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Maybe.
He immediately flitted for cover near the building’s front doors and pulled his pistol. There were at least five men that he could see. Where they had come from he couldn’t tell. Most likely they had already been here before he arrived. Which meant his hiding place had been compromised.
In the moonlight he could see that they wore light armor and carried automatic, combat-grade weaponry. They were advancing in a diamond-shaped attack pattern. There was no way he could fire at one without revealing his location. And his cover position could not withstand concentrated counterfire.
This dilemma presented a clear tactical first step. Since his current position was indefensible, he moved. He was through the front doors and up the stairs before any of them could gain a line of sight on him to fire. Any building that Will Robie had ever occupied had been thoroughly researched by him beforehand, and this one was no exception.
He turned left and sprinted down the hall that bisected the main floor. He reached the rear doors, knelt, and peered out. Tac lights and gun muzzles were coming his way. They were smart enough to have cut off his rear exit. This op had involved some planning. He heard the front doors opening. Robie hit the stairwell, running up three flights of stairs, popped through the door, and hustled down the hall to the last room on the left.
He unlocked the door and then bolted it behind him. He raced to the window even as he heard the reverberations of multiple feet pounding up the stairs. He never thought about calling anyone for help because there really wasn’t anyonetocall—and even if there were, they would never get here in time. Robie had to rely on himself, which was nothing new for him.
He opened the window and pulled out a coil of rope that he had earlier placed behind a piece of furniture. There was also a small duffel with some things that might prove helpful, along with his comm equipment. He slung the duffel over his shoulder and tied the rope to the railing that ran around the small balcony attached to the side of the building. He looked down and now saw no tac lights or other signs of someone being down there. They must have entered the building already.
In the distance he saw the blinking lights of an aircraft as it zipped across the clear sky. The flare lights of the oil fields burned far away, looking like clusters of shiny objects.
He slipped over the side of the balcony and, using his legs around the rope as stabilizers, he methodically made his way down. As soon as his feet touched dirt, he took out his weapon, screwed a suppressor can onto the muzzle, knelt down, took aim, and shot the man who had just come around the corner. The fellow dropped silently to the ground, but the sound of the suppressed round seemed to boom across the flat, dark land like cannon fire.
What was up was now coming down, as from inside the building Robie heard the sounds of feet charging down to the first floor. He sprinted to his left even as gunfire rained down on him from above. They also had the high ground now, which was the best ground to possess. Fired rounds careened off the stucco hide of the building, and shrapnel flew off like little whirlwinds of twisted metal. Robie felt one slice into his arm, but he never slowed until he reached the man he’d killed. In one smooth motion he jerked the man up and used him as a shield while he grabbed the loaded sub gun out of his hands along with three spare thirty-round mags from ammo sleeves in his pants. As rounds slammed into the dead man, Robie waited for a pause in the firing, then dropped the body and sprinted around the corner of the building.
Reaching the front, Robie threw himself forward in a prone position and opened fire right as the group of closely massed men erupted from the front entrance.
Because of the body armor they wore, he employed only head shots, and in short order had taken out all five who had burst into his range. Those not instantly dead moaned, cried, and cursed as Robie rose and sprinted toward his scooter.
He heard another sound that caused him to change direction and then dive down, right as the bullets zipped over him. He rolled right, took aim, and strafed the field in front of him with gunfire. This would give him a few precious seconds to assess the new threat.
It was coming from two directions, ninety and two-seventy on the compass.
Looked to be six men in each group, armed and armored.
Robie felt flattered they had sent basically a platoon to take him out.
He fired off the rest of his mag to keep his enemy at bay for another few seconds, and then slammed in his next-to-last sleeve of ammo.
His scooter was out of the question now. His adversaries owned that ground.
He couldn’t run for it. They would cut him down in a matter of seconds. No help was coming, he was outnumbered ten to one, and he had two thirty-round mags and seven additional shots in his pistol. They probably had thousands of rounds to expend on him. So it was just a war of attrition now with only one clear outcome.
He thought of pulling out his phone and calling Decker, if for no other reason than to tell him what was happening and to take charge of his body. But he decided against that. That was a defeatist attitude, and that was not really in Robie’s DNA.
He looked left and then right, searching for options as the group of men in front of him slowly moved forward. Just to show he wasn’t to be toyed with, he focused on one man, leading the pack on the right. He watched the guy through the scope on his pistol and gauged his diversionary movements for about ten seconds. He discerned the pattern and took aim with his pistol, and when the man stepped to his right, it was the last step of his life.
As the man fell dead, Robie immediately rolled to his left and kept going as rounds poured into the location he had just occupied, his shot having given it away.
Then the others ceased firing and hunkered down. Robie could imagine them using their comm packs to assess the situation and arrive at a solution to the little problem represented by him.
Robie didn’t wait to confront the result of this discussion. He rolled to his left and kept rolling until he reached a planting bed that was full of dying flowers and small bushes. Tac lights were flying all over the ground as they searched for him from a safe distance, because there were limits to the accurate range of the sub gun. It was designed to be devastating in close-quarter battle, but it was for shit at long range.
He debated whether to use the tac beams as a convenient target to take out one or two of them. But doing so would only lead to overwhelming firepower directed at him. And he couldn’t keep rolling out of danger. They would figure that out and send fields of fire in every direction he could possibly take. Then it became a numbers game, and one round would eventually find him.
He assessed the situation again. It was a shitshow, to be sure. But Robie had some more cards to play.
He opened the duffel and took out two metal fist-sized canisters and a pair of headphones with a built-in battery. He put on the headphones and powered them up. He punched an engagement switch on each of the metal canisters, tossed one and then the other.
They hit the dirt about two feet from his adversaries.
The blinding flash of light was followed by an avalanche of sound, and, far more lethally, sheets of packed shrapnel traveling at speeds no person could dodge.
Two seconds later, Robie got up and fired through the smoke, emptying his mag. Then he ran to his left toward the road using an evasive zigzag movement.
