praying for a miracle as she spoke. “One, Zeus—do you copy?”

“Comms are still down,” Martin said, answering the question she didn’t ask.

Her mouth went dry. Her pulse thrummed in her ears. The compulsion to take the shot was overpowering. Fuck authorization, said the voice in her head. I’m going to take the shot . . .

But her index finger refused to move and the man she was ninety-nine percent certain was Arkady Zhukov disappeared around the corner.

Outside, she heard a muffled crack followed by a woman’s scream. Dempsey had engaged . . .

“It’s on,” she said and swung her barrel down and sighted on the Russian spotter dressed as a homeless person. A machine pistol lay on the ground next to the sprawled-out figure bleeding on the sidewalk. As usual, Dempsey had been right. She pulled her cheek off the scope for a full-perspective look at the street below. Two familiar crouching shapes, quickstepping in tandem, crossed the street, sighting over rifles. She pressed her cheek back against her Sig and scanned the front of the warehouse for targets. Dempsey and Munn arrived a split second later, taking breaching positions on opposite sides of the main entry door. She watched Munn quickly and deftly set a breacher charge. But before he could detonate it, the double-wide garage door that dominated the front façade of the warehouse mushroomed outward and went flying into the street. For a split second, her brain thought a bomb had gone off, but instead of flames and smoke blasting out of the hole, she watched the Astrolog missile transporter barrel out through the gap.

“Oh my God,” she heard herself say as the massive vehicle careened to the left and then went roaring northwest on the narrow street, smashing and ramming cars left and right.

The rear-deck missile enclosure completely blocked the cab from her angle, not giving her any lines on the driver. So, she did the only thing she could do and took aim at the rear tires of the 8×8 heavy-haul vehicle and fired. She was pretty sure her rounds flew true, but it didn’t matter.

It’s like shooting a monster truck with a BB gun.

She popped to her feet and slung her Sig. “We’re done here,” she said to Martin, but the Marine was already a step ahead of her, clearing the apartment door.

“SUV—pick up and pursue?” he said, bringing his rifle up.

“You read my mind,” she said and sprinted after him into the hall.