Quickly Zack lifted his pistol, put it right at eye level at the corner of the vehicle, and waited less than one second.
The masked Gauntlet operative had heard the mag drop and bounce away, took it to mean Zack himself was in the process of reloading, and he rushed around the side of the van to shoot him dead.
Zack fired the one round still in the pipe of his pistol, snapping the enemy operator’s forehead back, knocking him out into the street.
The Gauntlet man was dead before he hit the ground. Zack knelt andretrieved his half-empty magazine, slammed it back in the grip of his pistol, and dropped the slide back on a fresh round.
Standing over the dead man, he said, “You don’t clear a corner with your face, dumbass.”
Zack holstered quickly, checked his body with a blood sweep, and realized to his surprise that he had not been hit in the crazed close-in melee, though it felt like he had. His left leg hurt like hell behind the knee where it had been shot in Russia. Scar tissue there adhered to the muscles of his thigh, and he’d wrenched it crawling and juking around in the gunfight.
Zack’s physio back in Colorado had ordered him to stretch every day, and he’d not stretched once, and he was therefore paying the price.
But Zack wasn’t thinking right now that he wished he’d been more diligent with his PT; he was thinking about Travers, who had been shot in the street somewhere behind him, and Court, who was somewhere in the condo building, moving downstairs with the subject.
Zack knew his vehicle had probably taken a dozen rounds or more of gunfire right in the grille, so he decided to commandeer the Gauntlet Expedition instead. It would have a radio beacon in it, he was certain, so he couldn’t drive it for long, but if it could get him, and maybe Court, off the X a mile or two, they could dump it and then link up with Hanley before Gauntlet HQ could rally a quick reaction force to intercept it.
Zack moved to the driver’s side of the Expedition, pushed a dead man crouched behind the open door out of the way, then pulled himself up behind the wheel. Firing the engine and then throwing the truck into reverse, he backed a block down New Hampshire, did a high-speed, reverse-skidding J-turn, and then headed to the left.
He saw flashing red and blue lights behind him, but they were reflections off glass, and any first responders were still some way off.
Racing forward now, he broadcast to the group. “Six, status?”
To his relief, Court answered almost immediately. “I’ll be down on New Hampshire in about thirty seconds.”
“Okay, that’s going to plop you right out into a crime scene. Can you get in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, head out a door on M Street?”
“I’ll figure it out.”
“You’ve got Ortega?”
“Yeah, we’re both good. You?”
“I’m good, in a black Expedition. No time to lollygag, I’m in an enemy-flagged vic, so shake a leg.”
—
Arnold Reyes drove the minivan down L Street a minute later, slowing just a little as first responders and passing motorists all but blocked the way, and Chris Travers stepped out of the darkness of a cluster of bare bushes, then climbed in the back of the truck, still holding his neck.
Jill shut the door and the vehicle moved on; Hanley took one look at Travers and reached into an already open first-aid kit. He removed a compression bandage, tore it from its green vacuum-sealed bag, and then he applied the gauze-covered end of it to Chris’s neck.
Matt pressed the non-adherent cotton pad hard over the wound, and then Travers lifted his bloody left hand high in the air because he knew the procedure. Matt unspooled the elasticized wrapping and tightly wound it around the right side of Chris’s neck and then under his left underarm. He threaded the elasticized leader through a hooked plastic device called a pressure applicator, then pulled the wrapping in the opposite direction, nearly as hard as he could, to create the compression needed to slow the bleeding from Travers’s neck.
Chris grunted in pain, but he did not protest. The pain he felt was from a treatment that would keep him alive till he got some real medical care, so he sucked it up.
After several more wraps over the right side of the neck and the left underarm, Hanley came to the end of the bandage, where the metal closure bar was attached, and this he hooked over the leader, holding the dressing in place.
“Nice work, doc,” Travers said, and then, “I’m good to go. How’s Six?”
Just then, Hightower’s voice came over their earpieces. “I’ve got Six and the package, heading north out of the area. Where do you want us?”
Hanley thought a moment. “Any of you hurt?”
“Nothing too dramatic,” Hightower answered.
“Okay. I want you three to head to Reagan. We’ll get Teddy treated by a doctor I know of near here, and then we’ll meet you at the airport.”
“How is he?” Hightower asked.
