AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Normally, I hated it when he called me that, but in a moment like this, it was his way of reassuring me that he’d follow my orders and have my back. I gave him a single firm, grateful nod.
“Super-load on ammo, take at least one short-range weapon and try to stay covered once we’re in there. We’ll take an ambush approach, guns blazing, no chance for them to react. Take out as many as you can on the first sweep, then find cover to outlast the rest. They probably only have one backup clip on them, so we just have to let them shoot themselves out.”
“We don’t need to capture Baron?” Mark asked, eyebrows furrowing. I clenched my jaw.
“…No,” I said. “Fabri really did it.” A series of emotions and thoughts broadcasted across Mark’s face as that sunk in, from confusion to doubt to surprise to concern, but he didn’t ask any of the hundreds of questions on his mind. He knew now wasn’t the time, and I’d tell him everything as long as we both got out of there alive.
“…Makes it easier,” Mark just said, running his last gun check. “I hate trying to keep one guy alive during a firefight.” Especially a firefight where we were heavily outmanned. Being able to shoot indiscriminately was what was going to get us out of this; I’d have killed to call more backup, but we had no idea who else Arthur had gotten his claws into, so we still had to operate on paranoia. We’d be weeding everyone out for a while after this.
“Ready?” I asked, pulling out my earplugs. Some of our guns had silencers, but not all, and who knew if theirs would? I still remembered the very first shootout I was ever in, the day I met my dad, and how my hearing and balance were both not quite right for weeks afterwards.
“Ready,” Mark said. We looked at each other, braced ourselves, and started forward, guns drawn.
I'd heard actors talk about the feeling they had just before going on stage, and athletes talk about the moment they left the locker room for a game. That mixture of silence, eagerness, and nerves that somehow sharpened the entire universe and brought everything into perfect focus, that calm before the storm where they felt the most themselves. That was how I felt before a shootout. It was as if my vision had narrowed,and just one thing mattered: living.
We walked quickly but quietly, keeping our heads on swivels as we crossed the street and neared the building. Just because neither of us could see any guards didn't imply there weren't any; the roof line made hiding a sniper possible. Snipers were the fucking worst.
They must have been pretty confident in their safety, though, because there was no one stopping us. I suppose that made sense,given that my entire family wasat the hearing. Fortunately, I had arrived before they realized it was done.
The front door was held closed with just an average lock, the kind either of us could pick with our eyes closed, which told me this wasn’t one of the Irish Mob’s actual hideouts. Security would never be this lax. They probably used this place for meeting Arthur and nothing else.
We moved quickly but carefully, checking around every corner and doorframe. With one earplug out, we could hear muffled voices from upstairs, but we had to clear the lower floor first to avoid enemies coming up the steps behind us and pinning us. It was just a normal low-income townhome, with sparse furniture and patchy wallpaper that still smelled of cigarettes smoked here thirty years ago.
There was one guy in the kitchen, apparently getting a drink, but Mark took him out with his silenced pistol before he could shout for the others.
With hand signals, we finally moved towards the stairs. They were almost guaranteed to be creaky. We put our second earplugs in and I gestured up the stairs and ascended together.
With the earplugs in, all I could hear was my own breath and the quiet rush of my blood, almost like the white noise of an airplane, and the world honed in even further.
Which room we needed to enter was incredibly obvious. There were two armed men outside of it, standing at the end of the hallway like gargoyles, and they saw us just as we saw them.
One of them opened his mouth, probably shouting inarticulately, but I couldn’t hear him. I saw the opportunity before me and took it, swinging the semi-auto on my back around and unloading a clip.
Putting a silencer on a semi-auto was pretty pointless, so the moment I pulled the trigger, the air was full of noise that the earplugs couldn’t fully block out. This was our announcement; we were here, and we were ready.
I gritted my teeth through the rebound, feeling each shot like a drum hitting my bones, and stood my ground to sweep the hallway. Bullets punched through the drywall to pepper the room, hopefully dispatching some of the other people inside, though we’d find out momentarily. I knew for sure the guards outside were good and dead, their limp forms crooked, and only one of them had reacted fast enough to get his gun into his hand. He’d shot it once and hit nothing.
The silence was broken, and with it, the spell of the moments before the fight. Now, the curtain was raised, and the play could begin. I let a feral grin stretch across my face.
Mark and I moved in tandem, stalking quickly towards the door the moment my clip was empty. There was probably shouting going on past the door, some scrambling, maybe an agonized scream—the door burst open, and two more guns came out, ready to stop us. They weren’t going to.
One of them was already heavily injured, leaning against the doorframe to stay standing, and two quick shots were all it took to have him dead on the ground. Mark shot at the other one, hitting him in the gut, but to the fucker’s credit, he didn’t go down. He leaned back against the wall and started shooting, and I dove into the nearest room. Mark took cover behind a wooden cabinet. We made eye contact.
In moments like this, Mark and I operated as one organism, and I knew he was thinking the same thing I was—we had planned to let the Irish shoot themselves dry and then swoop in for the easy kill, but through the doorway, we could see a large window and the fire exit ladder attached to it. Baron and Arthur weren’t trapped as we’d hoped, and their single remaining soldier was just buying them enough time to escape. We couldn’t let that happen.
I didn’t bother looking down the hall to aim, not wanting to risk getting shot in the head while peeking when we had more than enough bullets and no reason to limit collateral damage, so I just stuck my arm out the door and shot blindly. It wasn’t elegant, but it was good enough, and I heard a short, sharp yell. I went to poke my head out, but Mark caught my eye, gesturing me to stay back, and just a moment later, the Irishman started shooting again. What an annoying motherfucker.
Mark had better sight lines, so when I ducked back, he took his turn. One shot, two, three—he stopped, waited tensely, then took off down the hall. I knew that meant that the guard was either dead or unable to keep shooting, so I followed, not even a full step behind.
We had no backup, no extra forces waiting at the bottom of the fire escape, and if Baron and Arthur got away now, we would lose them completely. The hound inside me snarled at the thought. Baron was bad enough; I had to kill him on principle, but Arthur?
Oh, Arthur was going to get so much worse. I couldn’t let him get free.
We passed the dead guard without a second glance, finding the final guard on the ground gasping through the holes in his lungs as Baron and Arthur stood near the window in the most unusual position. Which was to say, guns drawn at each other.
Oh, I thought hysterically, I get it.
“Underboss Marino!” Arthur shouted, never taking his eyes off of Baron. Only just then did I realize one of my earplugs had dislodged when I dove for cover. “I knew you would find me! I’ve got--!”
